Distension Beta Suggestions/Bugfix thread

[Lag.Com]

I've been playing Javelin lately, and I find it pleasantly balanced. Yeah, you can occasionally teamfer, but it just doesn't happen with the overpower that is repels, combined with the pitiful recharge rate you get in any of the shiptypes at rank 40. It's very much the specialist ship and I'd like to keep it that way.

Yeah, it's definitely repels that make sharks so strong. They seem to last forever. I've had 2 repels negate an entire javelin rocket booster before.

[DankNuggets]

RE: Lancasters - I just started playing it agian last night. without specializing, and without fulling upgrading, i was able to get an 8 kill streak w/o dying once. The reason for the streak, i think, was that the lanc might be kinda high on energy (although I can't tank lvl 3's with stock ship). I could shoot 2 lvl 3 bullets, or 3 lvl 2 bullets w/o recharging, or at the least very minimal recharge. The firebloom is still really powerful, so the later on you get it, the better off everyone else will be (although it shouldn't be too high, since where we are right now rankwise, will take a LONG time in pub release). The bomb is amazing, i think alinea and I sat shooting it constantly for at least 10 mins, the dodging aspect of it is underutilized. It's only the small radius that makes it not overpowered. Overall, I'd say raise level 3 bullet cost or raise cool down time, or slow bullet speed. Also I noted that most people were dying in fr from mulit, level 3, lanc spam instead of bursts/javs for teh first time in awhile.

RE: Sharks - I think the easiest way to nerf the shark would be a slight change to the fr we've all come to love. Remove the bricks on either side of the flag, and sharks will be ez to rep off the flag. As it is now, the only way to get the shark off the flag is to fly underneath it and rep him from below. Sharks need a lot of reps because there are more mines and more enemies than traditional games. The best aspect about the shark is definitely the multi guns for me, although i'm sure some would say the cloak is where its at.

RE: Levis - these guys are doing just fine. They are indeed one of the most annoying ships, with the ability to shoot repeated lvl 2 emps. However, their bombs are nearly impossible to rep-- i had to rep before i even saw bombs being shot, and even then it only missed me by a hair, or most of time, it ignored the rep. Not saying nerf the bomb speed of the levi, but it's an annoying combonation at the least. Also, they've got great bullet power too. I think the balancing comes with the fact that it's got little specials atm, so the boost in weapons makes sense.

[Viruk]

Lancasters - I just started playing it agian last night. without specializing, and without fulling upgrading, i was able to get an 8 kill streak w/o dying once. The reason for the streak, i think, was that the lanc might be kinda high on energy

Now that the advanced scout has been merged into scout you shouldn't have to specialize to get a competitive ship anymore.

I was able to get a 19 streak with my L2 scout Lanc and I consistently get higher streaks in my Lanc than anything else. I don't think this is because it is particularly high in any one thing but that it was adequate fighter in all respects (although I had to totally max out its thrust and speed to get this). At current levels twin-firing fast L2s are fine for killing most ships at mid/close range in a busy FR even if the fire delay seems a little higher than the pub version. Its multifire and leeching were also useful in many situations although I didn't need either for most of my kills. It can't tank L3s and is a poor sniper but is fine for its role as dogfighter/vulcher/anti-weasel as it has no other serious weaknesses.
I expect skilled spiders to surpass it at higher levels when they get L2s and enough energy and thrust to use them effectively even without their super and energy tanks. Right now their L1 bullets are efficient but often too weak to hunt down undamaged ships quickly without using their draining multifire.
Warbirds already surpass it as a fast sniper assassin but their aim has to be good and even then too many ships can now tank L3s or avoid them with specials and it takes time to recharge enough for a second L3 shot.

Sharks need a lot of reps because there are more mines and more enemies than traditional games

There aren't more enemies than in pub but there are more mines. If it wasn't for enemy fire then a couple of well-placed reps would still normally be enough to clear a path to the flag though.

Levis - these guys are doing just fine

I like my Levi but it struggles to recharge all that energy in a hostile environment. I tried warship then artillery but no joy. It is now Z-class and still can't tank L3s or recharge quickly despite minimal maneuvrability and no specials. Unfortunately my current team is often pretty dire and a support ship is not so useful when your team keeps dying before you are ready to support them :P It has great firepower and tanks well when charged up but its fast L2 bombs are more about EMP than damage and its L2 bullets often too slow to make the kill. It is good for supporting a stable attack or defence and has lots of future potential though.

