Distension Beta Suggestions/Bugfix thread

[AnidaLife]

so i tried terr's summon today, and it said you can summon again in like 16000 minutes. either we don't know how it works yet or it just doesn't work yet.

As for terrs, I think they're fine now. Most people are comparing them to pub/base terrs, and feel they need a nerf, but in distension there are 20 enemies in 2 bases with only 2-3 sharks on your team. there are way too many things that can kill a terr. so they need the bursts/ports to stay alive. if you nerf bursts, maybe give them something like lanc's leeching.

[Viruk]

TKs no ending streaks for person that got tked is ok. Punish the tker and make javs aim is even better!

Agreed!

Why crippling terrs? Because 1 player complains about bursts?

I count at least 3 players who feel strongly enough to post here.
It would take a massive burst and port nerf and not a small fraction of regen to 'cripple' the terrier. In any case since bursts are as effective against other terriers as anything else then nerfing bursts might even help base terriers survive longer although it would reduce their killing power and leveling speed.

There are 3-4 terrs in the game per freq, and their only defense is burst... fire a bullet and you die to any ship that hits you.

This is obviously not true:

• They have the option to fire (and they have energy and recharge enough to survive in many situations after firing.)
• They are speedy enough to run - particularly if they are heading towards shelter.
• They have ports.
• They sometimes have EMP.
• They can call for help and often have attaching players to help.
• They will have summon when it is fixed.

Yes they are more easily killed when they fire but that is true for every other ship except possibly a shark with reps or a fully charged levi.

Terr is not overpowered.

Regardless of what ship I am flying I usually die when I go up against any skilled terr near my level in a 1-on-1 situation in base. Bursts and ports seem just too great an advantage against any other single ship in a FR despite the terriers slightly limited thrust and firepower. If the terrier is busy doing something else then with a bit of skill and luck I can often kill it.
My terrier has leveled up so fast that it is at a comparable level to fighter ships I have sweated blood to rank despite the fact that I rarely play terrier and am not very skilled in it.
I don't really mind it being it being a bit overpowered because it is not designed as a duelling ship or a fighter - it needs to be powerful enough to survive in a FR battle and be popular enough to ensure the team has enough. Compared to any other single ship I have no doubt that they are indeed overpowered though.

EMP is used frequently, and it works. I get EMPed at least 4-5 times in long rounds.

I am not sure we have long rounds any more but probably about this. At the moment it seems powerful but not too frequent and not too high a duration.

Will test summon today, thks for looking into it.
I didn't notice javs that wipe out entire team, but they still get 4-5 kills with 1 shot, which is not so bad. Imo, jav is good now (speaking from the perspective of jav's target).

I haven't played jav since the nerfs but since it never had L2 or used much shrap I doubt mine will have changed much. At around level 30 I found it a lot easier than it used to be when I was struggling to rank jav through the 10s and early 20s. Thankfully I have noticed less shrap around lately but it is too early to say it is no longer going to be a serious random death problem. I have still been dying to javs regularly.

[Mjollnir]

yuh, energy cost for L2 bombs is too harsh, definitely. Some 1500-1600 would be more bearable. I dont mind shrap being slower, that's good, but you also reduced the damage they do quite a bit.

Agreed with this. Playing the Jav was no longer fun.

[2kill]

terr !summon

it appears summon is working... though I would like if the terrs could get on the don't summon list as it is they get summoned and have no why of getting taken off meaning that they loss their place in flagroom

2kill

[jngy slate]

it appears summon is working... though I would like if the terrs could get on the don't summon list as it is they get summoned and have no why of getting taken off meaning that they loss their place in flagroom

2kill

I agree. At least have an option for the terr to be taken off the list. There are many times when there are 2 terrs on the same team going to the same base. During a flag room battle if one of them dies the other could use !summon to try to bring him back quick. That could be a cheap way for a terr to get up there in the long run. Or maybe the terr is actually a bottom base terr but gets summoned to the top.

[gdugwyler]

• Stalemate now should give a percentage of points based on the total amount of time the flag was held by one freq. It will say something like: "Stalemate Award: 19203890192038 RP ... Split: 41% for army 0, 59% for army 1." Thanks for the suggestion about somehow giving it more one way than the other -- lead to that idea.
  
  I think that should be about as fair as a stalemate can get, and perhaps now both sides will be happy with the result, even if it's not an extremely desirable situation. If anything a stalemate shows that both teams are extremely competent (or both extremely incompetent!), and deserves to be a fitting end for a round.
• Terrs should no longer be summoned by !summon orders. It was never intended that they should be. It should also no longer affect Ops who are not spectating a particular player.
• I'll reduce Jav L2 bomb firing costs slightly.

Questions:

• If it's generally agreed that Levis are underplayed, I'm going to increase their bomb damage again (or, alternately, reduce firing cost and delay). I would like them to be a formidable support ship rather than a weakish attack ship. Seems like just a while ago everyone was saying that Levis were terrors?
  
  I would like this ship to get a special bot ability in the way that many others are receiving, if anything just to make it more interesting to play. I don't want any to get too boring.
• Is Jav's JumpSpace at all useful? Are the negative aspects too significant to make it work?

