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[BulbasaurWizard]

Don’t get me wrong, I like using them to, but it seems like with the limited options for kinetic missiles this is your only option. Even in mods, the sabot outperforms other kinetic missiles drastically for several reasons:

They detonate outside most pd range.
Their burst damage catches ships unaware and often overloads.
They have rapid refire rate.
They have emp damage to make lowering shields a rough decision.
They have a lot of ammo for their Points.

They just seem ubiquitous, while a lot of explosive missiles can more or less be used interchangeably depending on the desired effect you want to tune. I wasn’t planning on this being a suggestion thread, but maybe 15% less damage or 33% less ammo would help to balance it and make you have to think about your fitting choices.

[Grievous69]

Well all those reasons make them good, if you removed even one of those things, they'd be pretty bad suddenly. I agree that they're strong but AI doesn't use them the best, most of the time it just fires it when it's in trouble. Which is in imo fine since every single ship but one is piloted by AI. We just need another kinetic option, or honestly any missile that's not a complete waste when hitting shields (yes I know Squalls exist).

[TaLaR]

Sabot pod has about the same dps as Heavy Auto Cannon. And trades not having flux cost for very limited ammo. No ship that has proper ballistic options chooses Sabots over them.

Most DEs/frigates can evade them by backpedaling (and it is still somewhat effective move for slower ships), unless fired point-blank (which makes Sabots easy prey for PD instead). No matter how fast Sabot-user is, Sabot missiles themselves are very slow. AI doesn't know how to counter Sabots, but it's easy enough for player.

[Plantissue]

Sabot are still OP indeed. As you have written there is a lot of reasons that combined together make them extremely effective. It doesn't help that they are the only KE damage missile either, so if you want to do KE damage, they are the only option.

[Harmful Mechanic]

Sabots would be more manageable if a few low-tech ships that can spam kinetics didn't also have a huge number of missile slots. They're practically a necessity on most high-tech ships.

[pairedeciseaux]

I used to consider sabot missiles as a disgusting - surprise attack - hard to counter - burst damage weapon. But, looking back, that most certainly was the reaction of an unexperienced player that didn't like loosing ships to these "surprises".

In fact, I think my everlasting love for LRPD comes from my fear of sabots, and the LRPD's ability to act as a sabot spotter / catcher (to a limited extend, granted).

Nowadays I'm OK with these and all other ammo-limited vanilla missiles.

Do they have a significant impact on balance? Yes.

Is it a bug? No, it's a feature.  (sorry, couldn't resist)

The point is, those missiles help making battles less predictable and shorter. They help most ships to shoot above their weight. Looking at the big picture all of this contribute to make Starsector a better game, IMO.

[bobucles]

It's nice the Sabots have a damage bonus against shields, but do they need the EMP damage as well? EMP weapons have good utility against armor, so you essentially have a missile with two bonus damage types. Raise your shields and get wrecked, or lower your shields, get paralyzed, and then wrecked. Few weapons pack so much utility into a single package.

There are no energy missiles to play with so all other missiles deal half or less damage against shields. Out of the vanilla options, Sabots are the only small and medium shield breaking missiles. Squalls and Locusts both function as large shield crushers.

[BulbasaurWizard]

While I know the player can recognize and do things to avoid sabots (if they are in an agile enough ship), the main focus here is AI interaction.  We will probably never have AI as creative to dodge Sabots, and I'm most frustrated by the fact that it makes my life easier.  I've used a fracture (unique sunder) until end game before due to the double medium sabot pods and HIL follow up.  Even if we add other kinetic small and medium missiles they would either have to be equal/better to sabot or fulfill a more niche role like long distance damage in order to be worth even considering.  The fact sabots are so powerful now, makes them likely to be the logical choice even if other missiles eventually come along.  Like I've mentioned, with mods, there are other kinetic missiles, yet sabots are so good at those overloads that they are still frequently chosen.  I think reducing ammo would make their use more selective.  Otherwise, I'm just looking to put some focus on them.

Also: in before my tournament fleet gets wrecked by sabots in an hour.

[intrinsic_parity]

I think sabots losing some emp would not completely ruin them. You can still use other weapons to prevent the enemy from dropping shields, it's not like the missiles need to do everything themselves.

[Dread Lord Murubarda]

it seems to me that the AI isn't properly using them. on a gryphon I put:

3 sabots on the front small slots
big reaper on the large slot
2 harpoon pods on the meds

I was expecting the steady officer with missile spec to use the sabots to take down shields and rip ships to shreds with the reapers and harpoons, like I saw it doing when in fleet battles and it was engaging an enemy with no shield. but, for some reason, it never used the sabots, so weird!

it will spam annihilator with no problems on shields, or the locust swarms, but it refused to shoot the sabots.

[BulbasaurWizard]

it seems to me that the AI isn't properly using them. on a gryphon I put:

3 sabots on the front small slots
big reaper on the large slot
2 harpoon pods on the meds

I was expecting the steady officer with missile spec to use the sabots to take down shields and rip ships to shreds with the reapers and harpoons, like I saw it doing when in fleet battles and it was engaging an enemy with no shield. but, for some reason, it never used the sabots, so weird!

it will spam annihilator with no problems on shields, or the locust swarms, but it refused to shoot the sabots.

I think for smalls and on a slower ship, it feels like it can’t get close enough or doesn’t want to waste ammo. Maybe switch the harpoons and sabots

[Dread Lord Murubarda]

hmm, it was vs a hammerheads, so speed 60 vs 90. but plenty of times it was close enough to shoot even the reapers.

so what do I put on the smalls? finishers and use sabots on meds? gonna try once I find a gryphon. thx.

[Harmful Mechanic]

I think sabots losing some emp would not completely ruin them. You can still use other weapons to prevent the enemy from dropping shields, it's not like the missiles need to do everything themselves.

You can drop a fair bit of EMP off Sabots and still have them be quite scary, yeah. Going from 400 to 150 on the submunitions makes them less overwhelming.

[RawCode]

there are only two stages of weapons

1) useless
2) OP

there is no "middle" as long as player try to minmax and act reasonable.

making sabots "not OP" will cause reasonable player to replace them with other weapons and there is no other kinetic nukes.

[RustyCabbage]

hmm, it was vs a hammerheads, so speed 60 vs 90. but plenty of times it was close enough to shoot even the reapers.

so what do I put on the smalls? finishers and use sabots on meds? gonna try once I find a gryphon. thx.

If you're adamant on using small sabots on the gryphon, you're basically going to need to link it to your frontal large missile. There are probably other okay options, but in general the gryphon is not AI-friendly at all.