*** CLOSED BETA UPDATES & DISCUSSION/BUG REPORTS VI ***

I and several allies have been seeing this one rather frequently since the latest update.

A ship or a pile of debris may appear out of place, desynched to one or more clients but not necessarily all, and then another who does not see debris in the wrong location can move on to debris apparent to a bugged client, causing them to be untargetable. Both the false debris and the real debris (stealth) will actually prevent a player from moving to a tile.

 

That's actually a really interesting idea you have there that I'm going to build on.

A dynamic timer based on actions taken by the player! The dev's probably aren't going to want to hear this, but here's a little something of how I see it going:

This would allow a turn timer (combat, not allocation) to be significantly shorter, and people gain additional time for their turn, up to a certain amount, based on actions performed.

Why? Three reasons:
-Keep people tuned in to higher-paced combat
-If someone is AFK, their turn will be skipped rather quickly (oooooh, ahhhh)
-Dynamic time adjustment would allow for ships with more actions to complete a greater ability to complete their turns as desired


Allocation phase will start at 60 seconds as always. If a player fails to 'end' their allocation phase and lock in results, their next allocation will be reduced to 30 seconds, after which, then their turn is auto-ended. Everyone else who did end in a timely fashion, at least with a few seconds on the clock demonstrating that they are active in the battle, not AFK, will get their full 60 seconds in the next allocation phase. Seems a bit tough at first, but if you make the rules and people suffer consequences, they will become more responsible for their actions... or inactions.

Combat phase will start with 20 seconds, gaining an additional 20 seconds for the very first action taken (any movement/rotation or shot fired) and then an additional 5 seconds per action taken after that, up to a total of 90 seconds (or based on class, map size, or other factors).

That's the general idea for the system. All parameters can be tweaked as desired (initial phase time allotment, first gain if any, subsequent gain rate, different gains per different actions -attack or move or other-, max limit per phase, max limit per ship class) and even have varying profiles based on map size with larger maps having slightly increased values overall and the smallest maps having the lowest values.


NOTE ::: TURN TIMERS HAVE BEEN SKIPPING OUT ON 20-30 SECOND CHUNKS QUITE OFTEN RECENTLY!!! I missed out on killing Kenoe's suped up frigate because of this.

 

Bug report: General error 100 invalid target.

So, I received this error twice today in which when trying to fire a weapon at a target this error came up. Once that error came up, all attempts to fire any other weapons activated, but showed no animation or damage. After some testing I believe that this error was caused by having my weapons damaged previously, and the system not properly seeing them as repaired, details of this below.

This error occured in my Genari Agile Flyer IV.
Round 1: Charged main weapon(2 power) and both secondary weapons(1 power each). Attacked npc ship with main weapon(3 dmg at point blank), retreated one space, attacked npc ship with second weapon(1 dmg) destroying enemy ship. Resulting explosion damaged my third weapon(non fired). Moved to edge(if that matters).

Round 2: During repair phase, repaired damaged weapon and hull damage, in that order. During allocation phase, noticed that the recently repaired weapon was set as charged(as if it was set the same as the previous round) instead of being uncharged as is typical for after repairing a weapon. Moved and attacked an enemy player, main weapon hit, second(previously damaged) gave the error message and did nothing, third weapon just did nothing.

Round 3: Normal charge of weapons, move to hit enemy, main weapon works, third weapon works, second weapon(damaged) gives the error message.

Subsequent rounds: During allocation phase, the second weapon would charge even after I manually choose to not charge it during allocation(thinking this might fix the issue). Same results, any weapon/marine fired after the second weapon and error message just does nothing. I did end up warping, docking and logging out, which fixed the problem, just don't know which of the 3 was necessary to fix it.

Sorry if that was long worded, just wanted to give as much detail as I could about the bug, and what I believe caused it. I have seen this problem happen to other players, but do not know if the circumstances of a damage weapon are the same.

 

It's because of the damaged weapon bug. A damaged weapon SHOULD be unpowered once repaired, but sometimes they aren't and are at the same time of sorts, causing a bug.

Attempting to fire the repair bugged weapon will cause all subsequent weapon attempts to fail.
If you avoid the bugged one, you can use your remaining weapons normally.
You can never re-allocate the power from the bugged weapon.
You can get this issue to correct itself by leaving the map and returning, which isn't a fun thing to have to do, however rather necessary.

Been seeing this one since closed beta, but unable to reliably reproduce it. Maybe it has to be a weapon that gets damaged while still charged and unfired?

 

I only run into it rarely because Mendi weapons can only be damaged by explosions, and I typically setup kills for others then clear the area, so I dont take that type of damage.

The invalid target bug can be caused if your target is not where you think it is (happens VERY rarely) or debris is misplaced (happened quite a few times since last patch) or if you manage to queue up movements and attempt to fire while moving towards a target which then becomes outside of your weapon arc as a result of all the movement commands being resolved and THEN the attack command, all in the order they were issued.

I used to run into that one a lot with my buggy mouse sending multiple clicks, causing double pathing on click-to-move commands.

My gf got me a new mouse <3

 

S-1308, Graphics glitch on the rotating cored out asteroid. It looks like the two halves are spinning on individual axis instead of around a single axis, so it just looks weird.

 

overall I'm really happy with these changes. Nice work @vesuvius and the rest of the development team

 

There are some Sol ships with what looks like a bug. 64 shield on the Leningrad2, 80 shield on Swordfish4?

