After a way too long period of procrastination, tying up one last loose end: the Laser Cannon.
Current problems
Laser Cannon suffers from a couple of issues which severely limit its effectiveness at low and mid power levels. Due to the way its volleys are designed, it suffers from subpar damage for most of its progression, as well as very poor hitrate/volume of fire for the first 4 levels.
The first issue is linked to the large total damage ratio between 
0 and 20 volleys. The weapon’s 20/0 ratio is 20, by far the highest in the game (for comparison: Neutron Gun, Utensil Poker and Vulcan Chaingun have the second highest ratio of 15). With the way the progression is laid out, the first three upgrades involve upgrading the single beam, while the following ones either add two more or upgrade them. This means that from 4 onward, the rate at which you gain damage is doubled, which is the cause for this gap
The second one is more clear, as Laser only fires a single beam on 0-3, which means that it’s limited to hitting only one enemy per shot at that point.
Overall, for a weapon that was meant to trade overheat time for raw DPS, that description only really fits Laser at 8 and above. Below that, it’s rather underpowered for what it is.
Possible solution
The idea, naturally, is to fully rework Laser’s volleys in a way that eliminates these two issues. Basing the new set off of Neutron Gun’s volleys would get the job done, but we ideally want to avoid making Laser more similar to other weapons. Instead, there is a way to get the exact same damage scaling that Neutron has, while giving it more of a unique identity.
The plan is to essentially recycle the CI2 version of the weapon. This changes the damage scaling such that low power levels become stronger, and nullifies the hitrate issue by making the first two upgrades add a beam instead of increasing its damage. The original 20 volley is moved down to 10 (disregarding the double damage bolts it has, of course), and max power either receives a completely new volley or a rate of fire increase.
There is one thing to consider with this change. Aside from a possible version of 20, the weapon will no longer fire a maximum of 5 bolts per shot, but only 3. While this will lower the weapon’s hitrate on 8-10, it allows us to amp up its firerate beyond Ion’s, and even beyond Hypergun’s starting firerate, making it the fastest firing weapon of its formerly manual kind. IA has previously raised a concern that the changes implemented thus far have brought the firerates of some weapons too close together, so I’d imagine this particular aspect of the rework would be a welcome one.
The beam damage is based directly off of CI2’s values, which means that damage doesn’t increase linearly between different beam levels. Instead, the damage ratios of upgraded beams compared to the B1 beam are 1.5, 2 and 4 for the B2, B3 and B4 beams, respectively.
The proposed values are as follows:
- Damage: 250, 375, 500, 1000
- Firing interval: 0.180 (0.144 on 20 if it doesn’t receive a new volley)
The firing interval is the same as Laser’s automatic fire interval in CI2 remastered, and its interval when using boosters is the same as the manual one. An interval of 0.144 increases the DPS by exactly 25%, so it works perfectly for 20.
Here is a table that shows the overall performance of the weapon after these changes:
While I reckon that implementing the rework in the state above would be an improvement, some redesigning needs to be considered for a few volleys. Let’s take a look at the full set we have so far, taken directly from CI2:
We have a couple of potential issues here. Firstly, 7 briefly lowers the number of beams fired from 3 to 2. This isn’t necessarily a dealbreaker, but it does lower the weapon’s hitrate at that level, which should ideally be resolved.
Secondly, the B2 beam is only present in one volley, 6. In CI2, this beam used the same sprite as the weak beam, and essentially constituted a stealth buff to the volley’s overall damage. This might make the beam type seem somewhat redundant. There is also no easy way to rework this volley while ditching this beam type and keeping the rest unchanged, so we’re basically stuck with it.
Here’s a version of the set after a couple of revisions:
- The B2 beam is introduced to two other power levels: 4 and 20. The change to 20 matches the DPS increase that the proposed firerate boost would give (+25%), so it can be used as an alternative with no issue.
- 7 is remade from scratch, and now fires 3 beams instead of 2.
Since I can see no real downside to these two changes, I would recommend using this set of volleys as opposed to the fully original one.
Closing thoughts
With this rework finally covered, three smaller issues currently remain on the table:
- Absolver Beam is not compatible with boosters.
- Absolver Beam doesn’t allow for heat values to be set separately for each level.
- Corn Shotgun doesn’t have a weapon group.
All of these issues have been previously brought up in this topic, so unless new developments occur, this will likely be my last major post in this topic.