In this post, I will mainly focus on boss rebalancing, but also slightly on item rebalancing and other important stuff. That being said, let’s get started with that last one…
- The first problem are barriers. Not the ones with normal amounts of health, however. Rather the ones with 10x more HP. These are the ones in waves like Weakest Link, Lethal Connections, Do Not Cross - you name it.
But before I continue, I’d like to add I’m not proposing that all barriers should yield 0 points. Destroying them in some waves would just be pointless, and it’s not like it takes that long to destroy them. Besides, they are a neat addition on challenges because sometimes, you have to be quite careful not to kill the chickens before the barriers. So, while these barriers are perfectly fine, I feel like the 10x barriers are just awful. They take far too long to get destroyed and yet you have to do it if you want to compete with other people. It’s a huge waste of time if you ask me and it’s quite annoying in some waves, especially in the Chicken Vending Machine. If we’re not supposed to destroy them, you might as well make these specific barriers give 0 points. Or you could make them indestructible. Or just reduce their health to that of regular barriers.
- Space Race. Or rather the need to crash into bosses and the lack of power-ups that would let you get back what you lost in this specific challenge.
The problem here is that you will pretty much be required to farm for at least 4 atomic power-ups per stage in order to keep up thanks to mass condensers. And that’s a lot of RNG and time wasted. If you use mass-condensers, you will either need extreme luck, or lots of wave restarts. And if you don’t use them, you can forget about getting a good placement on the leaderboard. And mass condensers just decrease the amount of skill you need for bosses. Instead of having to dish out as much damage as quickly as you can and find out the most effective ways to do so for each boss, you can just…ram into the boss. And that’s something literally anyone could do. What we’re rewarding here isn’t really as much about skill as it is about luck. I highly recommend just disabling mass condensers for races, the way the condensers work just doesn’t allow for bigger changes, I think this would be for the best. If not, at least fix the RNG by setting a minimum amount of fp you can get in a stage to something like 4 or 5.
Edit: Due to a recent update, Speedy recoveries were also made pretty much required(at least from what I was told. If others think otherwise, let me know) if you even want to stand a chance. Maybe disable them? I dunno, let me know your thoughts.
Edit: There’s also the idea of just preventing the player from using perishables and superweapons as a whole. That would be good since it’ll prevent any possible issues with possibly broken items in the future. Original idea:
Anyways, that was that. Now, it’s time for boss rebalance suggestions. Most of the bosses are just too easy the way they are now, so I’ll suggest some changes that could make them harder.
That being said, here are all my suggestions:
Hend Game:
Ability to use two attacks at the same time. Perhaps also let it use its orange laser every time you get in its line of sight. Maybe just one of these is enough, I dunno.
Oh, and it should probably only fire the orange laser in the above mentioned scenario, as well as in the beginning of the fight, not when it switches sides. This just makes it vulnerable for longer, and the attack itself is so easy to avoid. Other henterprise variants probably don’t need to be buffed
Special Forces Chicken:
Pairs of knives are replaced with 5 knives that are spread out at extremely high difficulties. The lower the difficulty, the less knives there will be.
It’s Party Time:
An additional projectile is added that is always aimed at the player. It’s always fired at half the fire rate of the regular waste. A slight zoom out might be needed, but I’m not completely sure. Kinda hard to balance this considering the projectiles are random, and the screen isn’t zoomed out at all.
Chicken Multiplicity:
The Super Chick now uses its red waste here periodically. The max fire rate could be something like 1 volley per second. Also,all the chickens will split into 4 of the next kind instead of 2.,except for the super chick. The super chick will still split into 2 infinity chicks since they will be buffed in other ways. There’s also the possibility of changing the chicken types depending on difficulty, but that was suggested many times already. Still, it’s worth bringing to attention.(Original post: New Chicken Multiplicity 2.0 or Buff original)
Space Crab 2.0:
Higher difficulty=smaller pauses when it’s about to throw the next group of sunballs. At max difficulty,there is no pausing whatsoever,except for when it uses a forcefield. Perhaps also reduce travel speed of the sunballs, so there can be more on the screen at once.
