Build 65

[rob]

Hello Brave Testers! It's time for build 65! Changes include:

* Buff Mustang side shields
* Buff Silver small gun DPS
* Buff Wolverine shield thickness and delay
* Buff Wolverine main gun a little
* Reduce Viking shield delay
* Allow reload to occur even if clip is not empty
* Give Viking a Hurricane-like shield refill
* Buff Hurricane DPS
* Add healgun to Hurricane
* Replace Hurricane immobilize with explosion
* Buff cooldown on Hurricane target limit trigger
* Change Phantom invincibility to cloak
* Change Phantom immobilize to gun overdrive
* Make Phantom shield refill do only outer shields
* Buff Phantom inner shield delay
* Buff Phantom shield thickness
* Buff Phantom hp
* Don't paint enemy region icon sprites for faraway regions
* Add module items
* Add leaderboards for most total xp and most tank xp
* Show module item slots on tank stats menu
* Add Quantum Carrier convoy

I did a lot of buffing this week to improve some of the poor, sad, underplayed tanks. I think it will be interesting to see whether they get played more now. [Silver and Mustang are still not up to the level of the others, but that's on purpose.]

Tim began work on module items. Module item drops should be about half as common as coin drops, and they'll always be level 1. You can meld and trade them as normal. He also added a display of unlocked item slots on the tank stats menu. Right now we have the slots unlocking at levels 5, 10, 15 and 20, but you should expect that to change and for xp to be wiped in the coming weeks. Eventually, each level N module item will have a random collection of N pluses(such as, +2 bomb cooldown, +1 healing for a level 3 Hercules module), and you'll be able to install them into the slots with the Use button. The random properties will reset when an item is bought or sold on the market.

Please post in this thread with comments, suggestions, gripes. Thanks so much for your help!

Rob & Tim
Jetbolt Games

[quicklite]

I've tested all the buffed tanks, and these are my thoughts:

Mustang's better side shields are nice, and although I feel like the mustang is perfectly adequate and very powerful without the buff, the buff didn't make it particularly OP without them imo (though why do you want to keep the mustang weak on purpose? I mean, the corsair comes before the thing in levels, and the corsair is one of the most powerful tanks in the game imo). Hurricane's buff is beautiful. It's actually pretty great fun to use. The healgun, though not game-changing, is a nice touch, the explosion fits, and the lightning gun feels pretty potent (maybe a bit too potent?). Phantom feels surprisingly tame, imo...although the shields are seriously good now, it still lacks in damage terms even with overdrive, and the cloak isn't as drastically different as I figured it would be from invincibility. Might be too good at surviving, but then again survival is basically the phantom's main job. Wolverine feels...adequate. The shields can now take some fire, and it hits a bit harder, though it still feels like a average-at-anything gray area of a tank. For the record, the problem with this sort of tank is that I can change tanks in seconds (especially with the new rural tank changes), so if I need a certain type of tank, I can easily get it. I don't need a tank that does everything moderately well, because I can easily get a tank which does something that I need done exceptionally well. Imo, the wolverine should be flat-out re-done, but we'll see. Although the viking isn't drastically different, I still liked it as it was, so I don't have much to say on its behalf.

The xp leaderboards work, but they're kinda ugly imo. It would look far nicer and be a lot more readable if they tracked levels instead of flat-out bulk exp, though that's just my opinion.

As for modules/the new voy, I have encountered neither, so I have nothing to say about them (yet).

[Kelsoo]

I would say this is the build that made all tanks equal. And it is.

So here is what I think of the new and improved tanks! (excluding the Silver and Mustang buffs, though I am happy with them)

Phantom: So the Phantom, huh? I love it. It has taken the meaning of tank to heart, this is a good thing. Now instead of just relying on triggers and sitting still then retreating, the Phantom relies on your ability to properly rotate your shields and use triggers to keep it in enemy fire even longer. And it is great, it can even convoy somewhat, and in particular is a favorite tank to use on the new convoy. But at the same time it has not become overpowered either.

