3
« on: March 03, 2019, 02:04:05 PM »
I think if you wanted to do steadily regenerating missiles, you'd have to take a second look at all ships that can mount missiles, especially larger systems like medium and large mounts. I could totally understand if smalls remained as disposables while mediums and larges with their more sophisticated mounts and additional engineering could steadily load up more ammo for use over the course of a battle. But then the number of medium and large mounts available to ships would likely have to be reduced in general to compensate and try to make achieving critical mass wherein naught but a wall of double flaks will shoot down missiles fast enough to not take hits.
The Khopeshes are an outlier. To look at other bombers and their equivalent missile mounts, for 18 OP and a carrier slot, you get 1.5x Atropos racks (minimum of two racks for 8 OP and two small slots that only reload at the end of a fight) in the Daggers. 4000 (their engagement range) / 175 (combat speed) takes about 20 seconds and assuming 100% loss rate every time, its just shy of a minute for Daggers to go to the edge of their range, die and be ready to go again. An additional 10 OP plus the use of a carrier slot in exchange for Atropos torpedoes with greatly increased range with a grand total of three torpedoes a minute (before replacement rate comes into play anyway). For 25 OP and that carrier slot, you get two moving Atropos racks in the form of the Tridents, those take about 30 seconds to reach the edge of their tether range and assuming they die when they get there, it's over a minute before your flying Atropos racks are back up. An additional 17 OP plus the carrier slot usage get you shy of 4 torpedoes a minute. What is normally 4 OP and two small missiles for four Hammers is now 12 OP and 3 Hammers in the Perditions., which again take about 30 seconds to get to tether range, die, then take another 30 seconds to go again. Almost if not all the bombers take about a minute to reach tether range, die and be fully rebuilt. But most of those shoot single missiles. The Khopeshes shoots a spread of rockets instead. To compare them to Annihilators in one way, they are less than a single mount's worth of rockets, 50 rockets and 4 OP plus small mount compared to 28 rockets, 12 OP and a carrier mount. But to match the burst potential of Khopeshes, you'd need double their OP cost at 24 OP for 6 small Annihilator racks and then you'd also need the 6 small mounts that all face the same direction.
Are non-reloadable missiles bad or are bombers just really bloody good? I think I'd lean towards the latter over the former, even more so when mod factions like DME go all Space America on you and demonstrate the power of space superiority doctrine. Bombers are kept in check by limited carrier slot availability and that their motherships are typically poor when exposed to the frontline. To my monkey brain that throws so many mods together I literally don't know what's vanilla and what's vanilla-friendly mod content anymore, the balance of missiles comes from how cost prohibitive is it to play the numbers game. Like how a few versions ago, enough Pilum launchers and Fast Missile racks would create a death ball of Pila that gibs capitals on contact and maintains mass by obliterating frigate hulls. With how many ships can mount a small missile rack, you can't simply give all Harpoons and Sabots a minute long reload and call it a day.