The bulk of the work I'm doing lately is focusing on an introduction for new players, as this is one of the last few pieces necessary. A window will pop up for any new enlisted player, and give them the option to run a short intro that will familiarize them with the game rules and objective, the basic HUD, and so on with similar pop-up windows that will play like most game intro sequences over the period of maybe 60 seconds. (This should still allow the player to move around and fight normally if they wish.)

[Mjollnir]

...

• Is Jav's JumpSpace at all useful? Are the negative aspects too significant to make it work?

I had the ability at max upgrades for some time but I finally decided it is not worth the UPs. It is a fun ability to play around with but I think spending the UPs on something else is way more optimal. Most of the time warping to the flagroom resulted in a very quick death and sometimes a lucky kill for me.

[DankNuggets]

Sharks: RE: Chao's complaint -- I still have a hard time laying mines where and when i want to. I use the default settings (shift+tab) to lay mines and I find that I have to either press both keys a couple of times or hold them down for a bit to lay a mine. This results in either me laying 2 mines on top of each other, laying a mine several tiles off of where i tried too, or just not laying a mine. I've gotten used to it a bit and you basically have to sit still in the line of fire for a sec or so to lay a mine. Also, what does anyone think of the "remote detonation" ability i suggested a while ago?


Levis: I'm a rank ~30 or so levi and i find myself pwning people left and right. The cost for shooting the emp bomb is really low, so that i can shoot it 2x at a group of enemies or 1x and then bullet them. As far as upgrades, most of mine are spent on recharge/energy and i probably only upgraded slots 1-3 once or twice (i do this for most ships). I don't have a portal or multi, i prefer to be able to mix up the bomb/bullet spray. I think people may not play much as them b/c they aren't aware of how drastically different the lev is in distension or how to use it as a bullet heavy ship.


Terrs: I don't see any problems with them as-is. I think ph's complaints are b/c him and other high ranked players like to lone-wolf it against an enemy fr. The easiest way to kill a terr is to do it when they are fighting some one else, which doesn't happen if you are by yourself and 20 ranks above everyone - you become the target and terrs avoid you.

Javs: did i hear correctly? no lvl 3 bombs? ever?


edit: do levis ever get a rep? i think they should, or at least one other ship should have one rep and i think lev might be the best bet

[roxxkatt]

now that im seeing this summoning business in action, ive decided that i dont like it, and it will only degrade the quality of the game, similar to antideath in hyperspace.
dug, i know youve probably spent some time on this already, but please abandon it, take it out, it will only turn out badly.

[jngy slate]

!summon

When using the !summon ability sometimes I ended up summoning just one or two players. Then I'd have to wait 3 minutes before I can use it again. I'd be cool if the time between summons depended on how many players were summoned. Say only 1 was summoned then the next summon can be used 30 seconds later. If 2, 1 minute. 3, 2 minutes. Yes exponentially, but the max would still be 3 minutes.

About ph's complains. Most of the time when I see him he will aim for me or another terrier that's around. He complains because he can't kill us but what he wants is an easy kill. You can't expect to be able to kill the terrier when 5 other players are proteting it. That's not how basing works.

[Viruk]

If it's generally agreed that Levis are underplayed, I'm going to increase their bomb damage again (or, alternately, reduce firing cost and delay). I would like them to be a formidable support ship rather than a weakish attack ship. Seems like just a while ago everyone was saying that Levis were terrors?

Not very underplayed as I saw plenty of them about today. Definitely not a terror up to around level 30. They have potential to be overpowered at high levels if they ever get to move and fire like a fighter as well as having the bombs and high energy. I haven't seen any levis that I would complain about yet though. I suspect the lack of thrust early on and the big differences from the pub levi are likely to deter many new players from using this ship regardless of any minor tweaks made to it.

I would like this ship to get a special bot ability in the way that many others are receiving, if anything just to make it more interesting to play. I don't want any to get too boring.

How about something that works like an energy tank that would temporarily multiply its recharge rate for a short period? It could be useful for recharging all that energy quickly after attaching, increased firing or tanking but the effect shouldn't be as powerful as super or shields or the high energy + full charge combination. Its power would increase with recharge and energy level and perhaps the ability's frequency/duration/multiplier could be upgraded too.

Is Jav's JumpSpace at all useful? Are the negative aspects too significant to make it work?

I have played with it a little. I like it because it is fun and can circumvent the overpowered Ops door ability and distract the enemy. Even if I had more than one level of it I would probably just get myself killed a lot trying to assault the FR singlehandedly though. There are other things I would like to try with it with macros set up for it. It is not cheap though so I am not planning to invest more in it any time soon and it will be first on my scrap list if I need more UP for something more vital - like L2 bombs.

[Viruk]

what does anyone think of the "remote detonation" ability i suggested a while ago?

