OFFICIAL DISTENSION THREAD HERE

[qan]

To all Distension players,

Please accept my apologies; Distension has been taken off-line indefinitely, pending the discovery of the source of spontaneous settings changes which, regardless of their origin, are completely disrupting the game.

Here is what we know:

• Subspace arena settings files, as a rule, never change "by themselves" -- if the error is due to a problem with the server, it's just about unique (at least as far as I can remember). (Quite Unlikely)
• The bot is not changing the settings file -- there is no code in DistensionBot or TWCore that would spontaneously change arena settings. TWCore is not magic ... at least not in "that" way. The assumption that the bots might spontaneously change arena settings is ... lacking in intellectual rigor/understanding of the workings of computer science.
• The settings changes made have mostly benefited Weasels. And only some settings in various sets of changes I've made have actually been reverted or changed to values which they've never before been at; others were left alone. Meanwhile, values such as Levi bomb damage percentage (the percent of total bomb damage an EMP bomb does), which have remained the same for years, are suddenly found to be at 1/3 of their normal value. (Fortunately, we have "helpful" people who identify this when this happens, and set it back for us. What would we do without them?)
• I'm not an idiot. And I'm done playing around. I will do a full playerwipe of all Distension players if the game is run again without my consent, and I will not bring it back online again. This is my prerogative. I worked on this every day for a year and a half. This is my child. I will drown it in the bathtub myself before I see it molested by a pervert.

If you'd like to see just how far down the rabbit hole you may go, by all means, take a look.

[ogron]

Bombs/Mines do seem a bit underpowered at the moment.

Awhile back the blast radius of yellows was WAY too big, but now I can tank yellow mines and good jav shots don't seem to kill. Javs have always seemed a bit underpowered, although their ability to rocket towards Terr is a big difference maker.

[LF]

I feel bad harassing you in game every time I see you so I will just leave this here so you can address it at your convenience...

I was under the impression that the 5% diversity bonus for having ships 20+ were to be applied to everything but it seems that it is only being applied to kills and not profit sharing/ball games/end of round bonus/holds and breaks/etc. This has been confirmed by comparing results from 2 different players in the same ship at the same level (Myself and bellflowers) while I have all 9 ships 20+ and he has only 2. So just wondering if I was mistaken or if something small just needed to be tweaked to complete this. On a side note +1 for the weasel nerfs, the fire delay is intense and takes some getting used to but it completely changes the way you have to play the weasel to a way much more appropriate for its design. Now its actually worth while to buy blue bullets, since you can't spam yellows. Nice job and thank you

[qan]

So, great news -- my hard drive died last night. I'm still able to do some work using other systems but I'll be a little bit crippled until I can get my old system up and running properly.

I've tweaked Weasel again, as well as a few other ships. (Interestingly, some of the settings changes I made before were mysteriously reverted. For example, Weasel starting recharge was at 2400. This is highly unusual, as it reverts not one but two changes... so it seems unlikely to have been a simple error on my part. We are researching server logs to get to the bottom of it. The potential for foul play aside, this means that the Weasel you've been seeing in-game is not the "true" new version. Well, that doesn't matter much now, as I'm reverting some changes -- speed changes -- and increasing the fire delays and energy costs.)

Weasel changes:
- Initial thrust and speed back to pre-nerf settings.
- Initial energy from 1000 to 1100.
- Bullet speed from 2000 to 1500. (May raise slightly as needed.)
- Bullet cost from 225 to 350 per bullet level.
- Multifire cost from 275 to 450 per bullet level.
- Bullet fire delays increased for both standard and multifire. (This will be the most noticeable change.)
- 4x as likely as other ships to lose upgrades after receiving damage, due to small ship size. (Still will be rare.)

Other ships (NOTE: These changes are more "working" changes, meant as a stop-gap measure until I can come up with a more comprehensive solution):
- Jav bomb L1 energy cost from 900 to 700.
- Levi bomb L1 energy cost from 650 to 600.
- Levi bomb energy upgrade cost (how much more each level costs) from 400 to 300.
- Shark energy required to drop L2 mines increased by 100.

