OFFICIAL DISTENSION THREAD HERE

[roxxkatt]

another idea may be to put the highest lvlrs at the bottom of the prize queue, as they are a bigger strain on the bot and it makes their deaths a higher stakes thing, and it will also prevent lvl60 terrs and sharks from simply walking into the fr every 3 minutes

you can also increase the arena setting for time spent dead

[Viruk]

To be implemented:

• +10% (or so) RP given for every ship you have over rank 20. Plan accordingly! Start ranking up ships now

I currently have 4 ships over level 20. I plan to rank Tac Ops to over 20 if I can find the time. All my other ships are only 10 levels away from 20 and will no doubt get played now and then when I get bored of high level ships.

Do you really think this added game diversity is worth a 40% bonus to my RP (and possibly 90% in the distant future)? I don't.

As a player with 3 ships I want to level, I already have a good chance to get 10% solo bonuses and avoid 10% swarm penalties.

The only ships the game seems short on is people willing to Terrier and Shark. I suggest only these ships should give a 10% bonus and everything else gives 5% or less.

[qan]

Changes:
- +5% RP bonus in current ship for every ship you have in your hangar that is >= rank 20. It's called the CELEBRATE DIVERSITY bonus. Having trouble ranking your late-level ship? It may now actually behoove you to rank up some others. I may have it give sloping bonuses, where you get a small bit for other ships that are rank 5, 10, 15 and so on, with a large bonus for 30+ in another ship. But that's for another day; just seeing how this works for now.
- Very slight rearm delay increase (will continue to raise by a millisecond until we have no crashes)

>you can also increase the arena setting for time spent dead
Actually a very simple, neat solution, possibly, while angering everyone equally/nobody specifically.

[qan]

Changes:

* Upgrade amounts for Weasel reduced for speed upgrade (large reduction) and recharge upgrade (small reduction). Will continue to adjust as required.
* Increase in death time delay by 1sec, to reduce appearance of rearm time/give the bot a break. You'll be rearmed more often after you spawn, now, but will just spawn a second slower each time. Use this time to gather your thoughts, center yourself, and become one with the internet.
* !defect cheaper: used to cost all rank progress + 1 rank in every ship. Now just resets all ships to start of rank. Also, if other army for some reason has 2 or more players (total, not in-game), !defect is free (previously 4 or more).
* Added a way for operators to add an RP bonus to all players (for post-crash). Ops please use discretion (+0 to 30% RP possible).


>I suggest only these ships should give a 10% bonus and everything else gives 5% or less.
Not a bad idea, may end up doing this.

[roxxkatt]

might consider having ladder rewards
ex:
+5% for each ship lvl20+, +20% for lvl40+, etc

[maddack]

Weasel suggestions.

Some people say just limiting wzls to 1 or 2 per team is enough. One overpowered weasel is enough to ruin games.

Either make Weasel big.


Or reduce starting energy to like 600.
and every energy upgrade only gives 20 ish energy.
yellow bullets to cost 590 ish energy if possible.
blue bullets like yea however much energy a scout has at blue bullet level.

one prob with big weasel is ball stuck in ball game - need to address that.

[roxxkatt]

limiting weasels like sharks seems to be a solid idea, as it is supposed to be a elite ship or something

[Rab]

ban distension

[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.

[maddack]

WB = WZL DUH

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

[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.

[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%

[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.

[ogron]

Direct link to the image in case its too big:
http://i.imgur.com/LjPXJax.png

[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.