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Author Topic: All missiles should cost 0 ordnance points.  (Read 24411 times)

Wapno

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All missiles should cost 0 ordnance points.
« on: November 19, 2017, 12:51:50 AM »

I believe missiles should not cost any ordnance points.

Missiles in general are already a tough sell, since they are extremely limited and highly situational type of weapon. Thing is, installing them takes the same resource that could instead be spent on more flux vents/capacitors or better weapons/hullmods. At least in my case, 9 times out of 10 it's far, FAR more profitable to just rip out any missile launchers, leave their mounts blank and instead spend those OP points on Flux Distributor or other things that would last throughout an entire fight, instead of having a limited amount of shots, which can also be intercepted by PD to add insult to the injury.

There are even ships in the game with which its just outright illogical to mount missiles on, unless you want to waste OP. Exhibit A - Astral supercarrier. Has 2 large missile mounts. If you have any bombers in your loadout, I say nobody in their right mind would install any expensive missiles there, as those OP can instead be dumped into Expanded Deck Crew and/or vents to enable cycling your bombers faster with Recall Device.

Hence, I suggest to make missiles free, loadout-wise. That weapon category would no longer have to compete with regular weapons over ordnance points and would leave no reason to leave slots empty (at least those that support missiles).

Another thing is that it would justify missiles having limited ammunition.
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AxleMC131

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Re: All missiles should cost 0 ordnance points.
« Reply #1 on: November 19, 2017, 01:16:40 AM »

*Takes a deep breath*

Are you out of your bleeding MIND!!?  ???

Missile weapons are some of the strongest and most abusable in the entire damn game. This is extremely common knowledge. If you think missile weapons aren't worth it, you need to open your eyes and actually use the damn things for once. 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.

Don't believe me?

Try a Sabot SRM Rack or two. Fling 'em against some well-shielded target. Watch the result.

Stick Harpoons on a ship and wait for a target to be overloaded. Watch the result.

Equip a Safety Overrides ship with Hammer Torpedoes and give it something to shoot at. Watch the result.

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.

Noticing a pattern?

Then come back to me and tell me, with a straight face, "missile weapons are bad".



EDIT: If I come across as rude in this comment, it's partially because I'm tired, but partially because (and I apologize for this) that I actually think your suggestion is utter nonsense. And that doesn't happen very often from me. So if it helps, consider yourself lucky to be one of a very, very, very exclusive group of people in the world, and enjoy your day.
« Last Edit: November 19, 2017, 01:22:57 AM by AxleMC131 »
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Wapno

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Re: All missiles should cost 0 ordnance points.
« Reply #2 on: November 19, 2017, 04:05:40 AM »

*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.
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TaLaR

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Re: All missiles should cost 0 ordnance points.
« Reply #3 on: November 19, 2017, 05:37:46 AM »

Missiles are good in AI vs AI or as anti-player weapon. Or when you are shooting far above your weight category, like Afflictor vs Paragon. They also have some usage as *threat*. Just having one Harpoon and never launching it changes AI behavior somewhat, making it more conservative.

Squalls are also kind of special case - it's easy to make AI waste them all and eventually destroy launching ship. But it remains pretty much unassailable for single Cruiser/Capital while Squalls last. No other weapon/hullmod/whatever can buy reliable survival time vs player like that.

But outside of specialized cases, missiles are not worth it. Not for player piloted ship that is expected to destroy many AI-piloted ships and thus it's ammunition (if at all limited) should last most of it's CR time. Neither they are too good for AI ships that are expected to distract(and survive) vs overwhelming amount of enemies for extended period of time (which is what I usually want from my fleet).

« Last Edit: November 19, 2017, 05:47:09 AM by TaLaR »
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jupjupy

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Re: All missiles should cost 0 ordnance points.
« Reply #4 on: November 19, 2017, 08:13:34 AM »

Even IF missile weapons were bad - let's just assume for a second that they are, it would make no sense to make them 0 ordnance points.

Take some insanely *** weapons, for example, like, the Thumper or something. That gun is basically firing darts against starship armor and it still costs something to mount. Why would something like a torpedo that at least has some use be free in comparison to that?


Now, putting that argument aside, I find vanilla missiles rather annoying, though I do believe they're not nearly in the same boat as modded missiles. As a player, getting spammed by 300000 harpoons is stupid, and getting poked by sabots every 5 seconds is equally frustrating.

