Distension Beta Suggestions/Bugfix thread

[gdugwyler]

now that ive tried it, id say to completely get rid of all this ship specialization.
even with all ships reset to the same level, everything is so unbalanced now that it isnt fun anymore...
no matter how much time and effort you put into it, it needs to go.

You'll forgive me if I put almost no stock into your opinion, having only tested it one day. Pardon me again, but that's just plain stupid. Balance issues can be fixed. The system stays. What an idiotic post.

[roxxkatt]

youre just being defensive because its your time invested in this, not mine =P

[gdugwyler]

I am more than merely defensive due to having invested a decent amount of time in it. Your views are also ridiculous -- as I said, an imbalance can be righted; the system may still function in the way I intend it to.

Balance at the first go was not predicted. To say that the system should be reverted because it is imbalanced is therefore illogical, meaningless.

[2kill]

Planning on testing tomorrow at 1:30PM EST.

darn it!

I stop reading the thread for a few days and you guys host a test

is it going back to normal times now? (meaning 1:30 and 7:00 EST)

thanks looking forward to testing again

2kill

[Joku Ugo]

youre just being defensive because its your time invested in this, not mine =P

Actually, your comment truly was absolutely fucking stupid. And I say this as someone who hasn't invested any time in that feature. Horrible balance issues are usually straightforward to fix. It's not like Distension's balance was perfectly fine tuned before this change either. You should try to explain why the feature itself is bad or what ships are imbalanced and how. That could be helpful.

[alinea]

It's taken me awhile to grasp the new system, and I find myself constantly answering questions about it in-game, so to help those who are coming to the forums looking for an explanation, here it is short and sweet:

All players have been set to RANK 39 in ALL ships, regardless of their previous ships/ranks. Due to the major crash we had awhile back, this was necessary. It was also necessary to implement the new energy/recharge systems.

The beta bonus has been increased to 9x (was 4.something before), so a major increase that will help you regain your levels faster.

Energy and Recharge upgrades are now automatically given to you based on your rank (so they increase every time you rank). The amount of energy, recharge and upgrade points (UP) you receive per level is based on your ship type. You can PM DistensionBot with !shiptypes to see a list of the available ship types and then !specialize # to specialize in one of them. Specializing in a ship type is free during the beta (will cost rank points (RP) in the release), so feel free to play around with the different ship types. But note that each time you !specialize in a ship type, you will have to re-purchase your upgrades. All ships are defaulted to the Scout ship type, so if you do not !specialize, that is what you are.

There is one ship type that does NOT automatically give you recharge/energy upgrades: ship type # 5 (The Z-Class). Z-Class ships will have to !upgrade their recharge and energy just as they did before ship types were implemented. The downside to having this flexibility is that you will end up with less UP to spend on other upgrades.


I have found that several ships just don't have enough upgrades to purchase if you choose a ship type that grants you many UP per rank. But with dugs ideas and suggestions given here on the forum, we'll hopefully be able to add enough special abilities to make these lower-energy/lower-recharge/higher-up ship types tempting to use. Feel free to share more suggestions on the forum.

-ali

[gdugwyler]

Thanks ali for that concise and clear description of the large number of changes that have occurred in the game recently. Sorry to those with whom I was short with today. It's been a frustrating last few days of (non-)testing and I was not in a mood to repeat myself for each player -- that said not even the prior forum posts made a decent explanation of what had happened, so the questions were not surprising.

One major issue remains: that of the lag (or more likely packetloss) between our RoboKing bot server and the TW server itself. Today's test and especially yesterday's were severely limited by the bot simply not being able to stay online with a shoddy connection. I might have a temporary fix for this -- basically just forcing the bot to slow down the number of packets it tries to send out at once -- but until the issue is resolved the game will not be running all that well. That said, once it is we'll resume all testing as normal, and will need all the testers we can get for this final phase of testing.

[Fluffz]

i suggest a higher speed upgrade cap for scouts!

[gdugwyler]

i suggest a higher speed upgrade cap for scouts!

Hm, interesting idea. I was thinking of making some of the upgrades available only to certain ship types... could also try something along the lines of a single slot that would represent a different upgrade depending on type. Nothing too wild, but just something more to set them apart.

By the way, if you're taking the Scout option I hope that you're choosing Advanced Scout. After a certain rank, the default Scout is even worse than the Science Vessel in terms of energy and recharge upgrades. It's meant to be the starter ship and not much else, though it might be advantageous in terms of UP and upgrades given to keep around to a certain rank...

