Distension discussion

[gdugwyler]

I'm for the 'bot has short name' idea but I thought it was policy to always end bot names with 'Bot'? Maybe 'DBot' would be good enough.

Otherwise you could pick something self-important like ARBITER

Hahaha. For the record, that was DoCk>'s idea. I wanted "Secretary of "... somethingorother. He said that was too sissy. (Tell that to the Secretary of State.)

Sorry I still didn't get to this thread fully yesterday -- too much work at present. This Friday I'll honestly have at least an hour or two free. Please keep posting and I'll be sure to catch up to it soon. I'm reading bits and pieces at present.

[dako]

On behalf of the normal people of distension,

I'm requesting that someone other than H.M.S. Stargazer be put in charge of distension scheduling / hosting.

(if youre lazy, scroll down to the bold line)

Why? Because:

1. Out of the past 10 scheduled hosting periods, one have been hosted on time, two were not hosted at all, one was hosted early, six were hosted late (including two that started over an hour after it was supposed to be hosted)

2. He has chosen unreliable "other ops", listed mainly as malladrin <ER> (leningrad) and alinea <ER>. This is not to their fault, as alinea is busy with parenting (congrats by the way) and signs on once every other day or so, and malladrin has not even logged on since the schedule has been started. I believe alinea saved us last night thankfully at around 6:30 to start it up (supposed to be started at 5). Other people (smods i believe) can host it, but I have never seen anyone other than HMS or alinea (or qan ofcourse) start it up. I'm pretty sure these people were chosen just to momentarily please distension players and to put a bandaid on a broken arm.

3. HMS himself has said he doesn't know why he wakes up early to start the 5 AM session. The thing is, some of the time he doesn't, and when he does, it's usually about 5:45 or 6. If you don't want to host it HMS, there are plenty of people who would like to instead.

4. Power hungry much? Starting polls in distension along the lines of "So you guys want me to shut down distension until someone else comes along to host it?" Obviously people would rather have distension + HMS than no distension, but I'm pretty sure it would be an almost unanimous agreeance if we could switch over to someone who liked distension enough to stick to a simple schedule. Furthermore, we can make an analogical parallel to totalitarian government, which has never worked out in the end. HMS as the entire Event Coordintion TEAM? Governments where a single person has almost all the power tend to result in riot and civil unrest, which is where distension is leaning towards - the players disagreeing with their government, which responds with "Boo hoo, I have the power, you don't, get over it".

5. He's unfamiliar with distension, and an ass in general. It was agreed upon that I would recieve a one-day ban for attempting to create an avarice. So I get banned. However, HMS believed (falsely) that there wasn't an !unban command, which he knew at the time, and would rather let qan find a way to fix it. Surprise! There is a !unban command! But wait, DOUBLE WHAMMY time! The time I was supposed to be unbanned was in the middle of a distension hosting period, at 6:36 AM. Surprise! Its 6:36, HMS is nowhere to be found to unban me, and distensionbot is nowhere to be found, people on the chat asking "wheres HMS, when does distension start, etc." So I waited until the next host at 5 PM (which HMS didn't show up for) and luckily qan was on, who unbanned me. A few hours later, he shows up and simply says "Congrats on getting unbanned". Yeah, thanks for not showing up to unban the ban you instated in the first place, and then failing to apologize for doing so.

LAZY VERSION!!!!!!!!HMS rarely starts the bot on time, makes excuses for doing so, and cares little about taking responsibility for the schedule HE imposed. There are quite a few people who I'm sure are able to host this much more efficiently than what HMS is doing at the moment, those who can actually stick to a schedule. What happens if you show up late for work at a job 85% of the time, and dont show up 20% of the time with no explanation? You get FIRED.

Fire HMS.

/rant

Now, I would like to personally thank qan for what he's doing, which is excellent. The updates are in a timely manner, exceeding what should be expected of a solo dev of such a big and complex production. I also want to thank alinea for putting the time she is into this, especially with the baby alinea <JR>.


Onto the ball game:

In my opinion, it would be cool if there was like a small (really small) sort of base with the goals inside of it, this would give sharks / javs / weasels some use in the ball game. Just a couple more layers of wall that you have to go around or something, nothing fancy.

