Distension Beta Suggestions/Bugfix thread

[gdugwyler]

I appreciate the feedback here. Have to say, though, I'm starting to notice a trend in players saying their ships are weak and the ships of others are quite/too strong.

Bursts: Regardless of how fast it would be able to level with more profit-sharing, the Terr needs to remain, above and beyond, fun to play. If it's not fun, people aren't going to play it, and even now in beta most people are pretty reluctant to touch the ship. That said, I also don't see what's wrong with a burst making a one-hit kill. This is what it does for every ship in pub, for example ... and unlike the warbird's bullet (which does the same in pub) there's no way to upgrade the damage, so having it remain permanently one-hit kill seems reasonable. Is there a specific intent to the 1599 damage level? Maybe a ship you like to play that has 1600 at a certain time, or what? I'm sorry for being suspicious here, but the number given is quite intriguing, you have to admit. Perhaps we could look at slowing bursts down a little bit, and/or reducing the damage to something that will kill most ships, but not all.

L1 bullet damage: It was at 600 before the big change recently, and I reduced it to 520. Some people griped that with most ships now starting with L2 and dropping L1 bullet damage back to pub's 520, it made the ones that have only L1 at a distinct disadvantage, so I upped it back to 600. Recently I played a spider and it did seem pretty easy to mop up, though, so I see the point. However, this brings me to ...

Warbird overpowered: If WB is overpowered, and Spider is overpowered due to L1, which is "more" overpowered? The WB, Spider and Lanc are the fighting ships, and in 1v1 combat against any other ship should generally appear "overpowered." Anyone who understands the basics of TW mechanics knows this... so are you saying it's overpowered compared to spiders and lancs? I also recently heard someone saying that WB was rather crappy now. Didn't necessarily believe it, but, just throwing that out there.

Jav bomb nerf: The Jav bomb energy being put up to 1000 wasn't really a nerf so much as a correction. It was set at 725 or something equally ridiculous ... consider in pub the damage is 1100, and that the ship is still played like hell there, and I would be inclined to believe that the jav is not suffering. I'll look at the rocket cost, though.

Flag cap: While newbies may play the game, I would like to aim it at being able to be tactical. Any online flag cap game of much merit requires you to hold a flag for a decent bit before it's considered capped. Some require as much as 30 seconds. I don't think 10 seconds is too much, really.

Assist abuse: I talked a little with meqa, and she's just macro'd !assist x. From what I understand she's not able to actually return immediately after, which would be a nasty bug. If that's not true and it's being abused, I'd like to figure out how it's going on, though. Keep me posted.

Upgrades costing more at later levels: This was the case before the system change -- only, it was less gradual then. You'd have 5 levels of recharge for 1 UP, and then the next few for 2 UP, and then 3, etc. There are also rank limits as you suggest, though. Problem is: too few upgrades, too many ranks.

Weasel power: Doesn't seem too bad. That's just me.

[AcidBomber]

Yeh what's up with upgrades costing anywhere from 15-20+ UPs now that i am a level 30 spider?

I noticed the same upgrades cost more UPs as i level, yet i still gain 10 UPs per level, and is much much harder to level when you're level 25+... so then is basically 2 hard levels per upgrade now =(...


PS: What's up with weasel's energy recharge rate, rocket, and portal? Is owning up everyone (especially terrs) in the flagroom with the fast recharge and portal + rocket (aka - Mjollnir and Vergilius)... not to mention is hard to aim at those gay ships... -_-


PPS: Is it possible to make spider multi-fire angles closer? right now is like 70 degrees... which is practically useless unless you're in the open.

[Mjollnir]

A few notes on the comments here and on the game in general:

- I agree with bursts being annoying. They are a random luck factor in the game that too often decide how a flagroom battle goes. Limiting the damage to 1599 and limiting the amount of bursts both sound like good ideas. If you nerf the bursts enough you can just add more profit sharing RP for the terr. In my opinion a terrier should be able to get most of it's RP without killing. That way we wouldn't have annoying kamikaze terriers (Ze Punisher) on the team and even the lonely terrier in the home base and the losing team's terrier could level up in a nice rate.

- Red bullet damage is too high. Doing 600 damage per bullet has made spiders (and the shark multi) too strong, being able to kill most people with 2 bullets from full energy.

- The javelin got too weak after the bomb energy nerf. I also tested the javelin rocket and it didn't seem worth the huge amount of RP it costs.