[Fluffz]

duno what caused this but it looks fishy

END OF BATTLE 3: People's Republic of Misanthropy (0) is victorious.
SAM SPADE of People's Republic of Misanthropy has been promoted to RANK 10 in the Warbird!
SAM SPADE of People's Republic of Misanthropy has been promoted to RANK 15 in the Warbird!
SAM SPADE of People's Republic of Misanthropy has been promoted to RANK 20 in the Warbird!
SAM SPADE of People's Republic of Misanthropy has been promoted to RANK 25 in the Warbird!
SAM SPADE of People's Republic of Misanthropy has been promoted to RANK 26 in the Warbird!
SAM SPADE of People's Republic of Misanthropy has been promoted to RANK 27 in the Warbird!
SAM SPADE of People's Republic of Misanthropy has been promoted to RANK 28 in the Warbird!
SAM SPADE of People's Republic of Misanthropy has been promoted to RANK 29 in the Warbird!
SAM SPADE of People's Republic of Misanthropy has been promoted to RANK 30 in the Warbird!
SAM SPADE of People's Republic of Misanthropy has been promoted to RANK 31 in the Warbird!
SAM SPADE of People's Republic of Misanthropy has been promoted to RANK 32 in the Warbird!
SAM SPADE of People's Republic of Misanthropy has been promoted to RANK 33 in the Warbird!
SAM SPADE of People's Republic of Misanthropy has been promoted to RANK 34 in the Warbird!
SAM SPADE of People's Republic of Misanthropy has been promoted to RANK 35 in the Warbird!
SAM SPADE of People's Republic of Misanthropy has been promoted to RANK 36 in the Warbird!
SAM SPADE of People's Republic of Misanthropy has been promoted to RANK 37 in the Warbird!
SAM SPADE of People's Republic of Misanthropy has been promoted to RANK 38 in the Warbird!
CHAO <ER> of People's Republic of Misanthropy has been promoted to RANK 41 in the Shark!
.================================================= =============================.
| Total award: 26811.0 RP 75% for 4 on support -> average 5026 RP |
| 25% for 4 on attack -> average 1676 RP |
}====== MVPs ================================================== ============{
| Holds: Chao <ER> [12] Breaks: N/A [0] |
| FR Kills: MegamanEXE [39] TeKs: MegamanEXE [7] |
| Gen. Kills: MegamanEXE [49] Best Ratio: MegamanEXE [2.23:1] |
| Best Streak: Wagyo, MegamanEXE [5] RP: MegamanEXE [21141] |
WAR STATUS 0 [ =| ] 1 2 MORE NEEDED FOR WIN

than it died

[roxxkatt]

then it died*

btw, has noone noticed that there has never been a break?
"Breaks: N/A [0] "
possibly a coding error?

perhaps it could be possible to award RP in proportion to the end reward for being on the end leaderboard?
like we used to do for having most breaks?

also, dug, you still havnt added the bottom you forgot about to the end spam,
is that coming?
i know its only a tiny fix =P

additionally, in a ship supposed to be getting +11UP per rank, i only got +10 when i lvl'd (default still?)
was in shark, science vessel, lvl41.

and would it be possible to raise the beta multi to x10?
just because its a nice round number =P
but ive also noticed that at high ranks, its too sharp an exponential, and ranking takes a REALLY LONG TIME. the beta multi is countering that, but when this goes public, its going to be really noticable...

Actually, your comment truly was absolutely fucking stupid.

and who the fuck are you?
some retard who never plays, doesnt know shit, and noone cares about?
dont butt in to things you cant possibly finish, fucktard.
go crawl back under the little rock you crawled out from under.

[roxxkatt]

also, we did some troubleshooting today, and found that the bot was lagging after a new player entered, somewhere after the 300000rp starting bonus.


and opsmine still isnt in?
all it takes is 5 mine pics in the lvz between the player and tile levels, and sending *objon....
and the bot placing them...


and there is no way to check your ship alignment after you specialize... like !myalign or something


and the new energy/fire levels are still terribly unbalanced, why is it that i have a level45 shark, and can barely take a lv2 bullet, when almost every ship is firing lv3s?
AND ALSO, if zclass ships are PAYING FOR THEIR FREE UPGRADES, why did you cap it? and why is the cap so low?
50% nonfree chg/nrg leaves there no reason to be zclass...


and when you added the 'swarm of sharks' thing, you forgot to check the number of players, because in a 2v2, everyone gets -50% rp


also, i noticed you made respecialization of your ship cost 5%, which is a rather large change, wouldnt u agree?
by contrast, to scrap 1 item, it costs 15%.
i suggest that scrap and respec cost 5% and 10%, respectively.


