*
goes off to use missile weapons for once*
*
comes back*
Yup sir. Missiles weapons are bad
In all seriousness, I actually never said missile weapons are
bad in my previous post. They are not, in their own right. However, when pitted against virtually
unlimited weapons, it's more profitable to put resources into installing/empowering the latter, instead of spending points on a temporary boost in firepower.
Meanwhile, I find all of your points completely invalid. I have a feeling you think I'm pulling all of this from nowhere - let me clarify I DO use missiles sometimes. I did test this all out. But every time I try it, after battle I go back to refit screen, uninstall all missiles, dump OP into vents/hull mods, test it, and I'm like "yeah, this really IS much better".
Missiles usually have extremely limited ammo because they are extremely powerful. Seriously. And yeah, they are situational. Why the heck wouldn't they be? That's why we have missile weapons for, quite literally, every situation. And in those situations they can often turn the tables on a fight almost singlehandedly.
Correction: They can often turn the tables on a SINGLE FRIGGIN ENCOUNTER. Because that's how long missiles will last you, unless we're talking about using Squalls or Locusts on several frigates.
"That's why we have missile weapons for quite literally every situation"? Well, we also have GUNS for every quite literally every situation, and these don't have limited ammo
Seriously, it's all matter of opinion, but why would I spend points on "extremely powerful weapon with extremely limited ammo" (and meanwhile, mr. Point Defense doesn't quite agree with the "extremely powerful" part) when I can spend same points on a little bit less powerful weapon with UNLIMITED ammo? Bottom line - such considerations should not even be part of the game.
Try a Sabot SRM Rack or two. Fling 'em against some well-shielded target. Watch the result.
I'm not really surprised you've brought up Sabot rack, the biggest cheese of missiles. And then wow! It really does overload ships!... THREE TIMES and afterwards you're stuck with a flying paperweight.
Stick Harpoons on a ship and wait for a target to be overloaded. Watch the result.
Yeah, I've seen the result. You wanna know what it is? Entire goddamn fleet dumps ALL of their harpoons on that single overloaded ship. That's at least 4 or 10 ordnance points on every ship down the toilet for the rest of the fight. And god forbid if that overloaded ship was in middle of a bigger fleet equipped with PD - then it may even survive that spam of harpoons.
PRO TIP: Tough fight in front of you, and you hate enemy harpoons? Buy yourself a cheap, rustbucket enforcer, place an officer on it, take control of it during a fight and then overload it on purpose. Now your enemy will throw all, or at least most, of their harpoons at that single enforcer and since you had an officer on it, you can recover it post-fight (assuming you had Fleet Logistics 1). Actually no, you don't have to do that - just use a carrier with shielded fighters - these provoke enemy to use harpoons too when they overload.
Equip a Safety Overrides ship with Hammer Torpedoes and give it something to shoot at. Watch the result.
Result: Same as harpoons, except this one can
sometimes kill something. That is until it runs out of hammers. Seriously, for what convoluted reason would you pair up missiles with hullmod that adds 2x vent rate??? Movement speed doesn't make any difference if it's the shields/PD that stops your firepower.
Better idea: Equip a Safety Overrides ship with GUNS! Now it can actually reliably kill things, and enjoy the buff to vent rate from the mod.
Fit those Squalls back onto that Astral and let it snipe the f### out of anything in the vicinity in advance of its fighters launching their payloads. Watch the damned result.
*sigh* Yeah right, "snipe" with Squalls. As long as you're shooting at something slow enough to not move out of the way of those Squalls.
Result: Exactly the same as my main loadout (2 Tridents, 2 Longbows, 1 Broadsword, 1 Claw, 2 Ion Beams, Expanded Deck Crew mod) except you eventually run out of ammo on Squalls and you can no longer "snipe" stuff. AND you cannot use Recall Device as fast, because you had to sacrifice 40 worth of OP points from either Vents or EDC mod. Honestly, why for the love of god would you waste points on missiles on Astral? It has fighters - these are better AND unlimited.
Again, this is not about missiles being too weak. Bottom line is that they should not take the same points to install as conventional weapons. Former has a hard limit on ammunition, latter is infinite. They should not compete.