Messages posted by: Szlat

Thanks for reporting these, and for including approx times and maps. It helps.

Danno wrote:

4/10/12 (3:17 PM ET) Desert Isle:
My engineer link gun displayed 2 different streams after my ball turret was destroyed. I was trying to heal my locked ball turret after it got hit by a fire titan. (I have no idea what anyone else saw, but this is what I saw on my client.) Once the turret was destroyed I continued to see the red stream that is used for boosting, and was 'joined' by the other 'standard' green one. No matter how I moved the red stream was 'stuck' to where my turret was prior to its destruction, while the green one went where directed. A couple of new guys may have be joining our server at the time.

I think these sorts of issues are down to packets getting lost between the server and the client. I would expect other people not to see the problem. Was the framerate struggling at the time? How often does this occur, or was this the only time you have seen it?

Danno wrote:

4/11/12 (2:18 AM ET) Dismemberment:
Cannonball's ultimate destroyed PK's mini turret. If I recall correctly, it was at medium or low health at the time. (I've also seen Annika's ultimate destroy floor sents on some other map, but I don't recall the time or the map.) Hopefully this instance with Cannonball can shed some light on this.

Unfortunately, I didn't get any log files for the 10th, which would have included this game as it was around midnight Mountain Time. So I can't chase it up. It may be that when Cannonball died, he got removed from the server due to a player joining, so the Ultima couldn't determine which team it was on. But that is speculation.

Danno wrote:

4/12/12 (11:29 PM ET) Tutorial Classic:
I'm pretty sure this bug has been mentioned elsewhere, but here is a record of player's ultimate 'pushing' titan rocks into another player, killing them. Ghost_Recon was hit by several titan rocks, setting off his ultimate, and forcing him to ghost to another location. There were several titan rocks adjacent to my position, and when Ghost's ultimate went off, I was instantly killed. (And no, I'm not blaming Ghost for this. ) I was not under direct fire by titans at the time. I was around the corner from them, but the rocks were nearby. If I recall correctly, this was not a wave with ghost titans.

There isn't a lot I can do about this. If a titan rock gets pushed onto you, however it occurs, you will get splattered. Just one of those things. I am assuming you were stationary? Some missles only get replicated to your client if you can see them when they get spawned. So if you walk into a room, you can get hit by a missle that the server knew about, but didn't tell your client to draw it. It is one of the "efficiencies" in the code, to reduce network loading.

Danno wrote:

4/12/12 (11:56 PM ET) Redkin:
Engineer deaths are occasionally causing the server to crash. Here is a record of Ghost_Recon getting killed by some monster, and the server crashing. Ghost did not recall what killed him. (I know my engineer has been killed by titan rocks and/or fireballs and it was enough to cause a crash. This has been the outcome of a recent TON80 death, too. Both of these other crashes were on different maps than the above-mentioned one. I may add the names of the two other maps to this post when I get the chance, but I don't recall the dates/times for those. I'm going to try to be more diligent about making a note of any of these in the future.)

MMmm. I have it playing DM-BDC-HaNGaR2k4v2 then BR-DE-ElecFields at that time. Redkin was played at 11:34PM ET on the 11th, so I assume it was that one since you were on. It crashed due to a runaway loop
ScriptLog: CHOOSEATTACKSERIAL in state Hunting enemy NONE old enemy NONE CALLING BYTE 23
This was for a RockSlith finding a new enemy, but it occurs periodically for all sorts of monsters. I don't think it was particularly due to an engineer being killed. I think it is a bug in the underlying UT2004 code. Not sure if what we are doing is encouraging it or not though.

Danno wrote:

4/12/12 (1:38 PM ET) Squander:
Similar to Locrain's post above, here is a record of my engineer blocks surviving my engineer's death. I was not disconnected at the time; said blocks were viewable while I waited to respawn. I'm not sure if this helps, but I was killed by a queen prior to this occurring.

I can't see anything in the server logs that would indicate what caused it. Were the blocks visible to others, or just you? I think RoadKill was the only other person on at the time?

Thanks for the reports, but I don't seem to be able to help much on these ones

K&D_Enterprise wrote:

..but I think the wm/eng should be able to build two total sentinels instead of one.

Can you clarify please? At the moment, a WM/Eng can build 2 defense sents or one lightning sent - similar to the AM/Eng. You think the WM/Eng should be able to build 2 lightning sents - which is more than a standard Engineer can do?

Locrian wrote:

I take it that means Base Specialists are keeping all of their current Defense Sentinel bonuses?

