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. Because of the Heavy Bomber’s release, this blog series took a solid hit, but I decided to continue it anyways despite that inconvinience. So I am back, and today I want to talk about Riddler.
Since its release in CI5, Riddler is one of the most underperforming weapons in the roster. Many problems and weird design choices show up when using this gun. Some of them are unique and only apply to this particular weapon. As always, in my post i am going to present my thoughts on how it could be fixed. The issues with Riddler are:
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Its damage output is horribly low. Damage-wise, on higher power levels, Riddler is outperformed by almost every other weapon in the game.
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On low power levels Riddler has very bad accuracy that later improves. This feature seems to serve no purpose in the game and only makes already a bad weapon even worse and less reliable.
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Many of Riddler’s power upgrades do not give any damage increase, only slightly improve its accuracy. This is the flagship example of “useless power upgrades” in CIU.
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Despite being an automatic weapon, Riddler’s manual fire rate cap(20 shots/s) is almost twice as high as its automatic fire rate. Because of that, Riddler can be easily exploited by using autoclicking programs.
As you see, there is a lot wrong with Riddler. In my opinion it is the worst designed weapon in Chicken Invaders history. Horrible accuracy on low power levels, multiple useless power upgrades and exploitable mechanics. All that on top of the abysmal damage output. To put it into perspective: Max powered Riddler does 7344 DPS, when Utensil Poker does 18525. That’s more than 2,5 times the DPS of Riddler!
This means that even with autoclick exploit that doubles Riddler’s damage output, it is still inferior to Utensil Poker and Neutron Gun. Riddler is that bad at the moment. Aside from making Henterprise bossfight “easy mode”, this weapon has absolutelly no use in game right now and is outclassed by pretty much everything else.
That said, I belive Riddler can be fixed quite easily. Let’s start with problem nr 2.(bad accuracy on low power levels) In order to solve this problem I suggest to:
- Change Riddler’s accuracy on power levels 0-9 to be exactly the same as its accuracy on lvls 10 and max.
This is a very simple change, but should greatly improve Riddler’s performance. Equalizing Riddler’s spread would make it more reliable weapon on lower power levels. On top of that, when “increasing accuracy” powerups are gone, there is more place for actual damage increase per power level. This brings us to the problems nr 1 & 3(insufficient damage and useless power upgrades). In order to solve those problems I suggest following steps:
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Increase damage of Riddler’s projectiles from 80 to 100.
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Change amount of projectiles in lvl 0 volley from 2 to 1.
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Change scaling of Riddler’s volley to 1 additional projectile per power level on levels 0-9. 2 additional projectiles for 9->10 transition, 3 additional projectiles for 10->max transition.
After such changes useless power upgrades would be gone and Riddler would have 15300 DPS on max power, which is very similar to the damage output of my suggested Ion Blaster and Photon Swarm reworks. In such scenario, Riddler would be interesting alternative to those two weapons thanks to having focused fire instead of spread or swarm, but still maintaining very high projectile count. On top of that, with its 18 seconds of overheat time, Riddler would be perfect for any scenario in which player is required to fire in extended periods of time. For Egg Cannon, Henterprise and Nasty Surprise, Riddler would be one of the best choices.
15300 DPS is also higher than current Riddler’s DPS when using autoclick programs, so such change would still be a buff for players that use this exploit. This brings me to the problem nr 4, which is the autoclick exploit itself. To deal with it I suggest simple solution:
- Change Riddler’s manual fire rate cap from 20 to standard 6,5 shots/s.
That’s a a really simple change, but it would elliminate the exploit completely. With massive buff to Riddler’s damage output, removal of this exploit is mandatory.
Here you can see results of the proposed changes:
To summarize, I think that Riddler could be improved by:
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Increasing its accuracy on power levels 0-9 to match the accuracy on levels 10 & max.
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Increasing damage of its projectiles from 80 to 100.
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Decreasing amount of projectiles in lvl 0 volley from 2 to 1.
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Changing scaling of Riddler’s volley to 1 additional projectile per power level on levels 0-9.
2 additional projectiles for 9->10 transition, 3 additional projectiles for 10->max transition. -
Decreasing its manual fire rate cap from 20 to standard 6,5 shots/s.
Such changes would:
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Increase Riddler’s DPS to the viable level. (Problem nr 1 solved)
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Make Riddler more reliable weapon on lower power levels. (Problem nr 2 solved)
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Remove its several useless power upgrades. (Problem nr 3 solved)
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Remove the possibility to exploit Riddler’s manual fire rate by using multiclick programs. (Problem nr 4 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. I will make a post about next weapon, so stay tuned.
You can also check out my previous posts:
(Wider hitbox, less damage)
0. I’d suggest doing 30 degrees instead, like on current 