Changes in Pub

[AceHac]{er]

No, the levis are not defenseless. In fact, they are able to defend themselves better than what we had before. They're a lot faster and mobile and have stronger bullets. If your point is that the weasel is invisible and the poor slow levi can't see it - the same goes for the other 3 ships (Wb, Spider and Wzl themselves) which don't have XRadar.

specifically against a stealth cloaked weasels - when weasels had stealth cloak then levs always had energy draining xradar they could flash on off to at least stand a chance. It needs put back that way.

You say that the weasel isn't able to get into the FR when it's mined and you think that's negative? Because any other ship has the same problem, except for the shark and levi. It was just way too easy for a weasel to get into FR with all the tiny holes nobody was able to pay attention to and get a flag claim. Now that the weasel is balanced, you're starting to complain... because you can only play an overpowered ship and take the "overpowered" things the weasel had -- (just to mention a few: being really tiny, fitting through any hole, really hard to hit, invisible on screen, blue 1 hit kill bullets with multifire, really super fast recharge making it able to shoot at an hilarious ratio, being able to thrust-bullet getting super speed) -- for granted?

Don't give me that BS weasel isn't overpowered. Bullets barely travel one inch ahead of the ship, and they recharge slower than wbs & spiders. You want to keep little weasels out, that's what the lanc is for, it's just nobody wants to play the lanc, they would rather bitch and moan when X gets in.

It's always these two ships out of the eight that get adjusted, because it's hard to balance them. While every other ship is imo greatly balanced and shouldn't get touched, except for maybe adding an item, or making an item availiable to buy (and these changes will happen very carefully, if at all), both the weasel and the levi cause the problems. The levi being mostly lame when it comes to LevTerring, and the weasel (read above) being overpowered in any aspect.

Like you said in your opinion (IMO), in my opinion the constant screwing with the settings is more annoying than Xs or LTs. Of course I'm a fan of Xs and LTs; I find them the most enjoyable. If you're say a fan of terrs or javs then maybe they should start f-ing with those settings and see if you are still happy.

Here's a suggestion, if you don't like LTs because they bomb from outside, change the map so you can go up the outside. It's fine for Javs apparently but that evil lev is so powerful, ahh!

Like I asked before, is it possible to get an email when the settings are restored because I think you've ruined subspace continuum with this current crap?

[Shaddowknight]

give weasels some unique !buy options to help balance it out, maybe buying bounce or a bomb upgrade or something else that would make it cool to play

[Tone]

L3 + Stealth + Cloak + Trolls is closer to the catagory of the same effect as a hacker exploit or a major application bug or the server continually crashing ; than it is to a game-setting. Cloakers existing is like the same as the server randomly crashing, the results are the same, what you are doing is ruined by something you cant see or predict so why bother playing at all?

[Tone]

Weasels make no sense at all -- See my 2005 thread "Cloakers running TW"

If having L3 bullet, they must not have stealth .. if they have both stealth and cloak, they should be nite-wasps with L1 bombs and bullets + EMP

You cant have L3 bullets + stealth + cloak -- that only invites game-trolling and also it disallows any game play such as win loss record, bounty & win streak, killothan

it disallows all play where you are just goin to quit and not play because its not worth it and its the same as if your ship was programmed to randomly explode for no reason, and is a lottery-like odds and chance thing (L3 + Stealth + Cloak).

[fiS]

Changes are good, but could you remove weasels rocket? whats its purpose anyway, its consuming enough to keep hitting radar on/off all the time and still get hit by that rocket.

Hmm... Well, we can't remove everything from it. It has gotta have something that makes it worth to be played.

Anoher thought i had, give weasel weaker bullets but more abilities, like brick and mobility? Less annoying ship but still useful to cloak careless players.

That is a very interesting thought. I actually love the idea of having a weasel with higher speed/rotation, and having L2 bullets. But I think to make up the loss from the 1 hit bullets, we would have to give it a lot of items. I do believe that sort of destroys the "idea" of the sneaky cloaker.

[kthx]

For the weasel, I would suggest as a way to placate the masses. Remove its rocket, give it bounce for its bullets and slightly faster bullet speed, it would be a good ship to kill the under FR javs who try to hit angles to take out base terrs or roofers etc.

