Distension Beta Suggestions/Bugfix thread

[DankNuggets]

after last night's test, i was only really able to upgrade my lev but i did specialize it. before specialization, i had decent energy (no idea about recharge) and 400 UP. I chose Z-Class, and spent nearly all my of my 400 UP on slots 4/5. After I maxed those out, i figure i'm only 1 or 2 steps ahead of every other ship (50-100 energy) and no idea on the recharge. But i'm down 300+ UP and only ~80 UP better than the other ships. If I have to spend 300 UP on energy and recharge, I want it to be much better than the other ships' energy and recharge. The insane costs to keep the energy on par with the stock scout don't make sense.

Maybe Z class could have AVG or MED recharge and energy, with only 3-4 upgrades for slots 4 and 5 that are separated like 10 ranks. That way, it'd still only be slightly better of a ship energy-wise, but it'd be paying a fair price (a couple of upgrades) instead of the 15 upgrades that it has currently (of which i don't know how many it takes to keep it on par with scout). Maybe less UP could be given per rank if it has med/avg to keep it with the others.

Specialization is gonna be hard to test out at this high of a rank i think, since it took me a whole test just to tweak 1 ship @ 1 specialization. All that !a !u takes awhile, especially if you don't know what to expect. You won't see a lot of people trying each specialization out, since it takes a long time to do and it's hard to see the difference right away.

[DankNuggets]

I like the different classes thing. I was actually talking about this on the game then somebody mentioned you'd had a similar idea, heh.

For those interested, I've set up a small resource page for distension on my site. Currently it has some numeric stats and a program that lets you plan out your ship build, could come in handy. Of course that'll need updating whenever dug changes game balance, but I've made it so updating is easy enough.

Anyway you can update that site with the new ship types ? Would make everyone's life much easier :grin: :wub: :thumbsup:

[Zeimonster]

dont know anything about the other ships but i tried shark for some 20 mins today and imo it was highly overpowered at level 40 already. I had ~1550 energy, max thrust and speed, 3 reps and 50% regen, cloak and enough recharge to be able to keep cloak on without losing practically any energy. I dont think i specialized in anything. Just killed one guy, leveled to 40 and upped everything I could.

Umm, but like I said, I dont know anything about the other ships. I just dont recall seeing so powerful sharks earlier even though some of them were at high 50's.

On another note, bombs have no radius anymore? Too sleepy to read all the posts above - sorry if it's been answered somewhere. Even as a shark the small radius didnt bother me in-game, though. Just wondering how many people would play javs anymore. At least give them 2 bounces for their bombs to make it more fun! :turned:

[Viruk]

A few things:

I find it confusing when it tells me I have gained 10UP per level and I only have 4 of them to spend. It should tell you they are going towards the automatic upgrades. It should tell you when an automatic upgrade happens so you get some sense of progress as, apart from energy upgrades, you are unlikely to notice the difference.

Ideally you should have the option to see all your upgrades including automatic ones as well as the numbers behind them when you check your armory. This will make it possible to tell the difference between the various ship types while testing and could make it easier to plan upgrades while playing. Seeing your automatic upgrades should give a better sense of progress. Seeing the numbers behind the upgrades would make it possible to tell whether an upgrade ought to be good value or not and should lead to fewer complaints about high priced, big increase upgrades.

Unless I choose the Z class this will mean at higher levels I will be lucky to make any useful upgrade in 3 - 4 levels which could take quite a while with no beta multiplier. Even in today's beta I found myself switching my terrier to Z-class merely to have more fun with a chance of upgrading something when I leveled rather than to maximize a particular combination.

Not sure if this is already suggested or done: Would it be possible to have automatic dummy upgrades that could make the number of ship upgrades up to your rank if less? Would the upgrade number on screen then be a more accurate indicator of level? Obviously this still won't work very well if people are able to make more upgrades than levels but I am not sure this is happening much right now and may never happen at higher levels.

When you type !specialize with no argument I think it ought to list the ship types.

The !specialize X:YES syntax seems to be case sensitive on the YES bit which I find rather annoying and could easily confuse someone who doesn't realize this.

I like the new format for the end of the game score display. It seems clearer and easier to find the bits you are interested in. Please finish the bottom and put your end of game RP bonus in it too.

