Distension Beta Suggestions/Bugfix thread

[gdugwyler]

Sorry not to be around the last week. Good bit of stuff going on.

I'll work on the Javs and Lanc. Javs will probably have increased L2 bomb energy required (fortunately you can modify the increase rate on bombs, rather than it just doubling required energy). This should keep the normal Jav viable, but keep the monsters of the present at bay. Lanc will have slower-moving bursts, and perhaps with less total burst shrapnel. I don't think you can adjust the alive time, as it bases it on bullet time. I might be recalling incorrectly, though. I'll also cap the percentage chance for the new WB ability. Shouldn't be able to get it to fire every single time you get a streak, even if you're on a good bit of a roll.

I may consider changing the OP system to giving Ops a much larger number of OP points, but then making the abilities cost more, allowing a finer gradation of OP costs and possible slight increases for the more annoying abilities such as doors. This would also make bonuses from team efforts possible, as it'd be a much smaller percentage. The OP increase rate upgrade could also be more reliable: per-tick, a certain number, rather than a percentage chance of 1 OP showing up.

Still plan on adding that Terr summoning ability. Can't remember if there was another. Oh, right, the Weasel -- anyone think the large decoy array idea had any merit? I think it could work, even if it sounds not so effective from a hypothetical stance.

Anyway, I'll be starting development again a bit at the start of next week. (Not the first test, though; have to get a goddamn root canal.) Also, to Left and ali, thanks for rescheduling earlier so I can see how it's going from time to time.

[roxxkatt]

READ THIS POST

anyone think the large decoy array idea had any merit?

i think its a good idea, especially with cloaking...

NERF THE JAV
Javs will probably have increased L2 bomb energy required

that messes up levis as well =/
a better idea is to have javs get bombs later, like level 40-50
JAV YELLOW = LEVI BLUE
levi is 58. whats jav?
and to compensate the levi for all the radius nerfs, the lv2-3 need to cost less, or for emp bombs to do more then 35%...

f1 text

dug, pm me the text you want in f1, and i can set it up extremely quickly.

NERF THE FIREBLOOM

something needs to be done, perhaps:
#1: reduce burst time. (affects terr)
#2: decrease bullet count for lanc. <--best
#3: slow bullets even more.
#4: "have the firebloom prized randomly(%)" <--more best'r

FIX OPS AFK CHECK

it doesnt work.
at all.
in case you missed it:

what if you killed the current ops afk thing, and made the only test so the bot pms you a random number 1-100, and you simply pm that number back? that would defeat ?away completely, the only reason for all this extra crap...

which plays into:

FIX LAGOUT

today i played in an electrical storm.
i got to test the lagout and queue quite extensively.
it returns you automatically, which works, then adds you to the queue, which also works. While i tested it in levi, it returned me to ship 4, but didnt restore my participation. While i tested it in ops, it did nothing, even while noone was in ops, and didnt restore my participation.


also:

will have an 18% chance ((7 - 1) x 3) of being awarded super, and an 18% chance of being awarded shields

good thing they get super + shields after their 35th kill 100% of the time, right? that sounds excellent.

i predicted the future :fear:


spot the important typo!

Distension>Snaps view to a location based on the number.
Distension> 1: HomeFR 11: HomeMid 12: HomeTube 13:HomeRearm
Distension> 2: NME FR 21: NME Mid 12: NME Tube 3: Center

^also, im a fucking genious for thinking of this, anyone that ever plays ops had better thank me. i sure do...


also, opsmine doesnt work at all

Distension> | !opsmine <#> 2 .mi| False minefield @ home base.

nothing works, no messages for !opsmine, !mi, or .mi

also, ops !a has no #10.

and i dislike the idea of terr summoner.
also not a big fan of the stalemates, i like the nice long battles =(

also, ops can close nme doors, as well as their own.
ops should also be able to open a door that nme ops has closed.
i tried this, and it used my OP, but didnt open the door.

also, the cost of orb should either be reduced, or enlarged to cover thrust and custom shipsets, or made to last longer.