[Vehicle]

My reasons are this:
The shits stupid
No one plays it
It claims to be 3 minutes long but is really 5, at least
Its boring

Now this could just be me, but the fact that 1/2 of the players are just flying around the bases during ball games should illustrate my point.

[DankNuggets]

Can we get rid of the ball game already? Or just make it like a minute long or something?

(If this was already talked about, MY BAD.)

What's your beef with it? That post wasn't very specific at all. Also, it's only 3 minutes long right now (maybe 5 at some point, idk) compared to 10-60 mins for games.

Some pros/cons i can think of as it is currently

Pros:

• Gives something to do besides nonstop basing
• Provides a pub-like experience with spawn dueling
• Provides down time to upgrade your ship after a victory
• Provides a "bathroom break" or similar short break
• Allows players to experiment with other ships and configurations while not detracting from the team

Cons:

• Discourages ship variation (almost all terrs/wbs/spiders) for those that acutally play it = swarm/pall penalties
• relatively low RP rewards for hard earned goals (i usually get like 2-3 kills of RP for a goal)
• Many people don't know what's going on; they've never played ball games
• it seems almost short to me, I think it's like no more than 3-5 goals in a game.

That's really all i can think about it so far. I might suggest making the goals a bit closer together, and stop people from spawning in the lower part of the bases if possible. Could also maybe have the ball spawn outside of the asteriod circle when the game's over if possible, to keep people from getting the ball during the fr battles.

All in all, I don't think the ball game gets used that much, or plays a significant role in Distension. It's a side diversion for those that don't want to spec for the between round breaks. It can be fun, but there's hardly the incentive to play it as there is the normal game.

[meddi]

I demand multi-classing.

Rank 70 Terrier-Shark FTW

[Vehicle]

Can we get rid of the ball game already? Or just make it like a minute long or something?

(If this was already talked about, MY BAD.)

[dako]

Weird sequence of events this morning

Apparently FarScape got glitched lanc, then the bot crashed

Gen. Kills: Raible [76] Best Ratio: dald [2.79:1] |
| Best Streak: dald [10] RP: Raible [1235] |
.================================================= ====
Round time: 28:33

And then...

trenchwars.org/distension/statistics.php

Lancaster
1. FarScape (0)

Im willing to bet the relationship between this and the bot crashing isn't a coincidence, but does he get to keep his lanc? o.o

[Viruk]

Of course there should never be resets, I never suggested that.

Then eventually all the regulars are going to max out all the ships they like. The game is going to be pretty tough for newbies and rather boring for regulars at this point.

If high rank ships break the game that much then there needs to be more balancing.

Shiptype vs shiptype isn't too unbalanced at high levels. I don't think the balance was ever intended to be perfect at all levels though.
High vs low level ships will only be balanced in the sense that low level ships will benefit more from their much rarer kills.
The problem is that all the extra specials and weapons are harder to counter at high rank and lead to more random deaths (e.g. bomb radius increases but FR size remains constant). Perhaps this could be made better but not without removing lots of the mid-level fun and it would take a lot of effort and testing. Much better to have a limited number of high level ships for most of the game.

My point is that the current leveling curve is far too focused on single-ship play which is not fun for people who like to spread their play across multiple ships.

At early stages you have to focus on reaching target ranks to unlock some ships. Later on, the leveling curve makes it easier to get several mid-ranking ships. It is harder to focus on a single high level ship because it is slower to rank at high levels, your kills get RP capped, you are a preferred target and are vulnerable to ship limits or swarm/pall penalties. Unless there are other more flexible players able to switch to support ships as required your team is also more likely to lose.

It's just pointless to restrict the high levels for a single ship to months of frequent play

Wrong. The whole point of a long term leveling game is to make the high level ships a difficult but worthwhile goal.

most people simply don't play Continuum that much and I think the high levels should be accessible to everybody.

But a fair number of people do play that much and you have to take account of that when designing a game.
I agree that everybody should get a chance to play a high level ship eventually. I would like to see enough time to get at least one high level ship for an hour-a-day player before any reset. RP multiplier events would help with this. Perhaps you could also increase the multiplier as the 'season' end approaches like we had in the beta.

Even if leveling were 10x as fast, it would take years for someone to max out every ship and have no reason to play anymore.