For the Levi, slightly faster recharge, faster rotation speed, keep the current bomb and give it enough energy to survive a warbird shot (1501 nrg I think?). That way it can survive a direct bird shot while spawning if it isn't boosting or shooting.

[Steep]

Changes are good, but could you remove weasels rocket? whats its purpose anyway, its consuming enough to keep hitting radar on/off all the time and still get hit by that rocket.

Anoher thought i had, give weasel weaker bullets but more abilities, like brick and mobility? Less annoying ship but still useful to cloak careless players.

[fiS]

Thanks for the feedback! Would actually appreciate more though.

If they were smart the would eliminate weasel, replace it with NiteWasp, and then mess around with medium-slow EMP ship as NiteWasp, with Levi being the same as the old levi. and alter the pub settings to rotate being levis and no levis allowed every 90 minutes

But people who have sysops control arent very creative or smart, they cant think of stuff.

Tone, we're not dumb. There is a lot of options on how to encourage pubbing more. What you said IS an option, but it is just too harsh and means that the levi would be restricted for 50% of the time. We are rather looking to change something, making it better, but keeping the ship(s).

You put the weasels back to stealth cloak but didn't give the Levis back energy using Xradar so they are defenseless. And you didn't put it back so weasels can buy more repels so basically the weasel can't get in to FR if it is mined and it's only use becomes an annoying spawn-killing machine. I think the changes are crap.

There are 8 ships yet it is always the weasels and levis settings you screw with. There will always be people POd that levs are too powerful but they have been a part of the game since day 1 so IMO those whiners can go suck it.

Make it so bombs/mines can't TK, how about trying those settings instead of screwing with these two ships all the time.

Bring back the wasp and then they will know overpowered - hahaha!

It quite caught my attention that these two forum posts are the only ones you have ever written, so I realize that it means something to you. However, what you're saying isn't thought through really.

No, the levis are not defenseless. In fact, they are able to defend themselves better than what we had before. They're a lot faster and mobile and have stronger bullets. If your point is that the weasel is invisible and the poor slow levi can't see it - the same goes for the other 3 ships (Wb, Spider and Wzl themselves) which don't have XRadar.
You say that the weasel isn't able to get into the FR when it's mined and you think that's negative? Because any other ship has the same problem, except for the shark and levi. It was just way too easy for a weasel to get into FR with all the tiny holes nobody was able to pay attention to and get a flag claim. Now that the weasel is balanced, you're starting to complain... because you can only play an overpowered ship and take the "overpowered" things the weasel had -- (just to mention a few: being really tiny, fitting through any hole, really hard to hit, invisible on screen, blue 1 hit kill bullets with multifire, really super fast recharge making it able to shoot at an hilarious ratio, being able to thrust-bullet getting super speed) -- for granted?

It's always these two ships out of the eight that get adjusted, because it's hard to balance them. While every other ship is imo greatly balanced and shouldn't get touched, except for maybe adding an item, or making an item availiable to buy (and these changes will happen very carefully, if at all), both the weasel and the levi cause the problems. The levi being mostly lame when it comes to LevTerring, and the weasel (read above) being overpowered in any aspect.

But yes, it's likely that if the weasel stays the way it currently is, we will be giving it back the !buy ability. Same with leviathans, only restricting LevTerrs from that.

[Tone]

You put the weasels back to stealth cloak but didn't give the Levis back energy using Xradar so they are defenseless. And you didn't put it back so weasels can buy more repels so basically the weasel can't get in to FR if it is mined and it's only use becomes an annoying spawn-killing machine. I think the changes are crap.

There are 8 ships yet it is always the weasels and levis settings you screw with. There will always be people POd that levs are too powerful but they have been a part of the game since day 1 so IMO those whiners can go suck it.

Make it so bombs/mines can't TK, how about trying those settings instead of screwing with these two ships all the time.

Bring back the wasp and then they will know overpowered - hahaha!

If they were smart the would eliminate weasel, replace it with NiteWasp, and then mess around with medium-slow EMP ship as NiteWasp, with Levi being the same as the old levi. and alter the pub settings to rotate being levis and no levis allowed every 90 minutes

But people who have sysops control arent very creative or smart, they cant think of stuff.

