Distension Beta Suggestions/Bugfix thread

[jngy slate]

I am against reps and cloaking for the terr. The decoy seems pretty worthless since I'm moving around the flag room all the time. It would only create a small distraction. But I like the idea of making ships lean towards being offensive/defensive.

[DankNuggets]

terrs: i see no reason to change them, one can do well almost as good with a rank 20 terr as a rank 45 terr as long as you have teammates. Plus, they've already got a plethera of abilities it seems.

javs: javs are popular to some extent because of the novelty involved with using them (that is to say bounce shots + multikills). This won't change too much no matter how much you nerf them. You'll just make it unbearable to play at low ranks. I think the best way is to make them as vulnerable as possible after shooting a bomb. This might entail a sort of 'freezing' of energy recharge for a second or so after bombing, or maybe keeping them from firing bullets for a second or so after bombing. this way they'd be much more reluctant to fire bombs all willy-nilly since tk's aren't a big deterrant.

Newbs: I completely agree with alinea - it was wayyy more fun to play a low ranked ship when you could rank up quickly. Having a bunch of low-level ships around doesn't help anybody; the faster they catch up to the rest of us, the more fun and competitive the game will be (even though uneveness is a big part of RPGs)


also, what ships currently still need abilities? i got plenty of time on my hands to think up stuff

[Vergilius]

About the new weasel decoy ability- looks neat, have to think of tactics to use it wisely but i see possibilities. But can you make them last longer available? I mean, when i load them i only have a few seconds to use them. If we look to jumpspace ability (jav loads it when its 'safe' to jump into fr) it is a little different. This is used in full action- to get away from a nme or bedazzling terrs- and at that moment i prefer using my hands for dodging more than typing ::--- f5 f5 f5 f5. So i suggest either make the time available longer so we can load them in advance, or by releasing all decoys automatically after pressing ::--- (with .3 secs delay inbetween, to spread em) which gives the effect it is meant for (instead of just prizing 4 decoys)

[jngy slate]

Thought of a super after playing with WPE and her bot. Unlimited decoys that only last for 5 seconds and you only have 5 seconds to use them.

[Viruk]

Then I remember being pretty disappointed when the changes came in that limited you to getting 25% of a rank. At rank 1, 4 kills can take a long time and I remember it being painful at that point -- and that was back when there were no level 3 bullets and far less ships eating a level 2. I just can't imagine trying to kill with a rank 1 ship at this point

Personally I enjoy the sense of rapid progress you get at low levels and even with a 25% cap this period ends all too soon.
It is not as if 25% of a level is an insignificant amount. There are probably players now who would be glad to rank 25% in a game let alone for one shot!

For the ships that do not level mainly through support bonus it really isn't that difficult to kill at low rank when basing although you should expect to die a lot trying. I regularly get 'humiliated' by low level players. In crowded games I don't have to imagine killing as a level 1 ship - I am often forced to kill when the rearming is unexpectedly slow when I am equally weak and vulnerable despite being a rewarding target.

With no penalties for death, minimal upgrades for each level and little incentive to spend energy on killing low ranking ships, Distension is already a very lowbie-friendly game and little more assistance should be required.

Probably there ought to be a cap set at whatever percentage makes a skilled ship level at a roughly equivalent rate to that of a skilled support ship of a similar level. Since those early levels fly by so fast it is perhaps unimportant to get things exactly balanced though.

[jngy slate]

terrs: i see no reason to change them, one can do well almost as good with a rank 20 terr as a rank 45 terr as long as you have teammates. Plus, they've already got a plethera of abilities it seems.

Good point O_O. How about making the number of ships able to attach to a terr simulaneously upgradeable? They would start with only one ship being attached at a time and could go up to about 7. Then the low level terriers would really have a competition with high level terrs. In a crowded battle the higher level terr would be faster in getting ships there. While some of the ships that attach to the low level terr might have to wait an extra second to wait for others to detach.

[meddi]

Yea so I meant to post this a long time ago but I forgot.

Shark Emergency Defense Cannon seems to be messed up when you get it to level two. At rank 55 I put 45 UPs into it, and !a showed (MAX) which is (2/2) - but it didn't CHANGE anything. Even after dying and ship resetting, I could see no difference from the L1 defense cannon. I had assumed it would simply be L2 bullets.

Anyway, I decided to scrap it and mess around w/ the points in some other way. When scrapped, !a returned that I still had 1 rank in the cannon (which I did); however, I no longer had the gun (ie: I could not shoot at all). I had to ship-reset to get it back.