[qan]

Hi folks. Was hoping to have time to update again before yesterday but ended up camping over the weekend and then getting extra work I hadn't planned for. I'm still working a lot. Being American, I'll also be camping yet again for Inpdendence Day all 4 days (sorry). I will do my best to fix things up as best I can today before the test tomorrow. No promises though.

I have a few balance issues I want to address for the late game. As many of you know, the game is not balanced for the late game, as we simply haven't had the players to test it.

- Weasels still have issues with recharge -- they can fire too much, too quickly. I'll be giving them back maneuverability to a great degree (may even increase it beyond stock), but increasing fire cost, increasing fire delay, and reducing overall recharge.
- Levis have too high an UP cost for later levels. Recharge is supposed to be overpriced (it's a glider) but it's too overpriced to make the ship work. They will also receive additional levels of shrapnel to be purchased at various times. Note that this may result in a partial or full refund of upgrades on all levis. I also understand that prox isn't that useful for Levis... thinking about it.
- Jav bombs at high level are no good. Strongly considering increasing bomb damage across the board (only way to increase it -- L1/2/3 all do same dmg, just larger radius for higher levels), but reducing radius. I'll also be giving Javs L3 at a lower rank (was planned for the end), and perhaps another level of shrap (or 2).
- One solution to bomb issues is to adjust costs and introduce rank 4 bombs. Note that as bombs only do 1900 dmg, this would still just increase blast radius. So I may raise bomb damage by quite a lot but also reduce the blast radius proportionally.
- CONSIDERING doing something with Shark, though it pains me to adjust repel settings, as they're standardized across TW. May adjust how well regen works. Shark needs to be OP to be played (to an extent at least). Hard to negotiate this turf.

In other words, major overhaul coming; will continue tweaking as time goes on. At the very least I will be sure to get a weasel tweak in before tomorrow. Your feedback is as always not just appreciated but entirely necessary for the game's continued survival and prosperity.

[but...why...per...]

The weasel situation in distension is becoming an absolute joke; currently one team has 5 to 6 weasels and the other has 1 maybe 2. With 2 or 3 often being used on the team everysingle match, causing a blatant handicap in their favour. If you were to look at the statistics from just the past 3 or 4 hosts you would clearly see this, as 1 team has won at least 25 battles whilst the other has won close to 3. That is not even including the obscene amount of points that have been earned through hockey. Just cap the x to 1 per team at a time, I believe this is done for the 'nightwasp' in other zones. Trench Wars is one of the best and most popular zones due to the ships being so well balanced and ready to fight straight away. If you are going to have an event were players need to rank ships then there still needs to be some balance. For the large part this balance has been addressed to ensure fair gameplay though at the moment the event is becoming pointless as it is completely one-sided. Having fixed teams is largely part of the problem too, since the auto balance is not working and there is not even the peace of mind that by the next host the teams will have changed and may well be a little fairer. If things carry on the way they are you will drive players away from the game.

[roxxkatt]

ive been saying javs need a buff for a very long time
qan keeps saying that theyre op at lvl80 and that he never resets so its definitely worth the wait

[maddack]

I played my wzl from level 2 to 14 today, speed and thrust is low i suppose that's ok. It was way to easy to do this! I was in newbie mode, trying to spam out bullets in hopes of kills.

Problem is wzls dont need speed and thrust to sit in the ear and spam level 2 multifire all the time.

The multifire needs to be nerfed drastically.

Also it is not ok that a level 10 weasel can still shoot 4 single yellow bullets in a row.

In my opinion up the cost of multifire bullets so that it drains alot more
and lessen the starting energy. I said 600 before, i still think that if the yellow bullet only is going to be 450 ish energy.

Also you should remove the profit sharing from weasel. No point having that on the ship that gets the most kills (after level 45+ spiders).


Javelins have been overnerfed, it seems like the bomb is weakened? It should get back to previous state imo.

There is a small problem with spiders with level 2's getting super too much. This issue is minor compared to above though.

