Distension Beta Suggestions/Bugfix thread

[Mjollnir]

A few notes after testing today:

- The javelin seemed okay.

- The warbirds can tank yellow bullets again. I think they get like 1600 energy while the damage is 1400.

- The lvl 3 bullet energy cost is huge. I can barely shoot one single shot with my level 36 weasel and I can't even shoot a multifire shot. I would probably have to scrap A LOT to be able to even shoot one. Also upgrading to the lvl 3 is expensive which doesn't help.

- The attach -> rearm -> get warped thing is happening again but that is probably due to the lag?

- The huge time needed to recapture a flag is annoying.

- I also had a weird thing happen today. I upgraded to level 3 bullets with my weasel and after that I didn't get prized my specials anymore. I had to scrap the gun and buy it again for the prizing to start working again.

EDIT: After the 2nd test and the new lvl 3 multi cost I still think blue bullets shouldn't cost as much energy. If you aren't going to make them any more cheaper, then at least make the single fire as cheap as the yellow single fire is compared to the yellow multi. Currently the blue single takes about as much nrg as the multi.

[Foreign]

I think it would be nice if certain things about the ships were automatically improved at certain levels and did not require any UP spent. The best candidate I can think of is max energy, since it behaves much like HP in any other game.

Another idea I just thought of is to have a better explanation of something the first time it happens: for instance, the first time I level up maybe a message explaining to me what leveling is, what the armory is and how to use the upgrade commands. The first time I upgrade to get bursts in terrier, I ought to be informed how to use my new upgrade (same goes for decoys, portals, rockets, etc, etc). Maybe you already do this for some areas but not all? Seems like a professional-looking addition.

[gdugwyler]

Ship balances

First, the good news: I think we'll be able to run Dist again. Hooray, etc.

Other one: I made the ship balance change, as there weren't too many objections. This is probably the largest settings change you'll yet have seen... all energy and recharge upgrades do half of what they did previously, but all ships start with a lot more recharge and energy (proportionally to that factor). Sorry if this doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I've been up all night with insomnia and am starting to go a little fucking crazy in the head! Anyhow, this should allow new players to compete a lot better than before, and will also allow people to experiment more freely with ships.

To coincide with this change, the following ships now start off with L2 bullets: WB, Weasel and Lanc. Also, the Levi no longer needs to purchase L1 bullets. I made a small mistake refunding L1 Levi bullets in the database, though, so 16 total Levis (probably every Levi, come to think) is probably off 3UP. If it's true that there are only 16 altogether I'll just give everyone 3UP. Or I might even do it regardless. Will check that tomorrow.

Hope this makes it all a bit more interesting. Yes. Goodnight.

[2kill]

heh you should start everyone off as a terrier, til level 5, at least some people will actually use it.

lol true

[Malladrin]

heh you should start everyone off as a terrier, til level 5, at least some people will actually use it.

Agreed.

[HateTheFake]

heh you should start everyone off as a terrier, til level 5, at least some people will actually use it.

[2kill]

Ok let’s start with the career paths,

I like it. It should add an interesting side of play like mages vs. fighters in other RPGs… now the downside, I’m worrying about the fact that the people who choose the assault won’t be able to play the terrier if their isn’t any good support people. Maybe another career path could work being called a mixed path that goes WB, Terrier, Spider, Weasel (cause it’s a useful ship all around) Also I think ether you should be able to unlock the special ship at any time or at least be told if you get to the goals to unlock, so you don’t have to redo things you tried in a lower rank

As to recharge and energy I think it may work but I will know more once we try it out

That’s all cya guys

[gdugwyler]

Updates and such

A few things: the first is to apologize for the recent lack of beta testing. For those that haven't heard some severe lag issues with the server (I'm fairly certain) are keeping the bot from being able to stay up too long, and when it is up it's often lagging like all hell. There are a few things being worked on to alleviate the strain on the connection between bots and the server, and apparently the actual source of the problem is being narrowed down after HopOne turning up nothing, only a red herring.

To the second, I want to present a possible change to how Distension energy and recharge are handled. With no motivation to work on Distension (when you can't run the damn thing it's a bit difficult to remain convinced that progress is worthwhile), I've been playing some Hyperspace. Comparing notes, if you will. HS has some flaws in places, but it's also much better than Distension in being more friendly to new players. One way in which this is true: the gap between someone just starting out and someone who's been plugging away at it forever is not all that great. The odds aren't great that you'll be able to destroy someone who's been playing quite a while, but with a bit of luck and some skill you can pull it off somewhat frequently. On the other hand, starting off in Distension at a time when other players are quite far up in the ranks is an exercise in extreme patience... your best bet is to hope for an unrewarding vulch here and there. I don't think this does much to help low ranks enjoy the game... just making up for it by saying that a high-rank kill will give you several ranks at once doesn't help. It's hard to feel you earn it, and it's hard to get much pleasure advancing when there's little feeling of accomplishment except for having overcome the odds of an initially somewhat cruel system.

