Distension discussion

[meddi]

I demand multi-classing.

Rank 70 Terrier-Shark FTW

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[Viruk]

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

The bot often dies so why assume that FarScape's lanc was responsible for this? Of course I usually play at the more populated times when bot death due to something overloading is more likely and I have little idea how often it dies in a single FR game. I also cannot remember whether level 0 is normal or whether they start at level 1.
I do know the bot lasted long enough to award me RP for a kill made after the victory message when FarScape's lanc unlocked.
H.M.S. Stargazer mentioned that the billing server was going nuts after the bot crash. What form this crazyness takes is unknown to me - hopefully qan will have a better idea.

[alinea]

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.

<snip> <snip> <snip> <snip> <snip>

The 5pm-8pm EST time slot will be more stable now that I am in the swing of things. HMS being in charge of scheduling is better than no one being in charge of scheduling. It is difficult to find people willing to dedicate a set schedule to the game, especially when they are greeted with little respect and gratitude for such.

[alinea]

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:

<snip>

Great feedback Raible, thank you!

The player Project5 experienced something similar and believes their status was not saved when they were removed from the game in order to open up a slot for another player.

[Lizard Fuel]

HMS being in charge of scheduling is better than no one being in charge of scheduling.

Not true. I took a shit this morning more qualified for the job, probably better looking too. Why not have one of your Euro mods host it for the euros, and we can replace HMS with some other piece of shit in staff that doesn't give himself *ufo while forcing everyone else to sit in spec and watch.

[roxxkatt]

<snip>

Great feedback Raible, thank you!

The player Project5 experienced something similar and believes their status was not saved when they were removed from the game in order to open up a slot for another player.

way 2 restate, see here:

http://forums.trenchwars.org/showpos...6&postcount=50

[alinea]

way 2 restate, see here:
http://forums.trenchwars.org/showpos...6&postcount=50

I don't see what you're referencing?

[dako]

Re: the new goal base thing

Looks cool, GJ on whoever designed it. Thing is, the wormhole has been closed off as well, which means theres going to be much less turnaround and much fewer goals. The goals werent giving out much RP to begin with, were the rewards increased to reflect this change?

[2kill]

I don't see what you're referencing?

• no autosave after round ends
• no autosave when removed

this is what he means... though I'm suprised he expected anyone to read since he said it was just a list for him lol

I hope your not skiping resting to host distension as a baby can be pretty draining

[DankNuggets]

I don't think avarice is working (ppl have said it has never worked)

I won a round, in which my team won with avarice. The message from the bot went along the lines of

distensionbot>Avarice! You have 100% participation earning 285RP [-75% Avarice] + 30RP for 3 sector holds for 315RP !

This was not the end of a war, it was just a normal battle.

Earlier in the day, I won a war (double RP) and recieved like ~400RP, so I'm thinking that the 75% never got taken off with avarice.




Also wondering if the calculation could be tweaked to show more strength with numbers, not ranks. We've had several games go 15 v 21 or similar with no avarice, but the games were heavily one-sided with one team winning very quickly.

[Stabwound]

The ball game gives too much RP now. I mean, you might not think it's worth saying anything about, but in many cases you'll get more RP in the ball game than you will in the actual game. I got something like 800rp from one ball game today.