[AceHac]{er]

You put the weasels back to stealth cloak but didn't give the Levis back energy using Xradar so they are defenseless. And you didn't put it back so weasels can buy more repels so basically the weasel can't get in to FR if it is mined and it's only use becomes an annoying spawn-killing machine. I think the changes are crap.

There are 8 ships yet it is always the weasels and levis settings you screw with. There will always be people POd that levs are too powerful but they have been a part of the game since day 1 so IMO those whiners can go suck it.

Make it so bombs/mines can't TK, how about trying those settings instead of screwing with these two ships all the time.

Bring back the wasp and then they will know overpowered - hahaha!

[Pressure Drop]

reading fis/demonics (or whoever did it changes) it sounds really encouraging and like pub is getting back on the right track with some staffers who know what the game should be about.

Not that it matters but i dunno who fis is as they started playing after I left I think and demonic came to sage while I was there I dont remember talking to them much :P but I think was a hockey zone player ? Well from some other zone anyway, not an issue in either case but if you havent read it before read through some of the older threads here like this one

http://forums.trenchwars.org/showthread.php?35535-Publics&p=673217&viewfull=1#post673217

there was a great thread about levs from a good few years before that where loads of ideas were posted and I think mootland farmer or someone actually did do some testing on it with L2 shrap emp bombs but I couldn't find it >< so that will do :P

hopefully some may still be relavant or maybe too much has changed but i'm sure there is still a few that play that could give their experience of what has already been tried out etc or some of the silly fun weekend themes like nightwasps etc

this is a game that shouldnt change much and the weasel seems to be a ship that flip flops and has never found the right balance. In a way I kinda love that every few years it grows / shrinks etc but it should always be a novelty ship not mainstay

[Rab]

Current settings are MUCH better than previous settings because:
- you can't sit infront of a levi and ruin his day anymore
- weasel actually dies when you shoot a terr he's attached to

IMO this settings change is more of a bug fix than anything else.

[Tone]

the recent changes giving Levi more equipment and double blue bullets is an acceptable compromise to it being full-time change. I withdrawal my previous post.

[Shaz]

These are excellent changes. Personally, I'd take it a little further still (especially for the weasel).
WBs, Javs, Spiders, Terrs and Sharks all have their own special mechanics that work well in the context of a competitive game - even Lancs do somewhat.
But Weasels and Levs lift right out. They don't contribute anything worthwhile to the pub scene. Turning the lev into an independent bombing ship would be cool. You'd have javs with bouncy bombs, sharks with mines and a third bomber with straight bombs (no bounce). Give them even more mobility - on par with javs - lower their damage (but maybe keep EMP), take away their reps and rockets and let them keep brick (I love the introduction of this one - bricks have a lot of potential to improve combat dynamics in the pub base, but not while they're on a slow lev).
Basically, turn them into javs without the bounce and with a different secondary ship mechanic (role on the team).

Weasels, while this -is- a good change, are still a complete mess, though. Stealth+cloak just doesn't fit into a competitive environment unless you give every ship the ability to somehow spot them. This would be an option (give all ships x-radar the same way javs and sharks have them now - with a health penalty so they would have to actively cycle it on and off to try to keep track of weasel movement), but frankly I'd rather see weasel reworked completely.
I don't know exactly how you could fit them into the lineup of different mechanics, but turning them into another defensive ship might be an option. You could give them more health, brick/rep, portal and let them keep their strong, slow bullets (but of course remove stealth and cloak). Currently, shark is pretty much the only defensive ship. It would be cool to have some competition on that front. Portal would add an interesting aspect to this type of ship, though it might require a change of bullet strength (or just a time delay between porting and shooting).


tl;dr: Turn levs into a more agile, independent bomber with less damage and weasel into defenders.

Oh and mark my words: The amount of pub games that last over 20 minutes is going to shrink dramatically now that you've enabled one freq to completely dominate the other.

Only the games that lasted over 20 minutes because a weasel was stalling by rocketing the flag and repelling will be affected. Is that really a loss?

[Vehicle]

Oh and mark my words: The amount of pub games that last over 20 minutes is going to shrink dramatically now that you've enabled one freq to completely dominate the other.