While it's tanking ability has gone off the charts, it is still not able to hit very hard at all. In fact the only time it can do anything in terms of damage is really when you use it's damaging trigger. Letting it do great work with crowd control or when it can sit on an enemy, and in fact, do it's best work when surrounded, where it can take care of threats and focus its guns on any large fortress.

Hurricane: The Hurricane has become a complete monstrosity of a support tank. I have taken to calling it the Pally of clearing, it's healgun is sure to keep your allies in battle, while its lasers will keep the battlefield nice and clean for people to focus on the big targets.

The Hurricane is still not really able to solo on it's own, and that is a good thing, it should never be able solo fortresses effectively, only their minions, as it keeps it in the support niche. Making it a great addition to have in any clearing party, making for a tank that will keep you alive, and be of great aid to crowd control.

Viking: The Viking is a tank I expressed little interest in before, and knew that it was exceedingly unused and just not very effective. With this new buff I really have failed to see much change. Really all I can tell is that it is able to stay in the line of fire for a bit longer. I really can't see much difference with this one, and will most likely continue to leave it unused.

Though while I am still not fond of it, it has not stopped the tank from being somewhat more common amongst users. It definitely is not used as much as the others, but some seem to be happier with the tank and fine to use it. As so I would wait for other's feedback.

Wolverine: Now on to my baby, the Wolverine has effectively risen to the status of a main for clearing, in the same boat as the Predator and Valk. It has very quickly ascended to one of my favorites, and frequently do I use this one. The only thing I wanted from it was increased shields slightly, and decreased regeneration time, and it has done much good for it.

With now being able to properly shield rotate, it can stay in the battlefield for much longer allowing it to do some work. The damaging triggers allow it to get out of a surrounding of minions, or go point blank and tear a hole in any major fortress. And that is really all I can say for this tank, there is not much else to it I can now recommend it to anyone who grows bored of the Valk or Pred, and can say that it is a great alternative.


Now with the any whinge of tanks aside, I can focus my thoughts to tank balance, which I think will become further needed very soon. Especially with such a large inundation of players, and people knowing all too well what they are doing with most of the convoys basic designs. I'll start.

Convoys are being continually steamrolled quicker and quicker, even with only about 4 or 5 (which is an average for low, usually about 6-8 people on at a time now, not rare for more) they are rapidly becoming kind of boring to do, and not very challenging. Even the once great Flux goes down in just a single parastun phase, giving players high rewards for near infinitesimal levels of challenge or danger. Even a drill takes a bit longer to take down then one of the Mains.

Now I would be remiss if I didn't mention the new convoy, which in my opinion is fantastic! I love doing the convoy, it is interesting, and great fun to do. Forcing players to attack from the sides or front, and watching out for the dropping wall-like structured enemies when attempting to sit on it, creates for a convoy that is exciting and fun.

All's I can say at the moment with being busy with many other things, is that I hope convoys are buffed somewhat substantially, sometime in the future and hopefully not to far out, as it stands they are becoming kind of far too easy, and that's no fun.

[Hock Space]

There is a bug when I use the pally and it showed people at less health then they were and I kept healing them(sometimes).

[hypevosa]

I overhealed fire at origin and it kept shooting my healing gun at him repeatedly. It was strange.

[tarbomb]

Chat glitch. Admittedly I was altboxing when this happened.

[tarbomb]

Overall impressions:

The tank rebalancing is excellent, and I can say that this is the first build since ~30 where the all the tanks are acceptably balanced. There seems to be a bit of a divide between the older general-purpose tanks with universal guns and the newer, more specialized tanks, which (with the exception of Kraken, which is comparatively outmatched by spectre and cutlass) seem significantly stronger in their niches and a bit weaker outside of them.

The no-painting change has improved zoom lag by quite a lot. It's not perfectly smooth yet, but it's much less prone to freezing now.

