Worst ship or character to use?

[MOSQUITO FIGHTER]

Which planes, ships, characters, etc are the least effective to use in their respective shooting games? I seem to have a knack for picking the worst ships. In Mars Matrix I always picked the red ship, even though the blue ship is better. Don't know if it's the worst ship but I probably could have cleared the first loop on Strikers 1945 II if I didn't insist on using the Shinden. I always use the red ship in Dodonpachi, even though the blue ship is better.

Do you usually use an underpowered ship in a certain game? Do you think that there is more merit in attaining a score using a underperforming ship as opposed to using the best ship in the game?

[Jonst]

I find playing Deathsmiles with Casper is a real chore.i love the game and have 1cc'd it with all other characters,but Casper just sucks! And type c ship in akai katana...despite loads of top players 1cc with it.Same thing a ds,I can do it with the other two but every time I try and use c,it just goes pear shaped!

[BareKnuckleRoo]

I always use the red ship in Dodonpachi, even though the blue ship is better.

The A type ship is more difficult to use, but this isn't a case where it's the worse ship. It's faster, and much better suited for chaining and making use of the game's scoring system, whereas the C type has better spread, but it's got the lowest speed, which makes higher level play tough. Cave does a pretty good job of having its shot types balanced out with advantages and disadvantages, without having any one ship be truly abysmally bad. Casper is very difficult to use due to how fast she moves in Deathsmiles, but she's got serious damage potential as her ideal use involves firing her shears into enemies, switching to laser, and repeating, so you always have a few shears tacking on extra hits.

The stealth bomber in Strikers 1945 III is pretty awful though. It wants to be a ship with spread and massive close range damage, but the spreadshot is abysmally weak and worse, it has godawful movement speed that hinders your pointblanking safety, so it basically can't do what it's supposed to be good at. If its movement speed were higher and its air mines moved a bit faster, it'd actually be able to do more pointblanking...

Palm Normal in Futari's got the highest rapid shot damage, but the lowest laser damage, and it makes bosses take noticeably longer than the other shot types. He's better in 1.01 than in 1.5, because the other shot types used to be weaker. His movement speed when lasering is pretty nice though.

Formation Armed F's missile weapon is pretty garbage - it's homing missiles that fire behind you to curve out forward, but they fire so wide that they hit the level's walls more than they hit enemies, and they're quite weak. Worst weapon to pick in the game.

Pentarou in the various Parodius games is quite bad. His weapon's got great damage, but he's badly lacking in spread, which is what counts in a game where most of the dangerous enemies die in one hit. His extra damage also doesn't really help with bosses, which tend to die just as easily from weaker weapons. There's only a couple levels with enemies where Pentarou gets a chance to shine (the penguins with coloured afros in Jikkyou Oshaberi Parodius, they have a lot of health that Pentarou rips through). The penguins in Sexy Parodius are a LOT better, mostly because their followers float in place instead of always moving to where you are, so it's much easier to get spread.

[Crafty+Mech]

Beast Wing in Raiden Fighters Jet... slow, huge, and with an unwieldy flame attack.

[Pretas]

The blimp/dirigible in Steel Empire has to be one of the worst. It practically doubles the size of your hitbox.

R-Type Final has a large quantity of nearly useless ships.

[Ruldra]

Pretty much any slow ship will be considered a bad option. When you need to dodge thousands of bullets, speed is a must.

I think Grimlen is the only slow ship I like to use, but even then I find the Infernon fight impossible with him.

[trap15]

Pretty much any slow ship will be considered a bad option. When you need to dodge thousands of bullets, speed is a must.

I think the exact opposite. Having a slow ship lets you get around everything neatly and with less effort and flailing. Even for games with relatively few bullets, I've always found slow ships to usually be the most useful.

[KAI]

Midi & Meidi

[Kollision]

Tetsu in Gunbird
Jinn in Chaos Field
all ships but the GE-22 in Sine Mora
Sinnosuke/Raijin in Giga Wing
Swift Arnold in Operation Ragnarok, at least for scoring

I agree about Pentaro in Parodius, disagree on Mosquito 1 in Mars Matrix

[BIL]

Don't know enough about the game to say if it's objectively the worst ship, but Gradius Gaiden's Lord British is the only one of its four ships with no means of attacking behind it.

[Pretas]

Don't know enough about the game to say if it's objectively the worst ship, but Gradius Gaiden's Lord British is the only one of its four ships with no means of attacking behind it.

Unless you position your options behind you, like any Gradius player worth their salt knows to do. It's not Gradius V; there aren't many situations where being able to shoot backwards is particularly needed.

Gaiden doesn't have a bad ship, they're all useful in different ways. I favor the Jade Knight for its 360-degree ring laser, but that's no good when you need to shoot across the screen.

[Furry Fox Jet Pilot]

Both of the actual Raiden ships in the Raiden Fighters series. Soooooooo sllloooowwwww....

I disagree, I find myself using those ships very often, and they are good once you get used to them. Or maybe I just play too much old-school Raiden.

The stealth bomber in Strikers 1945 III is pretty awful though. It wants to be a ship with spread and massive close range damage, but the spreadshot is abysmally weak and worse, it has godawful movement speed that hinders your pointblanking safety, so it basically can't do what it's supposed to be good at. If its movement speed were higher and its air mines moved a bit faster, it'd actually be able to do more pointblanking...

