Distension discussion

[roxxkatt]

my ping: 30ms
my wzl: 0rot 0thr 0spd
my gun: lv2
# of rockets: 0

however, i agree that the wzl should never get a port, ever.
i also think the levi shouldnt have one either.

[jngy slate]

2 things. There have been constant complains about uneven teams the past few days. In the last week, Stabwound has shuffled teams about 5 times because of complains of inbalancement. I think we can all agree that the algorithm used to shuffle the teams evenly sucks. Because it's not just ranks that matter. There's a lot more factors to be considered. Terrs and sharks need to have more importance when shuffling teams. Don't give one team all the high level terrs, even them out. Consider how often these people play distension, and how often they play the ship. For example, Burnt plays like once a week, so putting him on a team would not add up that much strenght to it. We've discussed this a few pages back.

Weasels are overpowered. I was discussing this with a couple peeps the other day and we all agreed that either rockets or portals need to go. For the following reasons, I am strongly leaning towards rockets:
* in the rest of tw, weasels are slow. In distension they are nowhere near as slow. It used to be that weasels were the shotguns to a FPS. What rockets do is turn that shotgun into a mid range weapon.
* nobbi has told me that for many levels there is nothing to upgrade for the x. Even though qan put a lot of effort into choosing the upgrades and special abilities for ships, he might have gotten impatient with the weasel and gave it rockets. Sure, the weasels in pub have rockets, but again, they are much slower than the weasels in distension. They are also twice as big, thus not as flexible to travel in. Pub weasels also have slower recharge. Now keep in mind what I've said about weasels not having anything to upgrade for a while. This means that all weasels would probably have max speed/thrust/rotation at about level 30. Why I'm guessing level 30? nobbi is 38 and he told me he was maxed on these stats some weeks ago.
* because x's are very likely to have max movement stats plus a rocket, their movement can be very unpredictable, thus hard to dodge. A rocket allows an x to go from 0 or even negative speed to full speed. You could be chasing an x and it can instantly change directions and shoot at you. This is not that case with javs. And even if isn't facing your way, it can quickly turn because of max roation.
* weasels already have multi. This, together with l3s and rockets makes weasel players hardly require any aim.
* Let's face it, a good number of the top x's right now have above average ping. As in above 300 ms. Rockets reeeally make the lag worse. Remember the javs in pub who seem to jump all around when they rocket? By the time you've realized a weasel used a rocket and shot at you, you're already ded.
* they already have portals. High ping + a portal really helps get you to that death out of nowhere experience. Even without lag, if a weasel warps directly next to you, rockets, and shoots, it's nearly impossible to dodge unless you yourself use a portal or he kills someone else that was closer to the bullets. Now, why get rid of rockets instead of portals? Because I can think of more reasons why rockets make weasels more overpowered than portals do. Also, imo portals are not all that useful. Plus, there is anti. There is no anti to rockets. No, reps are not the anti to rockets.
* weasels are meant to be support ships. They even get profit share. But often, weasels players are the ones taht get the most kills and the best ratio in a game. All the RP from kills plus profit sharing makes them easy to level. The reason weasels are not the second most ranked ships in the game is because not many have unlocked them and the highest ranked weasels don't play them that often.

2035 people have registered names in DBot. Granted a large portion of those names are probably 2nd and 3rd aliases....But out of those 2035 names....

41 People have unlocked the weasel. (Almost 10 people never play it)
15 Have unlocked the Lanc. (+1 for qan who probably just gave it to himself)

Too lazy to figure out what the percentages are, but maybe this is a hint that additional standards need to be added to the current unlock standards for these 2 ships.

[DankNuggets]

ship unlocks... they need to be rank-based

Personally, I'm never going to camp to the point I get a 20 kill streak. That, and none of my ships can really tank a bullet, so I don't see it coming by accident, let alone if I try 100% of the time to unlock it.

As for the lanc, the closest I've been able to come is around 25 kills in a five minute game. If it goes on for 30 mins... well there's no hope. Right now, only the overpowered/overranked ships can unlock lanc. It's because their ship is ungodly to the point that they can kill everyone and tank a lot of shots.

How is that not just a product of playing longer than everyone? Sure, it's not 100% gurantee if you play a lot you'll get it, but as it stands, the only people that seem to be unlocking the lancaster are the ones who ALREADY have a highly ranked ship. Thus, they've devoted a large amount of time, to just ONE ship, in order to achieve the unlock.

I think it would be a good idea to have it as a rank-unlock, just as a combonation of ships.

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A few possible examples-- Gonna use weasel/support for the example, just substitute lanc/assault for the other half.

Plan 1. Follow existing unlock method. IE, start with terrier. @ rank 10 you unlock shark, @ rank 20 you unlock levi, @ rank 30 you unlock weasel.

Plan 1a. @ rank 40 you unlock weasel

Plan 2. Update the method so that you can't just rank up one ship. Keep the first 2 unlocks the same, but then require at least rank 30 in two support ships to unlock weasel.

Plan 2b. same as above, but require at least rank 20 in three support ships

Plan 2c. same as above, but require rank 30 in all ships


Plan 3. base the unlock requirement on a combination of rank requirements and army wins. I don't know enough about the # wins it should take to help unlock, but it should be in addition to a total combined rank of at least 90-100 (that'd be rank 15 at least in all other ships, could bump it to 20 and make the range 100-120). This would also keep people from creating an account solely to play as X or lanc, and force them to be a more well rounded team player if they want the lanc or X.

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Right now, it's extremely hard to unlock one of these ships for several reasons.

