Hi, I am galbatorix and today I want to present my thoughts on how ion blaster could be changed to fix some weapon balance issues. This is a part of my bigger project regarding weapons. I talked more about it in my original post. CIU weapon balance program by galbatorix I strongly suggest checking it out, if you haven’t seen it yet, because in that post I explain what my plan and idea is.
Ion Blaster is the weapon first introduced in original Chicken Invaders and since then, it appeared in all episodes and now is a part of CIU. Unfortunately, at the moment Ion Blaster is a very underperforming weapon with a number of issues. In this post i am going to present my thoughts on how it could be fixed. The issues of ion blaster are:
1)Ion blaster has a useless firepower upgrade on the levels 2->3 that only increases spread of the weapon. Because of losing focus and no damage improvement, power level 3 is actually weaker and harder to use than level 2.
2)Damage per second of Ion Blaster is strongly insufficient on higher difficulty levels. 9100 dps on max power makes it absolutely unviable on Hard-Elite missions. Even in hands of skilled player. Utensil Poker, while having similar features, outperorms Ion Blaster twice.
3)Despite much lower damage, Ion Blaster has no other advantages over Utensil Poker whatsoever. Because of that, there is absolutely no reason to pick Ion Blaster instead of Utensil in any scenario.
So let’s start with the issue number 1: useless power increase from lvl 2 to lvl 3. In order to fix that, I would suggest the following steps:
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Remove current power level 3 volley.
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Move volleys of power levels 4-10 on power levels 3-9.
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Make new volley for level 10. (Adding 2 single projectiles to the sides of current lvl 10 volley)
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Change max power volley. (Adding 2 single projectiles to the sides of current max power volley)
End result would look like this. (Graphics taken from Chicken Invaders wiki and edited by me)
With that, we have the issue number 1 out of the way. To deal with the issue number 2(insufficient dps) i suggest a simple solution:
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Buff damage of all Ion Blaster projectiles by 50%.
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Nerf time to everheat from 16,5s to 12s, to balance it out a bit.
This change would make single projectile go from 100 to 150 dmg and double from 200 to 300 dmg. Such change (together with solution to the 1st problem) would give Ion Blaster 15600 dps on max power (15600 is close to Neutron Gun, but still noticeably weaker than Utensil Poker’s dps)
Damage dealt before overheating would stay pretty much the same thanks to slight nerf on the overheating time.
With issues number 1&2 fixed, there is only one left. It is the fact that even with the changes i have proposed so far, Ion Blaster would still be weaker than Utensil Poker in every possible situation. It has similar features and does less damage. Because the thing that always defined Ion is its spread, I suggest making said spread its main advantage over Utensil Poker. This could easily be done by replacing double projectiles with 2 single projectiles close to each other. It wouldn’t change damage output in any way, but it would add more utility to Ion Blaster. Higher amout of projectiles would make it a very good choice against waves like Henterprise bossfight, bonus challenge, or supernova missions. In such scenarios, Ion Blaster could be more useful than Utensil Poker. Additionally, it would slightly improve its general performance.(300 dmg projectiles would not be wasted when hitting enemy with 100 hp left) Below you can see how reworked Ion would compare to current Ion Blaster and other weapons.
To summarize, i think that Ion Blaster could be fixed by:
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Replacing double projectiles with 2 single projectiles close to each other.
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Increasing damage of single projectile from 100 to 150.
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Decreasing time to overheat from 16,5s to 12s.
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Removing a lvl 3 volley, moving volleys from levels 4-10 to levels 3-9, and adding 2 single projectiles to the sides of current lvl 10 and lvl max volleys.
Such changes would:
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Remove useless power up from lvl 2 to lvl 3. (problem nr 1 solved)
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Increase dps of Ion Blaster to the viable level. (problem nr 2 solved)
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Make Ion Blaster worth taking instead of Utensil Poker in some situations. (problem nr 3 solved)
So yea, that’s it for now. Remember to share your thoughts in the comments below. If you think, that I forgot about something, or you have a different idea, feel free to tell me. I am interested in all kinds of feedback. Soon I will make a post about next weapon, so stay tuned.
