ID:2655
 
I'll skip the bitching about having to spend Yet More Time on admin coding, and get to the details:

- New module, finally! Soldering Iron lets you combine two boosts into a mega-boost.

- The Players stat panel provides more info now. In particular, waiting players are listed, with their queue number.

- The waiting list queue will now persist between reboots, so that maintenance reboots don't knock you off the list. I won't be surprised if there are kinks to work out here, as there are lots of edge cases to deal with.

- By frustrated demand, tweaked the reboot and kick voting rules to try and avoid exploits by bored observers. Now, if there's a game containing players, some of the players have to vote for a vote to succeed.

If someone attempts to reboot the game or kick a person for no reason, you are encouraged to kick that person instead. A kicked person can't get back into the game for half an hour or so.

As always, much more to come!
I like the sound of that new module! Can't wait to try it. =P
Also, a suggestion, not sure if it's been suggested before: The ability to choose which activated defenses comes into play when attacked. Not sure if you want it otherwise, but just a suggestion.
Following on from Artekia's suggestion: The ability to decide whether or not to activate Anti-Anti-Matter?
And I'll throw out another suggestion: When under the effects of Panic and Turbo Charge, condense the two messages at the start of a new turn into one line: Soandso's Panic and Turbo Charge are in effect, leaving movement normal.
And, heck, yet another. Change Evaporate Water to Air Stabilizer and make it defend against the following two modules:
Hydrated Air: Places Superheated Wall in it's path, like it does now
Superheated Air: Attack is nullified and a Hydrated Air attack is sent at the attacker.
And, as long as I'm on a roll, mirror modules. They would be placed on a hall, like the Melted Hallway, but they wouldn't block movement. Instead, they'd alter LOS, in some cases allowing you to aim modules around corners and such. They would come in the following varieties: (you may include any, all or none of them, up to you)

Diagonal mirrors: They go from one corner to another of a hallway, and reflect lines of sight that go along it acccordingly.

Arrow mirrors: They point in a certain direction and aim all lines of sight travelling into it in that direction.

Box mirrors: They prevent LOS from even entering the tile unless you are standing in it.

Clockwise/counterclockwise mirrors: They direct lines of sight in a left or right turn, accordingly.

Diagonal, arrow and clock/counterclock mirrors could be placed in either orientation (or, in the case of arrow mirrors, any of the 4 orientations).

If that seems too complex, just use the diagonal or box mirrors.
Bug Reports:
Setting walls, making actions, after turn is over... Select the action, wait for boost menu to pop up, dont select anything, click shiny end turn button. Simple :P

Also, you forgot to disable byond DM text macros... I.E. \blue \i \n stuff like that.
Thanks all.

Also, you forgot to disable byond DM text macros... I.E. \blue \i \n stuff like that.

Since the game is not done yet, things aren't forgotten -- they are either not done yet or not known about.
Can we possible have italics in BB code format ([i][/i]). It is always nice to have another form of emphasis rather than caps.

Excellent game though I must say. However a few things:
Bug: Someone once used one of the push attacks to push someone 4 spaces however they stopped prematurely at a superheated wall.
Bug: A melted hallway blocks teleport markers visually. Also you may want to quickly check what happens if you take a teleport to a square that is melted. It should be possible but just immediately end all mvoement and maybe cause 1 damage.
Bug: An unlocked forcefield still blocks LOS.
However, this could be amde into a feature. Maybe the unlocked forcefields block energy attacks but NOT matter attacks. Justifiable by that some sort of new technology it allows matter but not concentrated energy through.

Suggestion: Big Bang effect- Ship Enters Unstable Wormhole- First it rotates all the sectors a random degree amount. THEN it reorders the sectors randomly.
Big Bang Effect- Massive Wormhole Stabalizer Failure- All the teleports on the board shut down.
Suggestion: Wormhole Destabalizer (card)- This card when used on a teleport marker in your line of sight shuts down the teleport marker.
The teleport could be reengaged using say Alternate Universe
Suggestion: Self-destructing over a robot should do some damage. almost like a last resort knid of motive. Could also possibly lead to a draw situation.
Suggestion: Request draw- If all the players agree than the game is over. They are all dumped as observers.
Suggestion: Clicking on a tile (even as an observer) that has multiple mobiles on it (supplies or robots) should list them all.
Suggestion: LOS check- It would be nice if we could click on a location and have all the LOS possibilities (floors, wall, robots) blink. Only asked because in certain cases LOS is a bit messy (see previous bug).
Thanks much for the suggestions.

Bug: A melted hallway blocks teleport markers visually.

This is intended. A melted hallway blocks LOS and cannot be teleported onto (it's a solid block of metal after all).


Bug: An unlocked forcefield still blocks LOS.

That's intended; it's unlocked, not unfunctional. However force fields may stop blocking LOS altogether in the future.
Bug: Alternate universe doesn't work on superheated wall.... It was definitely player created as well. Man that really killed my plan :/

Suggestions: Med Kit (Module)- simply heals your power 1, or the boosted amount. nanites should be able to double it. Of course you shouldn't be able to go above 15... unless you wanted to make 20 the max just for fun.
Why should there be a max? If you can get that high, I say allow it =P.
You can already go above 15 with siphon power; I don't believe there is a maximum (although for all practical purposes getting above 20 is pretty darn hard, and getting above 25 dang near impossible).
Bug: Alternate universe doesn't work on superheated wall

I've had two reports now on this, but I can't reproduce. I suspect it may be that people aren't clicking on the wall marker itself? You have to actually click the marker in that case for it to work. Let me know if you keep seeing this.

