Class Discussion: Space Cadet
On to the characters introduced in BfN! I’m going to start with my girl; the zombie Space Cadet. I don’t have a main in any of the games as I tend to play everything, but with some of the BfN changes making me enjoy classes like Engineer less, and with less choices thanks to no variants, Space Cadet is the closest to a main I’ve ever gotten in the PvZ shooters.
She has a decent amount of health in her normal form, about what one would expect, and I love having a floaty double jump. This makes her great for jumping puzzles and just getting around in around in general. I’m not a huge fan of sprinting but her sprint animation is a personal favorite.
Her main weapon is fine, it has some guidance built-in which it doesn’t really need and due to how spotty the tracking/auto-aiming is in BfN in the first place, wouldn’t be a problem if it was taken away in the next game. I like how she smacks her little robot pal to reload it too. Can’t say much good or bad here, another weapon that doesn’t feel too good or underpowered.
Gravity Smash is fun and appropriately silly as you turn your capsule upside down and slam into the ground. It has some serious camera and movement issues, especially if you activate it very high in the air or low to the ground or if the terrain height varies a lot, andthat should be fixed, but it’s an ability with a lot of risk, but is fun to use. Fixing its issues would really help with this ability, and while it can cause a lot of damage, it’s not all that hard to avoid as it takes time to work and is very obvious what she’s doing. Just fixing the problems with it would make it fine.
Big Bang Beam can be a little hard to hit your target with but with the Bullseye upgrade, you get some damage from that targeting part of the beam. It gets a weird bug once in a while where it acts like a horizontal Crater Maker and makes it very hard to hit with but the damage it causes is extreme. I’ve only seen it a couple times and in PvE, but it’s something that needs to be fixed for a new game. While it causes a decent amount of damage, it also is obvious when you use it so it’s not all that hard to avoid and is single target so I can’t see a big reason to change this, beyond fixing the aforementioned bug.
I’ll address the station last of her abilities as I feel it needs to go to let the team bring Acorn/Oak (who is next) and Imp/Mech in line with each other. Not that we can’t have uneven ‘mechs’ on each side, but that the due to how things work; the Oak is solid on its own and in fact, being a treetop Acorn is currently a death sentence in PvP (not as bad in PvE), but while a single Cadet station isn’t all that big of a deal, it becomes far more powerful when more Cadets ride, especially at 4, and then add on an overhealing Scientist, and 4 shields, and it’s extremely nasty! Such a station can be taken down, it being slow and huge help, but it’s far better than an Oak with 3 treetop riders. It has been nerfed but is such a problem child; with instant inflation/deflation, stacking shields, and its huge combined health pool, mean that it would be better to change this, and let the Imp’s mech return to the ‘big machine’ of the zombie side. I’ve mentioned this before, but use an ability similar to Marksman Sniper’s Orbital Strike ability in SWTOR (which I used to play), which is also an EA game; The cadet calls on her headset and a targeting spot appears nearby, telegraphing that the crater maker beam of an orbiting zombie space station is going to hit there, giving plants time to move, the beam then hits that area and traces a random line of high, but limited in size, AoE damage, a slow moving circle that is centered on that obvious targeting reticle on the ground, and then the beam ends after a couple of seconds. This keeps the space station and beam theme in the game, without it being too powerful or needing to rely on teammates to form the station. Giving it an obvious telegraph means too that plants have time to get out of there as well. The beam would continue its short but dangerous path even if the Space Cadet is vanquished since it’s independent of her once activated, and could get some revenge vanquishes. The other thing about the station is that the Imp’s Mech and the Oak all feel like they have their own personalities, especially the Oak, but even the Mech, and especially the variants in GW2, all come off like their own characters. The station lacks this, and that’s part of why I don’t like it as much as the Oak and Mech, even if I love Space Cadet, and that’s another reason to get rid of it.
I don’t have a lot to say about the station rider shield and torpedo abilities as I want the station and riders removed for a new game. The shields aren’t that big of a deal most of the time, even with 3 of them, but if stacked can be a pain (worse with an overhealed station). The torpedoes can be very effective but can also simply crash into terrain right after launch, especially with an erratic driver, so removing them wouldn’t hurt much anyway.
I actually like the team up idea, it’s the PvZ shooter team showing us that they can break out of the normal mold of online shooters, and be really creative but it’s been an issue in BfN this entire time. I’ll cover my Oak changes when I get there, they actually need less alteration than my Space Cadet plans, but keeping crater maker as a powerful, but limited radius and obvious attack, allows her to keep her theme and to use the weapon effects and sounds already in the game but avoid the issues with the station and getting teammates to cooperate. I’ve had to bail from stations due to the pilot deciding to use a packed station to spawn camp plants in Giddy Park, or because they were driving so erratically that I couldn’t hit anything, or they would jump off and suddenly I’m piloting the thing in the middle of a firefight. Great idea, love the character and want her in the next game for sure, but the team idea has been problematic.
Variants could include a Solar Cadet that replaces her long ranged beam weapon with a short-ranged flame throwing cone weapon, an Asteroid Cadet that fires shot gun blasts of rocks where the damage drops off at range pretty rapidly, and a Nebula Cadet that fires AoE projectiles at a slower rate of fire and lower ammo capacity than the default version. Space Cadet is a character in BfN, that barring the station issues, has always felt like she’s in a good place as far as playing her and balance. I’d like to keep that for a new game, with obviously any balancing she does need, and will need at least some to replace the station with the crater maker orbital strike ability, but she’s in a good place right now. Removing the tracking on her main weapon would be a slight nerf that I’d have zero issue with losing and most/all variants wouldn’t need or want anyway.