Terrier bursts still rather powerful - I noticed I was first for RP and joint first for max streak and terrier kills in the last game. I am a lousy terrier pilot and missed most of the opportunities to use my ports and died many times when I had bursts. At several points I wasn't even paying full attention to the game. My terrier was Z-class and not optimized for killing and everyone is more or less the same rank as me. Admittedly if I was playing more seriously I would have been playing much more defensively. I still do not think it should be that easy for a terrier to kill so much and level so fast. Bursts (sometimes after an escape pod in FR) and a good (if irregular) burst recharge rate must have been the cause although I did manage to kill quite a few with my little red bullets.

I would rather not be spammed by all the level-up messages for other players. I would prefer to be able to turn these off completely but if this is not possible can it be made so they only message the arena every fifth level until level 50 or so? I know it is not going to be such a big problem without the beta multiplier and some other players would rather keep them all but it seems utterly ridiculous to be notified that player Alpha has just reached level 3 when you are at rank 40.

Would it be possible to display a graphic with your team's flag or emblem when you return to the distension arena? It would make it faster to spot when you have been reshuffled to another team and perhaps the design could include your team's frequency number, name and home base colors to help tie all this together. Possibly some of the symbology could even be included in the base graphics (perhaps mixed in the north base as this will be the battleground for single FR games).

My kill messages help me see levels and target the more profitable ships but an option for brief kill messages would be nice as this could cut down on spam and save the bot some bandwidth. Something that would include but abbreviate all the various factors (e.g. 'ES' for 'Ended Streak') with the total RP and total bonus %.

[maddack]

Just wanted to say why I have stopped playing beta (I stopped a long time ago I know).

You made the game way too complicated by adding new features all the time.

Now I was bored and curious what has happened. I remember a post saying launch of "live" version around mid-april. Instead you have started adding all kind of stuff.

Distension was fine before you added the ops feature.

[jngy slate]

gtfo cheese

[gdugwyler]

I'll reply backwards through the posts as this will be easier.

Maddack:

• Such is any kind of development. We could probably have gone live then, but I didn't feel the game had enough depth to keep people playing for a long time. Ops is still an enigma as to whether or not it is valuable -- it may or may not be a good feature. I wanted to try for diversity of play. Still would like to develop it a bit further. Sorry to those who had Ops at a high rank before the change as well -- a DB query didn't account for it. If many people would like to test it, I could have it unlock more easily. I was under the impression that with everyone over rank 40, it would be unlocking for just about everyone quite soon, needing just the 20 round wins.

Viruk:

• UP per rank display has been fixed. It was a relic from the past system -- should now display the actual amount received. Also, it should tell you on levelling when you receive an energy or recharge upgrade (was already doing this). I'm also adding a display to !armory to show your automatic energy and recharge levels there, and will probably also add something to !status. I've been meaning to clean up !status for a while anyhow, much like the end round display was cleaned.
• I understand the problem about waiting several levels to upgrade something. Unfortunately that's a trouble with the more "boring"/heavy ship types. You might be better off with something like the Advanced Scout, which will give you a balance between UP and the automatic upgrades.
• I know what you mean about bounty no longer matching your rank, and the idea behind dummy upgrades. Unfortunately each prize is an individual PM the bot sends you, so this would actually create a great deal more net traffic.
• !specialize w/o args now displays ship types, and the yes is no longer case-sensistive.
• Finished up the end-round display. Your end-round bonus has of course always been displayed, and was not removed with this addition. It's just in a PM, as to include it in that box it would need to be an arena msg, and we'd have 40 different messages, one for each person.
• Re: Terr bursts, I could set it up so that podding Terrs don't come back with bursts, if this seems more fair to everyone. Remember that I essentially can't play Distension due to time constraints and the simple fact that I'm assaulted by questions non-stop whenever in the arena, so this sort of thing I definitely have to rely on you guys. Alternately people could save questions for the forums and I could play.
• Level up messages don't occur at every rank for players < rank 25. Going up a rank past 25 is fairly significant, and there shouldn't be anything wrong with displaying it. Below 25 only 10, 15 and 20 are displayed. If it's too annoying I can up the numbers slightly, but 25 seems a good threshold.
• Flag or some sort of identifying mark would be good. I just don't have the time for the most part, however. Designer or the like would be welcome here. I asked dev many months back and very few seemed interested in the design dept. however.
• Abbreviated kill msgs may happen.

