Sorry I haven't posted here in awhile. Real life decided to get in the way.
Anyway, I've added a FAQ section to the front page that should help answer common questions. I've also been trying to address as many issues I can, though things have been hectic.
One major balance change I've been experimenting with involves the Spazer, Wide Beam, and Vortex Beam, as I'm sure you're all familiar with how overpowered these addons are. I'll mostly refer to the Spazer, but know that its upgraded variants are affected also; anyway, here's the upcoming changes:
-Rather than the Spazer effectively tripling damage, instead the damage is now divided amongst the fired projectiles. For Spazer and Wide Beam, the damage for each projectile is divided by 3, for Vortex Beam, it's divided by 5 (though I may change this to still be 3, as endgame stuff can afford to be OP, but this is still WIP). This is actually a huge nerf, and makes the whole mod feel relatively more difficult if you're solely relying on the Power Beam (Missile Launcher is still OP, but I'm looking into that next).
-This next change, however, is highly debatable. Since the total damage is being divided amongst 3 (or 5) projectiles, and each projectile's damage is reduced by the target's defense, the overall total damage is being impacted by the target's defense x 3 (or 5). As such, a level of armor penetration was implemented for the Spazer, equal to ignoring 2/3rds of the target's defense (or 4/5ths if using Vortex). I did the math, and if all projectiles hit the target, the total damage is properly mitigated by the target's defense x 1. I'm hesitant about this change, however, because it doesn't make sense for the Spazer to have any level of armor penetration. Plus, having the total damage impacted more heavily by the target's defense seems like a good drawback to splitting your beam to cover a larger area. Alternatively, however, this armor penetration formula could be enabled when using both Plasma and Spazer (both Red and Green Plasmas could have this effect).
If this is all well received, a similar principle could be implemented for the Missile combos where applicable. For example, rather than the Diffusion Missile's explosion projectiles dealing crap tons of damage, the total damage could be divided amongst those projectiles.
On another note, I've also been spending some time working on the bosses, not only trying to make them better multiplayer compatible, but also tweaking or even redoing some of their AI so that they aren't easily exploitable. And Expert-specific attacks/changes are on the list of things to do as well.