Godslayer Balance Essay

[Chenzo-]

Ignore my personal situation here- that’s the mentality of the head developer Haste. Fine tune everything to his own hideously unbalanced view, suck any fun from anyone else then gaslight the player saying it’s a skill issue..

I've literally spent the last four years nerfing myself and other players who have invested a lot of time into Getting Good™. This is a fact. Both if you objectively look at the changes made to the mod (shield hitboxes the average joe can actually hit, mechanics that protect against instakills, easy access to far higher velocity guns, upscaling smaller fighters and bombers, reduced strafe force further increase hit-rates) and if you look at outcomes.

Since we all know anecdotes are the best types of evidence, however, I also have one of those to go with my Cold Hard Facts™. Yesterday I flew my GRN| Lynx to Leeds. There, I fought two CDI Light Fighters (Arrows, specifically): MadVillain and Jammi. Neither of these players is currently at the top of the PvP food chain. Running 900 m/s Railguns, however, they were able to do very respectable damage to me in a 2v1, and eventually downed me with the help of a third ship that didn't involve itself until one of the two Arrows was taken down. Now, I'm sure I'm at least a little washed, but a few years ago I would've expected to take down three ships there and walk away with over half my regens remaining, probably with the help of some cheeky Mini Razor (+ Wardog) action.

The fact that I didn't, however, is a good thing. It means our changes are doing what we hoped they would. Now all that remains is convincing more players to slap on high velocity class 1s by default.

As for the rest of your post, I'm just going to copy what I told you on Discord:

DEFILER does 720 shield damage for 368.8 energy per shot, twice a second, for 1440 DPS, at 600 m/s and 540 meters range.
QUASAR does 808 (+12%) for 750 energy per shot (+103.8%), one and a half times per second, for 1212 DPS (-15.8%), at 650 m/s and 535 meters range.

You wanted to compare these two guns, claiming the QUASAR would come out of the comparison favorably. It doesn't. QUASARs are cool but horrendously inefficient. Pretending power usage is a non-factor while this thread is the last thread in this subforum to see any activity seems a little silly to me.

I am aware that you used to have objectively insanely broken DEFILERs. However, you also had them in an era where the Bergelmir was a Medium Bomber. "Things were different back then" -- by which I mean that balance was simply absent. A Sabre with effectively 9 guns (due to the ludicrous shield DPS of DEFILERs) still likely wasn't as powerful as a boxing Odin. However, we've moved on since, and balance works with much thinner margins, so having guns that are just straight-up busted doesn't work anymore.

DEFILERs provide a lovely niche of punchy, low refire pulses that pair very well with shotguns. They're not exceptional, and they're definitely not bad. They're just balanced. You're asking for something explicitly not balanced, and I'm just not convinced we want that in the game.

Damage per hit vs statistics ‘damage per second’ only applies to those who can hit at a high percentage rate.

Actual shot landed on an enemy vs ‘potential damage across more shots’ is a huge difference.

A gun which does 720 shield and I think 50 hull damage per shot vs a gun which does 800 something shield and 700 something hull damage is wildly better. Shotgun loadouts fire one or two volleys per a few turns, the quasar will always, always be a much better gun.

My main point in our conversation on the Defiler topic was that it was robbed entirely of its RP’d purpose- To deliver astonishing levels of shield damage, next to no hull damage, next to no range & low speed and requiring huge levels of energy- Advanced Inferno technology(inferno’s also robbed of their actual purpose now)


By making them consume less energy and have a better ‘statistical damage per second output in shield damage’ despite the fact it does less damage per shot robs the gun of what it was- Make a different code with those stats if you want- it’s not a Defiler.

This is more of a rp/balance issue as opposed to direct balance issue- I used the example to highlight your elites mentality with ‘wool over the eyes, b-sh1t baffles brains” techniques you use to try and justify actions.


The higher part of your post literally just highlights that you’ve nerfed things - we know, it’s what everyone is complaining about.

You also have been directly responsible for many good things like fixing hitboxes etc I’m sure.It doesn’t take away from the distinct lack of balance seen in every other over complicated joy sucking change in mechanics.

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