I've been playing Javelin lately, and I find it pleasantly balanced. Yeah, you can occasionally teamfer, but it just doesn't happen with the overpower that is repels, combined with the pitiful recharge rate you get in any of the shiptypes at rank 40. It's very much the specialist ship and I'd like to keep it that way.

I had to switch my Jav to Z-class to get enough energy with a reasonable (if minimal) recharge to fire L2 bombs. It has no specials or shrap and minimal maneuvrability but it works fairly well as a bomber. I suspect it would be more efficient to stick with L1 bombs for a few more levels though. I find Levi and Jav are the only ships I have tried that had a problem with recharge rates although my Warbird and Spider were always artillery and perhaps would struggle as warships.

[Viruk]

A couple of things I noticed in the latest game:

Why does the ratio in MVP victory stats sometimes contain a '?'
Why do some players have a rank of under 39? (I keep getting 'humiliated' :P)

[Chao.]

The fact that the team that has more sharks always wins, tells a lot about their current power.

I'll have to call bullshit on that simply because i've been there when that didn't happen, and it was quite recently.

[Mjollnir]

I'll have to call bullshit on that simply because i've been there when that didn't happen, and it was quite recently.

It must have been a weird game then. I guess I'll have to say almost always then.

[gdugwyler]

I've made a couple of settings changes in reply to some issues of late:

• L2 damage and L3 damage increased by about 100 and 200 respectively. With the ship type system, the energy maximums just aren't what they once were. This is actually fortunate in many ways (for me) -- it allows me to up L2 damage again, which also ups L3 damage, without devaluing L3 to the point where it's of no use. On the contrary, L3 will generally yield a 1 hit kill. It won't stay this way, though, due to all ships now having the same basic energy upgrades and so any one of them being able to eventually tank them (yes, probably even Weasel) -- but at least even for these relatively high ranks (and 40 should be seen as a fairly high rank), it'll function as a one hit kill.
• Lanc bullet fire costs upped to 310 per bullet level for singlefire and 435 per bullet level for multifire. These values were taken straight out of pub, despite the Lanc in Distension being oriented to the 1-hit kill as in the old style, rather than the pub Lanc's hybrid approach between WB and spider. (What this means: it may still be imbalanced. Taking it a step at a time. Note that Distension's Lanc still has a much longer fire delay between shots than the pub Lanc.) This is a very small increase for the singlefire, but a good jump for the Multifire, so that Multi L3 should not be seen as often.
• Removing the blocks near the flag that allow sharks to flagsit easily. It's an interesting suggestion, one that's easy to implement and experiment with, and potentially will help with the Shark "problem." I'll also recheck the code that limits sharks to +1 of the other freq -- it shouldn't be possible that one army has 3 and the other 0. Ah: there was a small logic bug that actually allowed there to be 2 more sharks rather than just 1. That'll be fixed.

Glad that ship types are working out a bit better now. It's very true that no one ship type is meant to be better than the others, much like how we're trying to balance the ships themselves. I calculated it somewhat more carefully this time and I think it should now work, though there's a possibility that the Scout or Science Vessel might end up being more powerful than the others after special abilities are added -- depends on the costs of the abilities and how decent they are. In any case, even from rank to rank the ship types should be balanced against one another, barring the fact that sometimes one type will let you use a weapon you could ordinarily not, or let you purchase an upgrade that would give a great advantage at one particular rank. Now all that said, there's a final shiptype called the Dreadnought that will only be available after public release, and while being a good bit worse in the lower ranks, it should outstrip every other shiptype in the higher ones. Essentially it will be for the very motivated. Additionally, to prevent abuse, those selecting Dreadnought will be set to rank 10 so that they have to bear the full brunt of its challenge through the young years -- therefore it will only be worth choosing at that rank. This type may also only be available to advanced players, perhaps requiring flag officer status.

Viruk:
Why does the ratio in MVP victory stats sometimes contain a '?' I'm not sure. Can you copy/paste an example?
Why do some players have a rank of under 39? Wasn't aware any did. Could you also paste that when you see it? I can then look up the player's records. New players should be entering in at 1 RP from rank 39, regardless of whether or not they were beta testers before the recent reset.

Also, Levi players, I forgot to mention: if you haven't noticed, shrap has become available at a much lower rank. However, each level only adds 1 piece of shrap per bomb, so it's rather affordable. This should be a must-have upgrade for every Levi, as it turns your otherwise benign bombs into something much more powerful. If this proves too strong, rather than removing shrap for the Levi I'll reduce bomb damage further.

[DankNuggets]

It must have been a weird game then. I guess I'll have to say almost always then.

yes you would, though i'd have to say that if that game that chao is refering to had more than a dozen ppl playing, the sharks might have had more of an impact. This seems backwards, but I'll explain.