Zei:

• Not sure on the sharks. Nothing was changed drastically. Others have opinions there? I'd like to see the ship be formidable at later levels if mainly just to encourage its play. Also, it's a good ship -- one of my favorites. Can't neglect the team-saving shark.
• Bomb radius was tweaked around a bit, but the radius bonuses, concerning L2 and up, were reduced somewhat so that Jav L2 wasn't too dominant. To compensate Levis the EMP time was increased a good deal.

Dank:

• Before Z-Class you were in the Scout, which is a decent choice up until rank 30 or so (where it's better than most types) and after that starts to suffer. However, it has the same amount of UP per rank as the Z-Class, so I would wager that a Scout at rank 40 would probably still be better than a Z-Class at rank 40. Note that when you maxed out the energy and recharge, that means you had 9 ranks of each according to the records, whereas in the Scout you had only 4 ranks of energy and 5 ranks of recharge. That's a massive difference. Further, the Z-Class is the only one with the option to have such high energy and recharge at rank 40 -- no other ship comes even close at that rank. So you paid to be quite ahead of the others in energy and recharge, and wound up with almost no UP to spend afterward, which seems exactly right. Note that you don't have to max them -- you chose to. The choice in Z-Class costs it a slight bit more, but it's not actually a very large amount. So considering that, Z-Class will never receive automatic upgrades of any kind. The new !armory (and soon !status) display about automatic levels of each upgrade should let people know well enough how much they are getting, anyhow, and allow better calculation.

2kill:

• As you say, the bit about the ship type should be in status, which it now is.
• "Pall" / "swarm" will not fire with a small number of players on the team any longer.

Cheese:

• The doors were intended to work like that so that Ops could fight one another for the doors.
• I'll check out sabotage costs. It would be nice for each level of the ability to be useful. Unfortunately a lot of the Ops ability costs have not been well-tested and are still somewhat arbitrary. A big source of imbalance.
• You said you'd made it to rank 75 in Ops -- was there too much profitsharing? Did it seem too easy to rank up? Also, how were the +OP rates and so on? And I certainly hope Ops will be tested again. It can't be hard to get now. Talk to me in-game if you'd like to get some of the ranks back on Ops as well. This goes for anyone who had Ops before.
• I'll modify shield length for each ship. WB already has a greater shield length for the purposes of its Drive, so I'll make the others equivalent to that.
• The orb was made a little bigger, though perhaps not big enough. Also, there are two levels of the shroud if I remember correctly. Neither should cover all of the screen of a player at any resolution, except very low res.
• Whether or not Dist will have more than 1 arena is still open for discussion, and is certainly not limited to your decision on the matter! If there were more than one arena it might have a different map and even different gametype, for variety. It all depends on whether or not the server can handle 2 bots, as well as TW politics. The global ops might be interesting but probably will not be done, requiring too much effort on my part.
• !opsmine still isn't in not because it requires 5 things in the LVZ, but somewhere on the order of 90. Each position must be calculated by hand and frankly I don't care enough to waste my time doing that. However, I might limit it only to the FRs (which I think I have in already) and be done with it there. It would just be a much less useful ability, but people would mostly want it for the FR entrance anyhow.
• "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?" -- Depends on what your ship type is. Would you care to disclose it? I'm guessing you have a light build, do you not?
• "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..." People still seem to be playing it. I think you're missing something as far as the math is concerned. Other ships have automatic upgrades, but they are hardly free -- they're paid for at each rank. Ships like the Science Vessel receive even more UP per rank than Z-Class -- however they don't have the option to change their very weak build to something stronger in order to, say, equip a high-energy weapon when it becomes available. This inflexibility is a very large disadvantage. Z-Class, on the other hand, can have more energy and recharge upgrades at any given rank than any of the shiptypes, even the "heaviest," and still have UP left over. And they can switch them around to buy the upgrade coming in 2 ranks, if they want. There are many reasons to choose this class. I don't understand why you're turning on your cruise control and getting all uppity.
• Scrap costs: they'll be cheaper for Z-Class, and Z-Class will be able to change upgrades w/o penalty much further into the rank than other players. This advantage is an unseen one in beta when the scraps are all free, but it will be a useful one in public release. Also, note that the cost for specialization is not 5% of the rank, but of total RP. Much different. Respecializing could easily cost you a rank or more.
• Made the various text fixes you suggested.
• !listban might become necessary, yes. Might have to do it a different way as well, so that it logs who did it, when and why. Separate table, etc. We'll have to see. I don't yet know how the Distension banning system will work; just included it because I knew it would be useful.
• No breaks: the MVP stats only report the winning team. There's a chance that nobody's having to break -- only prevent breaks and so on.
• I understand about it taking a very long time. It's supposed to, but not an unbelievably long time (no ultimate grinding). To work at this I'm planning on reducing the overall cost per rank for every ship at the public release.

