Author Topic: Updating the Wiki  (Read 51940 times)

Offline Diazo

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Re: Updating the Wiki
« Reply #15 on: February 15, 2012, 12:28:39 pm »
I think we are talking at cross-purposes here. Without the strategy section existing to fit into the reference section I think we've got different ideas of what it's going to be.

For now, as the strategy section does not exist, feel free to add any strategies to the comments section at the bottom, there's no other place to put them at the moment.

Later on, when the strategy section gets created we can sort out what goes where. Putting them in that section will also give us a starting list to populate the strategy section with when it's made.

D.

Offline PokerChen

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Re: Updating the Wiki
« Reply #16 on: February 15, 2012, 09:36:15 pm »
I myself lean more in Dazio's direction - in the sense that I envision separate strategic pages at the end of the project.  These strategic pages discuss the important aspects of the game without going deeply into how to use individual ship-types:
- The ship-triangle. From which a majority of bonus-ships derive their balancing philosophies.
- Fleet compositions styles.
- Fleet combat styles.
- Wormhole defense. Containing subsections on minor-threat defense, wave defense and exo-defense.
- Raiding a planet
- Assaulting defenses
- If the project matures further, a ship-type breakdown and categorisation. That is, lists of ships that are damage-dealers, raiders,

These pages will list the ship-types that are particularly useful for a strategy.

And then what I would place on the ship page is:
 - mention their key roles in a sentence or two. I would like a player to be able to derive their own strategies and counter-strategies from this.
 - then include links to those strategy pages where relevant for whose who like to study more.

All links should be bi-directional (to be noted). The thing that I prefer not to happen is players learning cookie-cutting strategies and then stagnating. I would also not guide players into making a small list of bonus ship-types they use (thanks to the wiki) and stick to them, since they can do that all to readily on their own.

A visual schema would be:
First mile-stone: Individual Ship page <-> Specific strategies page.
Second mile-stone: Individual Ship page <-> Ship-type categorisation page <-> Specific strategies page.

= = =
What this misses is a lot of player experiences with certain ship-types. For that I would personally prefer some separate section, like a discuss page or links to the forum. Meaning my ideal wiki system looks like this at the end:

Individual Ship page <-> Ship-type categorisation page <-> Specific strategies page.
 /'\                                                         /'\
  |                                                           |
 \./                                                         \./
Player experiences using this ship           <->          Player strategies


 The top-half contains objective content that we can usually agree on, and try to place the overall page in a semi-useful light. The stats can be maintained by Dazio's script, and will generally be in-keeping with the most up-to-date version of the game. Stuff like version 4.000 and pre-4.000 strategies which currently exist on the wiki should not be allowed to remain here, but be shunted to the section below. When a ship-rebalancing event occurs, we make a note here and tag it for future updates.

 The bottom-half contains the sum of player and developer comments, which may be directly transcribed from the forums or linked straight into the forums. They are allowed to be out-of-date, and biased. We can freely include opinions like GUDare's "pieces of crap" collection (which, by the way, might include useful context such as what difficulty he plays at as there are certainly ship-types which stop being useful at higher difficulties). All players encouraged to participate in the wiki should submit their comments in the bottom-half, and one self-appointed unbiased judge can incorporate the community concensus into the top-half.
« Last Edit: February 15, 2012, 09:50:47 pm by zharmad »

Offline Bognor

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Re: Updating the Wiki
« Reply #17 on: February 17, 2012, 12:19:13 am »
Dazio, maybe you already know this, but there's a problem with the listed DPS values for all the fleet ships after Autobomb.  Maybe the zeros somehow messed things up?
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Offline Diazo

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Re: Updating the Wiki
« Reply #18 on: February 17, 2012, 10:01:15 am »
FFFFFFFFFffffffffff............

I see what you mean.

I had to add an error trap to my template at the auto bomb, was throwing a dived by 0 error and looks like I messed something up.

Looking at it now.

(Anyone checked my first post again? A few more questions.)

D.

Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: Updating the Wiki
« Reply #19 on: February 17, 2012, 10:32:47 am »
I don't actually see notifications of edits, so missed those :)

Quote
Anti-Starship Arachnid does not have Engine Damage in it's abilities list? This show somewhere else?
In the code it explicitly sets their ED to zero, despite being part of the spider line, for some reason.

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Confirm how the beam attacks on Beam Frigates work?
It hits up to 9 targets on the line.  If there are more than 9 eligible targets on the line, 9 are picked randomly from that set.  Note: it's 9 for all marks, it does not increase.

Quote
How many targets can the Grenade Launcher hit?
6+(2*mk) targets within 100+(100*mk) radius of the actual detonation.

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Impulse Emitter damage calculation?
Base Damage * (1 + (target energy use / 1024)); but part after the * is not allowed to be lower than 5 or greater than 30 (ergo, it does max damage against anything using 30720 or more energy).
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Offline Diazo

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Re: Updating the Wiki
« Reply #20 on: February 17, 2012, 10:47:14 am »
I don't actually see notifications of edits, so missed those :)

I'm thinking about doing a post every couple days just to bump the thread for that reason (assuming there are new questions anyway.)

And thank you for the info, will incorporate soon, not sure how much time I'll have for it today.
D.

edit: Okay, the DPS displays should all be correct now. (Except for the MLRS)
« Last Edit: February 17, 2012, 03:58:20 pm by Dazio »

Offline PokerChen

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Re: Updating the Wiki
« Reply #21 on: February 17, 2012, 11:40:05 pm »
I've done dyson-gatlings, anti-armors and acid-sprayers. These don't have much that currently exists in the forum, so I just wrote stuff.
EDIT: Skipped over a few A's and did most of the B's. Taking a break to do my real-life job. Anyone else coming in for this?

