Distension Beta Suggestions/Bugfix thread

[Foreign]

Maybe this is a limitation brought about by subspace, but I feel like there isn't enough of a gap between levels. A level 1 is able to kill a level 20+ with relative ease if the higher player is low on energy, which means newbies will level ridiculously quickly once this has been going on for a while.

To counteract that, eventually you may want to split arenas based on level (1-20, 20-40, 40-60, etc.) Of course you'll always need a greater quantity of the lower-rank arenas as there will always be more lower-ranked players, but I think the higher-ranked players specifically will have more fun playing against opponents who can give them more points.

Edit: this is, of course, being optimistic in terms of future zone population. I'm hoping the best for ya

[hak]

Distension bug

Another small thing, at the end of a pretty long round the teams were 14vs11. Team 2 was winning, and with only a few seconds to go i saw hak (in shark) changing freqs. He was on the freq for like less then 10 seconds, but still got the full RP bonus.

I understand that support ships like shark and terrs keep participation bonus when switching in mid-game from a winning to the losing team, but cant you make it that when hey switch from a losing to a winning team they dont get that full bonus? I know that this situation is very rare, but its kinda annoying to see that he still got like 1k RP (dont know exact numbers anymore) for being on it for less than 10 secs.

No offense on u, Hak, just you happened to do it under my watching eye.. tbh i would have done the same

Actually, I was abusing this bug to see how far it stretches. When everyone started drama-ing about it in the distension chat, I tried to make it clear to you how it works, and why it works incorrectly. I'm sure Dugwyler knows what I'm talking about, if not, we will certainly have a word.

A possible solution to this bug would be no !assisting in the last 30 seconds of the game. This however cancels the effect of avarice (!assisting the other team in the last seconds, so the teams aren't too unbalanced)

Thank you for reminding me though Vergilius, I forgot to put the 'bug' on the forum.

Regards,

Hakkinen B)

[HateTheFake]

Yea i saw that as well, only when he switched and we won, I recieved 0 rp and i was on the winning freq the whole time.

[Vergilius]

Another small thing, at the end of a pretty long round the teams were 14vs11. Team 2 was winning, and with only a few seconds to go i saw hak (in shark) changing freqs. He was on the freq for like less then 10 seconds, but still got the full RP bonus.

I understand that support ships like shark and terrs keep participation bonus when switching in mid-game from a winning to the losing team, but cant you make it that when hey switch from a losing to a winning team they dont get that full bonus? I know that this situation is very rare, but its kinda annoying to see that he still got like 1k RP (dont know exact numbers anymore) for being on it for less than 10 secs.

No offense on u, Hak, just you happened to do it under my watching eye.. tbh i would have done the same

[Peace_Maker]

3 items to report of notice:

I have noticed, a couple of times now, that if I go afk for 15 secs or so and get the notice to be active or I will be specced I get specced after dying and returning to the spawn area. I will attach and play until I die but it seems that the bot starts back where it left off on counting time. Maybe there is another factor I am unaware of.

Today while playing, the bot took away everything it had prized to players, they retained the bty. Every player in the game at the time experienced this and were prized correctly upon dying and rearming. Dunno what that was about.

Toward the end of a session the bot disappeared/died on us. It did not just shut down in its normal pattern of speccing all players sending an arena message it was going down for maintenance.

Is !killmsg in the !help command? I am sure most players would use it. I will be.

[gdugwyler]

If I worked more on the other map I talked to you about a few weeks ago, would it possible to do tests there (maybe just in dev if we can bring some people) so see the general reaction/get ideas for it?

Yes, we could definitely do some dev testing. To make it easy, it would be best if the coords would match up with the current map as far as the rearm area, center base spawn and warp/respawn goes.

Recent changes:
- Shrap made random as some were saying it was ineffective
- Jav and Levi TK penalty halved; hopefully this makes Jav more enjoyable while still curbing TKs
- You can now stop kill messages from being sent by using !killmsg. Turning them off gives you a 1% bonus to all RP earned, so it's worth considering. This has been done to alleviate more load on the server and bot.
- Implemented the time limiting system. If there are 50 people in the game you can now bump players that have been playing longer that particular day; they get to play out the end of the round and then are switched out. Also, regardless of how much or little a player has played, anyone who is docked (in spec) is fair game for losing their playing slot. At present time is reset at the start of every test, but later on when the bot is up for long periods of time it will be once per day. Use !leave to log yourself out completely (does more than spec/!dock) and stop your playing timer running. If you want to get back in you'll have to !return at that point. This is untested, except as a thought experiment, so feedback will be especially helpful here.

[Chao.]