The underlying reason is this: maximisation of burst damage in Starsector tends to be more efficient than maximisation of sustained power. If each of my frigates has 6 sabots and can overload an enemy frigate 6 times, versus the enemies which have none, I'm going to be winning every fight that has this kind of match-up will be in my favor. It is not difficult at all to take a missile-heavy fleet into a fight far above its weight-class, dump all the missiles, retreat, and repeat, without losing any ships.
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mehgamer

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Re: All missiles should cost 0 ordnance points.
« Reply #5 on: November 19, 2017, 10:27:14 AM »

OK, so I'm going to take a different direction than pretty much everyone here and say I understand what you're getting at.  You're wrong, but I had the very same line of thinking as you for a while in my "Career" playing this game.  For a long while I saw no reason to use missiles on any ship at all, because - well - why would I waste OP on a temporary weapon when I can instead reinvest into more reliable and persistent things?  My flagships would almost never have missiles on them, because I was fine without using them so what was the point - even if harpoons on a wolf means I can kill things quicker, who needs speed if you already won?

But this thinking has several flaws.  Yes, you don't need missiles.  And yes, you can minmax a more "durable" build without using up your valuable and limited Ordinance Points on a weapon slot that you never use.  But minmaxing isn't everything, and you DO feel the slower kill speed without missiles when CR starts to tick and only half the enemy ships have died.

There are a lot of points I can make, and a lot of paragraphs I can ramble on about the exact, nuanced reasoning why someone would decide whether or not they equip a missile weapon on a given ship.  But instead, there are two ideas I would like to present you with in order to explain why I eventually broke out of my "war against missile weapons":

Firstly, I noticed something very subtle about the AI:  When a ship is at high flux, enemy ships will become more aggressive towards it, because they know that a kill may be possible. Ships who are at high flux, or worse yet "flux locked" and unable to fire their entire weapon loadout without risking an overload, are nearly defenseless against enemies with the flux pools to spare and enough mobility to run them down.  But, there is still one thing that "flux locked" ships are still capable of doing - firing missiles.  Missiles do not cost flux, and deal a LOT of damage in a very short time, and the AI is coded to realize this somewhat.  If a ship is at 90% flux and retreating from combat, even just the presence of a harpoon MRM sitting on its hull ready to fire is enough to make greedy ships think twice before chasing it down.  Personally, I found this invaluable when kitting ships for my defensive play styles - making enemy ships less eager to rush my vulnerable allies increases fleet survivability by magnitudes!

Secondly, starting to re-equip my ships with missiles made me realize something else.  Missiles give ships an upper hand in 1v1 fights.  Yes, I know, this is obvious, and you even pointed out this trait in your own post, citing that even though missiles work once, they only work the one time.  This can be true!  But consider your fleet not as a collection of ships fighting 1v1 duels, think of your fleet as a swarm of ships engaged with another swarm of ships, likely of equivalent size.  If each of your ships are capable of bursting down just ONE ship before losing a significant amount of their combat effectiveness, and your fleet has about the same number of hulls as the enemy fleet, that's a battle won!

If every ship in your fleet gets a kill, that's all you need to win!



Fitting weapons and systems on ships in this game is designed to be a game of tradeoffs.  Certain ships do better with certain loadouts, others can not manage to pull those same strategies off no matter how hard you try.  Understanding this is the key to victory, and arguing that one or more elements of the game should suddenly ignore this design betrays Alex's intention for Starsector.  Nothing should ever be zero OP (and yes, I include talons and mining pods in this), because it means they become the default option, and it reduces the opportunity costs inherent in loadout design.
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intrinsic_parity

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Re: All missiles should cost 0 ordnance points.
« Reply #6 on: November 19, 2017, 10:37:48 AM »

Missiles are definitely more relevant in the early frigate v frigate fights because the burst damage is so massive relative to the damage a frigate can put out but there are also some powerful late game builds. The point of missiles is to allow ships to punch above their weight/do damage extremely quickly. It would definitely be absurd to make them cost 0 op.

My favorite example of a good late game missile build is a missile boat aurora. I use 2x sabot pods (forward medium hybrid and rear hybrid turret) 4x single reapers (forward small hybrids) 2x heavy blasters and then tac lasers and pd in the back. I max vents and use expanded missile racks and a range boosting hull mod. The two heavy blasters are more than enough firepower to deal with anything smaller than a cruiser. A couple sabots will get any cruiser near max flux, and heavy blasters will tear through armor, you can use a reaper to help if necessary. All of this however can be achieved with a SO variant. The real power is dumping 8x sabot and 4x reaper into a capital. Only the paragon can tank 8x sabot on shields, anything else will be nearly maxed out on flux and then you dump 4x reapers into them. In a 1v1 this might be tough but in a fleet context, it is fairly easy and low risk since it does not build any flux. A SO/blaster build will not be able to that kind of damage to a capital ship without massive fleet support.

With expanded missile racks, you have 48 sabots total. I almost never run out. I just need to be careful to save reapers for the biggest targets.