The largest contributor to the disparity is -- pretty clearly -- energy and recharge. What I propose to do is for each ship increase starting energy and recharge by a factor, decrease maximum energy and recharge by the same factor, and decrease (probably halve) the amount of energy and recharge bestowed by each upgrade. This will bring everyone quite a bit closer to one another in terms of tanking and firing ability, while still allowing gun upgrades and other special bits to serve a good purpose. Along with this change would come a more severe cap on the highest rank above that continues to give full RP.

This may also extend the life of yellow bullets somewhat, though of course reduces the value of red in the short term (increasing it in the longterm). Might consider dropping L2 bullet damage a bit.


Last, I wanted to open up the idea of two career paths: assault and support. This would basically decide the order in which ships would unlock (though eventually you would be able to unlock all). Assault would begin with a WB, and support with a shark. The assault unlock scheme would be something like: WB, Spider, Jav, with the Lanc being a special unlock. The support scheme'd go: Shark, Terr, Levi, with Weasel as special unlock (mostly just because it's unusual, and not so much that it supports). Once you finish off the standard 3 ships of your chosen path, the others begin to unlock, and once you've gotten the special of your path and all ships of the other path, you can unlock the special of the other. Also under this plan, Levis and Weasels would receive a small amount of profit-sharing. As an additional incentive, Tactical Ops would also unlock a bit earlier for support than for assault.


Comments appreciated, and so on.

[2kill]

Weasels

I don't play them much, but recently I've been upgrading all my ships to higher levels and once I hit 9, (and I heard another person saying the same thing) the leveling seems to be moving very slowly, and I think that L2 bullets at rank 9 would get the Weasels rolling..... It maybe a bad idea now (or not) but I think it could go into the final release since weasels are a special unlock and well be facing even higher levels


Tactical Ops

Sounds like a good Idea not much to say about it yet but,
I'm concerned about higher Ops creaming the other team, to fix this maybe a time limit of how long you can be an Ops would work... or a limit of a certain amount of battles in a conflict

thats all for now see you guys in distension

[Mjollnir]

...
Anyone else have an opinion on Jav firing rate?

The jav firing rate feels fine to me. The jav is finally starting to be more fun to play and I don't think it should be nerfed atm. Not many ppl play a jav as it is.

New ability idea: when the ship with the ability is killed, the killer is knocked to 0 energy (though begins recharging immediately). Not sure which ship to give it to, though. The following are all potentials: WB, Jav, Levi, Weasel, Lanc. I'd most like to see it on one of the last 3, as they're more unusual in nature. Though WB might be a possibility considering it doesn't have all that much.

Hmm... This one could be quite an annoying ability. I think it fits most to the annoying nature of a weasel but I would rather have some other way of making the ship stronger.

Weasel rank up rate/overall ability: Any thoughts? Is this ship still too weak, rank too slowly, etc? Had complaints about it being rather hard to kill people, but other reports that that's not so much the case.

I feel the ship is currently too weak. I get owned in my lvl 35(?) weasel all the time now and that makes playing the ship quite boring. Now that a huge source of weasel RP is gone (the breaks and holds) it is going to be tough.

Capping/winning the war: Securing sector holds now takes 10 seconds, as does sector breaking. Also, "winning the war" will consist of winning 3 more battles than your opponent...

This should be good in theory as it forces people to play more as a team. We will see if it works though since people aren't generally very smart. Before it was possible to save the team alone with a sneaky solo attack (if they didn't have proper defenses) and I kind of liked that. It made it possible to keep a horrible team in the game, as it is very frustrating to keep losing round after round.

[Vergilius]

i like that new ability idea, actually. altho i dont think u should give it to the levi. With the huge bomb radius they have, good,fast bullets and very maneuverable i think they are strong enough now (you didnt mention from which lvl this would be available?)

So yea, weasel and/or lanc, the 2 ships that are in smallest numbers.

weasel: well yea, i am able to get 1:1 ratio, but it is mostly cuz there are smaller lvls to kill. vs a ship with about the same lvl it is hard, I can only hope it has shitty aim. 1vs1 weasel-spider? if i dont cloak, i kill him 1 time out of 5. Very hard contestant.

