Hey everyone, thanks for taking the time to read this. I've been playing this game for quite some time now and I've come up with a few ideas on mild balance tweaks.
The 2 main goals of these tweaks are
1. Support more diversity in tactics without drastically buffing or nerfing any existing ones
2. Not to add much development time to implementing these, all of these suggestions can be done without any additional assets
Rebalance Hflak Primary to Secondary Damage Ratio
As it stands currently, The Hflak delivers 45% of it's damage regardless of arming, and then the additional 55% after arming. I'd like to see this go up to more around the 60/40 ratio for 2 reasons
1. Give Hflak a little more close range power, buffing (but still not making practical) double flak galleons and flakfishes
2. Those familiar with damage mechanics know that if you break a part, the remaining damage from the stage that broke it (Primary or secondary) is not transferred to the hull. I've seen a few premature Hflak shots result in the armor breaking, but no permahull damage, if the Primary damage was a bit higher, the chance of secondary doing an extra scratch would increase.
Increase the power of Explosive damage on balloons
The recent changes to the banshee led to a new tactic I rather like, shooting the balloon as I wait for armor to drop, this behavior on all explosive weapons would be nice. My current testing shows that constant buffed greased banshee fire (from 1 banshee) is unable to break a fully watched and chemed balloon ever, changing the modifier to the point where buffed banshee can barely break balloon and non-buffed still can't feels like a good starting point. This would open up cool builds like carro mortar as well.
Increase drogue chutes power and deactivation time
Blenders are fun, but everytime I see one I get incredibly nervous about going mobula, junker or galleon, regardless of the loadout I have. The main issue I have is that while the balloons on galleons and junkers are very close to the pilot, I only have a 2s cooldown where I can keep drogue chute and help repair, if this was increased to around 6-8 seconds, as well as perhaps a 30% slower drogue chute descent, I feel tanking balloon could have utility, though not to the point of making the blending strategy less effective or less popular.
Increase impact bumper effectiveness
Just like, 10-20% more resistance than it has, enough to make it worth the slot it's filling.
Rework fire extinguisher
I suggest re balancing the fire extinguisher to 2s cooldown, 5s immunity, and 9 fire stacks removed. This would help the game in 3 ways.
1. Make fire less powerful against newer players and AI, as they can babysit parts quicker and less costly than previously
2. Allow the fire extinguisher to have use in optimal chem runs, instead of [mallet, mallet, spanner, chem again,] the option of [mallet, mallet, fire extinguisher, chem again] which may have limited use against flamer-flare heavy builds
3. It buffs the flare slightly, it'll still suck, but it'll suck better.
Move front and rear squid gun arcs inward (Towards the right side) 10 degrees
Almost all squids are disable heavy, just 10 degrees would open the squid up to the world of gat-mortars and hades-flaks (Though not with the range and simplicity of them being side by side like a pyra), while still keeping any mercury+anything shenanigans at bay, giving the squid a much needed buff.
And that concludes my balance suggestions, I'd really like to know what everyone thinks about this, feel free to critique or compliment as you see fit.
