It was too strong before and couldn’t even overheat at low firepower level.
Wow, Positron as shot wayy up. Plasma still remains pretty low, but I wonder how the graph would look when taking into account successful attempts at higher difficulty levels. Also, Absolver isn’t the least used weapon anymore? That’s surprising. I think it has to do with newer players, more casual players using it because it’s more fun to use.
1 Like
Woah, didnt think Laser Cannon is the least popular weapon, even lower than Corn.
Lower than moron railgun.
I’ve decided to break up this batch of reworks into two posts, since several weapons (Laser, Plasma, Positron, Absolver) will require more severe changes and I need a bit more time to cover them. Most changes in this post are simple value tweaks, with a couple of more involved modifications.
Neutron Gun
- Damage: 330/660/990 → 300/600/900
- Interval: 0.263 (3.80/s) → 0.240 (4.17/s)
Overall firerate increase.
Vulcan Chaingun
- Damage: 160/300/420 → 125/250/375
- Base overheat: 7.8s → 8s
Overall damage nerf (same as previously, but with a stronger Strong projectile), slight overheat buff (though mainly to round it up to .5).
In addition to the above changes, we propose reducing Vulcan’s maximum spread to around the same level it has currently when the player has two spread condensers equipped. Such a change would improve its overall usability and stop it from being a requirement for Comet Chase missions (bring its performance in line with other weapons).
Lightning Fryer
- Damage:
140 215 290 395 510 645 780 940 1100 1290 1500 1800
→
160 280 400 530 660 790 920 1050 1180 1320 1500 1800 - Base overheat: 8s → 8.5s
Overall revamp of the progression: mostly linear, stronger on low power
Plasma Rifle
- AoE multiplier: 0.185 → 0.150
It’s possible that Plasma might need an extensive rework in the future. Lowering the AoE’s damage should make it a bit more balanced for now. The issue of its potential rework will be discussed in the next post.
Utensil Poker
- Damage: 310/620 → 300/600
Reduction in damage on 
0-10.
Along with Laser and Riddler, Utensil requires an additional firerate increase on max power to satisfy the requirement of a max power DPS increase in the 20%-25% range. While in Riddler’s case this isn’t particularly noticeable, I’d like to eliminate this issue in the other two weapons. For this reason I made a new max power volley for Utensil, which makes the DPS increase exactly 25%.
Current volley:
New volley: 
This is essentially a modified 10 volley: the central carving fork is replaced with a regular fork, and two additional carving forks are fired from the front weapon pods. The latter two carving forks are fired at half the offset of the ones fired from the rear pods – identical to the two forks on 1.
We’d also like to propose applying a general reduction to Utensil’s spread (similar to Vulcan’s mentioned above), to around the level it’s at currently with two spread condensers equipped. The reason for this change is that after Ion’s volley rework during the first stage of WBP, it became more focused in relation to Utensil, making it much easier for it to dispense concentrated firepower compared to its direct spreadgun competitor.
Boron Railgun
- Damage: 110/180/240 → 120/180/240
Slight buff to weak projectile.
Photon Swarm
Firerate: 4/0.933 (4/s - 13.33/s) (interval: 0.25 - 0.075) → 4.25/0.936 (4.25/s - 13.61/s) (interval: 0.235 - 0.073)
DPS/firerate increase.
It’s possible that Photon’s high firerate will clash with technical limitations of multiplayer (as mentioned here by iA), but it should be fine for now.
Riddler
Interval: 0-10: 0.100 (10/s) → 0.097 (10.31/s); 20: 0.095 (10.53/s) → 0.092 (10.87/s)
Slight DPS/firerate increase
We’d like to once again suggest removing Riddler’s additional spread on low power as it makes the weapon practically unusable for the first few power levels. It reduces its performance artificially, and makes it a terrible starting weapon should a new player buy it as their first.
Corn Shotgun
Interval: 0.625 - 0.222 (1.6/s - 4.5/s) → Firerate: 1.75/0.25 (1.75/s - 4.25/s) (Interval: 0.571 - 0.235)
General rebalance, major firerate increase on low power, re-added the firerate formula to the Excel sheet.
Those are its final values for the foreseeable future. If implemented now, it’ll be a bit underpowered on high power until overdrive is reworked (and therefore can be applied to this weapon), but I think it should be implemented anyway due to the buff to starter firerate (which I’d argue is more important).
Moron Railgun
Damage: 110/220 → 110/165
Interval: 0.145 - 0.145 → 0.145 - 0.095
Overdrive: 33%
Made progression (both projectile damage multipliers and firerate) consistent with Boron, should be more usable overall due to the firerate increase (as mentioned here).
