Suggestion on Absolver’s Overdrive, how about making the charge itself release automatically when fully charged? You don’t really need to hold it for a long time when you need rapid damage. Since the main purpose of overdrive is burst damage in exchange of faster overheat.
Being able to precisely time your releases is a big part of the Absolver’s strategic use.
15 Likes
Opinion + suggestion as of v54
- Neutron Gun
It became a slow firing gun. It’s kinda sad, but I can adapt. It does better after 0.35 -> 0.315 change though, but compared to other weapons performance, it kinda falls behind. In fact, its dps & dpv falls behind laser cannon at later fp.
Proposed change:
B2 damage (700 -> 750)
B3 damage (1100 -> 1200)
Not the smoothest progression, but it will make dpv closer to laser, dps close to utensil, and damage before overheat close to Ion.
I suspect what makes it performing below average is that it’s slow firing, slow travelling, not spreading combined. I wish its overdrive could be faster. Rapid firing with short duration (because I’m sure overdrive will be limited), to imitate burst attack it did when manual firing was a thing.
Will update the rest later.
Its DPV falls behind on 
7, 8, and 9. Obviously the DPS is lower, Laser has its short overheat time to counterbalance the 20.4k DPS.
So unless you’re proposing giving it a 6 to 7 second overheat time, damage output that high is not going to work.
It’s fine damage-wise. Its DPS is barely lower than UP’s, save for 8 due to the damage progression not being particularly smooth (which I’m planning to fix with some slight damage and fire rate tweaks). The main complaint I’ve been seeing was the slow fire rate, but I haven’t been explicitly told by anyone to make it faster so far.
I’d rather have us use the same base formula for all weapons instead of trying to balance recharge time with increase to fire rate separately for each weapon.
I think what you haven’t considered is
This part cause it has low accuracy thus low actual damage output, so I think it can help a bit, dpv wise, damage before overheating non-boss wise.
It’s in overdrive part.
I wonder how it will be like. But please consider overdrive works differently among weapons. It complements some, it overpowers some, it makes normal firing obsolete for some, etc.
This took way longer than it should’ve.
I pretty much lost almost all interest in the game, so this is likely the last batch of reworks that I’ll be putting out.
Changes
Ion Blaster:
- Damage: 340/480 → 300/425
- Firing interval: 0,250 → 0,220
- Overheat time: 8,5s → 8s
Fire rate buff as per @OneWingLunarian’s request (though to a lesser extent). Slight overheat nerf.
Neutron Gun:
- Damage: 330; 660; 990
- Volley changes:
–1: 1xB2 → 2xB1
–9: 4xB2 + 1x B3 → 2xB1 + 1xB2 + 2xB3
–10: 2xB2 + 3xB3 → 3xB2 + 2xB3 - Firing interval: 0,263 (constant)
- Overheat time: 9,5s → 10s
Initially, I thought the only changes I’d be making would be to the damage values (to smooth out the progression) and increasing the fire rate.
Unfortunately, even after smoothing the damage progression out, it underperforms on low power due to the larger DPS increase on 9. Due to this, I decided to rework some of the volleys.
Let’s go over those changes now.
1
Same damage, but with two projectiles. The point of this change is to give it more volume of fire to help with its performance against groups.
9 and 10
Changed to address the issue mentioned above.
I also have two designs for the 8 volley, which would fit the revamped progression better than the current volley (damage remains the same). Which one to choose depends on what we want: do we want to keep 5 projectiles (which would fit in with 9), or do we want to make it more focused (which would fit in with 7)?
Technically this change is entirely optional, so I decided to put it to a vote.
-
The old reliable “middle finger” -
Focused -
Dispersed
0 voters
Laser Cannon:
For now:
- Overheat time: 6s → 6,5s
Slight change to make it a bit more manageable.
In the future:
We have to consider reworking the volleys from the ground up. As it is, its damage scales in such a way that its starting damage output is way too low. This combined with its low volume of fire on low power makes it pretty much useless.
I showcased a possible volley rework on the Discord server (bolt damage 400/600/800/1000), and while I didn’t receive any objections, I’m not sure if I’m quite happy with the volley designs (the S2 sheet contains those altered volleys, if you’re interested). Reworking the volleys could also be paired with a visual overhaul, as the Laser Cannon does obscure the view quite a bit (and to be honest, it looks pretty bad on bombers).
Vulcan Chaingun:
- Damage: B1: 100 → 125
Slight low power buff.
Lightning Fryer:
Damage multiplier: 1
Chaining delay: 0
Multi-hit penalty: 0,75
While I originally dropped removing the chaining delay due to the presence of cowards, it turns out that this change makes chaining way more reliable. To the point where, in my opinion, it doesn’t really need its damage increased past the raw values. My only issue is that multi-hit is initially rather ineffective against squawkers (since you have no way of getting closer other than waiting) - making multi-hit slightly more lenient could be considered.
Plasma Rifle:
For now:
- Base damage: 10: 2000 → 2100; 20: 2400 → 2600
- AoE multiplier: 0,185
either: - Damage scaling: 1,3 → 1,5
or: - Firing interval: 0,200 → 0,160
- Damage scaling: 1,3 → 1,2
or - Whatever viable setup that gives the same DPS
The first damage scaling change is the one I initially planned, the second one was prepared in response to @OneWingLunarian’s suggestion to increase the fire rate.