I am assuming that is not supposed to be the result of sinking those 45 UPs to get Emergency Defense Cannon lvl 2.

Also, special characters (accented vowels etc) do no appear in the same font colour in chats:

[riske]

Yea so I meant to post this a long time ago but I forgot.

Shark Emergency Defense Cannon seems to be messed up when you get it to level two. At rank 55 I put 45 UPs into it, and !a showed (MAX) which is (2/2) - but it didn't CHANGE anything. Even after dying and ship resetting, I could see no difference from the L1 defense cannon. I had assumed it would simply be L2 bullets.

Anyway, I decided to scrap it and mess around w/ the points in some other way. When scrapped, !a returned that I still had 1 rank in the cannon (which I did); however, I no longer had the gun (ie: I could not shoot at all). I had to ship-reset to get it back.

I am assuming that is not supposed to be the result of sinking those 45 UPs to get Emergency Defense Cannon lvl 2.

Also, special characters (accented vowels etc) do no appear in the same font colour in chats:

Fake everyone knows belim is dead.

[gdugwyler]

This thread is intense. I'm finally on (the start of) page 22. It's taking a long time to catch up. Spending time getting ready for going back to a second bachelor's, writing a great deal, busting up the parking lot to put in a garden, and using a lot of hard drugs. The conglomerate has left little time. But here are a list of things that I've done or will do:

• Work on Jav a bit more. The L2 cost is going up, shrap speed is going down, and the shrap damage is now less than that of the actual bullet level of the ship with the shrap. Also, the distant L3 option has to be removed to make the costs work. Javs will now need the max available energy at rank 40 to fire L2. 1775 off the top of my head.
• Lanc: make FireBloom an every-5-minute kind of ability. We'll play with the time until it works.
• Ops: AFK fixed in one of two ways. Will send two AFK messages: one at 30s, and one at 10s. If the player replies back in both instances and the responses are the same, it will assume they are attempting to avoid AFK. The second option I like a bit better: send one message at 30s, and if the player responds in 500ms or less, assume it's an automated ?away. Due to the way commands are handled both may be a bit difficult to implement, however.
• Max OP fix. The formula was being calculated differently when you first got into the console and when you upgraded your points. Should work now. Wait until Mon to see if this clears up any issues with OP costs.
• Ripping some graphics from a popular sci-fi RTS game to use for introduction menu texts. It looks pretty good so far. High tech, yeah.

EDIT: I forgot to say, !lagout doesn't work past 3 lagouts in a round. However, the !lagout command doesn't distinguish between a person not added to !lagout because they didn't lag out and a person not added to !lagout because they're over 3 lagouts. I'll have it make the message more clear now (change the order of the checks).

I would like to make DC'd players eventually be able to lagout again. However, the last implementation was no good, and I need to plan it out. In the meantime, I'd like to do something with the lag settings, so that players are generally lagged out to spec rather than DC'd.

Here are the lag settings for Distension at present (in response to the above suggested settings). I don't have much familiarity.

[Latency]
SendRoutePercent=500
ClientSlowPacketSampleSize=500
ClientSlowPacketTime=40
S2CNoDataKickoutDelay=1000
KickOutDelay=3000
NoFlagDelay=300
NoFlagPenalty=1000
SlowPacketKickoutPercent=200
ClientSlowPacketKickoutPercent=200
SlowPacketTime=40
SlowPacketSampleSize=500
MaxLatencyForWeapons=45
MaxLatencyForPrizes=80
MaxLatencyForKickOut=120
LatencyKickOutTime=2200
CutbackWatermark=2400
NegativeClientSlowPacketTime=0

[PacketLoss]
C2SKickOutPercent=870
C2SNegativeKickOutPercent=870
S2CKickOutPercent=870
SpectatorPercentAdjust=500
PacketLossDisableWeapons=1

For a great deal of these the comments provided in settings files aren't sufficient to make a man feel comfortable adjusting them. Open to suggestions, though.

Regarding shark limit: are others in favor of raising to 3, or is a limit of 2 still needed? I recall that the shark limit was put in place when sharks were considered too amazing for words. Also, Sharks should now be able to use that L2 gun upgrade. Sorry to the person who upgraded and wasn't getting it.

Queuing system: Understand that it doesn't work properly yet. I found one bug and that may help fix some problems. Bear with it for now.

[meddi]

Heh, don't be sorry. It IS beta after all. We are supposed to find annoying little things like failed weapons upgrades.

