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[DatonKallandor]

Sure if you want carriers to not be used again. Make bomber reloads limited and people will drop carriers and replace them with more direct combat cruisers and destroyers.

[Shad]

Which means it's the bombers and fighters that need adjusting, and not the missiles.

I have no idea why you would say that. Most weapons in the game have ammo regen in some way to make them useful in long engagements, except missileses and AM blasters. So your "solution" is to make all other weapons bad?

Bombers reloading at their carrier is consistent with both other game mechanics and with in-game lore. Missiles not being able to reload is the odd one out.

There's a reason they had to add missile regen in the last tournament between rounds: noone would put them on the ships otherwise.

[Euphytose]

Well, come up with a solution that allows missiles to keep their identity with unlimited ammo then. So far, nothing I've read would be balanced. The only balanced solution is to nerf their damage by a lot, like they currently exist in mods.

And right now, a fleet of bombers is easy mode. Mix a bit of interceptors and bombers and you can take on anything. They're by far the most powerful weapon. Limit their ammo, make expanded missile racks work on them too.

Also I fail to see how "bombers" mean "all other weapons". But seeing as you take lore into account when it comes to balancing, the discussion won't go anywhere.

[Shad]

Well, come up with a solution that allows missiles to keep their identity with unlimited ammo then.

You seem to misunderstanding "unlimited". It doesn't you can fire them forever non-stop. I already gave example with annihilator pod. If the 4 OP annihilator launcher keeps all current stats but also regens one salvo (5 missiles) every minute or so, it will keep the identity.

The only change is that it will be a more viable weapon choice rather than the trash tier version of the Khopesh it is right now.

[Euphytose]

I perfectly understand what unlimited means. Nowhere in my post does it say that I think of "unlimited" as an uninterrupted hail of missiles.

[DatonKallandor]

Well, come up with a solution that allows missiles to keep their identity with unlimited ammo then.

Again there's a mod for that. And hey, since "not unlimited" seems to be a prerequisite for unqiueness, the ballistics are also more unique than they are currently too!

vvv Factually wrong on so many levels, which you'd know if you'd actually looked at it. But hey, you do you.

[Plantissue]

You are just ignoring and diverting the balance arguments in this thread so you can plug your own recently released mod?  How shameless. Your link doesn't work btw. Go plug your mod in the mods part of the forum not here. A mod which btw simply recharges missiles, keeping their stats, making them overpowered.

[Silver Silence]

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.

[Sutopia]

Giving them a decent refire time makes 0 flux reloading missiles a non-issue.

No. Zero flux is too big of a deal even with a "decent refire time". Ballistics which have decent refire times like the Hellbore Cannon... and less range... and inaccuracy... still cost 750 flux to fire. Even with long refire you cannot balance zero flux missiles with refire times unless they were so long you would prefer to use the ammo counts.

I second this. Most missiles generate no flux at all when firing and they simply go op if there's no serious restrictions on them.
On the other hand, I do see some mod with reloading missile generating flux when they fire, but then they better off pack good hitpoints otherwise they only get cheesed by random beam or PD.

[Thaago]

Bombers are in a good place at the moment - when the stars align and they get an attack run on a vulnerable ship, they do nice damage without risk to their parent ship, and they can certainly pack a bang. 90% of bomber attack runs don't accomplish this, because its very difficult to control the exact timing of a run and enemy ships can inflict heavy losses. And then vent away the shield damage. When bombers take losses, their combat potential is diminished for quite a long time - usual replacement rates when at 100% are like 12 seconds. A carrier whose wings get blown up is a useless ship for a long time.

Missiles are also in a good place: they provide large on demand flux free damage spikes. They are far more deadly than bombers because they (usually) only launch at targets that are vulnerable, and they can put out a larger spike. Multiple ships across a fleet also coordinate their missiles reasonably well; we've all seen ships simply evaporated by Harpoon spam. In return, missiles have limited ammo. The missiles that regenerate don't do spike damage.

At present, missiles are the most powerful weapons in the game unless you are fighting enemies that vastly outnumber you (which can happen in campaign). The quick kill potential they give is extremely valuable.

[TaLaR]

At present, missiles are the most powerful weapons in the game unless you are fighting enemies that vastly outnumber you (which can happen in campaign). The quick kill potential they give is extremely valuable.

Valuable against player. Player side is always badly outnumbered in any fight worth talking about.

To be worth using for player under these conditions missile variant needs to outperform the competing endurance focused variant during CR time (just tilting balance in first 1v1 engagement and having reduced performance after missiles run out is not good enough when outnumbered).

Under AI control this is mostly limited to outliers like Buffalo Mk2 (that is worthless unless it spams missiles like no tomorrow and has no CR time to boot). Not like you are going to use Buffalos in campaign though.
Also works for something like swarmer-armed frigates - with extended racks they have enough ammo for most of CR time.

Or player-piloted ships that can put missiles to optimal use, for goals that same ships can't attain otherwise (Sabots on ships without ballistic slots/etc) or needs too much time for (getting through armor with Reapers/ rushing with Sabot-Enforcer/etc).

[Thaago]

... To be worth using for player under these conditions missile variant needs to outperform the competing endurance focused variant during CR time (just tilting balance in first 1v1 engagement and having reduced performance after missiles run out is not good enough when outnumbered). ...

For AI controlled ships, this is almost ALWAYS true. AI gunships, even those with aggressive officers, do not take major risks to finish off enemies - this has been noted by many people on the forums talking about 'stalling' AI, etc. Especially when outnumbered, gunships don't get kills with any reasonable speed - an enemy ship can get locally overwhelmed and high on flux, but then just back off behind more ships and come back later with a fresh flux pool. However, if you arm the AI with finisher missiles, they will maul something every time an enemy ship overloads or is pushed to very high flux.

Yes, the effect only lasts while the missiles last - but many ships carry quite a decent missile complement for only a modest OP investment - enough to destroy roughly 2+ ships of equal size for the more missile heavy 'gunships' like Enforcers, Dominators, or wolf/lasher/kite. A hard fight at 3:1 odds against can become an easy 2:1 even if half the missiles are wasted.

The effect is even more powerful when the fight is deployment limited - the front enemy lines get hit hard by missiles, causing losses and retreats (and just like in real war, wounding an enemy ship enough to get it to retreat, often dragging escorts along with it, is more valuable than a kill for winning a hard fight - reinforcements are delayed). The remaining enemies are then outnumbered until reinforcements manage to get down the screen, letting an aggressive player rack up kill after kill.

[Megas]

I agree with TaLaR.  Fighters are already unlimited missiles and they work well, for carriers at least.  MIRVs used to regenerate and that version of the MIRV was the best version despite less total damage per missile.  I do not think the idea of unlimited or regenerating missiles are overpowered.

[Euphytose]

I agree with TaLaR.  Fighters are already unlimited missiles and they work well

They work so well that you can build a fleet of nothing but carriers and pretty much AFK. I wish people would stop asking devs to buff things to the level of what's clearly above the rest. This is called powercreep and it ruined many games.

[Megas]

I disagree that carriers are "clearly above the rest" in 0.9a.  (The changes to rates and flux use on carriers put a dent in fighter power.)  They are simply another class of ships, in this case, artillery.  Warships are the fighter or warrior class, carriers are the mage class, and phase ships are the thief or rogue class.  Carriers do what the Gryphon should do, but succeed where the Gryphon fails.  The only significant balance problem with fighters is Perdition being superior to most bombers at a low cost of 12 OP, but that will change.

And no, I do not consider the idea of unlimited missiles by itself power creep.  Unlimited missiles on a weak missile is still a weak missile.