- The warbird is still too strong as I have stated multiple times. Would be nice to hear some opinions on this but only like 5 people post on the board so bleh. And most warbird pilots naturally disagree except Zeimonster.

- The levi feels pretty strong now. I feel like my level 21 levi gets more kills than my level 36(?) javelin, now that it's weaker. I need to test the levi out some more but currently I feel it doesn't need to be nerfed.

- The amount of time required to capture the flag is too long. Something like 3-5 seconds would be better. Even though Distension isn't played by total newbies, it is still basically a public arena (and the amount of newbies will increase once we go public) so the teamwork will suck pretty bad most of the time. Because a long time needed to capture a flag requires more teamwork, it is really frustrating not being able to do anything when most of your team is retarded.

- The assisting system could probably use some tweaking. It seems some people are using !assist # and getting returned very soon (possibly by spamming !assist to the bot?) and then doing it over and over again. That has given certain people a lot of extra RP I bet. I don't see why else someone like Meqaman would keep doing it so much. He probably has the highest level ship in the game (along with PH) and I wonder how much of it was done by "abusing" the assist system.

- What is the reasoning behind later level upgrades costing a lot more RP although they give the same amount of %? For example the leviathan gets 3% recharge / upgrade but at some point the upgrades start costing like 24 RP which is ludicrous. The first upgrade costs something like 10 RP. In this sense I liked the old point system better. Shouldn't you rather limit certain upgrade levels to the level of the ship instead of making them cost more and more like that? I am probably missing something here but I feel it's better to say how I feel about these things than be quiet like most of the people who are testing the game.

This got a little longer than I expected but it would be nice to hear other people's opinions on these points.

[Zeimonster]

wouldnt it be possible to reduce the damage of the bursts to 1599, the same as lvl2 bullets? just feels stupid that a completely random piece of junk can kill a high level ship with full energy

[gdugwyler]

There are 3 things that can be tweaked as far as bursts go:

1. Maximum amount allowed to be carried at once.

2. Amount a player rearms with.

3. The percentage chance of burst being prized every 30 seconds.


1 and 2 seem nearly the same, but their effects are quite different. If you start with 2 bursts (#2), you're much more likely to be able to double- (or triple-) burst. So it follows that reducing this would reduce the possibility of double bursts. However, limiting the maximum amount of bursts to only 1 (#1) completely eliminates all chances of double bursts ever occurring. Personally I think that's going too far for something that is really only a minor annoyance. I think the reason that it's frustrating is not because it occurs at all, but because it occurs so frequently. Logically to rectify the matter we'd reduce the frequency rather than remove the possibility altogether.

Also note that limiting max bursts to 1 (and possibly same for port) makes regeneration far less useful, necessitating a percentage chance increase, as was suggested. Even that may not make up for it -- on a ship that people are still sometimes reluctant to play.

[FarScape]

2 burst max would seem fine to me, 1 could do, but I think for this situation 2 is fine.

I think if you want to tinker around with it, if you lower the max burst / portal a terr can carry, you should increase the percentage in the regeneration option in the armory. It's currently at 5% for every upgrade, why not make it 10% per upgrade and increase the up points needed to get the upgrade? That way, the terr can't spam all their bursts at once, but will have burst/ports rearmed more frequently.

Thats what im saying. don't just limit it to 1, but also increase the regeneration of it so you will "green" it more often.
terriers will have enough bursts in a battle, but they wont be able to spam 2-3 in a row.

Dug the tank idea is smart as tactical option, i agree. maybe it will work, ill try get used to it

[Vergilius]

If things haven't changed, obscene is always turned on when you enter TW. So even if you have turned obscene off from options, you'll have to add ?obscene to your autocommands to make it go off every time you enter TW.

It is in my autocommands, thats why i dont understand how the hell that ever got on.. anyways, not important

[project dragon]

2 burst max would seem fine to me, 1 could do, but I think for this situation 2 is fine.

I think if you want to tinker around with it, if you lower the max burst / portal a terr can carry, you should increase the percentage in the regeneration option in the armory. It's currently at 5% for every upgrade, why not make it 10% per upgrade and increase the up points needed to get the upgrade? That way, the terr can't spam all their bursts at once, but will have burst/ports rearmed more frequently.

[HateTheFake]

terrier burst is fine
and its not all that hard to macro !!

