Build 62

[kable]

Sorry, I meant Nova. Nova nova nova.

[quicklite]

Just tried using the minatour against a zeta.

...It did not go well. Either I'm doing it wrong, or the minatour really is ineffective against zetas. I found that the 2 offensive triggers, though great for collateral, are less great at damaging really bulky things (like zetas), its frontal gun was hard to use due to the fact that for zetas you have to keep moving, and its weak non frontal shielding was ripped to pieces in seconds by the zeta's guns. For the record, I don't think the minatour needs a buff, I was just stating that it sucks against zetas

[gingerbear]

Yeah, had the same experience. I think the main gun's damage was good for the zeta, but you couldn't stay in one place long enough to do more than one or two shots. With the increased range of bomb triggers, you quickly recieved some "present" from the turrets, which makes utilizing the tank's stationary nature quite impossible. However, it's a good method to pull bombs right in front of the turrets which will let the others roam freely behind. For that case, though, corsair's burst damage or herc's mine laying seems to be more efficient.

[hypevosa]

So that blank tank is in origin again, and it's preventing me from getting lone wolf bonus, which is really, really annoying since I somehow was the only one on.

[fsm]

The enemy shooting through cracks in your shield bug has been killing me a lot lately. Maybe very slightly overlapping shields would fix this?

Also, making a page that shows what level of augment each of your tanks is at for a given augment would be very helpful. If I want to decide if I want to buy/meld an augment, I dont want to have to go through all of my tanks to see if it will be useful

[tarbomb]

The new zeta has yet to be completed at all, despite even greater numbers of players than before. Now that the hornet strategy has been made a lot less viable, the only known working strategy is a kamikaze corsair zerg rush, which is undesirable for obvious reasons.

[hypevosa]

In all fairness Tarbomb, if there wasn't such horrific lag with everyone around we could make coordinated offenses, but it's just not feasible right now, so the zeta remains impervious to non-abusive tactics.

Too many players + too many bombs + too many particle effects = clusterfuck and hope for the best.

[pabu]

For the trailblazer-gun:
I found it helpful in situations where trying to regenerate shield near small towers. (The orange aeroplane tower the most). For getting through harder structures it doesn't match blink but it is obvious that it helps prolonging scouting much more.

EDIT: tested trailblazer some more and figured out what i dislike and like about the new trigger.
The cooldown on the trigger feels too long. I'd suggest changing it to be more in line with the invisibility which in my opinion is more useful one.

Conclusion:
In my opinion the only reasonable use for the gun is making a small tower with minions safer by eliminating most of the minions. Problem with this is that either tower is already safe enough or the gun doesn't kill minions fast enough to make it safe before dying.
One can solve this by using the invisibility at the same time but I like having the invis trigger up just in case i run into anything dangerous. This leaves me spinning around the now safe tower until invis trigger is almost back up. This leads to the thing i dislike about the gun.
In order for gun to be useful you need to commit into clearing the minions of tower, spend time doing it and spend time waiting shieldregen and cooldowns afterwards. This type of downtime is boring and takes away from otherwise speedy gameplay of Trailblazer.
I'd suggest instead of having a gun, make it be either damage- or stunblast that would disable minions faster. Might actually be worth the cooldown. These would be instantly useful and not require comboing with invisibility trigger nor cause as much downtime.
If it really must be gun i'd suggest making the turret turn faster so it wouldn't waste as much time aiming if player is dodging at the same time
TL;DR: Gun turns too slowly to hit enemies while moving. DPS is good enough but in most cases can't be utilized if not invisible.

Zeta changes:
I'm not hornet player so i can't say much about those but ramboing inside the zeta felt much easier and safer than before. I went as Corsair first and survived fine and tried Fury for fun.
The zeta was in shield region which might warp my opinion about how safe going in is.
Bombs spreading out is good because you might actually evade some of them instead of getting hit by all. Or they might hit different part of shields.

I still think loot with zetas is little problematic because its so easy to be out of range. Not only with hornet but even when going deep. I can go in and make a circle around the main and find out some tower on the edge was destroyed while i was doing that.

Or even worse i could be going deep in order to dps that said tower. And in order to get loot I'll need to either keep dodging bombs inside the zeta or come out and risk losing the loot.
Mix in 7 more players who are trying to stay in range of dying tower and you will get someone stepping on bombs aimed at others.

