Some Thoughts

[drewisfat]

Your instinct is right that something is OP with both sader and TPs, but your diagnosis is a little off, and your cure will likely kill the game.

Battleshipers have always had a bunch of whiners who like the status quo. Removing TP and nerfing sader = going to piss off like 90% of whatever decent players are left.

Sader isn't OP just by virtue of # of spells. There's lots of bad/good spells in the game, so it's quite possible 4 bad spells not as good as one good spell. Further, the problem with sader isn't that it's OP at all, it's that in pub games, a single noob not knowing how to avoid feeding sader can decide the game. The anti-crusader item isn't a great fix to this. After all, there is already an anti-sader item (bronze hull), it's just not called that. Calling it that will helps some noobs get it, but the majority of feeders probably won't get it either. But if you nerf the ability of sader to kill weak sailors, you kind of defeat the purpose of the ship and pros will rage. Also the game becomes really boring unless on accel.

Also as far as being OP goes, the sader isn't the only OP ship. There are five good ships, and those are exactly the ships that BENEFIT from the teleporter. Their spells are stuns/interrupters and that dictates the game. The main way to use them is with a tper, and the main way to dodge them is with a tper (until late game sails).

The game is fine the way it is, with just 5 ships, all pros and all satisfied just playing those five ships. Sadly that's really just a hypothetical situation now, I don't think a 5v5 ih will ever happen again. So we might as well make all the ships more balanced. But if you nerf the five ships and their good spells, you piss off every experienced player who knows how to win. Similarly if you remove TPer, you piss off every good player. Also removing just heavy TPer is a weird choice, since that nerfs every one of the good ships except the one you hate the most (sader) because that ship goes short tper anyways.

Nerfing the OP ships is going to be unpopular, so instead focus on buffing/fixing the ships. Here are some starters:

- Interceptor is a terribad ship. For starters the defining spell of the ship "intercept" sucks. It doesn't even dodge capsize consistently!! which you think it would do at a minimum! Fix it such that as long as it's cast capsize won't kill it. From there do what you want. Make it so no spells work while in intercept mode, or make intercept mode go faster, maybe even do more damage. ESL toyed around with the idea of giving it a hook, kind of like pudge wars, to draw opponents back with you. Or just buff the ship's speed.

- Junker, make wave more useful in actually nuking ships, either make it faster or stronger or bigger. Right now the only way to really hit anyone is if they're stunned, which again only happens with the good ships. Right now the nuke is just good for farming.... which it is too good at.

- Jugg, fix seamonster. Too strong early game, too weak late game. I'd give it a decent gold bounty, like 75-100, but then make it so you get a 2nd level of the spell late, like at level 16 that makes it faster / do more dmg or have more hp.