ADD A WEEKEND TEST

i added colors to help the lazy/retarded kids =)
TL/DR: fuck you.

[jngy slate]

I'm Not Sure How The Truce System Works. Today's Last Game In The Second Test Got Ended While A Lot Of Players From My Team Didn't Want This. Does It Ask How Many Want To End The Battle As A Tie? It If Does, I Never Saw A Message Asking. If There Is A Message, Make It Play A Sound So More Players Notice.

[Mjollnir]

Three things:

• For all of you who have been asking when the Jav gets yellow bombs: it's at lvl 40.

• It seemed like I didn't get streaks from high level kills. It just said high rank cap blabla.. and nothing about a streak. Not entirely sure about this since I didn't exactly have time to track the kills that well.

• I liked the tie game. In my opinion it could happen even earlier at like 40 minutes or so. Another possibility would be prizing RP to the team that held the flag the most during the period of 10-20 (whatever would work the best) minutes. It would be like a mini-victory every x minutes but the whole round wouldn't end until the real victory condition was met. The game could also end if a team gets a mini-victory y amount of times. In this mode there wouldn't necessarily have to be a tie at all, although it would probably still be a good thing to have.

I don't know how I managed to babble so much again and it is almost 5AM so I am off to bed.

[Birthday Party]

Two more possible bugs dealing with escape pods in warbird:


1. Three times when I got escape pod but then died right away anyway, while still rearming, I would be sent to HQ (I believe that's what the little round safe is called, if I remember correctly) and then reattach or warp or whatever, I would still be rearming and then the rearming message would go away, but I hadn't rearmed, and I saw quite clearly that everyone else had. I waited for a good minute once but never rearmed even though everyone else had and the rearming message went away, until I just changed ships and then back to wb, and after I did that, right away I was rearmed.

2. (not really important I guess) When I died right before round was to start, when everyone is warped to the HQ, when I was spawned with my escape pod and wasn't sent to the HQ at all and just got to chill out in base for a bit, though I was warped to spawn area when the round actually started. I know usually if you warp from the HQ you might get to stay out for a sec, but then you get warped back in (if I remember correctly), but not this time with the escape pod.

[Viruk]

I may consider changing the OP system to giving Ops a much larger number of OP points, but then making the abilities cost more, allowing a finer gradation of OP costs and possible slight increases for the more annoying abilities such as doors.

Unfortunately the doors are more than just annoying if they can be used in quick succession or totally block off an area. Unless there are limits/delays then making the abilities a little more expensive just pushes the problem back a little until there are Ops high level enough to be able to hoard the points to do this.
I do not believe that any single player regardless of level ought to be able to keep an entire frequency out of the flag room or stop the flow of the game for any significant period without a lot of skill or luck.
I suggest having separate doors for the two FR entrances and delays between allowing door use.
Alternatively you could make even more sets of base doors (with their activating codes written in the nearby wall graphics) and then lower the duration and OP cost. Replace the big doors with many smaller doors and allow multiple door use. You might then see ops using them regularly to warp enemies, slow the enemy attack, shield their base terrier and plug gaps in the defence rather than completely locking out the opposing side for significant periods.

[2kill]

Ok I'm going to post just about the Ops:

I am currently a rank 29 ops, and I was thinking why do I enjoy this? it isn't doing fast rearm constantly or spamming my team, don't get me wrong I enjoy watching a nice flag capture but the most enjoyable thing is to lock the doors on someone... causing me to laugh out loud, and if I can get it twice I laugh harder. Except for FR doors really smart terrs (I've seen flibb, ajant) lay a port run to the other I close the doors they port through the other one. and with the FR doors, I can't close them more then twice in a row if I was hoarding. Though I do have only 40% regen on my OP (will have 60% next level )

also dug I thought you would want to know the ops is wanted by the team... I jumped in to a shark from ops to help my team, and they told me to go back in to do fast rearm

I may consider changing the OP system to giving Ops a much larger number of OP points, but then making the abilities cost more, allowing a finer gradation of OP costs and possible slight increases for the more annoying abilities such as doors. This would also make bonuses from team efforts possible, as it'd be a much smaller percentage.