Wasn't the final beta multiplier something of this order? It didn't seem to take too many weeks before players were lobbing blue bombs around. Perhaps not too many years before total max then. Most players will not want to max out the ships they are not used to playing though.

I'm for the 'bot has short name' idea but I thought it was policy to always end bot names with 'Bot'? Maybe 'DBot' would be good enough.

'DistBot' a.k.a 'DistressedBot' or 'DissedBot' sounds about right to me.

There are good reasons why it should be difficult to rank up:

• To avoid having to reset too often.
• Having most people mid-ranking makes the game more fun. A base full of high powered ships leads to too many random deaths due to bigger bombs, more reps and bursts, killer shrap etc.
• It allows room for RP multiplier events as well as regular Distension. These would help promote Distension and could fill an arena even if people start getting bored with it.

Of course there should never be resets, I never suggested that. If high rank ships break the game that much then there needs to be more balancing. My point is that the current leveling curve is far too focused on single-ship play which is not fun for people who like to spread their play across multiple ships. It's just pointless to restrict the high levels for a single ship to months of frequent play, most people simply don't play Continuum that much and I think the high levels should be accessible to everybody. Even if leveling were 10x as fast, it would take years for someone to max out every ship and have no reason to play anymore.

[Lag.Com]

I'm for the 'bot has short name' idea but I thought it was policy to always end bot names with 'Bot'? Maybe 'DBot' would be good enough.

Otherwise you could pick something self-important like ARBITER

[Raible]

Bugs bugs bugs

Noticed three bugs since yesterday:

Bug #1:

RPs are not saved at round end under certain conditions. As can be seen here, I got promoted twice:

  People's Republic of Misanthropy will win the battle in 10 seconds . . .

  RAIBLE of Intergalactic Planetary, Inc. has been promoted to RANK 38 in the Terrier!
P Distension> -=(  RANK UP!  )=-  You are now a RANK 38 Terrier pilot.  Next rank in 22199 RP.

  |  END OF BATTLE 3: Victory for PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF MISANTHROPY (0)  \

P Distension> Another player wishes to enter the battle; you have been removed to allow them to play.
P Distension> RAIBLE leaving hangars of INTERGALACTIC PLANETARY, INC..  Time played today: 67 min.

P     Raible> ~
P Distension> Sorry, no playing slots are available at the moment.  You have been added to the waiting list.  Players in waiting list: 1

P Distension> A slot has opened up.  Sending you to your army...
P Distension> Special Agent RAIBLE authorized as a pilot of INTERGALACTIC PLANETARY, INC..  Returning you to HQ.
P Distension> R-37 Terrier Classified  20015 / 20181  166RP to R-38.    [=================== ]  99%  UP: 0  

  RAIBLE of Intergalactic Planetary, Inc. has been promoted to RANK 38 in the Terrier!
P Distension> -=(  RANK UP!  )=-  You are now a RANK 38 Terrier pilot.  Next rank in 22199 RP.

Bug #2:

Something about !assist and/or returning players to their army is working oddly. This all happened inbetween rounds:

P     Raible> !assist 0
P Distension> Now an honorary pilot of PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF MISANTHROPY.  Use !assist to return to your army when you would like.

E Distension> IMBALANCE: Pilot lower rank ships, or use !assist 1  (max assist rank: 57).   [ 87 vs 19 ]
P     Raible> !assist 1
P Distension> Returning to your army now would make things too imbalanced!  Sorry, no can do.
P     Raible> !ar
P Distension> #   Army Name                          Total     Playing   Strength    Flags
P Distension> 0   People's Republic of Misanthropy      494       2        77          0
P Distension> 1   Intergalactic Planetary, Inc.         494       1        19          1
P     Raible> !assist
P Distension> Returning to your army now would make things too imbalanced!  Sorry, no can do.
P     Raible> !ar
P Distension> #   Army Name                          Total     Playing   Strength    Flags
P Distension> 0   People's Republic of Misanthropy      494       2        77          0
P Distension> 1   Intergalactic Planetary, Inc.         494       1        19          1
P     Raible> !assist
P Distension> Returning to your army now would make things too imbalanced!  Sorry, no can do.
P     Raible> !assist 1
P Distension> Returning to your army now would make things too imbalanced!  Sorry, no can do.