There are now essentially three levels to its progression:
-
1-2 - +110 DPV and firerate increase,
-
3-6 - +55 DPV and firerate increase,
-
7-10 - +0 DPV and firerate increase.
The addition of overdrive was discussed in the same thread, and may be a permanent or temporary measure depending on whether or not Moron will be replaced/removed or not.
Other changes
Most weapons had their low power overheat values modified. The boost was removed from weapons that have a constant hit rate across all power levels (Plasma, Positron), introduced to Riddler, Corn, and Moron, and made less severe on other weapons.
Excel sheet (missing changes to Laser, Positron, and Absolver): https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/702487693636010054/866390831140569088/CIU-WeaponData-v85.override.xls
Edit: updated spreadsheet with missing Riddler buff.
8 Likes
iA, is this some sort of debug/dev mode inside the game?
Small update/revision while we’re still working on the remaining weapons (also in a new post, because you bet I’m going to take the opportunity to bump this to the top).
Boron Railgun
Damage: 120/180/240 → 135/200/265
Heat multiplier: 1.85 → 1.8 (max damage 222/333/444 → 243/360/477)
Overall damage buff. Heat multiplier slightly lowered to allow for a more significant buff to base damage while avoiding complete overkill.
Moron Railgun
Damage: 110/165 → 115/170
Slight damage buff. Deals roughly 85% of Boron’s base damage for corresponding projectiles.
Excel sheet: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/702487693636010054/872189349561782322/CIU-WeaponData-v85.override.xls
6 Likes
Great, at least now Boron won’t be a pushover anymore.
Done 
Done
Done
Done
Done
I don’t want to make it “more like the Ion”. Besides, given my most recent measurements, Utensil is the 2nd most popular weapon after Positron, so it doesn’t really need the boost.
Done
Spread reduced by 40%
Done
Done
Why? When you have a low-power weapon, you’re causing little damage as it is. Why not help the player by giving them a few more seconds of firing before overheat?
Done
Moron’s current damage is 110/220, not 110/165. So you’re in fact proposing a nerf?
15 Likes
The main issue here is not damage but volume of fire. Weapons that fire less projectiles or fire less often at low power have more issues with taking out large quantities of enemies. Generally, weapons that have a constant hit rate across all their power levels don’t really require improved overheat at low levels, at least not in my experience.
Do note that the spreasheet has also introduced improved low power overheat for Riddler, Corn Shotgun and Moron Railgun, which don’t currently have it and would certainly benefit from it.
The boost was lowered across the board, because it was too severe in my opinion.
That change was iterating on the one listed in the first post:
I haven’t changed the Moron’s projectile damage.I have, however, made it fire a bit faster on power 7 and 8 to straighten out its DPS line.
Done I haven’t reduced the overheat time on any weapons, though. Low power levels are (relatively speaking) predominantly used by newcomers, and I’d certainly like to help them as much as I can.
I think Plasma is broken in your Excel. It’s a constant 10s across the board, until max power when it’s basically infinite?
7 Likes
Yeah, it’s broken in the second file. I was using it to test stuff and I didn’t end up reverting it before uploading.
Wow you balanced so many things
A revolution as well. Isn’t that nice ? 
Sometimes yes, but sometimes no
QOL changes on some weapons:
-
Corn shotgun’s spread is quite RNGish, and despite the DPS improvements, an unreliable spread means a less popular weapon. Photon swarm’s RNG was excusable due to its high firerate and homing capabilities, but an unlucky spread can lead to missing out on a multikill or clean sweep bonus. I suggest giving the volleys in
0-4 a fixed spread, with subsequent bullet additions to the volley having RNG spread, so that the weapon still retains some degree of randomness to make it interesting. -
Lightning Fryer needs a slightly smaller cone of spread with the bolts coming from the ship’s front pods. The two bolts often hit different targets and that makes it quite a lot harder to reliably get multikill. Basically, make it easier to get multikill with Lightning Fryer.
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Absolver Beam needs some stopgap fixes. One would be increasing the uncharged shot’s firerate and width, I know you’re supposed to charge the weapon, but it just fails miserably to do anything against fast moving chickens in waves like High-Speed Chase and Centipede among others. Another would be to find a way to deal 1.5-2x bonus damage against bosses with large hitboxes so that shoot the core still takes normal damage but every other boss takes bonus damage cause Absolver’s DPS is poor compared to most weapons.
As always, May the forks be with you!
2 Likes
Why is the middle fork 300 damage instead of a carving fork (600 damage)
The volley needed to have an odd number of regular forks in order for it to deal the specific amount of total damage it needed, and it would’ve looked quite silly if one of those forks was off to the side.
1 Like
Base Volley now is 4500 damage on 20