My freq, had about 6 ppl on it, two of which were sharks, one was a terr, and the other three were jav? wb? lanc? (can't remember exactly, but only 3, 4 fighters at max). Don't know exactly what chao's team had, but it probably went along the lines of 1 shark, 1 terr, and 4-5 fighters (mainly spiders + lancs). Initially, we could push chao around enough (though he had 50+ bty and we had 30-40 bty) to keep flag, but since we had little to no firepower, we couldn't kill off the other team, just slow down our own deaths. Had we had enough fighers to shoot through our reps, it woud've been a bit different. We had enough "shark power" to out rep chao, but we didn't have the fire power to kill the enemies, just keep them from killing us for a few secs.



P.S. : WE NEED MORE PEOPLE TO SHOW UP AT THE 7PM TEST! The last 2-3 times i played we barely had enough to keep it intersting, and i haven't played a two base test in quite a while

[Viruk]

Also, Levi players, I forgot to mention: if you haven't noticed, shrap has become available at a much lower rank. However, each level only adds 1 piece of shrap per bomb, so it's rather affordable. This should be a must-have upgrade for every Levi, as it turns your otherwise benign bombs into something much more powerful. If this proves too strong, rather than removing shrap for the Levi I'll reduce bomb damage further.

I certainly noticed getting killed by their shrap a few times in the last game. While just one or two or them aren't enough to overpower the Levi it is going to be a bit sick when they start getting more. Weakening the EMP bombs just to allow yet another source of random death would definitely be a retrograde step in my opinion. The concept of support ship for the Levi was a good one. Why not stick with it? Better to lower the shrap damage so that even L3 shrap only kills the most weakened ships. Alternatively make shrap into a controllable, upgradable special that is only fitted for the next X seconds after the player pms the bot. That way the majority of shots will not contain the random element and players are forced to decide tactically when they should use their enhanced ammo.

Another thought: Instead of having heavily damaging shrap could you not make it destroy upgrades? Shrap intuitively seems like the sort of weapon that could easily break things but not easily kill a ship outright.

[Mjollnir]

yes you would, though i'd have to say that if that game that chao is refering to had more than a dozen ppl playing, the sharks might have had more of an impact. This seems backwards, but I'll explain.

My freq, had about 6 ppl on it, two of which were sharks, one was a terr, and the other three were jav? wb? lanc? (can't remember exactly, but only 3, 4 fighters at max). Don't know exactly what chao's team had, but it probably went along the lines of 1 shark, 1 terr, and 4-5 fighters (mainly spiders + lancs). Initially, we could push chao around enough (though he had 50+ bty and we had 30-40 bty) to keep flag, but since we had little to no firepower, we couldn't kill off the other team, just slow down our own deaths. Had we had enough fighers to shoot through our reps, it woud've been a bit different. We had enough "shark power" to out rep chao, but we didn't have the fire power to kill the enemies, just keep them from killing us for a few secs.



P.S. : WE NEED MORE PEOPLE TO SHOW UP AT THE 7PM TEST! The last 2-3 times i played we barely had enough to keep it intersting, and i haven't played a two base test in quite a while

Oh. In games where the amount of players is very small, too many Sharks may actually be a disadvantage. That makes sense.

We really do need more people in BOTH tests. I suggest we start making more public ads or whatever to get people playing again. It's a shame that normal hosted events take priority over this and we aren't even allowed to make private message based ads during them (I think?). Also the amount of test time allowed is so short that it just slows down the beta process.

Another thing slowing us down is the inactivity of this thread. People often talk about potential bugs and ideas while playing Distension but don't actually bother to come and write about them in here. That means Dug misses most of your input and that makes it hard to balance and finish the beta phase a in a swift manner.

[DankNuggets]

Why does the ratio in MVP victory stats sometimes contain a '?' I'm not sure. Can you copy/paste an example?

I don't have an example, but i remember him getting it a couple of times and i got it once. He also had it work a few times, where he had something like 3.61:1 ration instead of ?:1. I think it happens in really short rounds (like 3-5 mins) where he doesn't die at all. Maybe it's a simple divide by 0 bug.

Also, Levi players, I forgot to mention: if you haven't noticed, shrap has become available at a much lower rank. However, each level only adds 1 piece of shrap per bomb, so it's rather affordable. This should be a must-have upgrade for every Levi, as it turns your otherwise benign bombs into something much more powerful. If this proves too strong, rather than removing shrap for the Levi I'll reduce bomb damage further.