Perhaps the "max assist rank" value is just incorrect.

Bug #3:

The bot can fall into an inbetween-state where it says a round will start but it never does:

  ,---------------------------------------------------------------------.
  |  END OF WAR: GRAND VICTORY for INTERGALACTIC PLANETARY, INC. (1) !!  \
  .==============================================================================.
  |  Total award: 321.0 RP         75% for 2 on support   -> average 120 RP      |
  |  Hold percentage: 67%          25% for 2 on attack    -> average 40 RP       |
  }======   MVPs   =============================================================={
  |  Holds: Nobbi [5]                     Breaks: N/A [0]                        |
  |  FR Kills: Pub [22]                   TeKs: Pub [4]                          |
  |  Gen. Kills: Pub [26]                 Best Ratio: Pub [1.18:1]               |
  |  Best Streak: Raible [5]              RP: Pub [322]                          |
  .==============================================================================.
  Round time: 8:30                           END OF WAR STATUS   0 [   |===] 1   
P Distension> HQ awards you 220RP (double) for the final victory (100% participation), + 5RP for 1 sector holds = 225RP!
  NOTICE: 5 minutes remaining.
  FREE PLAY for the next 5:00.  Rules: Flags worth no points; goals earn RP.

For the next few minutes, it was changing momentarily wether the three players per freq required for the flag game were in the game or not. After that, there were often at least 3 players per freq, at one point it was 6v6 playing the ball game. At least half an hour later, the bot would answer:

P     Raible> !bi
P Distension> The first battle of a new conflict is just about to begin.

But the game never started. It's very likely that the bot never did the "A new conflict begins in 1:00 (goals active until then)" announcement, but I can't say for sure because the log is incomplete. Eventually (maybe another half hour later) the bot just disappeared without saying anything.

[roxxkatt]

i would like to have remote pms from the bot, would make it ezier to see


also, id like end round spam with stalemates too

[gdugwyler]

I'm going to catch up on this thread tomorrow when I have a bit more time, but I wanted to pose a quick formatting question. Does anyone think it would be helpful if DistensionBot sent messages as remote private messages? For example, right now you see:

[FONT=Courier New][COLOR=DeepSkyBlue]              Joey fox> lol
           Mister Cool> lol[/COLOR]
[COLOR=RoyalBlue]         DistensionBot> Something important 1
[/COLOR][/FONT][FONT=Courier New][COLOR=RoyalBlue]         DistensionBot> Something important 2
[/COLOR][/FONT][FONT=Courier New][COLOR=RoyalBlue]         DistensionBot> Something important 3
[/COLOR][/FONT][FONT=Courier New][COLOR=RoyalBlue][COLOR=DeepSkyBlue]       Captain Awesome> lol lol lol lol so funni im illerterate lol[/COLOR][/COLOR][/FONT]

Instead it could be:

[FONT=Courier New][COLOR=DeepSkyBlue]              Joey fox> lol
           Mister Cool> lol[/COLOR]
[COLOR=RoyalBlue](DistensionBot)> Something important 1
[/COLOR][/FONT][FONT=Courier New][COLOR=RoyalBlue](DistensionBot)> Something important 2
[/COLOR][/FONT][FONT=Courier New][COLOR=RoyalBlue](DistensionBot)> Something important 3
[/COLOR][/FONT][FONT=Courier New][COLOR=RoyalBlue][COLOR=DeepSkyBlue]       Captain Awesome> lol lol lol lol were am i lol???[/COLOR][/COLOR][/FONT]

Opinions? Note: could also print some of DistensionBot's messages as remote and others as in-arena if it might help differentiate. Another option: get the bot a very short name.

[dako]

Most people are going to rapidly level out pretty soon, meaning the RP difference between rank 20 for a pretty high level wb and 29 for jamal is about 50k, which is nothing once you get past rank 40. The only ship that really naturally levels faster than all the others is terr, terrs will always be the highest, and in the past levs / lancs have always been the lowest, but im pretty sure they have the highest RP cost per rank of all ships.

[Peace_Maker]

Page 3! Welcome, the games today were fun. The ships around me are getting stronger and I am not keeping up. Hopefully I will find time to play more soon.