One, most people who don't have these ships have low ranks, while the people with them have high ranks. That makes it really hard to even kill them, let alone unlock ships.

Two, neither unlock method creates a healthy basing atmosphere: ppl playing wb trying to get the streak, and not helping secure flag room/kill terr; and people trying to get 6k/min not helping defend bases so much as suicide and get as many kills as possible (also not playing shark or terrier, at all).

Three, people who have unlocked these ships have played them to the point where they're 30+ ranks over people who haven't unlocked them at all. It's ridiculous to play a level 20 terr against a level 40 lanc... it's no contest. They rank up so quickly because the ship is damn powerful, and it's given to people who have demonstrated they don't need the extra power... it's like giving Phelps or Bolt a headstart in a race.

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In sum: The unlock requirements need to be rank based, with focus towards winning flagroom battles. Currently the X/Lanc are overpowered, even in their limited availability, and probably need to be nerfed a bit. No one's going to get tac ops, or at least not nearly as many as should be able to. I'd like to know what %% of people have unlocked these ships, and when they did it. I'm guessing that <10% of players have these ships, and that <5% have unlocked them recently.

[roxxkatt]

or perhaps make it easier if your level is higher, like 25 kill streak - (level / 5) to unlock wzl...

so a lvl40 would only need a streak of 17 to unlock wzl, 50 only needs 15, etc...

[Viruk]

edit: can i reopen the discussion about the unlock of lanc and weasel? may i suggest 80 army wins for weasel, 100 army wins for lanc, or lvl 40 ship for weasel, level 45 ship for lanc.

Only in addition to something like the current skill feat. There ought to be some level of of skill involved in unlocking these powerful ships rather than just playing for a long time.

New players are going to find the feats harder and harder when facing all those high level ships though.

Make it too hard to unlock a favorite ship and you will get too many players spending too much time laming instead of basing. Or concentrating on a single ship at the expense of some fun and team needs. Or cheating. Or leaving to go and play something else.

Perhaps there should be have been a minimum level to prevent players lucking out in some perfect early battle and gaining a big headstart over others in the class. Too late to change that without a reset.

Adding more conditions now may help keep down the numbers of these relatively powerful ships a little but would be more than a little unfair to new players who are increasingly going to have a tougher time unlocking them anyway.

Perhaps it would be alright to add a fairly low minimum ship rank and to compensate by having feats a player could realistically perform with a below average level ship. Something that could take account of the level of the opposition and length of battles (may be just me but there seem to be far fewer 10 minute battles than there used to be).

For example:

To unlock weasel you could make it so you need ensign rank and one ship level 25+ and a 20 kill streak (excluding ships 10 levels below yours) with an extra bonus streak kill for any ships killed that are 20 levels above yours.

To unlock lanc you could make it so you need ensign rank and one ship level 30+ and you need 75 kills during the first 15 minutes into a battle with any ship killed that is 20 levels above yours counting as an extra bonus kill.

[KuNi]

no, 4 so then i can at least play 1 :P

edit: can i reopen the discussion about the unlock of lanc and weasel? may i suggest 80 army wins for weasel, 100 army wins for lanc, or lvl 40 ship for weasel, level 45 ship for lanc.

[Peace_Maker]

Next objective:

Longer hosting times, extend to 3 hours each?

[roxxkatt]

awesome on all 3, but a little conservative for #1...


now my jav rec can stain the rest of my rec forever! \o/

[Stabwound]

A few small updates for you all, thanks to qan:

-Player limit is now set to 28 and will probably rise again provided the game proves to be stable.

-Arena scores should now be persistent across zone recycles as well as when everyone leaves the arena. You can reset your score by using the !scorereset command to DBot while the game is running.

-I also got zone staff to change the distension chat back to a public chat, which means you can access it from non-TW zones.

Have fun.

[Peace_Maker]

omg peace are you wicked baser?

Yes I am.

Thanks nobbi, I currently have 13/19 or 11/19 energy, I don't remember which and to gain another energy I have to wait 6 ranks. I am afraid I will not get the energy I want even in the 70s but I do not want to sacrifice the UP I am spending on extras. What to do. Z class - no, max energy is 2200 which is not enough.

[DankNuggets]

Peace maker, warships maxed energy is higher than z-class maxed. z-class you have to upgrade your charge and energy manually. warship does it automatically and the energy upgrades about 5-6 times every 10 levels(if i remember correctly), but recharge only goes up about 1-2 times every 10 levels.

you have to do it manually, but the theory is that if you devote almost all of your UP to either energy or rechage, they will be higher than any other class of ship. In practice, I doubt you will wan to do this (ie no other upgrades like bullets, specials, even thrust) and there's no way you can do both.

[Ivan]

omg peace are you wicked baser?

[roxxkatt]

translation:

IS CURRENTLY BEING sent to nonplaying spectators

[KuNi]

Peace maker, warships maxed energy is higher than z-class maxed. z-class you have to upgrade your charge and energy manually. warship does it automatically and the energy upgrades about 5-6 times every 10 levels(if i remember correctly), but recharge only goes up about 1-2 times every 10 levels.
I remember with my terrier i had warship and the energy went up 1 level, then 2 levels, then 1 again etc. but i remember the max number of energy upgrades being about 35, so it cant go 1,2 all the way to level 80.I have a shitty memory though D:

And cheese, why do you have this on the to do list "DBot> Battle lost. K/D: 0/0 TeKs: 0" sent to nonplaying spectators"
that would just be spam wouldn't it? why would people want to see that when they are in spec.