Making better spacecraft more powerful

[Recruit_75]

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:

Spaceship Rebalance Program

There’s no denying that spaceship balance in CIU has a long way to go. From obscenely gigantic hitboxes like the one found in the BX-9 to the lack of improvements made over preceeding craft in the same lineup such as the M408 Cuisiner. And before I go further, I just wanted to state that the spaceships that need rebalancing are not only bombers, but Mullers and H&C’s as well, I don’t want all of the focus of the discussion going towards the bombers only, I want more ships to be rebalanced as wel…

Quite a lot of the data is obsolete with the M400 now having a smaller hitbox than the M404, etc.

@Sophodot

Reduce all main weapon damage by 33-50%

• This is a bit too much however.
  33%-50% damage decrease and 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.

@Sophodot

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.

• 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.

@Sophodot

• 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.

• 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 15= 10+ 15 + 10, which is essentially the same as 16= 11 + 16 + 11 as proven by

@Sophodot

In the current version it goes to ↯11 which doesn’t provide any benefit.

• This makes the 18 and 20 firepower caps the same as the 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 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 10 a double bolt.

@Sophodot

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.

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.

@Sophodot

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.

• 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.