You could do that at it would work out ok and just for the next part that quote I agree.

The OP increase rate upgrade could also be more reliable: per-tick, a certain number, rather than a percentage chance of 1 OP showing up.

I got one thing to say alleluia sometimes I would have more OP then I would know what to do, then other times no OP at all. though I want to talk to you about the predefined messages from the bot could you change it to every 30 secs cause in one minute the enemy has changed bases so you are left just spamming normally.

about fast rearm: I know this wouldn't be high priority but could you put in a graphic to show when fast rearm is on, you could take the rearm graphic and resize it smaller and put it in the corner somewhere. cause when I'm getting close to the last few seconds I start spamming .re, so I would like to be able to smoothly do it well doing other stuff

ops should also be able to open a door that nme ops has closed.

this is the truth it would also help a bit with doors stopping the whole team...

also, the cost of orb should either be reduced, or enlarged to cover thrust and custom shipsets, or made to last longer.

he can't make the first level less cheap unless he goes to a different system, about level 2 Orb though I would like to be able to do orb on all people not in my home base... so you would go .ot and orb all enemies at top .ob and all enemies and bottom I just think this ability shouldn't be tied to your home base, to my level its like what are the odds that I will have 3 OP and enemy attacking home base.

^also, im a fucking genious for thinking of this, anyone that ever plays ops had better thank me. I sure do...

LOL cheese I don't use those cmds :Pbut thanks anyway

FIX OPS AFK CHECK

I don't know Cheese I no longer get kicked out of Ops at all... now that I'm constantly doing stuff and spamming .h to make sure

Thats good enough for now

2kill

[Mjollnir]

There might be a few problems with the fast rearm ops ability. I can think of three:

• First of all, it is a very strong ability and shouldn't be so easy to get/use all the time.
• Another problem is that it may significantly slow down the rearm rate of the other team, which makes it even stronger and very annoying for them (not entirely sure about this one).
• It slows down the rearm rate of the essential ships on your team that have fast rearm upgraded. Especially in large games where there are many people to rearm it can be annoying for the Terriers and such that should be able to get it first. It should be done so that the ships that have fast rearming upgraded will get rearmed before anyone else (even if ops uses fast rearm for the whole team). Hopefully this feature is already coded in the game.

[Aquatiq]

Get rid of the 'blinding scary face' ops thing already. Or modify it so it flickers on and off very fast, but at least so we can see our ships. Some guy in spec blinding the entire enemy army, yeah, let's bitch about some yellow bombs that can actually be repped by sharks while this goes on uninhibited.

[jngy slate]

There might be a few problems with the fast rearm ops ability. I can think of three:

• First of all, it is a very strong ability and shouldn't be so easy to get/use all the time.
• Another problem is that it may significantly slow down the rearm rate of the other team, which makes it even stronger and very annoying for them (not entirely sure about this one).
• It slows down the rearm rate of the essential ships on your team that have fast rearm upgraded. Especially in large games where there are many people to rearm it can be annoying for the Terriers and such that should be able to get it first. It should be done so that the ships that have fast rearming upgraded will get rearmed before anyone else (even if ops uses fast rearm for the whole team). Hopefully this feature is already coded in the game.

It's not annoying for a terrier because a terrier should never die and thus fast rearm wouldn't matter. Might be annoying for sharks though. But I don't know which ships have fast rearm.

[gdugwyler]

There's always far too many things to work on with this game, particularly because as soon as one thing is modified, it throws everything else a little bit and causes a whole new stream of bugs. At present I'm trying to catch up with the most important issues and will go along with smaller or more recent ones as time permits.

