Ah, this is a useful thread!
Okay, I'm not actually addressing ALL of this right as I make this post (EDIT: I LIED!!!), I'm going to change this as I make alterations during the night, so this might get edited a bazillion times.
These changes might not be entirely what you were expecting though....
Burlust Warlord Longship: Yep, I'm pretty sure that aspect of these guys is fixed. How hard or not is the 3rd pattern to you right now?
Obscura Disc: Hahaha, ahh, these guys are made of problems. I have made changes! They'll either now be A: more horrible, or B: more hilarious, I'm not sure which. Either way, they're gonna be more in line with what I wanted the blasted things to be.
Changes:
1. Slowed down! I dunno why they were going that fast. Their speed is now chopped in half, which pretty much gets them to where they should be. The idea of these guys is that you probably attack them last, and unlike the other Obscura you're not meant to use lots of speed to zoom around. Staying at a somewhat low speed with higher shields should be what you want to do, while remaining close to them yet not close enough to hit the yellow death wall.
2. They fire faster! Fire rate overall, much increased. The road they were leaving was all spaced out and funky; the red "walls" are meant to be pretty much solid, and there is meant to be more blue things in it. The blue things are supposed to be the main threat (and the red or yellow if you make a mistake), but they have the lowest frequency/density of most Obscura attacks, to give space to weave between them. And typically, again, you'll fight these guys one-on-one, due to their tendancy to move AWAY from you, so there's not really any interfering fire. This means that...
3. They hit harder! The red "walls", and the blue... er... "things", now do more damage. The purple shots are unchanged.... but are a bit more rapid, just not faster or more damaging.
Now, if I could get 5 minutes without that accursed thing screwing up in some way, that'd be pretty super. As I type this I'm expecting it to break again.
Obscura Duo: Took me a moment to remember what this was.
Loaded it up, and: Whoa! Why is this guy moving so fast?!? Argh, this is the default stats changing between modes again, isnt it? Argh argh argh. There's going to be "problems" popping up here with all of these, arent there...
Yeah.... these guys arent supposed to be moving quite this fast. Or are they? Uhhh. Hoboy. I sense necessary effort. I keep forgetting about this effect as I switch between modes during design/testing... this is likely the cause of more than a couple of problems. This also means the blasted Disc is going to move like a dead frog in sludge when encountered in Standard mode... but that's fine.
Okay, so, this guy is actually mostly fine, though I might drop his speed a little so you dont worry so much about "catching" him. But not too much, just a bit. Should make for pretty much the same pattern effect, but less of the "ARGH JUST HOLD STILL ALREADY!!!"
[Obscura Angle: Okay, being too fast makes this guy easy. I'm not getting hit by anything. I cannot have this. He is slower now!
With this guy, you'll wanna get in, get in some hits, and then get out before the swirling angled chaos around him gets too thick. He's not as hard as he's gonna look, in the same way that the Burlust's 2nd pattern is. Watching the red trident shot is the key here. I may alter his damage a bit to make up for the increased density. As in, it may be lowered for once. EDIT: Yes, it's lowered now. By alot.
Having him slowed down though also has another effect: it makes it actually POSSIBLE for you to do the "get in, get a few turns of damage in, get out" tactic against this guy. Which is how it's meant to be. But yeah, watch that red attack. With this guy's lowered speed, if it looks like you're about to get smashed by a full line of shots... try the GigaCannon! The burst will stop entire shot lines, and his lowered speed means you can get in a strong hit at the same time.... and then get back out to lick your wounds a bit if needed.
I strongly suggest though, trying to isolate and take out the faster ships before attacking this guy. Also, once you've STARTED attacking this guy.... dont stop! He's one of the ones that gets stronger as his health gets lower. He'll add more stuff to his pattern as this happens, so always finish what you've started with these guys.
But he needs a bit more testing before these changes are fully decided on.
Obscura Wing: Arrgh. Actually these are... sorta not broken? But yeah, they add more crap to whatever else is there. I may make a couple of small alterations. When on their own, keep your shields up, and let them come to you! I might slow them down just a tiny bit.
I'm gonna take a wild guess and say that you havent encountered the bosses yet. But regardless:
Obscura Mothership: Speed cut. Works fine otherwise.
Obscura Mite: Speed cut. That being said, this thing is a terror, as is the Mothership. Yes, their patterns are doable. Yes, they can be dodged. Yes, they're designed to eat your face. You dont want to fight these guys if anything else is around. One on one only. Or even better, you and a big pile of allies VS the boss. Either way though, dont be afraid to run...
And by "run" I mean "withdraw if necessary". The Mothership, it's pretty slow, so you can actually escape it, and heal, and dive back at it. But the Mite, there's no running from it. Try as you might, you cant escape this one. So yeah, withdraw entirely if you see the need.
Just wait till you see what those guys can do. Even I think they're nasty. There's a reason why you get a permanent bonus upon defeating one. There's tricks and tactics to taking down each, but the best hints I can give is basically: ABILITIES. Use them. And you want those space power techs and things like that to power up as much as you can! Other than that, while you're pretty much GOING to get hit by stuff, just do your best to get hit by as few things as possible.
Also, the Mite's pattern is more predictable than it might look. The big key is to watch how the overall thing works; you really, really dont want to be in the area where the returning purple bits from each burst are going to converge.
Hm, but yeah, I need more testing here I think, as a whole.
One reason why you might be finding them (the Obscura as a whole) so bloody impossible in groups is that, by design, they're actually not supposed to move very fast. Well, not too fast anyway, though it depends on the individual ship.
So, a few changes made here, not TOO many, that should make this all work properly.
I havent gotten to the Razor or Stingray yet. Not expecting too much trouble with either aside from that they may need slowing down.
Overall, I'm gonna get the Obscura as a whole moving not all at the same speed like they were before (made it impossible to peel them away from each other, which is supposed to be a good tactic here), though their exact speeds right now arent set in stone. I dunno why I didn't think to do this before... But that's what feedback is for! And going to get their overall damage levels balanced out to still be very tough but still viable.
If there's any feedback on the new smaller ships (Aegis, VDeck, Parasite, etc.) that helps too, though I think most of those are pretty well set by this point.
EDIT: Er.... the Disc's AI appears to be missing a few screws here. Or it's forgotten what screws are entirely. These guys really arent supposed to just very, very slowly spin in goofy, disjointed almost-circles (which has the side effect of making them impossible to attack).... This coming from having started a new Invasion game. I try to defend against an attack by them, there's some 25 ships apparently in the fight (I see 4 to start with) and 3 of them are Discs... just... spinning and wobbling... Ahhh.... it's going to be just a BIT hard to properly test anything with those bloody things going nuts. I *knew* they were going to go wonky in some way. I just knew it!
EDIT 2: Omigod lots of things have gone wonky. Just.... what. Hm, gotta halt Invasion testing until some of this weirdness is dealt with.
