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Text walls are boring, so I'll keep this brief
Cannons are off meta. They're only useful against fastwalls, and we haven't seen a truly viable cannon ship since the days of Quix's Whiteout. Although Jun(0)/Yare has recently had sucess with their LC-Avoider, the ship still remains untested VS archetypes other than wall, and unfortunately for it avoiders have some pretty bad match ups if you exclude fastwalls, and LCs don't help with those matchups either.

In order to address this, many suggestions have been thrown around, thought they all suffer from the issue of making cannons even more feast-or-famine - Their slow projectile speed mean that they almost never hit outside of rams

Thus, it was suggested by NAOP for us to increase the speed of cannons, but also at the the same time increase the speed of lasers in order to keep the weapons feeling distinct. I made a mod to test these changes and player around 10 games with Jun(0)/Yare. (And I think a few more games were played by different people) These games demonstrated that these changes were able to do their intended purpose of making cannons viable outside of rams without making them overwhelming

Here are the core of the tested changes:

Small Laser

  • Proj. Speed 240 -> 480 (+100%)
  • Proj. Health 125 -> 75 (-40%)

Heavy Laser

  • Proj. Speed 180 -> 270 (+50%)
  • Proj. Health 300 -> 240 (-20%)

Electro-Bolt

  • Proj. Speed 180 -> 315 (+75%)

Standard Cannon

  • Proj. Speed 150 -> 270 (+80%)
  • Turret Turn Rate 45 -> 60 (+33%)

Large Cannon

  • Proj. Speed 100 -> 180 (+80%)
  • Turret Turn Rate 30 -> 45 (+33%)

My main worry with doing this is what it does to the visuals and feel of combat. Faster projectiles means that there will be fewer projectiles on-screen at the same time, which could make battles feel less exciting.

Walt
That problem is actually already half-solved. Because cannons projectiles move faster, their particle trails become longer, thus giving each shot more screen-room and therefore more apparent oomph, and if need be, the particles could just be upscaled a bit. Although the same is currently not true for lasers, some particle work or simply making the sprite longer would do the trick

However, the need for sprite-work does greatly increase the developmental resources needed, so it's not a perfect solution.

Another solution to get more shots on screen for lasers is to increase the rate of fire of lasers while decreasing the other stats accordingly. Since lasers rely less on their alpha than cannons, and that most competitive players already set their HLs on alternating fire, it probably wouldn't have a major impact on the meta.

    Walt
    Faster projectiles means more of them actually hit near where you're aiming, which would tend to make them more exciting.

        I find these suggestions interesting to solve certain problems.

          a month later

          Can you post the mod to change projectile speeds?

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