Build 71

[rob]

Greetings to all Brave Testers, and welcome to build 71! Changes:

* Increase convoy tank unlock drops by one level
* Fix bug with swirly camera and supply cache icons
* De-specialize Cutlass and Kraken a little
* Add new miniboss: X35 Subcommander
* Spawn supply caches 3 at a time, randomly, as 3x3 boxes

Cutlass and Kraken got their specialized anti-air and anti-minion guns nerfed, and their general-purpose guns buffed. Cutlass should be less useful against convoys now, but I'm hoping both tanks will be more useful in general situations.

The new miniboss spawns when a region is 75, 80, 85, 90, and 95% clear. It's a 5x5 box which you must clear to fight the boss. You get a tank unlock prize for clearing the box, and he drops loot like a convoy boss. The 75% regionboss was eliminated.

Supply caches are about 1/3rd of their previous size, and they spawn in threes. Once a region is half cleared, each fortress kill has a 2% chance of spawning a group of supply caches -- so expect 9 spawns per region. Our hope is that they'll overlap sometimes (even with subcommanders) to provide interesting combos.

In general, we're pleased with the new on-map minigames. We hope to add more over time. However, Tim is hoping to get a new "patrol" or "hunter-killer squad" feature working next.

Please give feedback in this thread. Thanks for playing!

Rob & Tim
Jetbolt Games

[Kelsooo]

I don't know about abolishing the 75% region boss. They are rare and hardly ever cleared all the way as is. Interesting to say the least. Can't wait to try out the new build.

[Ood]

Uhh, I could use some help recovering my password. I had previously been stuck on the black screen/green circle bug, and had logged out to try and fix. Now I can't remember (though I think it's still being screwy) my password... lol

[Ood]

Well, as I can still play on my home (and relatively useless) computer some comments:

Kraken 'buff' doesn't seem to be very good. Trigger 2 is still garbage (Minion to ally trigger please?). Kraken wasn't so bad following the wander range increase, because it could quickly dispatch minions with its 360 gun. Now it takes too long, particularly when dealing with an unbuffed area that has double the minions.

Please don't allow people to 'healbot', like nefarious, by driving in circles. They might think they are doing good, but removing lonewolf bonus from solo play is much more detrimental than the benefit a 'fountain' brings. Giving cities 'effects' would counteract this perhaps? Give hp region cities (origin) low heal over time 'auras', shield region cities low constant shield regen over time 'auras', cd region cities lower trigger cooldowns, range region cities increased voy detection radius, damage region cities small turrets on the edge of town, and speed region cities something useful (since speed regions are not). This satisfies people wanting hp 'fountains' at the Origin, and also gives more strategic importance to cities.

Also, I could still use some help recovering my password -.-

[Crunch]

Supply Caches:
I really enjoy the update. The caches feel much more natural now and add a fun element when they overlap or when players get on a streak of them and suddenly there are 6-12 in the same region. Also, something about the change even makes the drops seem better. I'm not sure if it's because you now get 3 chances instead of 1, or if RNG was rewarding us for some reason, but the caches feel more rewarding as well.

x35:
Really awesome boss fight. It's dynamic, requiring the tanks to move and dodge and it doesn't trans-warp away! Small groups of players can now have a fight with the boss without feeling as though they're wasting the opportunity (like with region bosses). It's a great incentive to clear regions, even while solo, at least up to 99%.

Supply cache icons:
<3
Looks great!

Convoys:
I finally agree with Kelsoo, they're taking a backseat. We'll see what happens over the next week, but I expect the rewarding x35 fight to diminish the general interest in clearing routes.

Bugs:

x35 event causes supply cache not to trigger:
• Lead up: x35 event spawns on 2 overlapping supply caches, which are completely contained in the x35 square. Players destroy central towers first, clearing those inside the SC bounds. One SC triggers, but the second does not. The x35 icon disappears as well. Players continue to blindly kill towers. Eventually, the x35 boss spawns inside the remaining supply cache bounds. However, when the x35 is killed, the SC is not triggered and the icon remains.
• Paltry documentation: i.imgur.com/J7HkBvp.png

Click-to-Move Mode creates a curved path, especially over long distances:
• To reproduce: Zoom out, click a target far way, zoom back in, note the angle of the tank over the course of the trip.
• Notes: Most noticeable in follow camera mode, but can be seen in fixed cam too.

