Firepower Upgrades

I lurve me some big firepower upgrades. In fact i just love upgrades and who doesn't ?

so here i am wondering what to do about firepower in my latest game, and decided i really want to reward the player every time they finish a level, including the first easy level. So now i want to give the player a firepower upgrade every time they finish a level. Sounds easy enough doesn't it ? But there are problems....

I like balance, i also like consistency. So if i just add a bullet shooting out of the top of the ship, it will look unbalanced and crap. But if i add two bullets, one ouot of the top and one out of the bottom, i have added just too much firepower for one single upgrade. BAH! My game willl have 25 levels, so i need to come up with 24 upgrades to your firepower. That is a LOT, and the more does not always make stuff merrier. It can in fact diminish playability and cause confusion. So i have to be careful.

For now i have the first 10 levels of upgrades designed, and am trying hard to figure out what level 24s upgrade should be. That will be the final upgrade, so what should the ship loko like when it has total upgraded firepower. I think once i answer this, i can work out what to upgrade based on my nice level 10 setup and what i need for the final level.

Here is the first 5 levels explained in some bad way:-
1. normal forward firepower, damage 10
2. dual forward firpower, damage 10 each
3. triple forward firepower, damage 10 each
4. triple forward firepower with upgraded center fire damage, damage 10, 20, 10
5. triple forward firepower with upgraded center fire speed, damage 10, 20, 10

I might just swap around the center firepower upgrade with the going to trip firwpower. I think this will be a better progression, but i will test both at the right time.

So back to the grind of figuring out what i want the final firepower to be i guess.
laters