Regarding the recent necessity of a player limit and time limit, I think I've found a good compromise. There won't be so much a time limit as playing times recorded. These won't matter until the arena is full, in which case a player who wants to get in will be able to bump out the player with the most amount of total playing time for the day, if the player has less total time. The switch will occur at round end. This means that players won't be limited by time so much as demand for slots, and will encourage those that want to play a lot to check out off-peak hours. The time will reset once per day at the statistical average low-pop time.

We might also be able to run another bot or bots depending on if the server recycle problem is on a per-bot basis or not. This would allow a lot of players on Distension at any one time, which may or may not be a Good Thing.

Anyhow, sorry if anyone got annoyed or worried about the 2 hour limitation. I think this'll work much better.

If I worked more on the other map I talked to you about a few weeks ago, would it possible to do tests there (maybe just in dev if we can bring some people) so see the general reaction/get ideas for it?

[gdugwyler]

Regarding the recent necessity of a player limit and time limit, I think I've found a good compromise. There won't be so much a time limit as playing times recorded. These won't matter until the arena is full, in which case a player who wants to get in will be able to bump out the player with the most amount of total playing time for the day, if the player has less total time. The switch will occur at round end. This means that players won't be limited by time so much as demand for slots, and will encourage those that want to play a lot to check out off-peak hours. The time will reset once per day at the statistical average low-pop time.

We might also be able to run another bot or bots depending on if the server recycle problem is on a per-bot basis or not. This would allow a lot of players on Distension at any one time, which may or may not be a Good Thing.

Anyhow, sorry if anyone got annoyed or worried about the 2 hour limitation. I think this'll work much better.

[gdugwyler]

- Dropped Terrier XRadar level requirement. You can now get it from rank 1.
- Increased Weasel Stealth rank requirement. Now only particularly advanced weasels can use cloak and stealth simultaneously.
- Reduced thrust from rockets (all rockets, that is), so that it will take a bit to get up to the top speed; it's now half of what it was. This is not hugely noticeable, but it does have some effect and should help with lag.
- Lowered Weasel starting energy, but also gave them more to upgrade in the <5 levels as a result.

We'll see if these changes balance it out a bit. I'm curious to play the ship first-hand. The rapid fire bullets are not too much of a concern unless the weasel is able to get up to high speeds with a rocket, or just has a lot of speed upgrades -- though if the latter is true, then I think they should be able to do it, as that means they've also had to ugprade recharge and energy in addition to that speed.


Also, decoys now last a much shorter time than before. This is to cut down on lag, and to make their use is more tactical than random.

[Jeenyuss]

i like the small size. it's just the matter of them being able to recharge so god damn fast.

[Zeebu]

gonna have to jump on the weasel hating bandwagon...

gotta be able to see that thing

[Burzum]

Increase their size so that it's possible to hold a base even with a low-level terrier - when I mine up the entrance and dedicate to the other base, the terrier should be able to see he rammed a mine and call for backup. With the way the weasel is right now, we had Mjollnir going in and out of base, sometimes silently stealing flags, mostly wildly spraying yellow stuff everywhere, at level 20!

[Peace_Maker]

Hehe, looks like everyone else is seeing what I was saying about the weasel now. Instead of just complaining I will suggest some alternative settings: keep the weasel small, slow down the rocket, increase the amount of energy required for it to fire (right now there is a weasel that can fire 3 l2 multifire bullets, not sure about his rank but it was under 30), x-radar should be available to terrs and maybe one or two other ships before a weasel is ever able to cloak.

Edit: Dug, remembering you replied to my last post on weasels I reviewed the information and realize increasing the energy required to fire L2 bullets by weasels alone is not possible. I think slowing down the rocket and giving terriers the capability to see the little monsters would be enough to decrease its power. Right now weasel rockets seem to create a lot of lag at least on my screen.

[moltenrock]

SERIOUS BUG, THE BOT RUNS AWAY FROM US SOMETIMES.

FIX IT. :fear:

[Peace_Maker]

I'm having to make some significant changes to the way the game is handled, as we're causing server recycles. This means rearm times are going to be a little slower, and yes, there is going to be a player cap, though instituted by the bot and not the arena settings. And due to the necessity of a player cap, there will also be a daily time limit imposed per person, probably looking like 2 hours per day, refreshed at the rate of 5 minutes per hour and storing up to a max of 3 hours per day. I know this is not welcome news for many people, but I'm afraid that because of the way the bot must be implemented, there really isn't much of an alternative; it's looking like it's Distension in this way, or no Distension at all. Suggestions as to other ways of dealing with it are welcome ... complaints are not. The benefits of such a system are reasonably good as well: running the bot fairly regularly (perhaps 24/7) is not going to be as much of a problem, nor will leaving to go to a hosted event if you can just use your Distension time later on. I understand multiple accounts may be a problem, but we'll have to see how that goes. It might be alias-checked, and it might just be allowed if people get obsessive...

What about running 2 arenas/2 bots?