Levi; i see tons of 'em lately, just like we saw tons of weasels bout a month ago. Not stating you should nerf them, but keep a close eye on em.

Or you could make it easier for yourself and just make the weasel a bit more powerful . Anyways, need more testing. Put it up more plz

[alinea]

New ability idea
The Terr seems like a good idea, but since it doesn't have an open slot, I would vote Lanc. I have seen many Levis and Weasels that have been terrors, but never a Lanc, so maybe it needs a boost around its middle levels where it seems a bit boring to play compared to other ships.

Spider nerf
Bwahaha I love my spid, and yeah, it probably need a slight nerf.

Weasel rank up rate/overall ability
Not a weasel myself, but it seems okay for the time being.

Capping/winning the war:
Hard to say on this one, sounds like it may make the game more exciting with less people unnecessarily suiciding the flag. Looking forward to trying it out with these new settings!

-ali

[Soja]

i like the capping that u made instead of a 2-3 win it has to be broken woo nice dug

[gdugwyler]

New ability idea: when the ship with the ability is killed, the killer is knocked to 0 energy (though begins recharging immediately). Not sure which ship to give it to, though. The following are all potentials: WB, Jav, Levi, Weasel, Lanc. I'd most like to see it on one of the last 3, as they're more unusual in nature. Though WB might be a possibility considering it doesn't have all that much.

Spider nerf: Did a small one. Overall energy reduced by 60, and recharge upgrades now don't add as much. Opinions on how they work now?

Weasel rank up rate/overall ability: Any thoughts? Is this ship still too weak, rank too slowly, etc? Had complaints about it being rather hard to kill people, but other reports that that's not so much the case.

Capping/winning the war: Securing sector holds now takes 10 seconds, as does sector breaking. Also, "winning the war" will consist of winning 3 more battles than your opponent. The will show up like this:

Score:  0 [ ==|   ] 1

This means army 0 is 2 battles ahead of army 1, and needs just 1 to win. However, if army 1 wins the next one, it will look like this:

Score:  0 [  =|   ] 1

Meaning now army 0 needs 2 to win, and army 1 needs 4. No blocks either direction of course means it's tied.

Progress on Ops: Going well enough. I'd say it's 50% there. All the groundwork has been laid -- just need to implement most of the abilities in the bot. Have about 3 done (easily the most difficult ones). Re: a high-level Ops unbalancing the game, this could be the case. However Ops will still add to overall army strength even though they aren't in the game. Might modify it slightly so that their ranks count for a bit more in the strength figure if it becomes a problem. Also, re: turret (or thor air strikes, what have you), it would mean putting a bot in the game and having another login dedicated to Distension, a step at this point I don't care to take. I did consider the warping idea, but thought that it might lead to some abuse... hmm. Were it done in the right way ... safely ... it would be a damn interesting twist. OK, seems like a good idea -- in that case I'm dropping the radar ability as an upgrade: it will come as the single default Tactical Ops ability, as it's not all that great anyhow...!

[gdugwyler]

I have said it before and will say it again. Lower jav bomb rate. Most of my suggestions have eventually been implimented and this one should. Riske is now able to spam 3 bombs quickly with the amount of energy he has. Change it.

I did see him lob 3 bombs fairly quickly, though it did reduce him down to no energy. Keep in mind that he's rank 35 when he's doing this, though, and likely has just thrown most of the UP into recharge and energy. Anyone else have an opinion on Jav firing rate?

Lets be real, until anyone makes a legitimate case for this arena that would have SS players thinking it had something more to offer them than Hyperspace its not gonna mean much.

I'm regularly in touch with one of the HS devs. Each project is better or worse than the other in various respects, and one such aspect in which he believes Distension excels over HS is seeming to have more of a goal-oriented approach to how the games play out. Some people might value this, and others not as much.

To you Dist might not (at the moment) have the "hook" ... to others it might. I'll admit that right now it's not easy for a new player to get started, what with the majority of the ships being high level -- this is primarily due to it being a beta test, with generally the same people playing, and not much in the way of fresh fish. Only occasionally is it adverted, and even when it is the new guys are often alienated by receiving almost no help for getting started, to say nothing of the large and scary ships floating around. This should be remedied by a proper intro, F1 help, and maybe even a Distension tutorial arena... as well as the arena being public and up regularly. There may even be a chance we can run two bots in separate arenas, one which allows something like ranks 0-20, and the other, 15+: this would cure the apparent problem of the ranking up not having a pace fast enough, as you describe, to keep someone hooked from the beginning.