Henperor’s apprentice:
My idea was to have its lasers rotate counter-clockwise like usual, but instead of disappearing, they would quickly go back to their initial state by spinning clockwise. The turn would be very sharp and fast. The forcefield attack should be removed and the battle should become a constant fight of lasers. The amount of lasers is the same as before, the turning ability will be there only for high difficulties and the next portion of lasers comes up more quickly the higher the difficulty is. Speaking of the next portion of lasers…after rotating lasers are done, regular non-rotating lasers will appear several times. There will be about 6 of them or so. Maybe a bit more. All in a quick succession before rotating lasers are used again.
Another idea I got was a lightsaber attack. The apprentice would throw it at you, and it would quickly come back to the boss. Then the boss would sweep across a part of the screen with the laser and then come back to its original position, restarting its pattern.
Sufi actually made an animation for this to demonstrate the attacks(but not the actual speed of them. It’s supposed to be a lot faster than this), so here you go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPVuAsQgQRw
UCOs:
Revert them to their 10.1 state. Except for their speed. Btw, that first UCO really shouldn’t appear on high difficulty missions…it’s hard to make it suitable for high difficulty missions unless I change it completely. The 4th UCO could perhaps also use its attacks for longer before moving to the next location. Maybe give it enough time to fire a second pair of green lasers. The 2nd UCO could also get a red laser.
An alternate suggestion I got from someone was to combine attacks for UCOs randomly. And to also include a possibility of the missile from “inbound missile strike” waves appearing as a weapon here. It was included among the sprites in ci3, so why not?
They should also not ram you when they first come on the screen. It’s pretty much a pray to god situation if you use a bomber, because the boss is too fast, the bomber is slow, and you have no idea where the UCO will start off.
Sweater chicken:
The clothes can now kill you. Because why not?
Show 'em who’s boss!:
Now this is hard to balance. A lot of suggestions came to mine and other people’s minds. Terminator chickens that spawn whenever a big chicken dies, or more big chickens in a fight…both require a slight zoom out. Another interesting suggestion I got was that every time you kill a big chicken, it becomes an invincible ghost that keeps flying around and shooting as usual. You’ll need to do this to all the other chickens as well to end the fight. This last suggestion might be the best because it means that when you destroy some of the chickens, the rest won’t become trivial. And it certainly doesn’t require a zoom out.
Mother-hen ship ci3:
Early phases should have less health, while the later phases should have more, so that the bullet hell part doesn’t last for 5 seconds only.
Yolk star:
Well, its second phase could use a buff because it’s kind of just…there. Perhaps let it constantly spawn terminators? They would spawn near the place where the yolk is, so the player can’t just get screwed over by an off-screen terminator easily. The yolk’s speed should be decreased a little because bombers.
Crabs(ci4):
No zoom out(or decrease it). Seriously, it makes the boss easier than the very first crab. The second one could attack faster, maybe. Or just bring back the first and second crab to lower difficulties-only again.
Twice Infinity:
Nothing much, really. Although these chicks should have their buffs in chicken multiplicity, as well.
Super Chick:
It should either be kept on low difficulties and replaced with multiplicity on higher ones, or it should be buffed a lot. Give it the buffs I proposed for multiplicity, perhaps(red waste spam).
Mother-hen Ship:
Well, first of all, its projectile speed should be the same on all difficulties. Why? Because slower projectiles means you’ll have to deal with a lot more projectiles on the screen at once. Right now, ssh+100% difficulty is actually easier than, say, 0% difficulty(aside from the health) since 0% difficulty will have a lot of bullets on the screen.
That aside, the boss still won’t be that hard even with this…so, why not give it 5 bullets that spread instead of the 3 current ones? one goes forward, 2 are slightly spread out(one to the left, one to the right, of course), and the last 2 are even more spread out.
Apple Core:
There are several ways to buff this thing:
1.Replace egg barriers with lvl4 barriers. Egg barriers just last longer than the lvl3 barriers, and spam firepower way more. They don’t really make the fight that hard.
