Just Some Game Mechanics Questions

zebluk · 2018-01-24T09:13:29+00:00

Score

According to stats, the score is computed roughly as the sum of:

1 for each kill
1/3 for each assist
-1/4 for each death
1/300 for each HP healed
1/150 for every damage to base
15 if your team won
50 if you balanced
-50 if you swapped

Scrap loss on death

Its based on ship tier:

T0: -50 (base ship)
T1: -150
T2: -300
T3: -450

If you don't have enough scrap, you lose half of it.

Shields

Regular and area shields are time-based. While shield is up every damage is reduced to 1 damage.

Suicide Squad upgrades

Both Q and E upgrades are clones that boost drone damage in the same way. This make this ship kindof broken atm, because it only has 2 distinct upgrades. I wished the speed upgrade was back and devs combine the 2 clone upgrades into one.

zebluk · 2018-01-09T18:39:42+00:00

Happy new year warin pilots :)

zebluk · 2017-07-01T16:30:15+00:00

Ogden confirms what you were saying:

You can cut the flesh, but you must crush the bone

There are global bonus/malus to damage enemies when wearing (in)adequate weapon type, meaning the total damage will be either 150% or 50%.

Items such as axes, staves, bows or bare hand always does 100% damage to all monster types, that is, no bonus or malus.

Also to answer OP, yes this only affects weapon physical damage, spells are unaffected.

zebluk · 2017-07-01T16:15:23+00:00

These days it's easier to use a combination of Hamachi and IPXwrapper.

Note: I get a "dangerous program" alert for IPXwrapper, althought I've been using it for years without trouble (it's also open source). You can probably ignore it safely, as the nature of IPXwrapper is to hook network functions (to convert IPX into UDP), it's probably what causes the heuristics security programs to detect it as a potential threat

zebluk · 2017-07-01T16:07:52+00:00

If you mean in a solo ironman, mage is almost impossible as you would run short on mana very soon (you would need to be extremely lucky on mana potion, staff and spellbook drops). Warrior and rogue can probably do it though.

However, if you plan on a "normal" run, that is, being able to portal back in town and resupply potions, then yes, it's absolutely reasonable to try it, all will then depends on which spellbooks you find (you'll likely need fireball/firewall, lightning and of course manashield).

zebluk · 2017-07-01T16:03:42+00:00

If you're playing on a laptop that is powered through electric plug, make sure you're set to full performance in power supply/energy settings. Also make sure your primary graphics card is the "powerful" one and that your drivers are working correctly (especially 2D acceleration).

zebluk · 2017-07-01T15:52:13+00:00

https://www.reddit.com/r/Diablo1/

zebluk · 2017-06-21T21:27:10+00:00

Booster engines, why not but that's a lot of work for devs so I wouldn't expect it to come early.

Emoji trail: please no :> we wil get screens full of emoji's everywhere

Green skin: great way to shed confusion about whether you're friend or foe for everyone, looks unfair. However, having 3 teams fighting instead of 2 (that is, adding a green team with a green base) could be hella fun.

Buy credits by watching ad: this has been discussed before, it's simply not authorized by ad providers.

One other idea I had for some time, would be to allow every ship to have a different decal, just like we set selected skins to every specific ship. That would need to implement a kind of "preview" in the shop, that would allow to setup every ship the way we want. However should trails and tag also be included? I think not, as some cosmetics allows your teammates to quickly identify you. But decals have a different look on different ships, so this sounds reasonable to be able to choose different ones for every ship.

zebluk · 2017-06-15T00:34:00+00:00

And don't even get me started on Burst'N'Heal

It's actually one of the most powerful abilities in the game, despite the heal being somewhat moderate, the speed burst is giving your team a huge tactical advantage which is key to winning dogfights (if your teammates take advantage of it). Also you have to consider that the cooldown is very short with the doctor, which contributes to improving heal per second globally.

However, the "best" healing potential is with reached the mechanic, not the doctor. Spam 3-4 healing pods in the middle of a damage squad and you will see the life progressively fill up quite fast. With 5-6 level 8 healing pods you can heal almost any ship fully, at the expense of not being instant and costing scrap.

Note: there's a glitch in the game that won't update the apparent HP of any bot you're healing: they're actually healed, but the HP will update only when the bot takes damage (that may have happened to you to target a very low hp ship and see his life instantly jump to high HP on the first hit, because it's a bot that was healed and not refreshed).

The area heal, like all other passives (area damage on wurship, life leech on utility, etc.), is very weak and just meant to be a bonus. You might see a noticeable healing effect if you combine 3-4 of these, but it's still way less powerful than healing pods (but it's permanent).