Exploits:
Alting town chains (Elephant in the room):
• How to: Clear a 10x10 box around a recently discovered town. Do not destroy the tower at the town center. When only that tower remains, park alts near the final enemy. Destroy final tower and receive 13 tanks per alt (connect + 1-12).
• Fix?: No idea. Perhaps anti-spectators around the specific tower which is preventing the town from leveling up. So, it would be essentially be a buff for enemy towers which are touching the town tiles. It seems reasonable, right now, but I'm sure there are problems with this too. Thoughts?

[rob]

On alting town chains: do you think that this exploit would be possible on a server full of random players? That is, would a random newb/griefer/ninja see you stacking up the reward and just kill the last fort to get the loot himself?

[Crunch]

Rob, anything is possible. Also, assuming that servers would have caps, it would be possible for guilds to flood servers with alts and exclude these randoms. Once a server were maxed with alts, the same behavior would easily continue. It's your call, but honestly, if someone can do it, it will be done.

2 more bugs:
x35 only shoots 3/4 cardinal directions (North, West, South, East):
• To reproduce: Summon x35, during the fight avoid areas where bombs have been fired, find ~45 degree section where bombs never get shot.
• Scope: Unsure if this is always the same direction or if it's different per spawn. Tuvior brought it up this morning, he swore x35 never shot South, I can't confirm. Just a minute ago, it never shot West. I sat on the main tower the entire fight with a Minotaur on the west side. I realize I wasn't helping to clear (sorry) but I was trying to figure this out.

Supply caches spawn on one another, leaving icon after award:
• To reproduce: Find two SCs centered on the same tower, raze all enemies inside bounds.
• Result: Correct number of items awarded, but the icon remains over the empty terrain.
• Notes: This seems to be connected to the bug reported in my first post.


**EDIT**
Confirmed, x35 cannot shoot bombs West.

**EDIT #2**
The x35 could not shoot North this last time, but fired West just fine. It seems to leave a 'safe spot' every fight, although which direction it is appears to be random. 
And again, East was safe this last time. 

[gingerbear]

Terrible lag -> convoy closing in -> panic clicking on close button to shut the not responding browser, at the same time pulling out the utp.

coming back -> "already logged in error".

I'm pretty sure I'm dead, but whatever. In any case, the map and game lags terribly, I assume it's because of the size of the map. Some back-end upgrades before new content could be handy.

[Kelsoo]

So I will be ranting on about the Minotaur. Once I get around to it. The main thing is, the sure, the tank has pretty little survival, but using it's triggers properly can clear areas and let you regen etcetc. What's OP about it mainly is the DPS.

More literate and better feedback on it later. But it is apparent that it is an overpowered tank.. to some extent. #savetheconvoys

[tarbomb]

Convoy tank unlock buff: Excellent! People will start doing them again, and level 20 won't be as hard to attain.

I don't like the de-specialization of the cutlass. Modules do enough balancing between specialist and generalist tanks - build up one general tank really, really well, or have mediocre builds for multiple specialists? Reducing the variety seems to "flatten" the game even more.

Kraken remains a lousy tank.

Subcommander is a well-designed, fun boss, and more cooperative to team play than omicron or zeta. The lack of the rush factor means that people are more willing to wait for others to come in and get the loot. The only thing that I think could be improved is the bomb dispenser - having random shooting removes some of the teamwork factor. Having it target players in range randomly (NOT the closest player) would lead to more interesting strategies like attacking it from different directions to split fire, or circling it in a well-coordinated group.

I'm still not really sure of the point of supply caches. With tons of incentives to clear a region (subcommander, omicron/zeta at end) and pre-existing landmarks (minerals/towns) already in place, caches still seem tacky.

@crunch: I don't really consider the alting of town level-ups a viable exploit. First, as brought up earlier it's vulnerable to griefing. One greedy asshole is all you need to have your plan spoiled.

Second, and more importantly, there's no real point in altboxing. Sure, you'll get a few more tank unlocks. But what are you going to do with them?

Even now, you can't transfer them to your main account without losing a lot of money from your main, and losing some of your total net worth due to VAT. In a more crowded server, this becomes completely impractical: anyone with enough resources to post a visible offer could just buy it from the market anyway.

