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