Hi, I am galbatorix and this is my CIU weapon balance program in which I talk about current issues with weapon balance and I propose solutions for them. More info about what my deal is you can find in my original post: CIU weapon balance program by galbatorix I strongly suggest checking it out, if you haven’t seen it yet, so you will fully understand what my goal is. Today I want to talk about Laser Cannon.
As most of you probably know, Laser Cannon is one of the oldest weapons in the Chicken Invaders series, it first appeared in CI2 “The next Wave” and since then it appeared in all CI games. Unfortunately, right now in CIU it is a really hard-to-use and underperforming weapon for various reasons. As always, in my post i am going to present my thoughts on how it could be fixed. The issues with Laser Cannon are:
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Laser Cannon has average DPS and overheats very fast, what makes it strongly inferior to Neutron Gun and Utensil Poker in terms of inflicting damage.
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Laser Cannon has instantly hitting projectiles, doesn’t have autoaim, nor spread and blocks a lot of player’s vision. Those things alone make Laser Cannon a hard-to-use weapon by design and there is nothing to balance it out. (See issue nr 1)
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For no obvious reason, Laser Cannon has a range limitation. Because of that it performs even worse on the waves that are zoomed out, or horizontal.
To be honest. Laser Cannon is actually a pretty tricky example when it comes to balancing. Despite having 13000 DPS on max power (which actually isn’t that low compared to other guns), Laser Cannon is still really bad weapon. Things listed in problem nr 2 alone make using this weapon difficult. Having projectiles with instant travel time, together with no spread and lack of auto-aim, forces player to always be directly under the target to deal any damage. Moreover, it totally blocks vision when fired. Because of all that, using this gun requires not only being in the danger zone all the time, but also makes it harder for player to see incoming projectiles.
Being under a chicken and not being able to see when it layes egg is very problematic on its own. So even if Laser Cannon had damage output similar to Utensil Poker and Neutron Gun, it still wouldn’t be worth taking, because of the other negative traits that this gun has. The problem is, that those traits come directly from the design of the weapon and cannot be changed that easily. So the only way to balance this weapon is to increase its damage output beyond Utensil Poker’s. Also, the range limitation should be removed, because it really serves no purpuse in game like CIU. So to balance Laser Cannon, I suggest the following steps:
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Remove Laser Cannon’s range limitation.
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Increase overheat time from 4,5 seconds to 5,5 seconds.
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Increase damage of all Laser Cannon’s projectiles by 50%.
Such changes would give Laser Cannon 17550 DPS at power 10 and 19500 DPS at max power, which is higher than dps of Utensil Poker(14625 and 18525 respectively) and slightly increase its insanely short overheat time to playable level, while still leaving Laser Cannon’s “damage done before overheating” lower than that of Utensil Poker and Neutron Gun.
Laser Cannon after such changes would be worth taking as a “super DPS gun” , especially in scenarios where you need to deliver as much focused damage as possible in short amount of time. It would be excellent choice against most bosses, especially ones like Crabs, UCOs, Mysterious Ship and some variants of big chickens. However, its huge damage output would be balanced by really short overheat time and other disadvantages listed in “Problem nr 2” (Instant hit, blocking vision, no spread), so in the situations that require constant high DPS for an extended period of time(omnidirectional onslaught for example), other weapons would still be more desirable.
Results of the changes proposed by me you can see here:
To summarize, I think that Laser Cannon could be improved by:
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Increasing time to overheat from 4,5s to 5,5s.
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Removing range limitation.
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Increasing damage of weak projectile from 100 to 150
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Increasing damage of medium projectile from 200 to 300
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Increasing damage of strong projectile from 300 to 450
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Increasing damage of very strong projectile from 400 to 600
Such changes would:
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Increase DPS of Laser Cannon to the point that it is worth taking despite its major drawbacks that come from the design of the weapon. (Problems nr 1 & 2 solved)
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Make it perform properly on waves that are horizontal or zoomed out. (Problem nr 3 solved)
(Small note here. If in practice such changes would make Laser Cannon too strong, or still not enough strong, adjusting the overheat time should be enough to balance it out in both ways.)
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. The Riddler is next on the list. You can also check out my previous posts:
20 - 5 lasers, 600 damage each
Idea