This build also has the advantage of killing things extremely quickly, which can make a huge difference in terms of peak performance time concerns. Finishing a battle quickly saves you CR loss which in turn saves you supplies. I can't even imagine how strong I could make an aurora if all missiles cost 0 op...
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Linnis

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Re: All missiles should cost 0 ordnance points.
« Reply #7 on: November 19, 2017, 11:07:44 AM »

Pilum and Salamanders are weak.  Sabots a bit too strong.

Honestly I wouldn't mind if they had 0 OP cost, as everyone's ships would get "stronger", except medusa, poor medusa.

Almost every AI ship uses missiles anyways. Without them battles are 100% one ship will win over the other, the only real wildcard is stupid AI mistakes and missiles. Also ships will just end up with beefier flux stats to take more damage from more missiles in the game.


It would not be that bad.
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Megas

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Re: All missiles should cost 0 ordnance points.
« Reply #8 on: November 19, 2017, 01:28:46 PM »

I am not opposed to the OP, if missiles stay as they are.  I prefer all missiles gain regeneration instead, though.  I would use fighters' Swarmers over the limited four-shot if I had a choice.

With tight OP budgets, if I need to sacrifice something, missiles are always the first to go.  Sometimes, that is not enough, and I need to sacrifice more than missiles alone, but missiles are always first.

Missiles, in general, are terrible for endurance fighting, like for the player in a campaign expected to fight waves of ships; but missiles are good in a tourney setting where the enemy cannot outnumber you, you only have one fight to deal with, and you can launch everything in one burst.

Regenerators... Salamanders and Pilums are bad.  In 0.8, you need four Salamanders to get the reliability you used to get with two.  Pilums' hit points seemed to have lowered enough that even LR PD laser can shoot them down fast.  Regenerators are so bad that for a cruiser or capital, Converted Hangar and a wing of fighters fulfill the regenerator role bettter than either Salamanders or Pilums.  Salamanders may still be somewhat useful on smaller ships, those that cannot use Converted Hangar well, if at all.  Pilums are rubbish - too slow and too fragile, and no classic Missile Specialization to make them good.

Large dumb-fire missiles... worthless because of the hulls that can use them, Gryphon is much too fragile, Apogee has awkward mount, Conquest sacrifices broadsides to use them, and Astral sacrifices fighter power to fit the missiles in.  Player needs to find mod ships that can use large dumb-fires effectively without drawback.

SquallsLocusts are great.  Despite frag damage, they are an excellent generalist weapon due to overwhelming DPS and enough ammo to last some time.  Locusts are like a homing needler back when needlers had ammo.  They are worth using on a Conquest.

Squalls... I don't know.  From what I see, let's say I am not impressed.  If I need lots of kinetic damage, better to bring a Dominator with Mark IXs or some carriers with Longbows (for Sabot spam).

Reapers can be good.  Afflictor vs. Paragon is classic textbook case.

Atropos are a disappointment.  Clearly rebalanced for the sake of Daggers and ruined for playership use (not unlike Damper Field for Centurion and Brawler thanks to Mora).  They were better as "finger of death" in the 0.7.2 days.

Missiles I tend to use...
* Reapers - anti-Paragon on Afflictor.
* Harpoons and Hammers - either filler weapon on zombie clunkers and/or minor AI mind-control.
* Annihilators - defensive wall on Enforcers and other ships.
* Salamanders - harassers on ships that cannot use Converted Hangar.
* Locusts - homing needler on Conquest
« Last Edit: November 19, 2017, 01:54:52 PM by Megas »
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Shrugger

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Re: All missiles should cost 0 ordnance points.
« Reply #9 on: November 19, 2017, 01:42:12 PM »

Missiles aren't really combat-economical as a primary weapon for most ships, and as a secondary weapon their ECCM and Expanded Racks upgrades can't really compete for OPs with ballistics and energy weapons.

In short and in my (mod-tinted) opinion, they're the weakest of the three weapons categories at present. They run out of ammo, the AI uses them poorly, and they do not share hullmods with other weapons.
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Megas

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Re: All missiles should cost 0 ordnance points.
« Reply #10 on: November 19, 2017, 01:50:58 PM »

the AI uses them poorly
This is what kills MIRVs for me.  AI loves to squander them.

Similarly, AI likes to use Sabots as a shield breaker instead of as an unblockable hull smasher.  Sabots also do a decent job smashing armor on thinly-armored ships.  I tend to ignore Sabots on my ships.  If I want Sabots, better to bring a carrier with Longbows.
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Igncom1

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Re: All missiles should cost 0 ordnance points.
« Reply #11 on: November 19, 2017, 04:34:17 PM »

I'm not too big on using missiles but there are times when I have had a good time with them.

Reapers aren't as strong as they used to be, they used to be some kind of red death that would violently delete cruisers from our dimension. These days they serve excellently as super heavy, one time use armour crackers that can be very good at putting Mora carriers down. They also make for fantastic cathartic weapons to use on disabled high-tech Wolf frigates. Nothing says die like gratuitous overkill.