2.Give apple core a spread-fire machine gun. Basically 3 bullets at once instead of just 1, same fire rate.
Planetary egg-city:
Fires a constant stream of green projectiles, only stopping when red instant lasers are active(not when the warning lines appear. only when the lasers are actually active).
Iron Chef:
Kind of a difficult one. Perhaps a good solution would be to let it shoot 2 foods with each hand instead of just 1. Also, remove the ramming at the beginning…It does nothing except for making you pray to god it won’t go where you are when playing as a bomber. Same reason as UCO.
Egg Cannon:
Bring it back to its 10.1 state. Perhaps also let it use all of its attacks right away, or at least a bit earlier one. Or let it use 2 attacks at once.
And for the last of the older bosses…Alien mothership.
This one is a little hard to balance. You could give it faster projectile speed or faster fire rate. Problem is that it’s either trivial or very hard. If you let it go too low without destroying the front rows, it’s pretty much a death sentence. Otherwise, it’s rather easy. Also, if you destroy the left-most/right-most parts, it’ll become trivial because you can always hide on the left/right side of the screen. This issue might need to be fixed. Sure, it’s not an advantage like in squawk block missions, but it really makes the fight much easier than it could be.
As for the new ciu bosses? Honestly, I dunno. They’re a bit harder to balance. I’ll leave out most of them because their rebalances were suggested already. That being said…
Henlley’s comet:
Not really about rebalancing, but there’s just the issue with its last phase. If you get it to 75% when it decides to lower itself, it could easily cover the safe spot between the comets, effectively making the first line impossible to deal with normally. The boss should just go back up instantly to prevent this from happening.
Bossa Nova:
Attacks faster.
Actually, most of the new bosses just need this. They attack rather slowly and with big intervals between attacks.
So that’s all for bosses. The last thing will be…items. Only a few of them, really.
Bullet spray expanders and condensers:
Are these really worth being a perishable? These should have a much greater effect, and they should be hardpoint(or at least regular mountables). First of all, they are extremely expensive. Second of all, they’re not really improvements. They just change your current gameplay style, and they often change it for the worse. I’d say either make them much cheaper, or let them be in another category.
Thrust vector control and invulnerability extension:
Too expensive for their usefulness. They might need a price cut.
Strobe lights and laser scope:
Strobe lights could emit slightly more light during darkness missions, since they’re not all that useful now despite being rather expensive. Someone probably suggested this, but I can’t remember when and where. I just remember someone mentioning it. If someone can find the post, post it in a reply here. Laser scope should probably get a price cut, as it doesn’t help that much.
A certain satellite also feels rather weak, which would be microgun. I suggest raising the ammo, or something like that. It can’t remove projectiles, it takes a while to load up, it has no aoe attack and it can’t go through bubbles. It just has a high damage per single target which doesn’t make up for all the downsides. Maybe it would if it had more ammo. Or maybe let it pierce through enemies? Edit: Traveller’s idea for this sounds good, too:
And lastly…music and background prices. Why are they so…different? I can understand a special track like the anniversary one costing more, but I don’t understand why the title theme of ci5 would cost so much more compared to the chapter themes, for example.
And that should be just about everything. I probably missed a lot of things, maybe some things aren’t really that good, and exact values will most certainly change. And perhaps a few of these were suggested already, but I started making this post a long time ago and I only continued(and finished) working on it today(and I’m tired as hell, too, because this took forever to finish). If something was already suggested, I apologize for that. Feel free to point it out in a reply(a few of these actually got suggested as I was making this post, like making strong barriers in chicken vending machine and similar waves invincible.).
Edit: a few people told me this in the replies, so I have to bring this up here. These should be for max difficulty+whatever the new highest skill will be. The hardest upcoming skill isn’t going to be just a 10% difficulty increase, it’ll be much more than that, so I believe making the bosses much deadlier is the appropriate thing to do for such difficulties.
Several people helped me out with these, so credits go to: Sophodot, Emerald, BoggY, Sufi, Pritish, Franci, Traveller, RoboCat.
