Few comments, since I've been running on Hard with the Flame mech exclusively for the last few days.
1) His main weapon is far too strong / others are too weak. I feel -50 to -100 range and a slight dps nerf (reload 0.08 maybe?) would be best. Ideally, maybe give him -50 range, and all the other mechs +50 range?
2) Mirror Boss is kinda weak. Actually, really weak. Like almost stand still and kill it weak (on Hard). All I have to dodge is that one tiny aimed ")" shot, and maybe 2 of the orange shots coming in at angles. That's it. Seriously, test with Flame Mech on Hard Mirror, no damage upgrades. Really easy. Suggestions:
a) His bouncing shots need to move faster so they actually reach me before he dies. They just crawl right now.
b) Slow down the dps we can dish by giving him a bouncing wall in front that reflects shots (giant Pong paddle!). Then I couldn't put my damage on him constantly threw each stage.
c) For the same reason as b, he needs a push-back between stage 1 and 2. More thematic, but more work, what if his boss room was a mirror image left-to-right, and on stage 2 he teleported to the opposite side and started stage 2 from there?
3) Agree on energy weapons needing something. Still stand by my earlier proposal. If you hate that proposal because of shields, just make shields work as I propose on Hard+, and let them be as they currently are on Normal and below. Or have shield healing drops much more common so you can always recoup extra shields when you randomly run into traps on empty rooms.
4) Hilarious going against my own Green Aegis (not in game yet). His shield's spacing is close enough to block 80% of the flame tanks shots on Normal+. Ends up being much more interesting because I can't steamroll him immediately, but often I need to wait for his shield to timeout.
Mirror boss: Had some sort of nuclear incident or... something, it's all mutated now and stronger. Because that sounds less boring than "I buffed it".
Particularly on Hard it should be.... quite a bit tougher now.
That being said, Ptarth has given me an idea to add to boss transitions, which would stop forms being popped before their patterns fully form... so that's something I'm going to be experimenting with for bosses that have slow attacks (and Mirror's full pattern is very slow to form). If the difficulty on a boss is low because it's being wrecked because of this (like taking out Battleswarm's second phase before it has the chance to spawn enough blue blocks to be a threat), that might change if this works the way I'm hoping.
But mostly, Mirror has a bit of extra HP right now (I'd had it quite a bit too low, actually) and it's attacks have been improved particularly on Hard. Give it a go in the training room, if you'd like. This applies to both the early-game version of Mirror and also the late-game version (they have different Hard mode patterns, too). For proper testing, pretend that you cant deal damage to him for a bit to let the pattern form, so just dont fire for awhile, and THEN tell me how it is once the pattern is fully there, that'd help quite a bit.
Energy weapons: This is just part of ongoing balancing. Expect changes to a number of these soon. Right now they're still in what I'm calling the "mad science experiments" phase. The STG in particular has been nerfed quite a bit. Dont expect that thing to be a game-winner anymore. One thing that was odd about it.... somehow, it had INFINITE RANGE. I... dont how how that was missed during testing. Needless to say, it does not have this anymore. Among other alterations. But yeah, these are getting alot of changes overall, to knock down the very few OP ones, and just make all of them more interesting in a general sense. I'll be asking for feedback on these things, probably with a seperate thread on the forums here, when it's time for some to be released into the full build. So yeah, that's all being dealt with, it's just a slow process.
Flame weapon: Yes, it really is too strong, isnt it? Now, that being said, the Flame mech really is the Azazel of the game, and I think this is intentional. It should still be a hard hitter, but somehow it needs SOMETHING toned down. Do we reduce the power of the weapon itself? Or do we give the mech itself some sort of downside to balance out that level of power? Like how the Redshift is balanced by it's terrible HP and lack of shields. What do you guys think?