Weapon balancing by measurement, a character of their own for the Pulse Gun paths, asteroids are a resource.
- Pulse Gun, three feels:
- Frost Cannon: hefty. Half as many barrels fire large, single orbs (2.3 times the size) at 55 % of the rate, and they fly a little slower. Every shot has a muzzle blast, every impact throws ice shards and knocks the enemy back. Damage per second stays the same.
- Incendiary Core: It fires 1.7 times as often with a weak direct hit (30 %). The damage comes from the burning.
- Railgun Core: It fires beams instead of bolts, almost three times as fast, with a long, bright beam body. Every shot sends a pulse wave out from the ship (double ring, shake). It has 50 % more range and no damage falloff at distance.
- Balancing with a DPS test rig: Every weapon was measured at levels 1, 5, 10 and 15 and every path at 10 and 15, in seven scenarios: close (150 px), single target (300 px), focus, far (680 px), crowd (ten enemies packed tight), scattered (eight across the field) and evasive (one target weaving fast). The goal: no weapon comes out ahead everywhere, each has strengths and weaknesses.
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Where things stood: the Heavy Gun sat at half of the others across all scenarios. The missiles did six times as much in a crowd (everyone in the radius took the full hit), the Laser three times as much (full damage on five targets).
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Changes:
- Base power: Heavy Gun ×1.6, Pulse Gun ×1.1, Laser ×0.9, missiles ×0.72, Swarm ×1.2.
- Missile: secondary targets in the radius take 45 % down to 22 %.
- Laser: four targets at most, further targets in the beam take 55 %.
- Paths: Railgun Core ×1.1 instead of ×1.5, Incendiary Core burning ×0.8, Interceptor Swarm 60 % per missile (it fires twice), Strangler 40 % instead of 70 %, Fire Drones burning toned down, Mirror Storm +25 %, Cascade shards 65 % instead of 50 %.
- The Cascade did nothing at all without the shard boon. Now it works.
- The Flak no longer bursts in focus (it fires a shotgun slug there instead). With shards, it did 3.4 times the base weapon’s damage in focus.
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Result at level 15, base weapons, factor relative to the median of all weapons per scenario (close / single / focus / crowd / scattered / evasive; far listed separately):
Weapon close single focus crowd scattered evasive far Strength / weakness Pulse Gun 1.1 1.1 1.5 0.7 1.0 0.2 good Focus and distance / evasive targets Heavy Gun 1.8 0.3 0.9 1.0 1.0 0.7 – Close range, crowds / distance, single target Laser 1.5 1.7 1.2 1.6 0.0 0.1 best Single target, lines, range / scattered, evasive targets Homing Missiles 0.9 0.9 0.6 1.2 0.9 1.5 good Evasive targets, crowds / focus Snake Gun 0.9 1.0 0.6 1.0 1.8 1.3 – Scattered targets / distance, focus Swarm 0.9 1.0 1.1 0.4 1.0 1.9 – Evasive targets, all-round / crowds, distance Leaving out the far scenario, all base weapons average between 0.93 and 1.11. The paths add +15 to +55 %, most of all in their speciality, and have weaknesses of their own: Frost Cannon 0 against scattered targets, Hydra weak on single targets, Viper 0 against evasive ones.
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- In Orbit, asteroids are a resource, not an enemy:
- They can only be mined with the drill laser. No weapon, drone, missile or Snake Gun picks them as a target, and none of the ship’s damage sources harms them.
- Your own projectiles and the weapon laser pass right through them.
- Wreck parts can still be shot, but aren’t targeted automatically anymore. Ramming still works.
- In Arcade, everything stays as before.