Reactors and Overdrive
With engines taken care of, the last spacecraft module that has no direct effect on ship performance in missions is the reactor. We’ve decided that the best way to handle this is to tie reactors to the overdrive system. But first, let’s discuss overdrive one more time.
Currently, there is little reason for the player to not use overdrive in most scenarios, aside from some waves in which enemies are introduced one by one and additional damage or rate of fire is not needed. In most cases, including boss fights, it’s simply a superior method of using the weapon, providing +50% DPS without any meaningful penalty.
Additionally, due to messing with the overheat rate, it clashes with the mechanics of several weapons:
- Vulcan – overdrive increases the overheat rate, causing it to lose focus faster
- Boron – overdrive can be used to quickly heat the weapon up for more damage
- Corn – since the weapon can’t overheat, overdrive could be used indefinitely if enabled (which is the reason why it currently isn’t, and Corn had to be overbuffed for there to be any hope of it being competitive)
On top of that, overdrive is very abusable with coolant canisters, allowing it to be used indefinitely.
For these reasons, we’re again attempting a full rework of the system, moving away from overheat being the main limiting factor behind overdrive.
The new system works as follows:
- Overdrive no longer affects overheat time.
- Overdrive’s base duration is equal to 50% of the current weapon’s overheat rate, modified by reactor power (we’re not sure how much of a bonus a max reactor should provide, maybe let’s start with 25%). Each mission starts with overdrive fully charged.
- Overdrive recharges as the player deals damage with their primary weapon while firing normally. The amount of damage needed to fully recharge varies per power level. The damage boost from Amps is disregarded for this purpose.
The system will likely need to be tweaked a bunch of times in terms of specific values, as well as when overdrive and recharge mode are available (e.g. after full depletion overdrive can only be activated after being refilled at least 50%, or something like that). For now, let’s implement it without such restrictions and see how it goes.
Here’s a table with the recharge values we’ve decided on, based roughly on average weapon performance.
(If implemented, it probably wouldn’t do harm to include these values in the Excel sheet for tweaking)
While this system isn’t perfectly balanced (as different weapons follow different damage progressions, as well as due to other differences in stats), it’s still quite simple and we think it’d work well enough. Instead of overdrive being an alternate, and typically superior, firing mode, it’d become more of a resource that has to be used at the right time.
Overdrive on chargeable weapons
Needless to say, we think that all primary weapons should be able to utilise overdrive in order for them to be balanced. The problem comes with implementing it for chargeable weapons like Absolver Beam. It can be done, the system just needs to have one exception for those weapons.
Currently, the game enables overdrive if it detects a short enough pause between two “start firing” events, and disables it when firing is interrupted. The problem is that in order for a chargeable weapon to shoot, firing (or specifically charging) needs to be interrupted. This means that overdrive would have to be engaged before every shot. For Absolver, this means firing an additional small beam every time, which wastes time (an additional 0.2s, negating a lot of overdrive’s boost) and generates excessive heat.
For chargeable weapons, we can make it so that once overdrive is activated, the game instead checks for the interval between ending the charge and starting a new one (I referred to this in the past as “sustaining”). That way overdrive doesn’t get disabled after each shot, but only if you stop firing/charging for long enough. Overdrive is still activated with a double click, so that the player doesn’t enable it by accident.
We believe that Absolver would benefit from that change greatly, as its slow fire rate holds it back in a lot of situations. Overdrive would lower the full charge time from 1.4s (4x0.35s) to 0.933s (4x0.233s), allowing for shooting charged-up beams much more frequently.
Overdrive on Moron Railgun
We think that the omission of overdrive from Moron Railgun is a rather weird choice. Considering that it’s the starter weapon (that the player will be stuck with until they decide to spend 150 keys on a proper one), it should serve to demonstrate basic features such as this. Its lack of overdrive isn’t directly communicated to the player, and it’s also the reason for a pretty confusing moment in the tutorial mission where the player’s weapon is switched out for Neutron if they didn’t pick up Ion in the previous wave (* tangent below). Therefore, we propose adding overdrive to Moron in a slightly nerfed form.
- Overdrive is set to 33%, instead of the usual 50% (a smaller, but still easily perceivable increase)
- Overdrive duration is set to 33% of its overheat time instead of the usual 50% (5.333s duration with its current 16s overheat time)
*While the tutorial mission rework is a topic for another post, it’s worth noting that the current overdrive tutorial falls flat, as even with Neutron’s too-low-to-be-useful fire rate, it’s possible to clear the entire wave without using overdrive as long as the player has at least 
2 by that point – we think that Moron with overdrive would demonstrate the point much better.
Naturally, changing the overdrive system to what we propose here and keeping Moron for the overdrive tutorial wave will likely prevent players from getting a clean sweep on it. However, we don’t think this is a problem. If anything it’d allow us to better drive the point of upgrading to a proper weapon (introducing weapons is another aspect of the tutorial mission we’re not happy with, but this tangent has already gone on for long enough, so that’ll be discussed later down the line). Moron is weak, and while its overdrive can help you a bit, it’d be a much better idea to switch to a weapon that can handle streams of enemies on its own, and save overdrive for bigger threats.
That should be it for now. My next post will likely cover balance changes to weapons, and the one after that will be in regards to reworks/overhauls of the Laser Cannon and Absolver Beam, and discussing a potential rework of the Plasma Rifle. Meanwhile, Enhawk is in the process of addressing issues with general economy balances.