 

Balance is never in absolute value but always in comparison to other things and with nerfs the AF4 now have same speed and lower damages than the Orchis 1, Orchis 3 being far above in power, same damages and some shields to compensate the hp difference.
If AF4 keep the -1 power and - 1 damage, Orchis 3 should also have slight nerfs (power or damages, perhaps HP) to not be overdominant like AF4 was

 

The game is adictive and i think we all agree that Sol needed help. I admit that the overall change in my opinion goes mostly in the wrong direction. Problem is in my view that higher tier ships can camp without real danger. Limitation of player numbers helped them. Tier 5 was nearly indeztructable. Interdictor 3 buzzing around quickly enabled them to hunt down the opposition. This patch makes higher tier ships even more immune. More hitpoints and stronger shields make these ships immune to any serious damage from tier 3. More energy for higher tier ships make them even faster. Hit and run striking the lumbering whales and fly away doesnt work. Careful energy masnagement is less important. I would have preferred that some to string ships to be nerfed. I think for balance you need a vatch up mechanism. More ships a side is able to field nearby its stations . More exp. To counter the sdnowball effect. With this patch lvl 3 are prey. God beeare if sol on the next server has tier 5 first. They will kill the opposition like now the interdictor did and i think even worse. The fun for me was that enough lower tier ships eorking together can bring ddown a careless high tier. This patch again makes it that high tier ships can camp sectors. Even if you see it you cant move in to join the battle quickly. Of course perhaps i am proven wrong. If you want to test balance you should find a way that we can play both sides
You will see that players graviate to the strongest ships and sides. Again i applaud the overall design. I feel you took a sledgehammer to the wrong part

 

I'm currently playing Sol, so please understand I'm trying not to have a bias but I'm sure it will slip in here somewhere.

The hardest thing with balance in a tier based system is how do you balance between everything?

A good start, take a tier (say T3) and balance between all ships of that tier, making sure the rock-paper-scissors mechanics works between them. Do this for each tier.

Now the hard part, do you limit battles to a single tier? Easy to program that, but boring for players over time. Do you leave it a free-for-all? Now you have to have a mechanic in place to make sure a T3 can survive a T5 somehow, or you increase rage quiting when the server population ages into higher tiers.

Some games have tried to make it so a T4 can only damage a T3, say half, in one turn, and a T5 75% or so in 1 turn - but now that makes your inter-tier balancing broken.

Do you add in a mechanism so that when a T5 shoots at the T3, it only does partial damage so it won't 1 shot it? Then you get support issues about "my ship is broken shooting a T3" and issues related to "my ship lists it does X damage, why is it doing less?" This also makes programming damage tables, and increases the complexity of the game.

Everyone wants to be able to one-shot their target, except that the target wants at least a chance to shoot back before they blow up spectacularly. Is it fair for me to fly in my shiny new T3 ship, only to land 5 hexes away from your T5 and get to be glowing space debris because your T5 somehow has more initiative than I? Some will say the T5 costs significantly more so they should be able to because they "risk more".

Honestly, a one-shot is a fact of life, and I can accept it "every so often", but prior to the balance patch on 12/17, it was happening EVERY match. That's a long-term issue for the game, as it drives players to just quit and walk away.

The other item people tend to forget is the playstyle of a tier might change, such as T3's tend to be fast and zippy, all hit and run. Your current T4's tend to be slower and hit a tiny bit harder, but still some hit and run is available. Tier 5's generally are slow and can't move much because they try to power everything, except some ships that keep the hit and run.

A hidden example of all this "perceived balance" is movement. Genari players look at Sol stats and say "it's overpowered compared to mine". On face value it might appear that way since you are comparing those stats with Genari knowledge. The hidden "balance factor" that isn't thought about is many Genari weapons have a single facing, while Sol players generally need to rotate to multiple facings to use all their guns. So if a Sol Ship has 30 movement on the stats line, and 1 gun on each arc (front/port/starboard/rear), you really only have 25 movement available if you want to be able to shoot all your guns.

Those little details add up on both factions, and neither understands the other because you don't play the other side in the simulator.

From a playerbase perspective, every tier is "different" and people will be discouraged because they want to play a certain way and can't due to how the ships perform. This becomes a game issue until additional ships start to be released to enable players to use a certain playstyle over the entire range of tiers - which circles back to inter-tier balance issues because when the new ship comes out, none of the others were balanced with that playstyle in mind...

 

1 shot kills never bothered me with class3's, as long as the devs don't change their price to the original (somewhere around 100-220?). And the zerg suicides are fine because it keeps things interesting. If ships never blew up, it wouldn't be as fun. I'm ok with the hull increase on ships, because now your hard work can't as easily be killed off, unless you play stupid. Problem is right now that genari players have the advantage of running off most players, getting those free defense points each time and their Class 5 ships are becoming super strong with the officer upgrades making genari look more overpowered, when they're not.

 

[BUG]
I was in a Leningrad 2 in zone, max shields of 16. A 2nd Leningrad 2 came in, but had the skill shield overcharge at level 1.
The visual of my shield settings changed to allow setting of 20 power shields instead of 16.
Verified in another map.

Another player came in with a leningrad 2, but had shield overcharge at level 2... and now the shield settings would allow a visual setting of 24.

3 shots showing what happened, these were from a base Leningrad 2 ship, with no shield overcharge skill.
https://imgur.com/a/7KAWY

This was a visual error only, in the allocation phase if the shields were set over 16, it would pop a General Error and reset the shields back to pre-allocation levels of the prior turn.

 

You have misunderstood him completely. He does not have the skill at all. A 2nd and 3rd player each has level 1 and 2 of the shield overcharge skill respectively. When they enter the same zone as the player reporting this issue you get the behavior described above for the shield display of the player who does not even have the skill. In other words the skills of one player were affecting the display of another who had the same ship class in the same sector.