As of last game, the only one i've seen with shrap admittedly, it seems a bit overpowered. since it doesn't take that much energy to bomb repeatedly, it's easy to get a lot of shrap kills. while i agree it was hard to get bomb kills before, i kind of like the whole support aspect as well as the "bomb to weaken, bullet to kill" tactic too. I think a much better idea would be along the lines of Viruk's suggestion.

Another thought: Instead of having heavily damaging shrap could you not make it destroy upgrades? Shrap intuitively seems like the sort of weapon that could easily break things but not easily kill a ship outright.

Perhaps temporarily nocking turn/thrust/speed/etc. an upgrade or two per shrap hit or randomly removing a special seems like a good idea. Random damage to fit with a random weapon.

[Lag.Com]

Terriers attaching to terriers is very bad. Please remove.

I also agree with the rest of the things Mjollnir said, though I'm not so sure about Lancasters being overpowered. I'll try one out next test.

[Mjollnir]

Problems:

• Unfortunately, removing the blocks near the flag didn't work. Sharks are still way too powerful -> nerf repels.
• Lancasters are still overpowered. The bullet damage increase countered the slight nerf.
• 5 minute flag timer for 1 flag games is way too much. Try something like 3 mins.
• Terriers attaching to other Terriers shouldn't be allowed. It is simply too big of an advantage.
• When there is more than one Terrier of the same side in the flagroom there are too many bursts flying around. I don't know what to do about this since bursts are so essential to Terriers. I would prefer if it was more about skill though.
• The red bullet damage feels very low, now that everyone has a huge amount of energy. The problem is that spiders get the same damage increase if it is changed. I am looking at this from a Terrier's point of view.
• The new levi bomb + blue shrap combo is too strong. I would prefer no random crap flying around but if it is a must then make it less lethal. The bomb seems to do a ton of damage as well since the damage was increased.
• The assist bonuses don't seem worth it anymore. Does it take the new beta multiplier into account?

Ability ideas:

• Spider: A small percentage chance of causing an engine shutdown when hitting an enemy.
• Weasel: Destroying enemy specials when hitting them. It could be something like this for the ability levels: lvl 1: destroy portals, lvl2: destroy bursts and portals, lvl 3: destroy repels, bursts and portals, lvl 4: destroy all specials and x-radar.
• Shark: An ability that recharges and allow the Shark to increase it's max energy significantly for one life.

Other comments:

• I liked the new ball game. It seems that some ships have a huge advantage in it but whatever. I am sure it will be popular when it works properly.

[Viruk]

Unfortunately, removing the blocks near the flag didn't work. Sharks are still way too powerful -> nerf repels.

Well it did seem easier to rep them off the flag and the flag seemed slightly harder to mine securely. Thats a good start.

Lancasters are still overpowered. The bullet damage increase countered the slight nerf.

I am not saying you are wrong but I am not sure how you can say this with any surety from one set of sparsely attended games without trying all the possible builds yourself.
My L2 scout Lanc certainly seemed less able to use multifire but this hasn't really nerfed it as I mostly use single fire. The increase in L2 energy (which I am not sure was needed) was too slight to be noticeable from my end as was the extra cost of single fire L2. I would imagine that those Lancs relying on L3 multifire were far more seriously affected. Since even after the change I was still seeing Terriers tanking an L3 (and sometimes still fire an L1 back unless some lag/full-charging was going on) I doubt the extra L3 damage is going to be enough to compensate.

Terriers attaching to other Terriers shouldn't be allowed. It is simply too big of an advantage.

I agree with this.

When there is more than one Terrier of the same side in the flagroom there are too many bursts flying around. I don't know what to do about this since bursts are so essential to Terriers. I would prefer if it was more about skill though.

The obvious answer would seem to be bursts with a shorter duration. You would be forced to aim them more because you wouldn't be able to rely on them bouncing about for ages.

The red bullet damage feels very low, now that everyone has a huge amount of energy. The problem is that spiders get the same damage increase if it is changed. I am looking at this from a Terrier's point of view.

Yes I played Terrier for a short while today and found it tricky to kill with them. Same with Shark. I am not sure this is a big problem though as guns are upgradable and the ships with slower red bullets probably shouldn't be concentrating on gunning down the enemy anyway.

[Viruk]

Here is one of the low levels I found from my logfile. I remember killing/being killed by him when he was level 3. There is at least one more of them:

dodo Pinochio(60) killed by: Viruk
P Distension> +327 RP: dodo Pinochio(29) [x9.1 beta]

I haven't seen any more funny ratios recently let alone logged any.