The Base Specialist is really in trial mode, and needs to be tweaked to achieve the correct balance and game play. Their main attribute was the link sentinel - all the other bits are there for balancing purposes. If it is wrong, then it needs to be tweaked. Perhaps their defense sents are just a bit too dominating? In particular, I am open to the request to remove healing from their defense sentinels, and perhaps ammo and energy. But it requires feedback from you guys as to how to take it.
At the moment, there is one base specialist in the top 25 compared to 6 extreme medics, even though the base specialist has been played more times than the extreme medic. In fact Base Specialist seems to be the most frequently played subclass amongst the high levels. This might mean that it makes life just too safe, but takes some of the excitement out. You guys give me feedback.

The defense sentinel only being able to heal up to +100 health was a decision so that there would always be space for a medic or extreme medic to be able to top people up. And I think that restriction should also apply to MM/Eng sentinels - the MM/Eng can get the rest of the healing xp by standard healing methods.

Note that the MM/Eng can buy up to level 5 of sentinel healing, while the base specialist is limited to level 2. So the 2 MM/Eng's sentinels will heal more each second than the 4 base specialist sentinels, and hence return more healing xp.

But with the lock, you spawn the turret, lock it, and then no-one else can get in. So you don't need to worry about ejecting people or kick-voting. Because they can't get in.

You can hop out, pick up a DD, and hop back in again with no worries.

And according to the post I made, because you have the option of locking things you don't want people in, by default if it isn't locked you are saying you want people to use it. So lock things you want for personal use, don't lock things you want to share. But if you haven't locked it, don't start placing kick votes - it's your fault not theirs!

The presumption is that this is a team game, and people want to share good things.

Earlier in this thread, or in this thread. But I agree it isn't as clear as it could be.

Just bind a key to the command "Lock", and another key to "Unlock". Then look at the turret and press the lock key.

Why not lock the turret?

Locrian wrote:

I'm confused about the EWM part, though. I thought Advanced Damage Bonus this build was already +30%? Where did the extra 20% come from?

The Advanced Damage Bonus is +30% when maxed.
LW6, which only the EWM can buy, gives the player an additional +50% damage bonus, as well as maxed weapons, in exchange for reduced adrenaline use.

K&D_Enterprise wrote:

I played the Bersker for a bit and a first few levels are fine, but then it turns into a run and hide for you life. The power of the character is fine but no regen or shield regen, even if it was really low would help. At least you could go lick your wounds. If there is no base or players to help you, you're simply dead, which I was on almost every level on the map. Getting killed by a monster with like two shots with 400 health is not condusive to a great game play experience.

Everyone has a slightly different style of playing, and so different subclasses suit different people. Some people like the Berserker subclass, and never play anything else. And they get high scores - it just takes some getting used to.

First two bug fixes. As documented on the forums, when the speed combo finished, adrenal drip would give the wave bonus adrenaline to the player. This is fixed. And the same bug applied to shield regen.

Then a couple of balance issues. Extreme WM and Extreme AM are still too strong in my humble option. So I have reduced the extreme bonus they get.
So an Extreme WM with LW6, as well as getting all maxed weapons, would also get +50% on all weapon damage. This is too much, so I have reduced it to +30%.
And an Extreme AM used to get +100% damage from adrenaline and/or 50% adrenaline usage. This is again too much of a bonus - so now it is +66% damage and/or 60% adrenaline usage.

Personally, since I play with a 200+ ping, I find the flak a lot easier - at least some of it will hit, whereas the beam will normally miss.

Anyway, my personal feeling is that if you want to do DM, it is about player v player, so you should go without the RPG. Exactly what is the satisfaction for a level 300 wiping out a level 10 player? Or is it really about low levels shortcutting the xp grind?

Flak Monkey wrote:

Rod, Beam and Bolt....for AMs are considered Super weapons? ...so I have been told. I'm sure there are others. Beam and bolt have the potential at a certain level to be....insta-gibbers....and repeaters at that.

The rod isn't really a superweapon as it randomly gets dropped by monsters. And its usefulness in DM is suspect as it takes seconds to kill someone - much too long.

Beam and Bolt have maximum damage limits set on them. So bolt will do a max of 100 damage per hit, and beam 180 damage. So, no they are not insta-gibbers. So a max of 360 per second for a standard AM (two beam shots).

For a standard WM, a +4 flak will do (117/0.89)*1.5*1.4*1.3 damage a second = 359. (117 damage per shot, 0.89 fire rate, 1.5 weapon speed, 1.4 +4 flak, 1.3 damage bonus)

So yes, you are 1 damage a second behind.
But if you switch to the link gun, with its higher damage per second, then you score better than the AM (30/0.2)*1.5*1.4*1.3 = 410 damage a sec.

And the fact that weapons go through DB/DR helps the WM, since the limits of 80 DB and 50 DR mean weapons in DM will get +15% bonus.

Life gets much more complicated once you move to the subclasses, with their different bonuses.

