What would Happen...

posted on September 19th, 2010, 2:32 pm

I just thought of some interesting developer mistakes that could slightly effect game balance if the mistake actually happened.

• A new ship is out with all of the proper weapon ODF's modified for that new ship, however, the new ship has an ODF error in it's phasers.  Instead of the damage to one of the vessels being "4.225", that line of code is missing a decimal place and it now reads "4225".
• A new ship's weapon ODF is missing the decimal for weapon damage on several lines.  Now, about half of the vessels that come up to oppose it are destroyed instantly and several stations are also destroyed instantly.
• A new ship is missing the decimal in the shieldRate line and now the shields are recharging the moment they are damaged.  Making the ship, invincible.

It's just something I thought of.  I don't know if it has happened before, but it would be funny if it did.

posted on September 19th, 2010, 3:04 pm

Erm, no it wouldn't really be funny. They usually catch the serious bugs during testing.  It would be most unfunny to find that in a release and you can bet that the devs would rush a patch out as soon as it was discovered.

If it did happen i think you would find a tactic agreement with players not to build the affected ship until the patch is released.  Anyone building the ship in an online game would likely find themselves ostracized from further games until the patch arrived.

posted on September 19th, 2010, 3:15 pm

this reminds me of cascade feedback. it used to have a bug where it did stupidly high damage. so nobody ever built c11, now nobody every builds c11 anyway as nobody likes it

posted on September 19th, 2010, 10:33 pm

Yeah it wouldnt be really funny, but the devs would probably shortly there after release a small patch as they have done before