If you are keeping the ships from before you should make them all somewhat balanced so that what we see isn't 24/7 heavy weapons everywhere with 1 scout on each team and some sniper that everyone rages at. Perhaps setting specializations for each ship might help. Some suggestions: Giving the heavy weapons the strongest arsenal (aside from the tank) but poor movement speed and lackluster acceleration to ensure that it is not ridiculously overpowered. Letting the Flamethrower deal tons of damage at close range while still being fast (short bomb range with extremely fast reload rate and travel speed). A weak gun should give it the ability to snipe off long range targets. Try to buff its bombs so that it relies on them much more than the gun however. The Demolitions Man should also be improved to have double bounce bombs with shrapnel or stronger bullets because it is fairly weak even when defending in a base (DO NOT GIVE IT BOUNCING BULLETS HOLY SHIT). The Scout needs to be much more agile than any other ship without being too much faster at top speed, although it should take 4 or more shots to kill someone. The Bomb Turret needs some sort of buff to be on par with the gun turret. Perhaps a much stronger bomb or high shrapnel because right now it is too vulnerable even in a base. Remove all of its repels to ensure that it doesn't have too synergy with the new gun turret. The Gun Turret should be given a slightly higher spread on its multi-fire or the parallel shot from the events because it is difficult to accurately aim at a target without proximity detectors. Remove all of its repels to compensate for this and to make it easier to push into a base filled with turrets. The Shotgunner is in a fairly decent spot right now and I don't really think any changes need to be made to it. Although I dislike how it is more effective at range than in close combat due to the nature of spreading bullets. I'm not too sure how this can be fixed. I'll edit this if I think of a good idea. The tank is in a unique position right now. It requires a specific keyset to play remotely well and its high life coupled with its shitty regeneration and large hitbox makes it a difficult ship to use. It is more of a base defense ship than something that is actually useful on the battlefield. Increasing the regeneration slightly while making its bombs have more shrapnel might help with its play style although it will be extremely difficult to balance. It may need to be completely redesigned to be more of a threat in the open while being less overpowered in bases. Of course for events the ships would still be the same as before, but in public the lack of variety in viable ships is what really killed Desert Storm. Add events where everyone can continue playing for the entirety of the host so that people don`t leave due to being stuck in spectator. After a series of hosts Desert Storm tended to die for hours because no-one wanted to sit in spectator for 10+ minutes. If we are really having trouble attracting players, lowering the skill cap in public might attract more people seeing as a large percentage of the gamer population is pretty casual. Keeping the cap high in events is a must however. All in all, more balance with less exclusion in events should be enough to convince players to come back to Desert Storm.
