Tazer strength

[Wanderer]

As Of 5.026, Riot II Tazer Stunlock is now *easier* to achieve, it can be done with two ships.  I believe the problem is that Tazers are now a two second reload.  Coupled with 100 or so Lightning Turrets under glass and this is pretty dang funny. 

[keith.lamothe]

That's... not what happened during testing.  Will test again, thanks

[keith.lamothe]

Ok, just retested, not seeing stunlock.  Maybe it's different lobby settings. Save?

[Wanderer]

Save attached.  Wave is imminent in Macross (Use Player Map detangle) middle/upper left.  Two Riot IIs are buried under the FF on inbound from Craps.  They'll basically keep a permanent 0-2 second stunlock on all inbounds.

[keith.lamothe]

Save attached.  Wave is imminent in Macross (Use Player Map detangle) middle/upper left.  Two Riot IIs are buried under the FF on inbound from Craps.

I wonder if that's actually the name of the planet they're warping from, or if the wormhole is named that because that's the sound the AI ships make every time they warp in.  Good grief that's a lot of lightning.  Between that and the ffs you're probably building up an atmosphere in there.

They'll basically keep a permanent 0-2 second stunlock on all inbounds.

But that's not what I'm seeing; after things settle out I see the cutlasses move for about a second, then get tazered, then later move for about a second, then get tazered, etc.  The bombers and whatnot are harder to see that with, but that's how it's looking from them too.

[Wanderer]

Save attached.  Wave is imminent in Macross (Use Player Map detangle) middle/upper left.  Two Riot IIs are buried under the FF on inbound from Craps.

I wonder if that's actually the name of the planet they're warping from, or if the wormhole is named that because that's the sound the AI ships make every time they warp in.  Good grief that's a lot of lightning.  Between that and the ffs you're probably building up an atmosphere in there.

ROFL

They'll basically keep a permanent 0-2 second stunlock on all inbounds.

But that's not what I'm seeing; after things settle out I see the cutlasses move for about a second, then get tazered, then later move for about a second, then get tazered, etc.  The bombers and whatnot are harder to see that with, but that's how it's looking from them too.

Here's what I'm seeing: They come in and move for half a second, Tazers (x2) go off.  They paralyze for 2 seconds.  The countdown occurs and just as they're about to move, bang, another 2 second paralyze.

Repeat ad nauseum.  I wonder why we're seeing different events here.  If they get 1/10th of a second to move I'm not seeing that.

[Wanderer]

This is odd.

Alright, I may have figured out something to test, but I don't know how to prove it.

I'm seeing what you're seeing, but only because the wave *appeared* in stages on my screen instead of all at once.

I think the Riot IIs got on the same 'timer' and were firing simultaneously.  I have no idea how that happened, but I'm now seeing exactly what you were.

This is VERY strange.  I don't see the 2 second paralyzes anymore, either.

Attached is an original screenshot of what I *was* seeing.  Note the 2 second paralyze on the bomber.

[keith.lamothe]

The tazer duration is actually 2 seconds, but due to the timing of when the per-planet throttle counts down and processing order that first second is always "eaten" by the countdown before it can have an impact.  When it was still 1 second it literally did no paralyze at all due to that.  So I increased it to 2 and had it show 1.  Perhaps reality is more complex

I think I'll go ahead and increase the reload time to 4 and the stagger time to 2, so you'll have a reason to stack 2 of them and you'll still get a massive reduction to AI firepower but it will be less processing-order-sensitive.

[keith.lamothe]

FYI, here's where I ended up for 5.027:

* Riot Tazer:
** Paralysis Time from 1 => 3 (internally 2 => 4, but the first second generally gets eaten due to processing order).
** Reload Time from 2 => 8.
** Per-planet stagger from 2 seconds => 6 seconds.
** This helps prevent some transient (and difficult to reproduce) stunlocks due to processing order, while maintaining the ability to keep things locked down 50% of the time.

[Wanderer]

Ah, cool.  So, you'll need two to paralyze stagger, due to reload times, but that should work nicely.  Thank you.