CIU weapon balance program - Part 4: Photon Swarm

Ideas
66

Or you could wait for IA to state the actual changes instead of speculating…

9 Likes
67

IA: destroying weapon charts circa 2018-2020

All I want is to get more visibilty, otherwise my poor BX is gonna self-destruct. This rebalance is perhaps the most hype-inducing one for me lol (yes my favourite weapon is photon dont judge me pls)

5 Likes
68

Speculating and essentially repeating what the original post says.

9 Likes
69

I’m not sure if the firerate changes will be possible since the game treats this as “fire every 0.0X seconds”

2 Likes
70

Photon Swarm might be my new favorite weapon after this…

3 Likes
72

I’ve added a limited homing ability. This is something I’ve wanted to put in the game since CI3, but technical limitations prevented me from doing so. The main issues were that deforming is very expensive and that that homing projectiles require a lot of network bandwidth. Luckily, CIU doesn’t have multiplayer games (yet), so let’s sweep that problem under the rug for now.

The main problem was incorporating the strong projectiles mixed in with the weak projectiles, because combined with the increased fire rate made the DPS curve shoot way up for the last few levels. So I had to temper that by increasing the fire rate inverse-quadratically rather than linearly (so most of the increase happens in the earlier power levels, and less in the later ones because those are also helped by the strong projectile mix-in).

Anyway, this meant that most of the suggestions above aren’t applicable any longer and I eventually decided to work on a clean slate. Other points:

  • It’s perfectly fine to have better manual performance at low power levels, but as the auto fire rate rises, auto takes over. This is intended.
  • The problem with any auto-firing weapon is that it can’t be boosted by manual fire at high power levels (such as e.g. Utensil or Neutron can). So you have to give it some extra DPS to compensate, but without making it overwhelmingly better than auto Utensil/Neutron. In other words, trying to balance it against manual Utensil or Neutron will make it vastly superior to any other auto DPS. And, believe it or not, auto is how 90% of non-expert players play.
  • I’m uncertain about how much homing ability “is worth” during actual gameplay (i.e., how much DPS players would be willing to sacrifice to have that ability). Try it out and let me know.

Changes made in v.47:

  • Projectiles home-in on targets (strong projectile has greater homing ability).
  • Heat generated and firing rate now follow inverse-quadratic rather than linear progression.
  • Power level 3 is now equivalent between auto and manual fire.
  • Overheat time @ power 10 increased to 10 s (from 3.8s)
  • Projectile damage: 100/170
  • Strong projectile appearance: 10% @ 6, 20% @ 7, 30% @ 8, 40% @ 9, 50% @ 10, 100% @ 20.
  • 25% thinner weaker projectiles, 15% thinner strong projectiles
  • Projectiles are now more translucent

Heat (0-10 power): 0.100 0.085 0.072 0.060 0.050 0.042 0.034 0.029 0.025 0.023 0.022 0.022
Firing (auto) period (in s): 0.250 0.212 0.178 0.147 0.121 0.099 0.081 0.067 0.057 0.051 0.049 0.049

13 Likes
73

Are the stronger projectiles on lvl <20 colored orange?

1 Like
74

Yes they are maybe.

75

Yes…

5 Likes
76

Shame. No more excitement from hitting max power level…

5 Likes
77

The problem with Photon Swarm’s first 5 levels at present isn’t all that related to having its manual fire rate be higher. Take Hypergun for example. Its manual fire rate is higher on early power levels, but when you take a powerup, you get some sort of upgrade - a new projectile, an improvement to an existing projectile, etc.

Photon Swarm only had an automatic fire rate boost, and that’s the problem Galba was talking about. I propose 2 solutions.

  1. What do you think of having the manual fire rate upgrade along with the automatic fire rate, kind of like with Corn Shotgun, but manual stops at 3/5 (whatever you think better)?

  2. Having projectile upgrades of some sort from 0-3?
    This one might already be implemented I didn’t read everything carefully now. I have in the past but not at present. So I will. And I might remove this.

6 Likes
78

Variable manual rate is a bad idea from a user experience perspective.

Besides, it only affects power levels 0-2 now. Hardly worth bothering with.

8 Likes
79

I mean, how often are we excited after doing that for the thousandth time already, knowing the outcome every time? If I understand correctly, the new photons will jump from 50% strongs to 100% strongs on max power, which is still quite an impact IMO.

1 Like
80

I’m just talking about visuals. I’m all for balanced weapons, but I prefer if they can get powered up visually after lvl 20.

1 Like
81

Why? Corn shotgun is like this and I haven’t heard any complains about this particular characteristic of this weapon.

6 Likes
82

Huh. Well, I’d forgotten about that. This was done to limit the otherwise excessive amount of DPS as the power level rises. There’s no such problem with the Photon because manual is only advantageous in low power levels.

6 Likes
83

At least BX users can enjoy the orange photons too.

8 Likes
84

EDIT: My thoughts and recommendations on Photon Swarm here. Please feel free to discuss/agree/challenge those thoughts in this topic too.

I’d totally believe that actually - as a kid playing CI3, manual fire as an idea never even occurred to me. I think it was some stage during CI4 that I figured it out when using Utensil.

I’m actually going to agree with qbus on this one - it’s cooler that way, makes it feel unique as a weapon.

Also, if we are going an always-both route, can we at least get an orange ribbon on the gift? Make it more distinct from Vulcan.

1 Like
85

Changed in v.48 :medal_sports: Idea

7 Likes
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