Distension discussion

[Stabwound]

Just wondering: why is it run so little now that it's out of beta? I just don't see the reason to keep it from being played on weekends, and even on weekdays only a few hours per day. It's even more annoying to just shut the game down before it's even finished (after a round ends, but still). If anything, I think it would be better to have it open on weekends. I mean, it's obviously a popular game, and I think TW needs anything that can get people online and playing.

Is it going to be up more often at some point?

btw: awesome game. Pretty much the only hosted/pub game to catch my interest in, like, 5 years.

[Viruk]

There are still some unresolved issues on the beta thread but I suppose it was getting rather long.

Re: Blinding
Are we sure this is from killing enemy ships or is it happening after the enemy score a goal?

Re: Goal rewards
I agree rewards seem quite low. Some players are encouraging their team to spawn and ignore the ball game.

Rewarding only players near the goal would reward those idiots crowding inside the goal who prevent the ball-carrier from scoring. Players who are killed assisting the ball carrier or who immediately warp to hunt for the ball would get nothing.

Probably any reward based on passing, scoring or holding the ball would be abused so best to leave it rewarding equally or according to level.

I think the goal reward should not be worth full team effort to allow people to have a break between battles without letting the team down. I would guess it should be worth more than 3 average kills if you want to avoid encouraging spawners to feed off the ball game.

Perhaps total reward based on total levels of enemy team and shared out proportional to your level?


Re: Leveling speed
If this goes 24/7 the basic leveling rate will need to be slow. You can still level up enough to move around faster fairly quickly though. I still hope to see frequent special events at higher RP rates.

[dako]

Malladrin:

Vengeful bastard can blind (short radius, wide radius), energy deplete, engine shutdown (i think), warp?. Its basically a way for the weasel to be more annoying, and also a deterrant for the terr to just sit in base killing the weasel that comes in through the sides.

The thing with the goal is, it helps a LOT if youre like level 1-8, where the RP rank ups are still under 500 RP. But after you get past 1000 per rank up, I'd really rather be spending my time talking to teammates / figuring out what to upgrade next.

For those of you that dont know, heres something to look forward to for your ships:

Wb - extremely fast later on, gets a thor (o.o) with huge radius and bombs x.x

Jav - Eventually gets the ability to warp in a designated direction almost instantaneously, gets extremely powerful bombs / shrap

Spider - Level 2 bullets + multifire + super. Nuff said

Lev - A lot like wb, gets very tanky and fast, the only ship (i think) that can eat a bomb, a mine, and a level 3 bullet. Level 3 bombs have huge emp prox that ends up screwing everyone over :P

Terr - Gets multifire much like pub ship, but with level 2 bullets. Eventually gets an absurd amout of bursts (I saved up 8 once in beta), with like a 70% regeneration of burst every 30 seconds. Also gets the ability to "summon" the entire team with one click.

Weasel - Gets really good at breaks and holds with rocket + decoys + level 3 bullets early on, ideal for terr rushes. Also can go in those tiny holes in the ears / side tubes of the fr. On top of that, can deploy a rather wide brick. On top of that, can cloak o.o

Lancaster - No one is this yet, will remain a secret

Shark - Gets... lots of reps. When I say a lot, im talking about starting out with 4 reps with a new one regenerating every 30 seconds. Also, level 2 mines have a HUGE splash damage area, and can get shrap eventually

Tactical Ops- No one's here yet either :P

Granted, all these, with the exception of weasel probably, takes until level 50 to get, but its not really all that impossible to get there.

[Malladrin]

I would really like some information on how much certain skills cost at certain lvls for all ships. It's hard to plan specialization and upgrades without this information.

In response to Dako's post:

- Random typos: Not so random. Write %245 (which I think it sais) and you'll hear a sound. However, something is wrong, since we see the text and not the sound.

- Vengeful bastard: Is that all it does, blind people, or could something else happen?

- I want a schedule too.:bigups:

- I concur with the RP reward for scoring a goal is very low, if it got higher people might actually care about the soccer game. Although, if it is a good soccer game people would warp before the scorer scored the goal, and thus only giving reward to those close to goal would be not so good.

[dako]

I don't see any thread other than beta, and since this isn't in beta still, it needs a new title

So, here, post your ideas, suggestions, comments, bug reports, etc. Relivant topics include : ship leveling, abilities, specializations, hosting periods, balancing issues, gameplay overall.

Irrelivant things / topics not to be discussed are : flaming, how lame distension is and how we should all give up life, random criticism without reasonable support, whining that distension isnt hosted more (:P), that you saw jesus in your toast, politics, or how to get secret ships (although im sure enough people know -.-).

"________ is overpowered because it is" posts will get you a frowny face.

My thoughts:

- The chat colors are very confusing as they are, i almost never notice when im getting PMs (with !killmsg on btw), but I've been playing for years now, im used to green pms

- I'm getting blinded by killing random spiders / sharks / weasels now, is there really vengeful bastard for all of those ships?

- Is there ever really going to be a set schedule for distension, or is it really just up to HMS now? I've gotten a vague "Mon-Thurs" with no time frame, but it was hosted for 5 hours today, so I dont know. I think the weekends would bring the newcomers in..

- I don't know if this was dug's intent, but is levelling really going to be this slow as time progresses? I remember rank 45+ costing 100k, and even at an average of 40 RP per kill (we'll say 60 to factor in streaks / end game wins), thats still almost 2000 kills. To put that in perspective, I got 800 kills today in 5 hours. At 160 kills / hour, that would take 12 hours, or roughly 6 two-hour sessions. And that was one of the top 5 killing ships out of 30ish

- Random typos with the end game message, specifically in the streak area and a couple random %258s in the reward messege.

- Is there anyway we could get a one way door so that the ball cant be passed into the base, its rather annoying :/ Or, just remove the ball at game start and put it back in after the game.

- The RP reward for getting a goal seems quite... pathetic, especially at later levels. Is there any way this could be ramped up proportional to level, or just increased in general. Secondary suggestion: split the RP among people who are near the goal, so that only people who are assisting in getting the RP actually get the RP.