Starblast Dueling Championship

Mod Version
 Creator
 Number of ships
 Mod code

Players duel in 1v1 matches with maxed Lvl 6 speedster-type ships against random pairings of opponents, until the game ends after 30 minutes. You can also spectate duels. The game will try to give you an opponent different from your previous opponent, if possible.

If an odd number of players are ready, an unlucky player is unmatched and must wait for the next one.

## Strategy

Obviously, the standard  dueling strategies apply: pick a ship you're good at using, shoot the enemy, dodge shots, pick up gems, avoid getting knocked out of the ring, and play mind games with the chat.

The Contraband used to be the best ship because of its zoom and huge pulse shot. But missing the large pulse shot can be fatal, because of the long delay to recharge, although it has weak secondary lasers.

The A-Speedster is good if you are already familiar with it from vanilla and Rumble, and its pulses recharge faster than the Contraband, reducing the penalty of missing shots.

The Broly is a heavy ship, able to recover from knockback well. Using the smaller lasers is a fatal mistake, without any regen advantage. It doesn't deal good knockback, and is a very fragile ship even with high shield and okay mass when not used well.

The Streamliner used to be garbage, but it was buffed too much, making it an OP ship, so it was nerfed. When it was OP, it would deal a stream of 90 damage/second with stunlock, almost as if it's a nerfed version of the U-Octa's frontal cannon. No other ship can sustain such a high amount of damage. All other ships have 40 energy regen, with some lower to 30 or higher to 45 (A-speedster), so 90 is a clear outlier. It has been nerfed to 66 though.

The A-Stasis shoots a unique "cannonball" shot, which can partially hit an enemy if your aim is mostly accurate but slightly inaccurate. It also causes the enemy to drop many small pieces of gems, compared to singular large pulses. Missing a shot can be fatal, especially when this ship cannot shoot while it recharges. It doesn't send the enemy spinning, but if it hits straight on, it can send them flying straight out of the map.

The Hornet's fast speed can be used to dodge and run around. If your dodging skill is better than your attacking skill, you can force a draw by running around. This ship is therefore a troll ship, since it is hard to win and easy to force a draw.

The MK47 is faster than the Hornet and is less wide, with a similar burst mode, but it has less agility and shield regen for forcing draws. If you manage to dodge enemy ships well, you might use it like a Shadow X-2, bursting them to death.

## Ranking

Players are  totally ordered by comparing with these rules, going to the next rule when one fails:

* Having played at least one duel is better than 0 wins, losses, and draws.
* More wins is better.
* Fewer losses is better.
* More draws is better.
* If all rules above fail (wins, losses, and draws are equal), the players are equal.

 Dense ranking gives each player a rank (such as 1st, 2nd, 2nd, 3rd) when the game ends. Since dense ranking is used, the number of ranks and the last rank number are equal to the number of equivalence classes in the equivalence relation where a ~ b if and only if a = b in the total order. Other ranking systems put gaps in the numbering, but those are not the ranking system used here.

However, if the lowest rank is for players with 0 wins, deaths, and draws, it will be displayed as "Unranked" when the game ends.

There are caveats, as the ranking is based on arbitrary pairings. Even if player A ranks higher than B, A is not necessarily better than B, and B might consistently beat A in a duel. It is possible that A was dueling low-skill players or "boosting" with friends.

## Ships

\* Spectator is only for spectating, and cannot be used during a duel.