Oh, and cutlasses have been updated in 5.026, so the page has been outdated - the fastest outdating in arcenwiki??? :P

 = = = =

We may need  to disambiguate some of  these ships. For example, Armor boosters are both ships and Trader items (planetary armor boosters). Shield bearers are both ships and Spirecraft, although the former is sometimes FF-bearers. Bombards are ships (Zenith bombards) and guardposts....
« Last Edit: February 18, 2012, 03:03:49 am by zharmad »

Offline Diazo

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Re: Updating the Wiki
« Reply #22 on: February 18, 2012, 11:26:56 am »
Ya, cutlasses go out of date the day after I make them.   :-[

Anyways, updated.

As for the disambiguation, I am aware of that and the best I've come up with is to at the top of the page, such as the Armor Booster, add a 'Looking for Planetary Armor Booster' link, and vice-versa.

I am also adding redirects as I think of them, for example Zenith_Bombard redirects to Bombard.

One terminology decision I made was that ship 'themes' will not be in page names, so the page is called Bombard rather then Zenith_Bombard, Mini_Ram instead of Spire_Mini_Ram and so on. I will be adding a note to the front page of the wiki about it so everyone knows, but as that page does not exist yet.....

D.

Offline Hearteater

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Re: Updating the Wiki
« Reply #23 on: February 18, 2012, 11:33:13 am »
It appears ships have two names, a long and short name.  For reference, the long name you see when you mouse over them and the short name is what appears when they are part of a wave.  Actually, three.  The third is some kind of internal name which is why Armor Boosters are sometimes called Shield Boosters.  I'd say keep the long names on the ship pages, probably with short names mentioned.  For LotS in particular, Spire vs Spirecraft is a helpful distinction in the ship names.

Offline Diazo

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Re: Updating the Wiki
« Reply #24 on: February 18, 2012, 11:47:17 am »
Hmmm.

Maybe it's just me, but I drop those names when I'm talking about ships, which is why I left them off the page names in the wiki.

And in my opinion it would be worse to have some ships with the theme name in front and some not, so I decided to globally drop them.

Nothing's set in stone of course, but that was my thought process.

Also, questions in first post updated.

D.

Offline Minotaar

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Re: Updating the Wiki
« Reply #25 on: February 18, 2012, 12:08:56 pm »
On the first question: Sure there are more. Off the top of my head, Spire Maws. Gravity Rippers, Paralyzers.
And of course, SSB's. Can't forget them SSB's.  ;)

Offline Hearteater

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Re: Updating the Wiki
« Reply #26 on: February 18, 2012, 12:29:35 pm »
Why would it be worse to have Zenith in front of ships from the Zenith expansion?  Among other things, the Zenith Descendant AI gets all those unlocked, which makes it pretty handy to know which ships are the Zenith ships (note that it doesn't get ALL Zenith ships, like the Acid Sprayer, just those with "zenith" in their name).  I think, especially new players, need to see full names and short names.  It can get very confusing otherwise.  You mention Bombards, but when I first was reading the forums I didn't realize Zenith Bombardment Ships and Bombards were the same ship.  Spire are bonus fleet ship types, and Spirecraft are built from asteroids.  Full names are useful and important, and pretty much what encyclopedias use, which a wiki is based off.

Offline Minotaar

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Re: Updating the Wiki
« Reply #27 on: February 18, 2012, 01:26:44 pm »
I am also in favor of using full names for the page titles and redirecting the short versions to them. It just feels right for a reference and prevents ambiguity. Would also
On a different topic, another primary thing for the wiki to cover is Minor Factions! What I imagine would work is a "Minor Factions" page that describes what they are in general and gives a short description of each (and an estimation of the effect on difficulty, which I feel is a rather important thing especially that it's not very well conveyed ingame), and an individual page for each minor faction that would go indepth on the exact mechanics and strategies associated.
In fact, I'll probably get to work on some of those pages tomorrow  :)

Offline Diazo

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Re: Updating the Wiki
« Reply #28 on: February 18, 2012, 02:43:02 pm »
Alright, looks like the consensus is for the full ship name. I'll see what I can do for the navigation and page names about that.

As for minor factions, if you scroll down you can see I've started an index for the entire reference section and I've got pages that will be dedicated to the Minor Factions and other game components. Not that I've created them yet or anything, but that is my intent. If you do start on any pages, check the navigation templates to see if I've already named something. I am crosslinking based on those names. Although a bunch of that may change.

Even if the navigation template changes, I think the names will still work. (Make a minor factions section?)

Note that one change I am making for sure is that Spirecraft will get their own section like Golems, they won't be listed in the Starship section.

These changes may have to wait a bit, I'm out of town tonight and don't know if the hotel will have internet.


Offline Diazo

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Re: Updating the Wiki
« Reply #29 on: February 19, 2012, 07:45:34 pm »
Okay.

Changes made to the navigation section on the ship names. Note that several of the links are not updated yet. This work for naming the ships? I used the names as they appear in game in the ship description box.

I still left the 'AI' off of ship names as that means the ship is AI controlled, not actually named 'AI'. The same with the 'Core' in Core Guard Posts.

Also, is there a quick way to get a list of ships with multiple shots? I don't see anything in the data files and I'm pretty sure a couple of the ships I've made pages for have that and I've missed it.

D.