Lot of stuff, Christ. Once we get everything fixed up and working decently I'm going to move on to a few more special abilities for each ship, some a bit more benign than the more powerful ones we've seen, as well as some upgrades that modify present upgrades (gives you bonuses to some, minor penalties to others). Each ship should have a couple of those.

[DankNuggets]

Dank: ... Note that when you maxed out the energy and recharge, that means you had 9 ranks of each according to the records, whereas in the Scout you had only 4 ranks of energy and 5 ranks of recharge. That's a massive difference. Further, the Z-Class is the only one with the option to have such high energy and recharge at rank 40 -- no other ship comes even close at that rank.

ok i guess the problem was more that I couldn't see how many upgrades that the scout had in place to begin with. The changes you're talking about ought to fix it. It might also help to know what each ship caps at, and how the caps relate to # of upgrades.

[roxxkatt]

end spam looks nice! =)

but theres no end spam for stalemate! =O
which is nicely fixed now, btw =)

[Lizard Fuel]

[*]Whether or not Dist will have more than 1 arena is still open for discussion, and is certainly not limited to your decision on the matter! If there were more than one arena it might have a different map and even different gametype, for variety. It all depends on whether or not the server can handle 2 bots, as well as TW politics. The global ops might be interesting but probably will not be done, requiring too much effort on my part.

In response to this part of your post, in regards to game types.... If there was a 2nd arena when this goes public, how about making a "Distensions Dueling Arena"? This would get the people in TW that don't care for basing into the development and gameplay of Dist, and with the variety of upgrades available for pretty much all the ships, you can duel in practically anything and tinker with the settings of your ship to better suit the particular person you are up against.

Let me share a couple predictions/foresights if this were to happen...

Lizard Fuel has won 10 games straight and has been promoted to Rank 30 in Warbird! Is there anybody that can stop him? -DuelBot

Ward> stfu newbie. you only won because your master drive is level 3.

I think it would work. :grin:

[2kill]

Ward> stfu newbie. you only won because your master drive is level 3.

ROFL!

anyway...I think the upgrade points need to be increased slightly if you want their to be different ways of building your ships right now in almost all the ships I've tested (jav, spider, lev, terr, lanc) even though I try the other specializen I end up using warship... cause it has a higher energy and recharge and I can get most if not all of the upgrades I want, now I know you will be adding more abilities to upgrade but still how it is now you can still have basicly the same ship with better energy and recharge to help make ships more different I think all upgrades need to be increased by a cost of 5 UP or more.

thats all for right now

2kill

[roxxkatt]

as i see it, theres no way to make it fair enough to be dueling, thats all.
HOWEVER, squad basing duels could be possible...
and i lol'd at the ward thing...
used to
ward> stfu newb, i lost because i sneezed irl...
made me chuckle...

about dist:

end spam, breaks still doesnt work... Breaks: N/A [0]
i never really sharked before, and when i did, it was slow, but now that my shark is fast...
repel speed needs to travel a little bit faster then max shark flying speed, for obvious reasons...
its the most easily fixable thing in my constant assault of everyone firing at me, my terrible sharking, and my fucked up keyset that gives me letters instead of repels...


lancaster bullets need to slow the fuck down...
as if its not bad enough that they have a fire delay less then half of all the other ships, fire lv3 bullets at like lvl30, and get leeching...

why do their bullets need to travel ten times faster then u can dodge with any ship?


and since were on the lookout for abilities, im going to remind you of chaos idea of wormholes by the ears, and the bot setting gravity really high, pulling everyone into the ears...


and i also suggest that either the new energy system be more normalized, or that all fire costs get lowered across the board due to ships having insufficient energy...

[Viruk]

You made the game way too complicated by adding new features all the time.

I am starting to hear a few complaints about the complexity in the arena. Not sure whether this is the cause of the reduced population or whether the gap in the testing and the distrust caused by loss of rank are more to blame.