Locrian wrote:

Though reducing the "maxed out" level gap between AM's and WM's would certainly simplify the balancing process.

The only way to do this would be to charge more for the AM skills - which will make it more difficult for AMs in the 40-70 range.

Locrian wrote:

On another note, would it be possible to add another column to the top two tables showing the median XP/min values of each class? Obviously we need more data before doing serious analysis, but once we get to that point, it may help with drawing inferences about the distribution of the data. The mean alone may not be reliable in some cases.

Done, but I don't know how much use it will actually be. To be honest, I don't think you can do any deep analysis - it is all too player/map/whoelse dependent. If for one subclass I have 9 low values from one player and 8 high values from another player, there will be a big difference between the median and the average - but it could just as easily have been 8 and 9 the other way.

Interesting thought - thought the nali problem may be down to countershove. I hadn't considered that.

I am presuming that the speed boost/adrenaline bug was as a medic (or extreme medic), not as an AM?

Brought across from the 226 balance thread:

[RMD wrote:

RAPIER]I don't know if this is the right place to post it, but here goes. I noticed sence the last rev I no longer have the lighting rod on my AM/ENG hb. was this an intentional change or something over looked.
I didn't use it a loty but I did use it. Whats up.

We used to have two abilities - DruidArtifactLoaded and DruidArtifactLoadedHybrid. The DruidArtifactLoaded was for AMs, whereas everyone else got the Hybrid ability. However, it didn't feel right. The hybrids were getting better artifacts at lower levels than the AMs - and that just isn't fair. As an example, why should hybrid AMs get unbreakable artifacts at level 2, but AMs have to wait until level 3? If anything it ought to be the other way around.
WMs manage with just one LoadedWeapons ability, so why not just one ArtifactLoaded ability? It was a last minute decision to go for it, so perhaps the list isn't quite as it should be.

I can see how a rod is useful, and the same applies for the triple for an Enginer or General class. And I can see how a MagicWeaponMaker isn't as useful when you always have an infinite weapon. The old list was:
226 AMs:
Level 1
Flight
Teleport
Spider
MakeMagicWeapon
Level 2
DoubleModifier
MaxModifier
PlusOneModifier
Invulnerability
TripleDamage
LightningRod
Level 3
LightningBolt
LightningBeam
ChainLightning
MegaBlast
FreezeBomb
PoisonBlast
Repulsion
FireBall
Level 4
SphereInvulnerability
SphereDamage
RemoteDamage
RemoteInvulnerability
RemoteMax

226 AM Hybridss:
Level 1
Invulnerability
TripleDamage
Level 2
MakeMagicWeapon
DoubleModifier
MaxModifier
PlusOneModifier
LightningRod

with the General class limited to level 1, and all others hybrids level 2.

The new 227 list is
Level 1
Flight
Teleport
Spider
MakeMagicWeapon
Invulnerability
Weapon+1
Level 2
TripleDamage
MaxModifier
FireBall
RemoteDamage
RemoteInvulnerability
RemoteMax
Level 3
LightningRod
DoubleModifier
PlusOneModifier
MegaBlast
PoisonBlast
Level 4
LightningBolt
LightningBeam
ChainLightning
Repulsion
SphereInvulnerability
SphereDamage

with the General getting level 1, most hybrids level 2, and the WM/AM hybrid level 3.
So the AM/Eng at level 2 loses the rod and plusone, but gains a weapon+1 and the fireball, and the remotes.

It is a difficult call trying to work out what artifacts should be at what level. Every subclass wants available to them the artifacts they like to use - so triple and rod. But the AM stepping up the levels needs to have some valid upgrade path.

Perhaps level 1 ought to be the artifacts that get spawned by monsters - so you don't have to go looking for them - pretty much like the WM with level 1 doesn't have to pick up weapons. This would be Flight, Teleport, Spider, MakeMagicWeapon, Invulnerability, Weapon+1, Rod

Level 2 would then be additional artifacts useful to AM/MM or AM/Eng. There isn't really anything to help boost the Eng or Medic side apart from what was in level 1. So perhaps some general AM functions - Max, PoisonBlast, Fireball and the remotes.

level 3 would be the ones most beneficial to WMs. Max+1, DoubleModifier

level 4 are the AM specific ones - Bolt, Beam, Chain, Repulsion, MegaBlast, SphereDamage and SphereInvulnerability.

And should we have any artifacts reserved for level 5?

HighwratH wrote:

Well .... not sure if this has been brought up or not but every time I play berzerker and I am killed by a shield gun nali, the server crashes, without exception.

Thanks for that - it could be the key. The Nali were tweaked slightly for this build, and not quite performing as expected.
I'll have a word with Druid and see if we perhaps get rid of the nali for a while and see if it makes a difference.
Thanks for the post.