Dev App Testing Change-log: 3 Feb, 2017

[Ayetach]

Here are the Wild Week changes:

• Removed Spire changes
• Removed Squid changes
• Added greased changes:

          -25% Damage
          +10% Clip capacity
          +80% Rate of fire
          -30% Velocity
          +42.85 Arming time
          Removed rotation speed reduction
          -20% lift

• Added loch changes:

          No change to current self-damage.
          No change to current damage increase.
          -50% Clip capacity.
          -50% Rate of fire.
          -90% Rotation speed.
          -90% Jitter. This reduces jitter more than current Heavy. Players are looking at options for testing 100% reduction for Heavy in a future session.

• Added gun buff changes:

          +10% damage
          40 second duration.

• Test however you please

Alliance changes:

• Tweaks to tension so that tensions doesn't spike quickly, will drop faster, and encourage more things to be spawning more frequently
• Slightly slower hull rebuild for convoys
• Focus of testing will take place for Defense, Retrieve, Assault game modes with different difficulties. Normal to Hard will be the focus difficulties.
• Lens Array and Lightning guns will have less of an effect on convoys due to their durability buffs.

Skirmish changes:

• Two new Alliance-to-Skirmish maps
• Focus of the map tests will be their sizes, map positions, and spawn locations
• NOTE: For the time being, we're keeping it 2v2 until we do more performance testing on the maps

[BlackenedPies]

Greased: DPS values are a slight nerf to use in some guns like Hades and gat, but loses most use in other guns like banshee where regular deals higher dps. The new greased is lower DPS than regular in some guns. I disagree with removing arm range in favor of adding negative lift. Removing rotation speed reduction is unnecessary

Loch: I agree with ZanC on -60% ROF, otherwise it's ok

Buff: increasing buff duration is not a buff to buff engi, it's a buff for gunner. Buff duration doesn't matter for the buff engi as they can keep their gun perpetually buffed (the only consideration is buff time when gun gets broken), instead it gives the gunner a buffed gun for longer ex. 3-4 clips instead of 1-2. I don't think this is the right way to balance the buff hammer and gunner

If gunner is underpowered then the simplest solution is increasing passive stamina recharge rate, the slowest in the game, not by giving them higher damage for longer when a buff hammer is aboard. If buff is overpowered then the reduced damage to +10% is ok, but longer duration is only a buff to the other crew. Shorter buff time (from 6 to 5) on the other hand slightly lowers skill cap, benefits all crew, and is a slight buff when the buff engi gun is broken

[Unarmed Civilian]

Back from a couple rounds of testing, so here's my thoughts.

Greased is not good on Hades. It makes the shots harder and doesn't reduce the arming time at all to compensate for the close-range use you'd expect greased to be good for.

Gatling range difference is very noticeable since gatlings were often used at the extent of their range before. Will force people to use standard more for the improved range. If that's the goal then I guess it worked.

Banshee it's hard to say. The travel time difference is noticeable, the tempo change is going to take some getting used to, and it doesn't seem like greased as a primary ammo will be good if the banshee is being used as a primary. As a secondary I think it's in a reasonable spot. The RoF increase makes it so you can empty the clip faster to get back to repairs.

The increased drop for mercury is barely noticeable over heatsink. It exists, but it's only going to do much at very long range.

As for changes in power level, I'd have to pilot 5 more matches to really say. It does seem to make mortar stronger though.

Overall, I think if you got rid of the arming time increase I'd be fine with it.  A big part of greased is the's the premier close-range ammo, so I don't think that guns with arming time being more close-ranged should be a huge concern.


Lochnagar is interesting. Didn't get to use it a ton. The increased rotation penalty is very noticeable, guns turn like bricks. Lochnagar gat does not seem super powerful, but that could be just because the RoF feels so different being so low. Makes maintaining the gun's RoF when shooting more manageable.

I tried to pull off loch flak (3 shots) since in theory it could one-clip a pyra. In practice, the user missed a ton. It seems it was very difficult to handle. I'd have to mess with it more to really say more on it.


As a side-note, please allow 1 ship bot deathmatch for practice. Would make it easier to test things.

[BlackenedPies]

Here's new greased DPS values:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1t5iLO3xnLJuzdj_E9Rko_TXCHiS0Cu8t38elNnVOu3U/edit?usp=sharing
(formulas not copied over from Excel)

Greased now deals lower dps than regular on banshee, Lflak, Lcarro, and Lumber. It's on average 0.05% more DPS than regular, whereas normal greased is 7.49% higher

Note: new* is greased with +50% ROF instead of +60%. On average it's 4.72% higher DPS than regular. This is my preferred change