• Jav nerf. L1 bombs cost slightly less to fire, L2/L3 bombs a decent bit more, and overall bomb radius reduced slightly. Also, bomb firing delay increased slightly. Firing costs do not affect other bombers as was suggested; radius does, however. In the last radius adjustment, EMP bomb damage was increased to 40%. Now it's 42.5%. NOTE: Last time I nerfed the Jav it caused serious problems and made the ship not enjoyable to play. I would like to see it remain functional. Let me know.
• Lanc Firebloom nerf: slower speed on the bloom. I can't recall if there are fewer pieces of shrapnel.
• Major Ops change: +OP is no longer a percentage check. Ops are guaranteed at least 1 OP every 60sec. Upgrades give you more each tick, rather than a greater percentage chance of getting just 1. This leads to more consistency. If you want you could even keep the clock open and watch the seconds roll around to know when you'd get your next bump. Accordingly, all ability costs increased. Some have been modified quite a lot, attempting to balance the less-used abilities. I don't want an Ops job to be just doing the priority rearm over and over, and am willing to do whatever it takes to make this not the case.
• Fix for the MASTER drive -- it caps at 50% chance, and doesn't carry over when you switch ships.
• Fast rearm fix so that ships who already had fast rearm rearm "even faster."
• Etc.

[roxxkatt]

Upgrades give you more each tick, rather than a greater percentage chance of getting just 1.

there is now a severe shortage of OP, and with the new prices, there never seems to be enough, it seems unbalanced now.
also, the max OP is messed up now. i had 6 lvls, and at +2 per lvl, i had 14.
then i lvled and had 7 lvls, and i had 9, which is not even divisible by 2, in addition to adding -5 to max op...

but could you put in a graphic to show when fast rearm is on

thats a great idea.

LOL cheese I don't use those cmds but thanks anyway

start using them. theyre awesome.

I no longer get kicked out of Ops at all... now that I'm constantly doing stuff and spamming .h to make sure

well i play normally, issuing commands when needed, and i get kicked out at least 5 times per round.

[glacier]

I may or may not be the only one to notice this (I think the 15 people that were waiting earlier noticed) but it seems to me like left_eye isn't too fond of distension. I enter the arena a few minutes early in hopes that it may start on time for a change, only to wait 45 minutes for alinea to finally wake up and start it. Alinea is not the problem, however. Everyday the game is started late because left_eye wants to sit in his private arena and either go afk or ignore everyone. I also noticed that within 5 minutes of alinea finally starting it, left_eye spontaneously decides to show up.

Don't ask to be in a position that you share with one other person (dug doesn't count, we all know he's at work) if you can't handle the responsibility. Or moreover, if you don't like the event to begin with.

I suggest left_eye either be replaced or another staffmember be allowed to start distension. We need someone that isn't only around most of the time, but someone that also likes the game. They also need to be awake for the start of round one and not dealing with morning sickness on a daily basis.

Aquatiq is competent enough and almost always there, why not give her the power to start the bot?

[Chao.]

Distension> Sorry, only two Sharks are allowed per army.

Please tell me that's not permanent.

[dako]

Today was weird.

Kinda went like this


Distension starts at 7:28 EST.
Left_Eye> We must stick to the scedule. (contradiction #1)
Distension test will be shortened due to bot failure. (contradiction to above statement)
Distension starts again at 7:43 EST.
Distension ends at 8:16 EST. (again contradiction to previous statement)

The test lasted about 45 minutes total, minus the 5 minute bot down time. When you factor in the buffer time before a round starts, theres really not a whole lot of distension going on.

Oh, and +2 OP reseve only giving +1 for ops :P Which is why cheese had 9 at one point. Also, the OP notice shows how many OPs you had before the new ones, so its a bit confusing

Ex: You start with 0 OP, with 5 total reserve possible

Distensionbot> +2 OP ( 0 / 5 )

Now you actually have 2 of them, but the bot shows what you had before hand.