Legacy

Some stuff from previous mods that was already working well.

• "Haste": Miniturbo duration scales the lower your speed stat is, to a maximum of 1.3x duration at 1 speed.
  This gives low-speed characters some better tools to approach corner overtakes, while keeping their exit line more flexible.
• "Firmsneaker": Sneaker items give you a full 50% speed boost even on Hard Speed, the same relative boost as Normal Speed.
  It's honestly just more fun this way; players move marginally faster in Juicebox overall, so slower sneakers felt pretty underwhelming.

Dash Gates

Frontrunning is boring for everyone, including the frontrunner. Dash Gates are a magnetic force that pulls the pack together; frontrunners have to consistently defend to hold their position, and players in the pack have constant chances to fight even on the most placid turns.

• Once 10 seconds have passed, 1st place periodically drops a Dash Gate. The distance between gates is lower for each point of Speed, and gates are larger for each point of Weight.
  Even with Haste, accel types struggle to take decisive leads; letting Omega rear-end Chao with the same force Chao needs to catch Omega is just unfair.
• Passing through a Dash Gate gives you a small miniturbo (Haste scaled).
• Dash Gates start out weak, become much stronger shortly after spawning, and continue to slowly grow stronger and larger over time. Strength increases boost duration, not speed.
  Funneling players with strong items through a tight circle leads to thoughtless carnage and hurt feelings. Gates "relax" enough that players still have a chance to fight, but don't need precise control when they're already falling behind.
• When holding an item, Dash Gates you pass through slowly become less effective, to a minimum of 10%. Holding stronger items decreases Gate power quicker, and using your item resets Gate power.
  Gates are strong; patient players can make up vast deficits even without strong items. Unfortunately, if they have an item and simply choose not to use it, they're at a vast advantage once they get in front. Smuggling is still possible even with this system, but it needs to be carefully considered and executed instead of just "rocketsneakers go brrrr".

Hyudoro

Vanilla Hyudoro ruins your life with no counterplay, but it also isn't consistently strong enough to feel like a "power item". A less volatile Hyudoro can have its power tuned up a little, solving both of these problems.

• Steal immunity period: 1 second → 3 seconds.
  It sucks to have your item stolen before you get to process what it is. Longer steal immunity ensures you always get to make a choice about whether to quickly use your item, without suffering the consequences of a blind mash.
• When sneakers or rocketsneakers are stolen from you, a sneaker boost is forcibly triggered.
  This is actually a buff for the player being stolen from! Most of the time, you can react to this and still gain something out of the boost, plus you no longer have to deal with having your sneaker stolen while entering offroad for a cut.
• While holding Hyudoro, you can see the items of nearby enemies, and whether they're stealable. Stealable items also appear on the minimap.
  This lets players make more informed choices about steal timing, but still gives them interesting choices to make; even if you know what items are up for grabs, you don't know how long the window of opportunity is, and you still don't get to choose between multiple available items.
• While affected by Hyudoro, you gain a 25% speed and acceleration boost.
  This isn't much, and mostly just insulates players in low-population games who don't have many items to choose.

Quick Recovery and Technical Recovery

Sneakers are strong. They're a great way to overtake, but they're also one of the best ways to recover from hits, letting you play super aggressively with no fear of reprisal. Quick Recovery gives everyone a taste of that power, and Technical Recovery gives you some control over the situation while offering another stat-balance lever.

• Spinout duration globally increased by 25%.
  Item hits in Juicebox are still weaker than they are in the vanilla game, even with this change; with so many ways for players to overtake, we had to leave some defensive power intact.
• Pressing Accelerate during the last 1/3 second of spinout cancels your remaining spinout into a miniturbo.
• Pressing Accelerate outside of the "tech" window disables tech inputs for 2/3s.
• Tech inputs are accepted earlier for lighter characters, up to 8 tics (.22 seconds) at 1 speed.
  This change, combined with good native acceleration, gives top-left significantly improved sticking power, letting them ride the gate line without worrying too much about items.
• When holding Brake, all tech inputs are suppressed.
  This allows players to "rubber-burn turn"—the ACCEL+BRAKE combo that lets you adjust your angle in situations where turning isn't normally possible—without destroying their opportunity to tech. The input sequence is still pretty fast, but it's a useful tool if you're recovering facing a wall or hazard.
• When exiting squish, or exiting spinout without teching, your next Accelerate input will grant you a small miniturbo. This is suppressed if you hold Brake, and becomes completely unavailable after 3 seconds.
  Squish sucks just as badly as spinout, but squish durations are too short for reactable techs—and sometimes, even the full tech window isn't enough to correct your angle. This provides some extra recovery power in those situations, while also making missed techs sting a little less.

Quick Respawn

The punishment for bad driving is bad driving. No need to rub it in.

• "Respawn platform" time 48 tics → 31 tics (1.37s → 0.88s)
• "Death animation" state removed (was 1 second).
• You can no longer negate a picked-up eggbox by dying or respawning.
  Deathpitting is fast now, but intentional deathpits should never be faster than anything. This isn't Battle Garegga.

Sneakers

Sneakers are (still) strong, and they're even stronger when everyone's so much closer together. Gates go a long way towards solving the catchup problem, so certain sneaker edge-cases can be filed down to match other comparable items better.

• If an item box would give you 3 sneakers, it gives you 2 sneakers instead.
  x3 shoes come up surprisingly early in the roulette, and steal souls pretty effectively. 2 gives you distance, but doesn't give you free 1st.
• Rocket Sneakers consume slightly more gauge when used.
  On Normal speed, Rocket Sneakers are the best general power item in the game by a huge margin, and Juicebox keeps sneaker boosts at the same relative power in Hard speed. This change is mostly to cover edge cases where they're able to take multiple spaced cuts; they're still the best for raw speed, but you have to use them more carefully.

Misc.

• Shrink is removed from the item table at all distances.
  Juicebox's other mechanics already compress the pack pretty aggressively; with players so close together, Shrink often created larger gaps than would otherwise be possible! Squishable players with stripped items also don't have many interesting decisions to make besides "try not to die".
• Miniturbos now stack duration. A small scaling factor is applied to either the new or old MT, whichever is smaller, before their durations are added together. This scaling factor becomes more lenient at lower drift spark rates.
  This change is intended to make turboing in and out of gates feel more consistent. Without the scaling factor, miniturbo duration can get kinda dumb, but treating top-right the same as other stats left them a little sad due to their low drift-spark rate; they work hard for pretty meager MTs, so they're allowed to stack at nearly full strength.
• Players who miss their startboost become intangible for 1 second.
  Typically, the players punished for a missed startboost are the ones behind the players who screw up. This prevents heavyweights from being unintentional roadblocks.
• During the last 5 tics of spinout, players are intangible.
  Aimed at preventing edge-case "magnet bonk" situations, where a player recovers with another kart inside theirs and is ejected backwards at high speed.
• When cancelling Grow, players gain a miniturbo lasting 2/3rds of their remaining grow time (maximum 40 tics / red miniturbo).
  Softens the impact of awkwardly spaced item sets cutting Grow effect short.
• After firing the SPB, players gain a single sneaker.
  It sucks to get stuck with the SPB, especially on the last item set. This lets players get some benefit from their item pull instead of just trying to point-blank people for the spinout.