Making better spacecraft more powerful

This will probably ruin the game for me and other people if it gets implemented, but here goes:

People who know technical details and don’t just rely on in-game help know that more expensive spacecraft don’t have that much of a benefit. H&C 101 has a 18% key bonus and is powerful enough to make it an attractive flagship for many people. The only compelling upgrades over it are M404 and BX-9, for 4-5 satellites and maximum possible firepower in the case of the bomber. So, the idea was:

  • Reduce all main weapon damage by 33-50%
  • H&C scout series remains with one weapon pylon, except H&C 101 is limited to ↯6, enough to max out the Moron Railgun starting weapon, H&C 201 has ↯8, and H&C 301 has ↯10, which would be like a regular spacecraft.
  • Müller fighter series gets two pylons instead, effectively turning them into what bombers are now. M400 is limited to ↯16 (or ↯8 on each pylon), M404 to ↯18 and M408 to ↯20.
  • BX bomber series receives a third pylon at the nose of the ship and has the combined firepower of a fighter and a scout. The middle pylon increases in firepower at each level while the two secondary pylons alternate as they do now. Such as: on ↯1=↯1+↯1+↯0, ↯5=↯3+↯5+↯2, ↯10=↯5+↯10+↯5. The power limits remain unchanged, ↯14/↯16/↯18/↯20.
  • Just like now, increasing firepower by ↯10 over the limit adds one level to every pylon. Except if the pylon is already at ↯10 then it increases to the max firepower of ↯20. In the current version it goes to ↯11 which doesn’t provide any benefit.
  • These changes should be mentioned in the item descriptions, such as
    H&C 101 Firepower 1x6
    M404 Firepower 2x9

TL;DR Simpler changes to differentiate spacecraft:

  • Give H&C 201 and M404 two engines; H&C 301 and M408 three engines; to keep the number of engines different and consistent with how they are on bombers.
  • Give the M408 6 satellites rather than 4. It’s the most expensive ship. I’d say give only 3 satellites to M404, but it would look weird no matter how you placed them.
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Hmmm, maybe I agree but disagree on that

Why do you need weapon tweak on spacecrafts, there is no possibility that some spacecrafts might not reach the max power (which is fp20)

The H&C pylon tweak is kind of confusing to me, why is should only reach at the number limit?

The BX pylon tweak is fine, same with the muller ships.

But the tweak you made on the H&C 101 is like you are discouraging people to buy that ship since it has the biggest key bonus

Having extra engines on their successors are absolutely fine for me.

That’s all I can say

I agree that the M408 and H&C 301 are underwhelming compared to their predecessors, especially the M408 which is arguably worse than its predecessor, the M404. The H&C 201 also suffers the same problem. And so I made a post with a somewhat similar goal to yours, balancing ships:

Quite a lot of the data is obsolete with the M400 now having a smaller hitbox than the M404, etc.

  • This is a bit too much however.
    33%-50% damage decrease and :zap: 10 on the H&C 301 with other H&C ships having even worse firepower limiters is frankly excessive.
    20-33% damage decrease should be enough along with cutting off the satellite slot for the H&C 101, one slot for the H&C 201 and two for the H&C 301. If the H&C price remains the same, the H&C 201 price should be around 1100-1250 and the H&C 301 price 1300-1550.
  • With the current health of most chickens and stuff, double pylon mullers flying at full speed are going to be TOO OP. Buffing the enemy health might help somewhat as this’ll make enemies quite the bullet sponge against H&C’s and make the latter two spaceship classes much better in comparison to H&C although the health might have to be doubled or such which might cause chickens to be too tanky when fighting with a H&C.
    The more concerning part is the massive increase in bullet count for the primary ship class for most players might cause a noticeable decrease in performance and increased difficulty seeing enemy projectiles, as a considerable fraction of the CIU playerbase have weak computers.
  • I don’t know if this feature is limited to the BX or applies to all spaceships, but in the case of the former, the formulae would result in :zap: 15= :zap: 10+ :zap: 15 + :zap:10, which is essentially the same as :zap: 16= :zap: 11 + :zap: 16 + :zap: 11 as proven by
  • This makes the :zap: 18 and :zap: 20 firepower caps the same as the :zap: 16 cap.
    Admittedly though, I might not have fully understood what all of that meant, or where which rule applies.
    *Having said that, the problem of excessive bullet counts would once again be worse with this idea. iA likely made the Lightning fryer a double bolt in :zap: 10 to maintain decent visibility on bombers with 4 bolts instead of 6, this change would mean bombers have 6 bolts, ruining iA’s whole idea of making :zap: 10 a double bolt.

I don’t really know if it’s confirmed that the Authentic Hero used the Muller 404-Pi, but if it’s not actually confirmed, then retconning it to the Muller M400 would actually make sense as both ships have two satellite slots and a single engine.

  • The sudden jump from 2 → 3 → 6 would be odd, also it would have more satellites than the BX-9, and the point of bombers is to have better firepower in all regards compared to regular fighters. So you can either keep the 4 satellites of the M404-Pi or reduce the satellite count of the new M408 to 5.

So overall, while I understand the desire to balance spacecraft, the changes are pretty problematic. with Mullers being on average over twice as powerful as H&C, and the bombers being only ~1.5 times as powerful in later power levels compared to Mullers.

In other words, the powercreep from an H&C to a Muller is generally greater than the powercreep from a Muller to a bomber with this idea. A speed nerf which is not as extreme as the current bombers to these new Mullers would help a lot regarding balancing.

Overall 4/10, could’ve been decent with some changes.

Instead of blanket nerfing it, I’d suggest giving it a special place in the roster. I’d remove fp20, and instead buff lower firepowers so that hcs are more viable than Mullers on short missions, but are outperformed by the latter on longer missions. If you want an analogy, think of Short/Long Gears in Need For Speed, where Short Gears performs better on shorter tracks with tighter turns, but is outperformed by Long Gears on longer tracks. H&C gains more damage faster than the Muller, however it has less maximum damage. As for Bombers, I think a dedicated balance program has to be there for them, though the people who ran the numbers last time have threatened to block should they find another spreadsheet in their dms.

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