I like it but it should not happen too frequently. About as often as the terriers EMP ability perhaps. The game probably needs proper TKing penalties to discourage using it sloppily as well.

edit: do levis ever get a rep? i think they should, or at least one other ship should have one rep and i think lev might be the best bet

Only if they then count as a shark for the shark limit. Perhaps even then it would make them overpowered unless it cost a huge number of UP. Any ability that can deflect the skilled fire and movement of an unlimited number of powerful ships, even for a very short time is going to be very powerful.

[gdugwyler]

Remote detonation: Unfortunately, like so many interesting ideas, this one can't be implemented with the way SS works.

Levis with reps: would like to keep sharks as sole reppers. While I understand Levis have had them traditionally, on and off, the Levi has also been the only ship other than the Weasel to be completely left out of any kind of serious basing. Sure, that's probably a result of attach regulations, and also because it would change the dynamic so much, but I don't think that because they've had them before, they should have them again. I'd much prefer for Sharks have a very clearly-defined role instead.

Mines: pretty sure it's as 2kill said ... when you're encountering places that you can't mine, these are probably doors. You can verify this by looking at the radar.

Summon: it stays unless a good reason is given. Cheese, pardon me for saying, but it does almost no good whatsoever to simply say "it's bad;" I need reasoning and argumentation, not off-the-cuff opinions. If you personally don't like being summoned, turn it off. If you have a problem with how the ability itself affects the game I would very much like to hear what that is.

I'll split this post up with the next, as what follows is quite a different thought.

[Zeimonster]

since u now seem to be reading/posting on the topic, i'll tell u that there's some bug in the bot atm that makes it crash once every 2 mins. Obviously it makes hosting distension impossible. So if u can, fix it quickly! ;d

[gdugwyler]

Possible change of energy/recharge upgrades

After some thought on it, I'm seriously considering a drastically different way of handling energy and recharge upgrades. At one point someone had suggested automatic energy/recharge increases by rank, to give more of a feeling of progress at each rank. These upgrades have always been problematic for the game, forcing a choice between upgrading a small amount of recharge and energy and some unique ability. The energy and recharge are usually seen as the more "sensible" choice, but also much less interesting and challenging than the various special abilities.

What I'm considering doing is making that choice automatic. When you first start a ship, you choose between one of probably 4 ship options: Tank (high energy, average recharge, low UP), Artillery (average energy, high recharge, low UP), Scout (average energy, recharge and UP), and Special Forces (fairly low energy and recharge, but high UP). The ship type you choose carries with that ship throughout its life, and can only be traded in by sacrificing a certain percentage of RP for another ship type (the symbolic in-game reason being the cost of refitting the ship to your liking and your need to retrain with the somewhat different controls). Each rank up you would be given a different amount of UP depending on the ship type you have chosen, allowing for a larger or smaller number of special abilities to be purchased. Meanwhile every few ranks you would receive an energy or recharge upgrade, the frequency also varied on the type of ship.

There are several reasons I would like to see this happen: the largest is to get rid of the ridiculous costs of energy and recharge that everyone is experiencing in the later levels. It would be far more cut and dry this way: you put in your ranks, you get the same amount of energy and recharge as you always have. And your upgrade points count for the same, rather than being worth less and less as ranks go on.

As mentioned above, another reason is to just make the choice simple ... a one-shot deal. Energy and recharge upgrades are easily the least interesting but also the most important. This way they could be taken care of ahead of time, and take the pain out of their investment. Personally I don't feel "good" about upgrading energy or recharge; I do it to the degree I feel I have to in order to compete (or at any rate, did when I still was playing).

There are also some that choose to upgrade energy and recharge in the extreme, and often they do quite well for it. I would like to see a greater cost come from that choice, namely an inflexibility in terms of special abilities. For example, removing a level of recharge in order to buy a needed gun upgrade would no longer be possible ... some other special ability would have to be sacrificed instead. Therefore, for the relative dominance -- or, after a while, sheer ability to compete -- yielded by extreme upgrades to energy and recharge, there would now be a larger number of places of weakness, a thing which at present I do not see.

With the UP that would normally be spent on energy and recharge available for more abilities, as well as two new open slots, we could have a number of new special abilities for ships, if desired. In particular I would like to see small abilities for small costs that would have some effect and provide additional interesting aspects to the ships, while not upsetting the balance too much. This would also give players quite a bit more in the way of options for upgrading, ideally with no specific upgrade track being the absolute best for every situation.

There's also a long-term benefit to this for energy and recharge lovers that some of you may have discerned: energy and recharge limits would be raised so that players could rank them as high as they wished. This would also provide an impetus to venture into the higher ranks, whereas before it would be mostly a matter of polishing off the ranks for prestige, a few last special abilities, and a few offensively-priced energy upgrades.

Last, the options would not allow a player to focus on both high amounts of energy and recharge, but instead force them to choose between one or the other (if that is the route desired). In this way no player would hold the absolute monopoly on both, and while being a formidable opponent with a large amount of one or the other, would by no means be immune to a bit of good old fashioned killing, especially by those who are faster and who possess a larger skillset.

I'm already anticipating the outcry -- but, all opinions here are welcome. It would be another upset to the way things are done, but we survived the change from 1UP/rank to 10UP/rank; I think we could handle this one, too.