I do have a healing module in mind, but it will work a bit differently. Of course we might add something like Med Kit also.
A possible thought for replacing Evaporate Water: How about a "holo shield" card that would erect a holographic wall to foil any LOS attacks? Like Evaporate Water, except useful in a wider range of situations and less likely to backfire and make a big flaming wall in your path.
Well, after a few games of drawing Big Bang and getting nothing but Holodeck I began thinking of other catastrophic events that could take place, and I came up with:

Note: I'm assuming on my experiences that the events are weighted, disregard my rarity suggestion if so.

Electrical/Magnetic Storm
Same rarity as Meteor Shower
Has the same style of effect as Meteor Shower, in that the number of 'storms' is relative to the amount of players, etc. A storm in contact with a player overloads the circuitry, causing the loss of a turn (or multiple with multiple hits). Storms have no effect on walls or anything, but can totally deactivate forcefields on contact, possible causing an energy burst damaging people on either side of the forcefield at time of deactivation.

I was considering suggesting a kind of mass gravity well, mass wormhole and mass alternate universe, but in the process of writing it didn't seem to be cataclysmic enough to fit with the big bang card.

Also, as an aside, despite the warnings I was tempted to use Big Bang for the sake of it and such I thought of a few bad things that could happen:

Memory Overload
The mere attempt at contemplating the ability to invoke the big bang caused
the processing cores to overload. The user is unable to fabricate new modules for X amount of turns.

Memory Leak
The sheer processing power involved in calling upon the big bang has resulted in a memory leak in the user's system for X amount of turns. The memory leak reduces movement points per round to 0/1 (or by 3/2 respectively if you'd prefer turbo charge to counteract this effect). Either results in the user relying on boosts to move around.

Big Crunch
The worst side-effect. The user's invocation of the big bang served as a catalyst to the Big Crunch. Resulting in a huge gravitational pull within the user. The pull becomes so severe that the robots internal circuitry clumps together with a sickening crunch, 10* power drain.

*I would say 15 to enhance the emergency nature of the card, keeping in mind Big Crunch should be rare. But, I kept it at 10 which in essence cripples you anyway and would probably kill most at time of use.

I hope you like some of them.
Big Bang is already inherently a gamble, so I don't see why it should be crippled. If people are over-hasty to use it, it is only because of its inherent randomness and risk--you can't save it for a good time because there's no way of knowing whether it will be good or bad at any given moment. If you want people to save it and use it more strategically, to be an ace in the hole rather than a use-it-and-ditch-it, it needs effects that are safer and more predictable--for example, add effects that automatically hit everyone, etc.
Suggestion: Abort. Retry. Fail. (module)- It's only purpose is to shield you from the BSOD. The plus side is that it can't be destroyed from any other attack. Is it worth wasting a space? You decide.
Suggestion: Advanced Coolant (module)- Let's you pass through superheated walls for a turn.
Suggestion: Overcharge (module)- Like electroshoke but only works noly when they have a power supply in their hand. However it causes 2 damage for every power supply on the tile.
Suggestion: Explosive (module)- Set this and run because before your next turn it will explode creating cardinal splash damage not counting as an attack. It causes 4 damage to anyone on the tile and 2 damage to anyone unshielded from the blast on an adjacent tile. It also destroys melted hallways, walls, and superheated walls (not however that if you have a wall between you and the bomb and the bomb explodes the wall will crumble but you will be safe).
The main use for this would be to create a nice hole in the base. Due to the 1 turn reaction time I doubt it will be very offensive.
Suggestion: Reflector Matrix(module)- (I believe this was alluded to before but I added a special clause) Reflects the attack back to the user. However, it acts as though you fired the attack. Your oppoents defenses will be valid. (A reprogram module on your opponent for example would just give them the attack back)

Suggestion: Recharge (Big Bang Effect)- Everyone gets 15 health. Any active effects are removed.
Suggestion: Power Failure (Big Bang Effect)- All forcefields, including locked ones, shut down. Maybe this could even cause a delay of winning for a turn or two until the auxilliary power can kick in to resupply the bases with power (but not the forcefields).

Suggestion: The stat panel should indicate how much health you have left. Really, anyone can figure it out and it just becomes a remembering game. Also incoming observers may not be able to find out the health for a while.
Suggestion: Host related- Maybe since all these cards are being added in the future hosts should be able to disable certain ones as to say bring the game back to earlier editions and play 'classic' rounds.
Leftley: How about a "holo shield" card that would erect a holographic wall to foil any LOS attacks?

I've been thinking about turning the Evaporate Water into something like this, but it would choose a barrier type based on the attack.


Exadv1: Advanced Coolant (module)- Let's you pass through superheated walls for a turn.

We probably will do something like this.

Thanks again for the suggestions...we'll go through all of them as we add features.