I'm not sure how to feel about XP and modules, really. On the one hand, it's a non-tradeable progression method, which is great since professional merchers (whom I will make a point of not naming - you know who you are) won't dominate the game. Unfortunately, the implementation leaves a lot to be desired - trailblazers and (to a lesser extent) convoy tanks such as cutlass and kraken have a tough time accumulating XP without leeching. How about having XP reflect some other combination metric - say, 0.01*gridshards + $some_multiplier * number of discoveries + $some_other_multiplier * convoy kills?

And on the leaderboards: where are convoy/town/region scouting leaderboards? (I'm... er... totally unbiased about this...)

The quantum carrier (which henceforth will be referred to as the "taco" due to its semicircular shape) is immense fun (the most interesting of the convoys at the moment, although the novelty might be biasing me a bit), but the loot is completely unbalanced. It firepower equivalent to that of a flux convoy, but it is immune to the standard stun-and-paralyze trick and works best with an attack from the side, making it a dangerous adversary in narrow lanes. By all accounts it's the most dangerous convoy in the game right now - and the loot is on par with a ladybug. The loot needs to be buffed to at least the loot of a flux, if not more.

Oh, and before I forget, there's a bit of a graphical glitch in the inventory - the minutes label is cut off slightly. Compare the time label of the speed augment (minutes) with the time label of the storage module (hours) in the screenshot below:

[rob]

Aug 30, 2013 1:15:40 GMT -5 tarbomb said:

Unfortunately, the implementation leaves a lot to be desired - trailblazers and (to a lesser extent) convoy tanks such as cutlass and kraken have a tough time accumulating XP without leeching.

We knew this was going to be a problem. Right now XP are just gridshards/100, but we may make XP be its own thing. We could give Trailblazer an always-on anti-minion gun so that it can get xp without being a total leech. We could also put gridshard awards on convoys and region bosses. We are not sure what road we'll take yet.

Aug 30, 2013 1:15:40 GMT -5 tarbomb said:

The quantum carrier (which henceforth will be referred to as the "taco" due to its semicircular shape) is the most dangerous convoy in the game right now - and the loot is on par with a ladybug. The loot needs to be buffed to at least the loot of a flux, if not more.

There is still some adjusting and balancing to be done on this guy. The intent was to have people attack from behind, through the trail of shooter buildings. To make this happen, we could remove the rear gun and buff the front guns, and also nerf the shooters' guns and perhaps reduce the rate at which they spawn...

That said, the side attack thing is also new and cool. The loot may be too low for how tough it is now. Of course once players learn how to farm them safely, maybe it will turn out that the loot is fine. Not sure yet!

[quicklite]

Aug 30, 2013 8:17:25 GMT -5 rob said:

Aug 30, 2013 1:15:40 GMT -5 tarbomb said:

Unfortunately, the implementation leaves a lot to be desired - trailblazers and (to a lesser extent) convoy tanks such as cutlass and kraken have a tough time accumulating XP without leeching.

We knew this was going to be a problem. Right now XP are just gridshards/100, but we may make XP be its own thing. We could give Trailblazer an always-on anti-minion gun so that it can get xp without being a total leech. We could also put gridshard awards on convoys and region bosses. We are not sure what road we'll take yet.

Aug 30, 2013 1:15:40 GMT -5 tarbomb said:

The quantum carrier (which henceforth will be referred to as the "taco" due to its semicircular shape) is the most dangerous convoy in the game right now - and the loot is on par with a ladybug. The loot needs to be buffed to at least the loot of a flux, if not more.

There is still some adjusting and balancing to be done on this guy. The intent was to have people attack from behind, through the trail of shooter buildings. To make this happen, we could remove the rear gun and buff the front guns, and also nerf the shooters' guns and perhaps reduce the rate at which they spawn...

That said, the side attack thing is also new and cool. The loot may be too low for how tough it is now. Of course once players learn how to farm them safely, maybe it will turn out that the loot is fine. Not sure yet!