I'd just like to be able to go in deep and spin around without worrying about loot and hurting other players trying to do the same. But because of loot range it is stupid to go too deep into zeta, forcing me to put myself and others in unneeded danger by circling the same towers as them

[pabu]

Oh yeah and the supertanks:
I'm not sure if I like the fact that the tanks are now structures and so unable to be reduced in numbers. Instakilling the small minions with predators is now lot easier because they are stacked in the middle at first. The middle cross giving regeneration feels just frustrating because it is impossible to kill it first even if trying. I think just reducing the cross hp by half would be enough. Compared to old supertank you would still need 2.5x the damage to kill it but it wouldn't be as hopeless to kill it before the tanks

[quicklite]

Aug 11, 2013 2:59:39 GMT -5 hypevosa said:

In all fairness Tarbomb, if there wasn't such horrific lag with everyone around we could make coordinated offenses, but it's just not feasible right now, so the zeta remains impervious to non-abusive tactics.

Too many players + too many bombs + too many particle effects = clusterfuck and hope for the best.

I actually don't get much lag (nor people complaining about lag) at zetas. Imo, the problem with zetas now is although they were made easier up close, the hornet strategy, due to the increased gun range and bomb triggering, has been seriously decreased in effectiveness. But since nobody wants to try and 'go deep' and risk getting thoroughly fucked, everybody still tries the hornet thing anyway.

And no, I'm not saying everybody should try to go deep all at once. That usually results in a bloodbath. What I'm saying is if at least 4 people bring a tank capable of doing some damage as well as surviving flak from zeta turrets (fury is great for this), and if they weave around zeta turrets in the right way (which is relatively simple), then sending 2 guys in at a time, as long as they try to avoid each other, would do a significantly larger amount of damage to the zeta than if everybody hornets. By all means, a few people on hornets are pretty valuable, but that's simply because it is nice to have someone who you know is pretty safe to tp to.

[hypevosa]

But that's the only strategies that would be effective without meaning instant death for most people - the very nature of the Zeta's construction and attacks means that you stop, you make a wrong turn, you follow the wrong person too close, and you die. The only effective means of defeating a zeta would be for players to actually stack one on top of the other and ride all the way around or through zetas. This is not possible because as soon as it's tried and there are more than 5 people on screen at least one person if not a few will get a bubble of lag and, oh look, they sploded.

Unless we're going to entirely reconstruct the zeta, this is the only non-abusive tactic that has relative safety, and it's impossible solely due to lag problems.

[ohyou]

I haven't done enough zetas to give specific feedback but I will say that at this point I do not like them. The hornet strategy is boring, getting loot kills others most times, and it just feels cheap and needs to be thought out a bit more in my opinion.

I haven't unlocked the minotaur yet, so I cannot comment on performance other than the fact that I get a lot of lag around them compared to other tanks. The trailblazer I do not use, and so far do not see much point to it. Maybe after some mechanics are changed I would see the need to scout, but as things are I hate clearing and even finding a delta isn't much to get excited about at this point.

Nova fortresses have become more annoying than anything else now, just watching the hp slowly going down wondering when you can move onto the next target. A bit less hp would suffice to fix this I think.

I think what this game desperately needs at this point is markings on the ground for convoy routes. There is too much random clearing and no real way to keep a group together and clearing in the correct direction. Clearing offers no real incentive except to make room for convoys to be taken out, and I think route markings need to be a priority so this happens more often.

Often I find myself wishing for a delete button in the long term storage so I don't have to liquidate at .0000001, but I think this is just a problem of being in alpha. I think more people need to utilize the buy offer screen so I don't have to help some person that takes the lowest(stupid) bid to gain from doing nothing.

[levesque]

didnt check if its on roadmap and im pretty sure you guys know already. but abilitys can still get stuck on, atm my venger stuck on stun. just a reminder

[kable]

Aug 11, 2013 17:37:04 GMT -5 ohyou said:

I think what this game desperately needs at this point is markings on the ground for convoy routes. There is too much random clearing and no real way to keep a group together and clearing in the correct direction. Clearing offers no real incentive except to make room for convoys to be taken out, and I think route markings need to be a priority so this happens more often.

Often I find myself wishing for a delete button in the long term storage so I don't have to liquidate at .0000001, but I think this is just a problem of being in alpha. I think more people need to utilize the buy offer screen so I don't have to help some person that takes the lowest(stupid) bid to gain from doing nothing.

I'm the kind of guy who clears everything anyway but I have to agree, marking routes would make things easier for everyone.

There is a delete button in the long term inventory, but only if that item isn't in the market.

[rob]

We are going to add map icons for routes probably in 64. Drawing routes as a line of colored tiles may happen later.