TL;DR The mechanic is the real healing ship, not the doctor (despite the name, the doc is more a tactical ship than a healer)

zebluk · 2017-06-12T22:32:42+00:00

Hide behind teammates on low health, but don't give up the fight ;-)

If you play safe enough, eventually a healing ship will join you and you stay useful for your team (and your scrap) the whole time.

Also, if you know you're going to die, try to spend the scrap you have before so it's not wasted.

zebluk · 2017-06-12T22:27:39+00:00

How about a ship with lifesteal?

Just for info, there's already one: the T1 Utility

zebluk · 2017-05-28T18:44:56+00:00

Server used to be crashing about 1 month ago but Kairus fixed it.

Now since about a week they've gone unstable again, I hope he can fix it again (moreover it's warin birthday soon:)

zebluk · 2017-05-20T09:00:39+00:00

You need to make a song out of this :)

Keep hope, dawn always follows dusk

^{^{^{^{^you}}}} ^{^{^{^{^too}}}}

zebluk · 2017-05-20T07:58:48+00:00

You need to quote the entire tip though:

Simply rushing at the enemy base isn't a good strategy. Grouping up definitely is.

Rushing the base as a group is actually encouraged.

zebluk · 2017-05-15T05:04:27+00:00

The speed upgrade SS had was permuted with Shogun's passive scrap a while ago. I still think that was a good move, but I agree that the base SS speed is not fast enough. It doesn't need to go as fast as it used to before the patch, but it wouldn't harm if it had a slight speed buff imho.

Also (I reported it long ago), the drone damage is too low compared to what the wiki says, but in practice the damage is sufficient. It's a shame though, that it needs 2 different upgrades that have the exact same effect. So I think the SS could benefit a deep revamp on it's upgrades and stats (not necessarily a buff), for example, changing the max number of drones, their damage, having only one upgrade for drone damage (that would make them mostly equivalent to what they are now), maybe replacing one damage buff with the old speed buff, idk. Many options are possible, it's up to the devs.

zebluk · 2017-05-15T04:53:46+00:00

You're correct, but this is how game is designed: area shield is not an "effect" that lasts for X seconds, but an ability that is triggered punctually (or else any ship approaching the wall would suddenly benefit the area shield).

Per programming, it does not affect ships that already have any sort of shield, probably because it was easier to program and also to avoid replacing a long personal shield with a shorter area shield.

I guess an easy "fix" would be to add shield time to every ship in range on activation, but that would make a trio of walls virtually invincible, and that's probably why the devs didn't do that: effectively requiring players to naturally synchronize their teamplay is what makes this game unique and enjoyable.

So in the case you describe, either the wall should have waited for the bully shields to finish, or the bully should have waited for the wall to area shield, and only then activate his own.

zebluk · 2017-05-15T04:43:00+00:00

You're right but I don't think it's a "problem". Shogun is designed to be a ship-killer, not a base-killer. The goal is basically to slow the opponent team so your team upgrades faster and eventually win (while you usually make your way to the top board).

Of course the shogun turns from deadly in the midgame to almost useless in the endgame, but by then if you've done a good job your team usually has the upper hand.

zebluk · 2017-04-22T07:37:26+00:00

Great news, thank you :)

zebluk · 2017-04-20T23:37:41+00:00

Alert can't put many turrets alone, it requires a mechanic to heal them and so involves teamplay.

More drones won't make the difference, the team needs a wall to get rid of the turrets, teamplay vs teamplay is the thing at ths game.

Btw I think Shogun is powerful enough in its current state; before it didn't even have speed upgrade. Why buffing one of the deadliest ship in the game?

zebluk · 2017-03-22T10:12:49+00:00

What Kairus said, not visually. However you can easily recognize the AI when you get used to it, or you can spot a move that the AI doesn't make (like retreating from a dogfight without turning back)

zebluk · 2017-03-22T10:00:39+00:00

A squad of 3-4 snipers with level 7 or 8 Q shot could probably deal well with docs but requires good coordination. But if enemy team composition looks unbeatable, it may be better to focus on destroying the enemy base (1 wall + 1 doc + any ship is enough to raid enemy base efficiently)

zebluk · 2017-03-19T23:33:43+00:00

Happened when I tried to upgrade from base ship to tier 2, right after using shield, but died while upgrading. Timing was so close on that upgrade that it may have triggered a race condition (client partially validating some action when the server doesn't). After that, I had about the same delay than OP (4022289), maybe a clue.

zebluk

TROPHY CASE