[ogron]

Direct link to the image in case its too big:

http://i.imgur.com/LjPXJax.png

[ogron]

I don't care about their speed or thrust or energy levels, this is what is really ruining Distension at the moment: X Spam





Remove their multifire, you end up with 2-3 X's on each side who have all figured out they can spam the entire FR full of multifire L2s and theyre so small they're practically unhittable, and they just escape through the hole if you try to go after them, or they can warp, or cloak. There's nothing anyone can do about it and the entire FR is just filled with their spam, you can't avoid it or stop it, especially when fighting 9 or 10 enemies, moving towards it to attack enemy or short on energy.

It's just a constant unending stream of shit not even aimed at anyone, and it's become unbearable. Thanks.

[qan]

Also:

- Army strengths now weighted more toward # of people on the team than ranks, though ranks still matter and terrs/sharks are still worth slightly more (but not nearly as much as before).
- !specialize now costs 1% of total RP in the ship rather than 3%

[qan]

THE WEASEL UPDATE

Talked w/ Lefty and fiS a good bit about Weasels today. It brought to mind the fact that when designing this game, the unlock for X was a good bit more stringent... the idea being that the ship would be overpowered but self-limiting. This no longer being the case, I need to roll back those changes for the game to continue to exist. For the record I am not in favor of simply limiting the ship and calling it good there... would much rather it be able to be used by any who unlock it, but just to smaller effect. If we wanted we could make the weasel twice as powerful and only allow 1 on each team if the team size is 15 or more... but that wouldn't make all that much sense and would increase feelings of unfairness and ill-will, despite the ship being "balanced" in some sense of the word.



With these ideas in mind I am nerfing the weasel fairly substantially. I've done some very small tweaks in the past week or two but I'd like to take a bolder step and see what happens. Nice part about settings is that they're just numbers and can be moved at will, so like anything, no, these aren't set in stone. But obviously something needs to be done, I think we can all agree. Weasels, my apologies, but it's the nature of the beast. And your settings WERE overpowered (as in, designed to be that way). Sorry to everyone else that I didn't remember this until it became a problem, hahah. But before, the stricter unlock requirements kept it at bay I think. OK, down to business.


PRIOR X CHANGES:
- Substantial reduction in speed upgrade amount
- Reduction in recharge upgrade amount


ADDITIONAL CHANGES AS OF TODAY:
- Starting thrust from 11 to 8, or same as Jav and Shark starting thrust. All thrust upgrades are 1 per level. So this is the weasel losing 3 levels of thrust across all ranks, resulting in a substantial reduction in its ability to dodge. HOWEVER, remember that because the weasel is a small ship, it can dodge more easily regardless of thrust amount, so this isn't all that large in and of itself.
- Starting speed from 1050 to 750. (Upgrade gives 120.) Also around 3 upgrades of speed lost across all ranks. Movement is VERY important the smaller a ship is (has a greater effect) because the distance traveled compared to the size of ship is much larger.
- Afterburner energy from 4500 to 7000. This means no more infiniburner (though may still be possible with high levels of recharge; will have to see), and a lot fewer rushing weasels.
- Starting recharge from 2300 to 2000 (this is still a high starting recharge). 6 levels lost across all ranks.
- Starting energy from 1200 to 1000. May reduce this a bit more. WB also starts at 1000, for reference. Oh, and no, this WILL NOT affect your ability to fire the L3 bullet upgrade. Around 4 levels of energy lost across all ranks.
- Multifire delay from 125 to 200.
- Rocket time from 120 to 100.



Thanks to everyone who's given me feedback on this, and to the entire playerbase for having to put up with it for a bit too long. I won't be able to be in tomorrow due to work but I'll see if I can get in at the next round. Expect continued tweaks, either raising its power back up a bit in certain areas, or reducing it yet further.

Tried the starting weasel just now -- still able to do the job. But with reduced thrust it's gonna need to afterburner more to dodge, and afterburners will drain energy hard, so it'll be more about getting into a good position and striking than dodging everything and then firing a massive stream of L3 multi while infinithrusting/rocketing at the terr.

[maddack]

WB = WZL DUH

these forums so bad, need 2 find advanced button just to post.

[maddack]

Yellow bullet is 450 energy, level 0 wb can spam 4 in a row.

take initial energy down from 1200 to 600 for level 0 wb. Try this.

[Rab]

ban distension