Well, first-off, don't add a always-on anti minion gun. That is a really bad idea. Given that I've gone 4 regions with the current minion gun as it is (which is imo perfectly balanced, it's just that I have a metric crap-ton of practice), I don't think we should be buffing that thing any further. Having a permanently on trail-gun would make all betas (and partially alphas) permanent safe-havens. Given how common these are, doing so would give trailblazers practical invinicibility in uncleared territory, which doesn't seem right. As for exp, just give the trail-blazer exp for what it does best: discovering stuff. We've already given all discoveries loot rewards, why not exp rewards as well?

As for the quantum, the problem with it isn't the back-facing guns: The problem is that the turrets, albeit small, are numerous, and do a LOT of damage. When I first tried to drive around them, my tank was torn to shreds in seconds. After all, you can't rotate your shields against static enemies while chasing a convoy at the same time, meaning that you have little to no protection against all the angles those turrets will end up shooting you from. If you really want people to chase this, either nerf the turrets or make them only able to fire in certain directions. That way, it wouldn't be absolute suicide. That being said, having to attack a moving target from the side is a very cool aspect, and you could alternatively play to that and keep it as it is instead. Though a loot buff is definitely seriously needed either way.

[hypevosa]

Creating a convoy that requires being flanked would be interesting since there are few tanks with good side shields - I would greatly enjoy a convoy where the fury felt very useful.

I also look forward to the swarming-type convoy we discussed in game

[dd321123]

This new 50 voy per route thing seemed nice, but in reality, it just seems to make the maps extremely large and laggy. Could we perhaps have closer voy routes?

[Kelsoo]

Referring to my post, really my only problem now is convoys and game difficulty, Zeta's are becoming easier to survive in with such long bomb delays, and convoys just in general are dying off like flies, and being cherry picked every time one finally decides to spawn.

My main gripe is with convoys, since even though there are some people that are just not dying there, many others are. But no one dies on convoys unless they are chasing (rarely happens as they usually die off before wilderness or getting too far into it) or it's a newb.

[fire]

Kelsoo new convoy seems to kill alot of people :3 and what are you talking about zetas are easier to survive? I see people die constantly every time they run for the loot :3

[hypevosa]

Zetas are always deadly for the loot gathering party, even with 1.5 second bombs I got caught once or twice with bombs lying overtop other zeta structures I couldn't see, or where I'd overestimate time to loot, or where I underestimated bomb radius. They're deadly enough.

The problem you're likely seeing kelsoo, is players slowly becoming better at the game, and more quickly indoctrinated players are also becoming better by observing.

[Kelsoo]

Aug 30, 2013 20:23:03 GMT -5 hypevosa said:

Zetas are always deadly for the loot gathering party, even with 1.5 second bombs I got caught once or twice with bombs lying overtop other zeta structures I couldn't see, or where I'd overestimate time to loot, or where I underestimated bomb radius. They're deadly enough.

The problem you're likely seeing kelsoo, is players slowly becoming better at the game, and more quickly indoctrinated players are also becoming better by observing.

That is what I was stating. People are getting better at convoys. Though you can't really get any better after a certain point, it's the same basic concept on all of them aside from the Pizza or new one (which I quite like fire) and there are just alot of people on now, and in turn they literally melt them down. Either way it is still a problem. As convoys are no longer threatening, you lose challenge and reward players with some of the best loot in the game for minimal cost.

I've always been one to complain about Zeta's though mainly the loot range (which should be buffed, nothing like doing one after waiting forever only to be rewarded with nothing) and the difficulty. As for loot gathering the only real time you'd die from this is if you swarm in after someone or without judging the situation. I don't find Zeta's very challenging anymore, it's really just circle in with a Herc or Phantom, do damage and circle out the other side. The mines are far to easy to dodge now as well.

I thought they were fine after the first nerf making the mines possible to dodge. I can't be the only one who thinks thinks the Zeta's are not challenging enough, I hope.