Okay, so you use the unlocks on your alt. So you essentially have a second account... except you can't really use it. Well, you could multibox the tanks with some hacked client, but that means you'd have to restrict yourself to no augments, since those would spoil your bot's momentum (besides, bot-multiboxing is easily visible and easily reportable). Manual altboxing? Aside from zetas (for which you only need a corsair), there's no real point to it, and opening more than three tabs even on a fairly new machine is asking for trouble. And the zeta issue could be fixed more elegantly by making enemies unfavorable to altbox. There's a reason nobody uses kamikaze tactics on omicrons. It's simply not worth it risk-wise.

Kelsoo: Minotaur is indeed one of the more powerful tanks. I did a little derping to a wildfire today and was slaughtered in seconds when trying to taken on buildings (the normal, everyday ones, mind you - nothing powerful). The massive firepower and long-lasting invulnerability are huge benefits that more than make up for the lack of defense against flying enemies. Why worry about airplanes when you can barrel past them and quickly clear a ground fortress in front of them under invulnerability?

[Crunch]

tarbomb:
On the topic of the exploit, you're most likely right. However, I'm of the opinion that people are capable of quite a bit, including creatively exploiting game mechanics and coercing others into following along. Even with randoms and trolls, it only takes a slow server and coordinated group to pull this off (we've seen this type of thing in Realm over and over and over). I was simply pointing out the possibility and you're probably right. Of course, now I'm going to have to do this when the game launches to prove you all wrong. XD

Oh, but as far as the point goes, I wasn't assuming that this method would be used to chain 7s and 8s. If I were crafty enough to make this work, I'd be banking on hitting pallys, cuttys, and mino drops, not to use, but to sell. Granted, the rate is low, but I've had all of these drop for me at least once while leveling towns. So, when these umpteen alts finally get the desired drops, they can sell them for coin, and take a 10% hit when the money is funneled into the main account (the main account posts a ridiculous sale price for a Lvl 1 Aug and the alt buys at that price). We're talking hundreds or thousands of coins from a single town chain (potentially), but I'm only saying it's possible. It's hard to judge how probable it will really be.

[Tuvior]

Still on the topic of the exploit, sadly I don't see how preventing this would be possible, even with a buff to turrets standing on town's ground.
People would still be able to clear around with alts in a safe spot and then move to clearing the inner circle, tping the alts at the last moment, when the town is close to do his 1-12 or whatever.

I tried brainstorming a bit but the only thing that comes in my mind is that, in case of concatenated leveling of a town, those level ups count as a single one?

I'm not really sure, I'll keep thinking about it.

[tarbomb]

Oct 11, 2013 0:52:39 GMT -5 Crunch said:

(the main account posts a ridiculous sale price for a Lvl 1 Aug and the alt buys at that price). We're talking hundreds or thousands of coins from a single town chain (potentially), but I'm only saying it's possible. It's hard to judge how probable it will really be.

The market provides a pretty good defense against this.

Right now we have a small market all comprised of dedicated testers who would end up on the higher end of the player spectrum.

That means the market is very skewed to the needs of high-end players. This allows your trick to work because nobody in the current playerbase would bother to trade for level 1 augments.

When we have a nontrivial amount of new players, though, this no longer applies. Level 1-5 augments would become commonly traded, and since the mass of new players would be larger than the number of experienced ones, there will be a lot more of them around. That means the main's absurd selling price for a level 1 augment simply won't be seen - it will be hidden on the market by an enormous mass of cheap buy offers; to buy all of them to reveal the main's price would cost an inordinate amount of coins - possibly more than the amount you're trying to transfer.

I doubt that this exploit would be usable when the game gets released.

[Crunch]

Dududuuuu... 
Dont mind me.

[rob]

I think Tar's saying that you only see the 300 coin level 1 range aug for sale because nobody else is selling any level 1 ranges for less than 300. The "for sale" screen only shows the cheapest item of each type. Right now, nobody bothers to sell level 1 augs, but Tar thinks that later, people will, and so your rich alt will have to buy ALL of them before the 300-coin level 1 aug is visible in the store.

Will people really trade level 1's? I'm not sure; they seem pretty worthless. Maybe you should be able to burn them for fuel or something...