The overall premise of these changes is to increase the base damage output to something more appropriate for its overheat time, and make first steps to reducing the OP factor of the AoE.
In the future:
As suggested by @fractorial, consider experimenting with damage sharing for the AoE.
Utensil Poker:
- Damage: 375/750 → 325/650
- Firing interval: 0,300/0,280 → 0,258/0,241
Changed in response to complaints about the slow fire rate.
Boron Railgun:
- Damage: B1: 105 (max 194) → 110 (max 203)
Slight low power buff.
Photon Swarm:
- Damage: 120/300 → 100/300
- Fire rate (base/increase): 3,33/1 → 4/0,933
Low power fire rate increase, readjusted regular photon damage. Also bumps up the damage jump back up to 20%.
Positron:
- Damage: 70; 130; 190; 250; 310; 380; 450; 520; 590; 660; 750; 930
- Firing interval: 0,075
- Ramp multiplier: 1,5x
I tried working with splitting, but I can’t really figure out a way to have it balanced. Its multi-hit performance is quite irregular compared to chaining, and the chaining delay only serves to make it less reliable.
Fire rate was increased to 13,33/s to allow for dropping damage per shot to limit the weapon’s ability to one shot enemies on high difficulty without the damage bonus.
It may or may not need an overheat buff further down the line.
Corn Shotgun:
- Damage: B1: 465 → 475
- Fire rate (base/increase): 1,45/0,255 → 1,55/0,245
A slight damage buff and low power fire rate increase.
Absolver Beam:
- Damage (uncharged): 130 - 1080; 1300
- Damage (full): 2600 - 21600; 26000
- Damage sharing: 0,675
- Initial heat cost: 0,08
- Heat drain rate: 0,07
The numbers might be ugly, but at least it kinda works. The next step after this would be to see how much it’d benefit from overdrive.
That’s it for now. The overdrive section will be posted at a later date, assuming I can find the time and energy to write it out.
Sheets: v55 - Google Drive
S1 contains: 5/s Plasma, Neutron DPS approximation, and a failed attempt at balancing Positron with splitting.
S2 contains: 6,25/s Plasma, Neutron volley rework, initial Laser volley rework, max damage splitless Positron.
14 Likes
Why people do favor “focused” more? 3 projectiles with 990 damage each will overkill and most damage output is wasted. Not mentioning probability to miss target too.
Usage stats for users with 10+ hours of playtime, data collected from 15 June - Oct
Done
Done (no change to lv 8)
Done
Done
Done
Done
Done
Done
Done
No changes. I want to keep the splitting mechanic, and the usage stats above indicate it’s a reasonable choice without being overpowered.
Done.
No changes. The 0 damage sharing change was independently made around the time of this post, so usage data is outdated. Will revisit this after a couple of weeks.
Idea
26 Likes
B3: 350 → 375
Bro, are you even reading the topic’s date? It was dead until you revived it again!
1 Like
I bump it for 1 reason tho.
Is the topic locked?
No? Then it shouldn’t be considered dead.
I disagree with that one.
- I don’t think Vulcan needs a buff on high power (19700 dps would be way too much).
- Yeah, the progression isn’t completely linear, but it’s fine.
5 Likes
So it’s now been a couple months.
How are we feeling about Absolver, everyone? (And what does the usage data look like now, btw? For all weapons)
3 Likes
I’d like to suggest a damage nerf for plasma, and a longer overheat time.
3920 damage is just overdoing it.
2 Likes
Haven’t tested these numbers, I’m just eyeballing it.
- Damage scaling: 1,25 (some ugly numbers on
1 and 3 , bit higher damage than the old values (16250 vs 15600). - AoE multiplier: 0,2 (a bit over half as much damage as the old pre-buff AoE, what do you reckon?)
- Overheat time: probably 7 seconds, could maybe be pushed to 7,5 due to the low rate of fire (and therefore faster effective overheat)
Overall, the premise of the buff was so that Plasma wouldn’t be rubbish against bosses. The problem, of course, is that giving it more raw damage screws with its balance in regular waves. The old 15600 DPS was acceptable pre-overdrive, because you could just use manual and have a 13 second overheat time to compensate for the sub-par damage output. I thought that giving it 19.5k would work, but it’s just straight up busted.
I guess you could[citation needed] bring the scaling back to 1,2 (same 15600 dps), AoE multiplier of 0,3 or thereabouts and make it so that bosses take damage from both the beam and the AoE. Or you could add the damage ramp back, but make it so that it either only works on bosses or always resets on target change.
6 Likes
I noticed that any auto-lock weapons (especially Plasma and Positron) are comparatively superior than non auto-lock weapons in non-boss waves. This is more noticable in ironman challenge. I suspect this is because they gurantee hit while most enemies become very deadly to come nearby.
TL;DR: they’re strong by design.
Even I, a frequent user of vulcan chaingun, I consider it excessive
I can see the changes there.
Can we buff the firerate of moron-railgun?