Turning Perishables to regular Mountables, and some other balance changes regarding gameplay

[_someRandomDude]

Perishables have been a part of the game for a long time, but there’re some undeniable problems regarding their usage, especially when comparing competitive and non-competitive missions. Some Perishables (like Appetite Attractors) are must-haves in order to score high in the leaderboards of those missions, but that also means winning those missions are actually a loss to your key budget due to their cost. On the other hand, they tend to be unused in non-competitive missions, where key efficiency tends to be the more important matter. On top of that, the balance between those items don’t help much to those issues. Another issue comes from the lack of satellite use in missions, where even satellites from alien containers are discarded, which’s likely attributed to the score bonus in competitive missions for not using them (and partly because of how some players view satellites regarding skill). Here are some of my ideas in an attempt to balance those items, as well as giving them enough uses outside competitive missions. (and key dumping purposes qwq…)

• Mountables

  • Perishable tag removed.
  • Mountables can now take a variable amount of slots per unit instead of always taking 1.
    _{Removing the Perishable tag will prevent the usage of those items from being a massive key sink, and also to encourage players to use and experiment them outside of stuff like competitive missions; while items being able to occupy more (or less) than one slot per unit should help with balancing their power, along with the existing stacking limit system.}

• Bullet Spray Expander/Condenser

  • Stacking limit reduced from 8/4 to 4/2 respectively.
    _{Not many changes are needed, since those items do have obvious drawbacks. The reduced stacking limit is to prevent some extreme cases, like 4 expanders reducing spread so much even weapons with significant spread can have near zero spread levels, and stacking 8 expanders on weapons with big spread to cheese comet chases (and maybe terminator chickens). Comets-specific changes should fix most of that problem, however.}

• Thrust Vector Control

  • No other changes other than losing the Perisable tag which’s mentioned above.
    _{IMO the difficulty of firing straight up when using it at high stacks is already enough to lose the Perishable tag without any other nerfs. (thrust vector control techs when qwq)}

• Appetite Attractor

  • Stacking limit reduced from 3 to 1.
  • Slot cost for each unit increased from 1 to 6.
  • (Maybe?) No longer increases the collection radius for gifts and firepowers.
  • (Maybe?) Small score penalty added.
    _{With how dominant Appetite Attractors are in score-based competitive missions even to this day, hopefully this change will actually knock its down a notch or two, so that there’s a reason for people to drop it (and not going unprepared x-x…). Not gonna like though, I’m not a big fan of adding a score penalty to it along with those nerfs, since it actually limits your maximum achievable score, but it could be needed if people can’t collect enough items without it to compensate. The nerf to the collection radius for gifts and firepowers is more to reduce chances of griefing in multiplayer lobbies rather than a nerf to scoring in competitive missions, however it’s one of the less necessary changes to it.}

• Maneuvering Jets

  • Stacking limit reduced from 10 to 3.
  • Slot cost for each unit increased from 1 to 3.
    _{While bombers without jets can be quite weak compared to fighters due to difficulties in dodging, giving bombers too much mobility from jets make them practically better fighters. (wonder if this nerf is too harsh tho…)}

• Invulnerability Extension

  • Stacking limit reduced from 3 to 1.
    _{While Invulnerability Extensions don’t see as much use as some others due to the requirement needed to trigger it, there’s a reason Ironman Competitions are a prime example of their peak cheesing potential: With a single death and 3 Invulnerability Extensions, you’re practically guaranteed to deal enough damage to finish off at least one boss from the extra invulnerability period, nullifying the point of Double Teams. Although, they aren’t too problematic when alone due to the firepower loss, unless when paired with Power Preservers, which will be discussed below.}

• Power Preserver

  • Stacking limit reduced from 3 to 1.
    _{Going down from 10 to 5 and from 10 to 8 is actually a big deal, and I’d prefer to have some of its power be a built-in thing rather than relying on having to mount those. Those being an important part of Invulnerability Extension doesn’t help much either…}

• Eggular Repulsor

  • No other changes than losing the Perishable tag.
    _{While shrinking your hitbox radius by almost 50% at 3 stacks sounds quite strong, actually going out of your way to graze bullets rather than simply dodging them like normal is hard enough in a game with big enough projectile size, so I don’t think this’s one of those items that need nerfing. (i wanna see more people grazing bullets with it…)}

• Speedy Recovery

  • No longer consumed upon use; stacking limit reduced to 1.
  • No longer banned in Space Races; triggerring it there will also give a 3-second time penalty however.
    _{Respawning earlier is not a really strong buff in most cases, so it’s fine to not have it consumed after dying. The time penalty added for dying with it in Space Races is to reintroduce them back here, but also with a reasonable tradeoff.}

• Poultry Payback

  • No longer consumed upon use; stacking limit reduced to 1.
  • Damage now scales with the amount of firepower held right before dying.
  • Slot cost per unit increased from 1 to 2.
  • Triggering Poultry Payback in Space Races will also give a 2-second time penalty.
    _{Other than cheesing some waves in Space Races, its rather pitiful damage makes it an unremarkable item. Scaling with the amount of firepower can at least help it in cases where losing a good amount of firepower from dying actually puts you in trouble.}

• Mass Condenser

  • No longer consumed upon use; stacking limit reduced to 1.
  • Slot cost per unit increased from 1 to 2.
  • No longer banned in Space Races; triggering it there will also give a 2-second time penalty however.
    _{Once the Space Race meta, and after such a long time being banned from it, the big nerf added to it to prevent cheesing in multiplayer lobbies practically killed one of their only uses, so those buffs shouldn’t be too unreasonable to it; although completely removing it from the game is a better solution in my opinion. 50 000 damage to a single target isn’t enough for most bosses, and being a single targets weapon with very limited uses is a no-go in a game that spams fodders.}

• Coolant Canister

  • No longer an Auto-use item; press the fire button when overheated to trigger it instead.
  • Can only hold 2 units per slot instead of 3.
    _{Stacking nerf to reduce Coolant abuse, while the manual activation helps with not wasting it when unnecessary. Also since normally you can’t fire while overheated anyway, overloading the fire button for this specific case isn’t a problem. (hey, technically that means the slot cost per Coolant is increased from 1/3 slots to 1/2…)}

• HUD Damage Indicator / Destruction Meter / Enemy Health Indicator / Pecking Order Revealer / Points Indicator / Progress Meter

  • No longer consumes a slot instead of consuming 1 each.
    _{Damage Indicator / Points Indicator / Destruction Meters are those HUD items that are quite inconsequential, so being able to simply switch it on/off without consuming a slot is a nice quality of change. Not as much for the other three HUD items though, especially for Enemy Health Indicator, so this buff can be reverted back for those.}

• Miscellaneous

  • “Conspicious “No Help” Commendation” and “Outstanding ‘One Man Army’ Medal” awards no longer gives any points.
  • Dares: Darer can pick a skill before daring instead of dares being locked to Rookie; the dared must play the dare with the same skill used as the darer.
  • Galactic Cup: Skill used in missions will increase as you go further: from Rookie in qualifiers, to Seasoned and Veteran in group matches, to Virtuoso and Superstar Hero in knockout matches.
    _{While you can say being able to survive without satellites can be a sign of skill, being able to utilize satellites to the fullest instead of simply ignoring alien containers can be a nice change of pace (and shaking up the meta can be nice~). The two changes below are mostly an easy way to give some extra difficulty to some existing competitive missions. Being locked to Rookie can be quite boring, and better recruits need to be able to handle harder missions, don’t you think~?}

_{um, does anyone have an idea for something fun to dump keys on instead of perishables…}