It's good if you know how to use it, and the most awful ship in that game has to be the F-4 Phantom; it just feels unnatural to me.

Beast Wing in Raiden Fighters Jet... slow, huge, and with an unwieldy flame attack.

That flame attack can be quite powerful if used correctly.

It seems I am a sucker for using slow ships, I just feel more at home with how they handle, instead of speed demons like the Judge Spear and Ixion in Raiden Fighters. As for the worst ever ship in a shmup, it has to be The Man with the Diabloon flying car in Sonic Wings Special. Weak firepower that decreases every power level, unlike the other ships, which would only decrease after maximum power, what the hell were they thinking?

[Jeneki]

If by "worst" we mean "makes me want to hang myself" there's always MEOW MEOW MEOW MEOW MEOW MEOW ...

But it's not a bad ship.

[Ed Oscuro]

The slow ships are really bad for Raiden Fighters if you want to play for score - lining up Quickshot bonuses is difficult if not impossible with the slowest ships.

[BIL]

Unless you position your options behind you, like any Gradius player worth their salt knows to do. It's not Gradius V; there aren't many situations where being able to shoot backwards is particularly needed.

Gaiden doesn't have a bad ship, they're all useful in different ways. I favor the Jade Knight for its 360-degree ring laser, but that's no good when you need to shoot across the screen.

Thanks for the lecture, but the Lord British still can't hit anything behind it. Jade Knight obviously has Twin Laser to balance Round Laser's lack of concentrated firepower. Falchion Beta likewise with Gravity Missile vs Auto Aim and the Vic with Laser vs Double Lv2. Only LB is stuck without a rear-capable weapon, and Disruptor is not the boss annihilator you'd expect with this drawback.

It's a noticeable weakness at higher loops in crowded, cramped places like st5/Organic Fortress and s9.2/Fate where juggling the Options about is less convenient than having a rear-firing weapon. And since this isn't Gradius V, a single bad checkpoint can blow your entire run. By default it's a harder ship to use.

[Ed Oscuro]

Shmups Forums: "The worst ship is the best to use"

[BareKnuckleRoo]

The slow ships are really bad for Raiden Fighters if you want to play for score - lining up Quickshot bonuses is difficult if not impossible with the slowest ships.

Slow ships tend to be just bad, period. A fast ship with the ability to slowdown (laser) can make wide dodges when necessary and more precise dodges, but an all around slow ship just limits your movement. Even in a game with only one movement speed a faster speed is usually more useful than not because of how it gives you more options as to how you deal with the game. Of course, there's a limit to how useful fast ships are, and Konami shmups generally let you power up your speed way more than is necessary to the point where max speedups is ridiculously hard to control without smacking into things.

The advantages of slower ships are usually that they have wide spread or powerful weaponry... their low movement speed isn't really an advantage.

[bsidwell]

moving the stick less will make a fast ship slow. moving the stick more won't make a slow ship fast.

[Crafty+Mech]

The slow ships are really bad for Raiden Fighters if you want to play for score - lining up Quickshot bonuses is difficult if not impossible with the slowest ships.

Exactly. And trying to chain 100,000 pt medals in Raiden Fighters Jet with a lumbering ship can be really frustrating.

That said I would love to see a 100 million+ run in RFJ with the Beast Wing, anyone who can pull that off has some serious skills.

[Sly Cherry Chunks]

Unless you position your options behind you, like any Gradius player worth their salt knows to do. It's not Gradius V; there aren't many situations where being able to shoot backwards is particularly needed.

Gaiden doesn't have a bad ship, they're all useful in different ways. I favor the Jade Knight for its 360-degree ring laser, but that's no good when you need to shoot across the screen.

Thanks for the lecture, but the Lord British still can't hit anything behind it. Jade Knight obviously has Twin Laser to balance Round Laser's lack of concentrated firepower. Falchion Beta likewise with Gravity Missile vs Auto Aim and the Vic with Laser vs Double Lv2. Only LB is stuck without a rear-capable weapon, and Disruptor is not the boss annihilator you'd expect with this drawback.

It's a noticeable weakness at higher loops in crowded, cramped places like st5/Organic Fortress and s9.2/Fate where juggling the Options about is less convenient than having a rear-firing weapon. And since this isn't Gradius V, a single bad checkpoint can blow your entire run. By default it's a harder ship to use.

^Agreed with this.

R-Type final has one (or is it two?) ships that are difficult to use - the raincloud one that can only shoot downwards.

All other ships can be organised into two groups: (1) useful and (2) game-breakingly overpowered.

[Mortificator]

It's the Jade Knight that I have a hard time with in Gradius Gaiden. If you have four options and the round laser, it has a disorienting, almost strobe-like effect. And with your main firepower coming from your spread bombs instead of the wimpy pulse laser, you often need to approach bosses differently than with the other fighters.

[BIL]

Yup - popcorn clearer Jade Knight isn't great on bosses, you have to teabag them with the Spread Bomb for decently fast kills. That leaves all-rounder to Vic and boss smasher to Falchion β. Lord British would be somewhere in the middle with Vic, but it's got a unique weakness and no unique strength to compensate. This isn't saying it's junk, Mosquito simply asked about "least effective" ships.

An obvious candidate: Blast Wind's 2P ship. As jp once said it's not that it's particularly weak, more that the 1P ship is a murder machine. Good choice if you want a bit more challenge, especially if coupled with Very Hard difficulty.