Development Game [ 2013-12-22 ]
We had 13 matches this time, with an average of 15 minutes and 10 players. Nice!
What has been tested?
New turret implementation (Tremulous 1.1 like), jetpack losing fuel when player is damaged (instead of disabling thrust).
Statistics
Average
Average of the last seven development games
(Don't have access to that data right now.)
Analysis
The new turret finally balanced Ishq by preventing him from single handedly destryoing the human base in the first five minutes of a match. On a more serious note, we could confirm that the turret is efficient against (uncoordinated) dretch spam and lone wolf sneak attacks while being considerably weaker against group rushes and heavier classes. It should no longer happen to you that you return to an empty base because a single Marauder split off the group and destroyed all your defenses at once. I'm still a bit afraid that humans might use turrets to slowly turtle their way forward but I guess this should be a non-issue when aliens realize they own the whole map and can spam leeches to get free credits when they die (your mining efficiency serves as a minimum amount of credits you will spawn with – get it over 400% and you can spam the enemy with Marauders). Working exploits might show up in the future but I'm sure they can't be as bad as the dretchlocking we've been experiencing for quite a while.
Didn't test the jetpack enough, will put a greater focus on it next week.
What's next?
I started replacing the defense computer with human structure auto heal. This provides convenient healing (and thus saves you time) in early game but prevents healrate stacking. It's mostly an approach to give humans more mobility during and after an attack against their base as currently they are dooming themselves the moment they stop pushing and shooting and start healing. (Aliens never had this problem since pushing was among the most intuitive things to do.)