Added to v.119 
Idea
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No way.
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I am shocked, this is the first item that I suggested that got added.
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Yeah, this:
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Thanks to @PlasmaX and @Starbrockle for remembering me.
May I ask you @InterAction_studios about its price and stack-ability? Considering its utility, I think it can significantly change players’ strageties and become a kind of basic equipment along with extra lives. I’m partially agree to @ChickenGaming’s suggestion, he said:
The main problem here is that when you’ve lost a life, your firepower gets nerfed severely, meaning you’d have more chance of dying again the more you play, which means an even lower chance of winning, more keys lost, and frustration keeps on rising, to the point where the player would simply leave, and never to be seen again.
(I can’t quote it because the topic was closed automatically)
To solve that problem, I think it should be rather cheap and stackable to encourage the use of it. I suggest selling 10 units for 50 keys (5 x 10) just like extra lives.
Stack-ability is slightly problematic to decide. It’s good for newbies but might buff a lot for pro players on high difficulties. I guess we need time to test and balance it and it’s good when we are still in early access. Let’s be generous, make it mountable to unlimited slots (though it won’t make sense if they exceed the lives you have) and each slot can hold up to 5 units. Make sure to reset all competitive missions to maintain fairness or temporary ban it from them. Then we will consider balancing later by players’ feedbacks. It’s gonna be a huge change for the game.
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I still think reworking Extra Lives is still better since with Extra Lives being what it is as of right now, you’re investing on an item that overall, reduces the chance of success in the long run if it ever gets used.
Dying already takes some keys away from you, so I’d only find it fair if the nerf you get after dying isn’t too big, to justify for the keys lost when that item gets used.
I also find that a solution that asks you to invest even more keys just to get this “buff” (that you may or may not even use throughout the fight) just increases the amount of keys lost once the mission’s ended. (Which is most likely why I won’t be using this as I don’t die as often now, it’ll be a waste)
Key investment is a pain to go through, and I hate having to do the math myself, but I had to if I want to earn keys while playing instead of losing them, which kinda takes away the fun of it if I was more of a newbie who had just realized this fact.
Imagine explaining how to invest keys to newbies so they could actually win keys and use the keys they won properly to do more missions that could win them more keys, and so on … for a more positive feedback loop.
Like, right now, whenever I do a mission, I always calculate on the top of my head, how much keys I’ve actually used, and compare that to the final keys I’ve got just to decide if I should be happy with what I’ve done. It’s definitely not fun to tell a newbie all of this.
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Ah yes @ChickenGaming, I’m talking about making it auto-use instead of perishable but it will be more expensive in invest in. For now, to follow your idea entirely will make an enormous change to the game, though it’s acceptable and understandable at some point. I suggest another rework for it:
Implement the ability to lose less FPs for the H&C series, suppose it’s newbies’ initial spacecraft. That ability will be decreased for spacecraft with higher weapon power limit, for higher firepowers and for higher difficulties. It make sure that your FP won’t be nerfed so hard if you have low FP, use weak spacecraft or play easy mission. We will need to make more effort to decide the exact numbers for them but I think it’s good enough. What do you think?
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Uhhh… Probably not, if you have more than 5 then if you die then you will lose no FP. 3 units per pack instead.
Eh there is a misunderstand here. You were talking about it as a perishable applied additively anytime you die while I was talking about it as an auto-use applied each time you die. I guess we should poll or let iA decide whether it should be a perishable, an auto-use or an internal change for all players to make dying less brutal.
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Shared
It’s 40 keys for a pack of 3. One goes in each slot. You can mount up to 3 simultaneously (i.e. reduce firepower lost by 1,2, or 3 units)
If it’s auto-use then you can have no more than 1 unit reduction per death, which doesn’t seem worth it.
Making it perishable allows for greater reduction in power lost. If might seem overpowered because it applies to all deaths in a mission, however if you die a lot you are unlikely to be performing well anyway. Plus, as a perishable you lose it at the end regardless, so there’s no benefit in stocking/mounting units “just in case”.
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Eh, each slot can hold 1 or 3 units? And is the number of units equiped limited?
1 unit
Up to 3
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Sorry I forgot to ask this also. How is number of firepowers lost each time I die determined? What is it depend on? Was @ChickenGaming true?
Another thing that could be useful if the rework is taken:
Items that takes a life to properly be used will also be more useful - in particular Poultry Payback.
Tactical usage wise, Poultry Payback is like a Mine, but it deals less damage, doesn’t wipe out projectiles, but the total cost of the Life + PP is cheaper than that of the Mine.
Oh, and it also takes more slots to use 1 of this too.
The only reason why it is an useless item right now is because it’s not worth trading your current firepower, life and medal score status just for something that deals less damage than a Mine, especially in high-firepower situations. And also, slots.
So, there’s a very high chance that this item isn’t more widely in use, and most people who do use it just doesn’t have another purpose for their keys, typically in the late game phase.
But in any case, I still support an Extra Life rework, as this just adds to the pain that is Key Investments.
PS: @QuackQuack the balancing on this post is flawed - I only did some rough work on that, so there’s a high chance for it to not be true.
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Yeah, Poultry Payback and Mass Condenser both work when you die. But they won’t be effective if you die far the enemies (by projectiles for example) or crash on part which not deal damage to them (like crab hands…), which make them even more useless and pointless. I think their can be a option to select whether you want to deal more damage to a single enemy when you crash in, or generate a weaker AoE when you die. You can choose what suit your play die style best, just like booster. I suggest a little buff for single crashing damage (double current is good enough). They will be turned into hardpoints or fleet equipments instead of auto-use.
Poultry is the one that always takes effect upon death. Condensers only activate if you crashed into something that can take damage, and that of course excludes projectiles.
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It’s all depend on the difficult of the mission, and also a number of firepowers which you are taking during a mission. Maybe you will lose a lot of power, example is what will happen to you when you lose 1 live at the nearby end of “Weekly Challenge” mission
Yeah, I see it seems to depend on difficulties and FP level. I wonder if iA can explain exactly what happened.
I mean, I personally would never use it.
Store price wise, it’s 8 lives/unit mounted.
It’ll only be worth it if the chance of winning is the same even when you lose a lot of lives in missions (which it isn’t). And if you do lose a lot of lives in missions, you’re going to be losing even more keys because you had this item on you, regardless of the game’s final result.
The whole stick of this item is to increase your chances of winning by a bit if you die once or twice in a mission, but since missions won/lost doesn’t affect the final key gain in any way, this isn’t an item that’s worth investing if you find Extra Lives a bad investment in the first place.
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