I would suggest having all automatic upgrades for the default scout ship to make it more easy for newcomers to get straight into the action. You would need to make sure the scout is well balanced at lower-mid levels though or people might feel forced to worry about finding a more competitive build before they are ready or feel frustrated because their manual ships are comparatively weaker.

dont know anything about the other ships but i tried shark for some 20 mins today and imo it was highly overpowered at level 40 already. I had ~1550 energy, max thrust and speed, 3 reps and 50% regen, cloak and enough recharge to be able to keep cloak on without losing practically any energy. I dont think i specialized in anything. Just killed one guy, leveled to 40 and upped everything I could.

I tried a bit of sharking today. I started off as warship with lots of energy but had little means of using it offensively and could not get enough to tank L3s so I switched to science vessel to max out my reps and other specials. I am a fairly bad shark with lousy repping reflexes and mining that often seemed to kill almost as many teammates as enemies. Since I could often get 5 reps by the time I reached the FR and had plenty of mines I could still disrupt and slow down the enemy a lot though. Sadly there were plenty of sharks on the other side as well and with lots of sharks in the same area the battle for the flag quickly turned into a horrible laggy repfest of the sort that would normally make me go and play something better instead.

Unlike the terrier I was unable to make lots of easy kills. I could defend an area better than anything else but this only held true as long as the reps held out.
I feel the shark is slightly overpowered but only because the repel is such a powerful special. Everything else about the shark is easily countered or balanced by weaknesses. Mines are easily repped by enemy sharks and are bypassed by weasels, bullets are slow and weak, bombs slow, x-radar draining, speed and thrust are nothing special and cloak without stealth is of limited use against alert opponents. Even if the enemy had no sharks and I was part of a strong defence forcing them to keep ramming my mines I would be lucky to level up at anything like the rate a terrier can. It is far more likely that someone on the enemy team would feel they had to switch to shark to counter such a powerful defensive arsenal.

Unless you can develop alternative counters to mines and reps or nerf them a bit I think we need a stricter shark limit for single flag games as 6 sharks in the same FR is often just too much for enjoyable gameplay. I don't like the idea of limiting player choice but the randomization caused by lots of repping and the need to get through multiple mines to win limits player choice in other ways.

[Viruk]

i never really sharked before, and when i did, it was slow, but now that my shark is fast...
repel speed needs to travel a little bit faster then max shark flying speed, for obvious reasons...
its the most easily fixable thing in my constant assault of everyone firing at me, my terrible sharking, and my fucked up keyset that gives me letters instead of repels...

No thanks! Bad enough that reps fling lots of random death around slowly!

lancaster bullets need to slow the fuck down...
as if its not bad enough that they have a fire delay less then half of all the other ships, fire lv3 bullets at like lvl30, and get leeching...

why do their bullets need to travel ten times faster then u can dodge with any ship?

I find I can sometimes dodge even the multifire but they are certainly a major threat. If they are actually faster than the pub lanc or faster than warbird bullets they probably do need slowing. Otherwise not since high level Distension ships seem more able to dodge than pub ships. They are primarily fighters so should have comparable fire delays to other fighter ships. I find my lanc fire delay seems slightly higher than its pub counterpart but this may just be me.

[Fluffz]

too much fast ships. speed upgrades way to cheap. scouts shouldnt be able to upgrade their primary weapon to the max lvl.

bombs suck, maybe l2 bombs solve that but i duno.

2 sharks in one fr = boring repfest.

with everyone claiming this or that is overpowered the abilities seem to have gotten boring while i wasnt playing. ur better of playing a high energy ship because abilities are nerfed to a point where they aint worth it. this results in lack of diversity.

maybe below lvl40 there is nothing to do now that energy upgrades go automated? put some upgrades there. generally spoken change more upgrades from instant to level. even xradar could be a 5/5 upgrade. so you get xradar at every 4/3/2/1mins/spawn. hope i made myself clear here.

more abilities! i know ur doing ur best with diversity of upgrades and subgams. maybe a ability that warps players in a defined radius around the ship uppon messaging distbot. like the balanceout bot does. this could help vs those nasty sharks.
i dont know how the eg bot schecks for antiwarp in spawn but maybe you could use it as an event trigger for somthing. i say drop ops and give its abilities to the ships

reset was a good idea, now everyone lost the "i have to post feedback to improve my ship" idea and tries other ships too. i suggest u reset to 50 next week.

IMHO