[glacier]

Completely agree with alinea on the newer players standpoint. I spent 30 minutes going from rank 14 to 15 in wb in attempt to get ops, but I'm damn near about to give up.

[Viruk]

Regarding shark limit: are others in favor of raising to 3, or is a limit of 2 still needed? I recall that the shark limit was put in place when sharks were considered too amazing for words.

Sharks are as powerful as ever: Their reps are equally effective regardless of ship, bomb and bullet level and there is no special to counter them. Now fireblooms sometimes make their reps a liability - unfortunately this usually increases random destruction rather than deterring reps so I will be glad to see them limited. As far as I know the mines can still kill everything regardless of level.

For a single flag game a 1 or 2 sharks per side seems about right to me. 3 would be too many for the smaller teams although it is very level dependent since it is the reps which really need to be limited.

For a two flag game I am not so sure. Part of the problem is that I can't recall how long we have had the current limits or exactly what they are. (If there was a post with the changes I missed it.) I also haven't sharked for a while.

Pros:
3 sharks a side would be roughly the result of an even distribution of ships in a full game so this would make sense if you want to encourage all ships to be played equally. A limit of 3 would allow a shark at each end plus an extra shark to reinforce whichever side needs help most which ought to be tactically more interesting than 2.

Cons:
Despite the shark limit, repels have remained a big part of the gameplay in many recent games and I recall seeing 2 enemy sharks in the FR many times. I fear 3 high level sharks a side in the same FR would often mean too many reps for good gameplay. A bigger limit could also lead to more imbalance if there is no longer also a +1 limit balancing the teams.


Special ability?
After my last post I was thinking how useful it is to be low level in certain circumstances.
How about a special ability available to all ships where you pm the bot and after your next death it effectively makes you level 1 for scoring purposes and removes all your upgrades while still allowing you to collect RP and level up normally. You would only be able to toggle this ability once per life so once you pm the bot you will not be able to reverse this decision until you pm the bot again during your next life. Even then you will have to wait until after your next death to be restored to normal (and you would be last in the queue for rearmament). This should minimise strain on the bot and ensure it cannot be abused by people who have failed in combat and think they are going to die.

You would be reduced in power but you would give away less RP to the enemy in situations where your power is useless. It could be useful for confusing the enemy, preventing avarice, humiliating enemies, suiciding mines, shielding a terrier, leveling powerful ships when there are no high level enemy targets, allowing even duels with other players or just for fun. Perhaps you could even get a tiny RP bonus for sparing the poor, overworked bot from rearming you when you die.

[Viruk]

Completely agree with alinea on the newer players standpoint. I spent 30 minutes going from rank 14 to 15 in wb in attempt to get ops, but I'm damn near about to give up.

That sounds frustrating but would removing the 25% level cap have helped much by the time you reach level 14? Were you ever going up 25% of a level with one kill?
Don't give up! On the other hand, Tac Ops is annoying! Give up! :P

[gdugwyler]

Few more changes:

• Cap on rank progress changed to 50% from 25% (forgot to mention this).
• Firebloom now has 3 levels. At level 1 it is prized to you every 4 minutes. Level 2, every 2 minutes. At level 3 you spawn with it. I may do something similar with the Warbird's Thor, to give higher level WBs something more to shoot for.
• Lanc bomb energy cost reduced by about 30%. Now that the Firebloom is weaker, perhaps this will make evasive bombing in a Lanc more tenable.
• AFK implemented for Ops in the second version as described previously: if a reply is received to the AFK message too quickly, it will ignore it and the player will be assumed to be AFK and using ?away. With this, Ops will now receive AFK warning messages at 30 seconds and 10 seconds; if you also want one at 1 minute let me know. This should keep the annoying bumping to AFK down quite a bit.

Anyone with lag settings experience have an opinion on those in Distension? One person posted quite lenient limits before. Mostly I'm just interested in lagging players to spec and DCing them only in very extreme cases.

Also, the functioning as a rank 0 is an interesting idea. I'll have to think about that one. Maybe something that would allow you to keep just your maneuvering upgrades as well? -- maybe putting you at a default rank 10 or so. That way it would be a bit more bearable, and perhaps advantageous, depending on the amount you'd invested in them.

[Chao.]

Dug, I don't know if this is explained elsewhere, so maybe you could tell me really simply here: Why is it difficult to drop mines in places other than on the flag (where it's disabled by tiles anyway)? It's weird to explain- it's like I have to stop hitting all the other keys except for the mine ones to get them to do it properly sometimes. Is rush-mining something you wanted to stop or is this problem just in my head?