also, i noticed that theres a !ban, but theres no !listban...
im sure rudy would get unhappy about that =P


and i noticed
m_botAction.sendPrivateMessage(arenaPlayerID, "YOU ARE NOW A MASTER " + shipname.toUpperCase() + ". ALL WILL FOREVER REMEMBER THE NAME OF " + name.toUpperCase() + " ... CONGRATULATIONS!!!", Tools.Sound.VICTORY_BELL );
m_botAction.sendArenaMessage( name.toUpperCase() + " has become a MASTER " + shipname.toUpperCase() + ". SALUTE THIS LIVING LEGEND!!", Tools.Sound.PLAY_MUSIC_ONCE );

btw, MASTER OF THE would sound much better, if u insert tactical ops after, the original sounds terrible.

could that be a zoner instead?
id say it would have been earned...
as Fleet Admiral as well...


and on line 7286, you have Tools.printLog( "Error banning player " + name );
in the UNBAN function...
unbanning*

[roxxkatt]

and also, while i still had ops, my last three suggestions are these:

#1:
sometimes i would close a door, and they would randomly disappear.
i found out what was causing this, and exploited it.
every time the other ops would close a door, i simply closed a worthless door worth 1 op or whatever, which opened the bad one.

door 1 + door 2 = door 2, i would rather have it be
door 1 + door 2 = DOOR SETTING 3.

also, the ability to open enemy doors have a much brighter future, even though u cant atm...

it should cost the same for you to close it, as to open.


#2:
i never used, and never saw used, the ops sabotage messages.
theres no way to upgrade your 3/3 message pool, and the sabotage messages werent useful, and expensive.

i propose that it maxed out at 5/5, and all messages cost 1, regardless of its type.

even as my ops was -LEVEL 75- BEFORE THE BUG, WHICH I NO LONGER HAVE, i still kept it at lvl1, wasnt worth upgrading.

#3:
prizing shields was supposed to be the pinnacle of the ops ability, with the final ops ability being prizing everyone shields....

why are shields so useless?
everyone i shielded died within seconds...

either dramatically reduce the cost, as in half or less, or extend shields time for every ship EXCEPT WB, to 20 seconds or so.



...ops probably wont be tested again...ever.
probably not before the public release.

*edit*
2 more things, make the orb a little bigger, so it covers thrust as well.
enigma compensates for this by removing it.
and make the shroud bigger, to cover those in 1024x1068 or bigger...
*edit*
also, after the bot leaves, the 2 opsmen are still on freqs 0 and 1, and were never returned to the spec freq...
*edit*

and ALSO, when this goes public, there WILL be more then one arena, whether theres more then 1 bot or not...
i strongly suggest that there be a GLOBAL OPS (ship 10), with all ships > 50 (1-9), and at least a Fleet Captain (which is 10x harder then ensign).

i also still propose you use the US Navy enlisted and officer ranks, as theres more, they sound cooler, and youve already used about 60% of them...

[roxxkatt]

lol, that kinda snowballed a little ^-^

/spam

if (cheese==boring)
{
tl;dr
}
else
{
gtfo cheese
}


^_^;

[2kill]

and there is no way to check your ship alignment after you specialize... like !myalign or something

and the new energy/fire levels are still terribly unbalanced, why is it that i have a level45 shark, and can barely take a lv2 bullet, when almost every ship is firing lv3s?
AND ALSO, if zclass ships are PAYING FOR THEIR FREE UPGRADES, why did you cap it? and why is the cap so low?
50% nonfree chg/nrg leaves there no reason to be zclass...


and when you added the 'swarm of sharks' thing, you forgot to check the number of players, because in a 2v2, everyone gets -50% rp


also, i noticed you made respecialization of your ship cost 5%, which is a rather large change, wouldnt u agree?
by contrast, to scrap 1 item, it costs 15%.
i suggest that scrap and respec cost 5% and 10%, respectively.

k first point the !myalign should really be in the !status spam

just wondering here cheese but didn't you say last test that you were a Science Vessel? that would mean you would have the lowest energy and recharge but most UP. that would be why you can't tank.

yea I was noticing that to with the swarm I was terring and someone switched to a terr giving us 2 in like a 5v5 match and I got swarm of terrs :-/

I think specializen should cost more then a scraping cause you're scraping your whole energy and recharge lines.

about the terr: it is my opinion that warship for a safe terr, or artillery for your attack terr are the best ways to go poor cheese got me when I was testing the attack terr lol though I did get like 5 streaks in a round

Thats all for right now I've only gotten to play a bit and have only upgraded my wb, jav, and terr so I don't know about balance issues.

2kill

P.S. I still think go with commonweath names what with my pro-british leanings