[2kill]

few suggestions:

2) Reduce Terrier bursts. its not make sense that terrier goes into the base and do 3 bursts in a row. what the fun of it? keep it as it now, even increase the speed they gain it, but limit their bursts to 1.

point 2... the burst is all the terr has especially at lower levels it maybe annoying to one person if the terr comes in and bursts but thats all the terr has after that he doesn't have anything else really to pull out of his bag he's a sitting duck waiting (if no teammates come) to be killed, and also the terr has to rank somehow the profit sharing helps but it isn't that much.

[Edit: I just remembered that I only start with two bursts and I am a level 35 terr, but I quite often have 3 burst cause of my regen so it isn't the maximum burst its the regen but I still think that it works out in the end]

[gdugwyler]

1) The tank idea is bad imo. in middle of battle no one will type !! to bot... I really liked it automated.

The idea is to make it more of a tactical ability: you get to use it exactly when you need it. However, because of that it doesn't pop up as often. I think that as time goes on, regular spider players will probably macro it -- and then redefine a particular macro message to a close-at-hand keydef ... something like z, x, c, what have you.

Reduce Terrier bursts. its not make sense that terrier goes into the base and do 3 bursts in a row. what the fun of it? keep it as it now, even increase the speed they gain it, but limit their bursts to 1.

I've heard some annoyance with bursts. There may be too many given out presently; I'm not sure. I might be willing to make the maximum starting burst only upgradable to 1, but not reduce the max to 1: that's just too harsh. They should at least be able to build up several if they can't start with multiple. Anyone else care to weigh in on this?

Why there is need of thrusts and speed? it could be reduced to just speed no?

Thrust is acceleration; speed is top speed. The difference is set in the way SS settings are laid out. However, I don't think it's all that bad that they're separate, considering that they're pretty cheap. If they were not separate, for example, ships like the Levi would be impossible (gliders with low thrust but high top speed). As would the close-call dodgers -- those with great thrust but not much top speed.

[FarScape]

few suggestions:

1) The tank idea is bad imo. in middle of battle no one will type !! to bot... I really liked it automated.

2) Reduce Terrier bursts. its not make sense that terrier goes into the base and do 3 bursts in a row. what the fun of it? keep it as it now, even increase the speed they gain it, but limit their bursts to 1.

3) Why there is need of thrusts and speed? it could be reduced to just speed no?

[gdugwyler]

YET MORE CHANGES

• All players now start with Terr in addition to Warbird
• Spider "Refueler" replaced by "Energy Tank." Rather than randomly being prized a full charge as with Refueler (not all that useful), Energy Tank gives you a much smaller percentage chance to have an energy tank refueled every 30 seconds. Once filled, this tank can be used to provide a full charge at any time by PMing !! to the bot. Those who had the Refueler before will now have equal levels of Energy Tank.
• Players now receive a small bonus when changing to a Terr or Shark if the ship is needed. Whether or not it's actually needed is determined by the number of ships presently on the team, the size of the team, and how recently the bonus was given out ... the last being to prevent abuse.

[Jeansi]

Edit: ur right. no idea how that filter ever got on, mustve been on accident. but still, the bounty issue?

If things haven't changed, obscene is always turned on when you enter TW. So even if you have turned obscene off from options, you'll have to add ?obscene to your autocommands to make it go off every time you enter TW.

[gdugwyler]

Yeah, the Levi upgrades do still seem a bit on the pricey side ... but then again most of them do pretty well -- for example the speed and thrust upgrades both give you huge additions, making up for their costs (actually cheaper than on some ships).

In the public release, with the new changes to energy and recharge, I'll probably increase the costs for the maneuver upgrades, and reduce costs very slightly for energy/chg, though they'll still be more expensive. Should create a fair balance. For now I'll leave it as is to prevent having to do another refund.

Another ability added

I added another ability today. In order to make the Lanc more unique, it no longer has the Vengeful Bastard ability. Instead this has been replaced by Leeching, which gives it a chance of getting full charge after a kill. Each upgrade gives 20%. A lot of people have said that (like the shark) it's a bit boring to play. This may make up for it, if you can rush in blindly to make a kill, with the chance that after it you might be able to immediately go at someone else without fear of being caught off-guard with low energy. The first level of this ability is available at the relatively early rank of 15, so, uh, check it out.