Pilums I have found to be pretty poor when used in numbers below 5, but once you cross that threshold, especially with lots of bombers and fighters with flares you end up with map crossing missile death tides. As seen here, (Sorry to advertise):
https://www.youtube.com/edit?o=U&video_id=X8fhzvGCGDQ
Very fun as they screw with the AI immensely and deny large portions of the map.

Annihilators are fun when massed but I find the AI mostly dumping them into empty space for the most part. Fun to use more then effective.

Sabots can be deadly to smaller ships as the AI has a tendency of dumping them all at once and completely overkilling their targets. Great for a limited use shield destroy but simply won't work in longer slugging matches that I tend to employ. It's far from a race case however for the AI to save them for a killing blow however. If and when you choose to use these can easily allow you to overload and opponent with little opportunity for them to actually intercept and stop you.

Harpoons tend to be used poorly by the AI, they get dumped on the first willing target available and are usually wasted. They are basic and pack a punch however, but I'll stick to Reapers/Hammers if that is all I want.
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TJJ

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Re: All missiles should cost 0 ordnance points.
« Reply #12 on: November 20, 2017, 04:14:19 AM »

There is an imbalance relating to missiles, in the way that fighters armed with missiles essentially give you unlimited missiles.

Though I consider fighter balance to be way out of whack anyway*, so no point moaning about it atm.
*(unlimited force concentration, unlimited missiles, bypass flux & range mechanics)

The game was more fun when the battlefield wasn't dominated by annoying little hornets that diminish player agency.
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Megas

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Re: All missiles should cost 0 ordnance points.
« Reply #13 on: November 20, 2017, 05:05:53 AM »

Right now, fighters are the only thing preventing the game from degenerating into a boring turtle-fest where the AI refuses to engage if they do not have the numbers to swarm and kill things as a pack.

It is nice fighters are useful again.  It is true that carriers are stronger than gunships, but in case of flagship, that is because player can stack speed boosts without penalty, while gunships lose shot range with UI and usually cannot use Helmsmanship 3 in combat effectively.  In other words, only carriers can kite-and-snipe like gunships used to do.

Quote
There is an imbalance relating to missiles, in the way that fighters armed with missiles essentially give you unlimited missiles.
This is precisely why missiles should be unlimited.  This is why I replace all missiles with Converted Hangar and wing of fighters on every cruiser and capital I have, if I cannot have both due to lack of OP.  Given the way the game handles fighters, fighters themselves are missiles that can shoot bullets or more missiles, and few of them do not need human pilots.  There is a reason why I write "fighters are better missiles than missiles".

Quote
The game was more fun when the battlefield wasn't dominated by annoying little hornets that diminish player agency.
The game is different.  In 0.7.x, I had to solo every fight or else my ships died, and it was too hard to replace the ships and some weapons I liked.  Also, fighters were weak to the point of uselessness during 0.7.x, and with useless fighters, carriers were pointless.  On the other hand, 0.6.5 was fun, but it rewarded frigate swarms best if you were not doing food runs with huge Atlas fleets.  Early 0.6.x up to 0.6.2 was hideous due to loot and supply drain, practically required Atlas fleet led by overpowered Medusa just to loot endgame fleet once without overflow.  0.5.4 was auto-resolve for powerleveling.

P.S.  In any case, we need a ship that is strong enough to use large dumb-fire missiles (i.e., Hammer Barrage, Cyclone Reaper) effectively without loss of power.  Gryphon could be it if its stats were boosted to cruiser level.  (Pre 0.7.2 Aurora with large missile mount would certainly qualify.)  Otherwise, large dumb-fire missiles will always be bad in unmodded games as long as there is no worthwhile ship to use them on.
« Last Edit: November 20, 2017, 05:40:15 AM by Megas »
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Megas

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Re: All missiles should cost 0 ordnance points.
« Reply #14 on: November 20, 2017, 08:00:39 AM »

Take some insanely *** weapons, for example, like, the Thumper or something. That gun is basically firing darts against starship armor and it still costs something to mount. Why would something like a torpedo that at least has some use be free in comparison to that?
Thumper is not that bad anymore, at least when you are stuck with Open Market weapons.  It will wreck ships that lost armor, or were thinly armored to begin with.  Arbalest and Heavy Mortars are relatively slow.  Thumper is fast and not to be underestimated anymore.  For ships with three ballistic mounts (namely Enforcer and Eagle), a Heavy Mortar, Arbalest, and Thumper combo is effective enough to be viable.

As for torpedoes, at least the small ones are fairly cheap and useful.  Bigger ones seem useful mostly as a playership weapon since AI tends to hoard torpedoes.
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