Today I was derping around with Sins of a Solar Empire and I noticed that the Vasari use "phase missiles" which can phase to phase space before colliding with the shields and dephase (which is a real word, of course) into the shield, hitting directly the ship.
As we are about to see phase technology in Starfarer, wouldn't it be cool to see such weapon in our game?
How would it work?
1. you launch the missile
2. it goes near the targeted ship
3. it enters phase space
4. it moves to the ship bypassing the shields
5. it dephases
6. BOOM!
7. profit!
My thoughts about it:
They use a technology similar to phase ships which allows a small object to enter phase space
for a few seconds before dephasing and requires less energy and, more importantly, less credits to build (meaning it can be used on missiles). BUT, as this technology is "weaker" than the one used on phase ships, only a small amount of matter can be phased, so it is an atropos-like torpedo, able to cripple cruisers and capitals but more vulnerable to point defense weapons due to its low speed (as it has a powerful warhead but a smaller engine).
In the moment when the missile phases to attack, it estimates the time needed to reach the target's
current position and begins a countdown from that time. Passed that time OR 5-10 seconds (remember what I said about the technology) it dephases and behaves like a normal missile, exploding when touched.
Also it won't track the target while phased, so it's possible to evade it completely or just move enough to make it dephase out of your ship.
Obviously, it should be balanced not to allow people just to fire 10 of these missiles every five seconds. Maybe using a medium-sized launcher with 2 missiles (which have a low range, like 1200-1500) and a large-sized launcher with 6 missiles, maybe each one brought to the target via a MIRV, allowing a longer range and making it a useful fire support weapon against shielded targets.
I don't have any idea how hard implementing this can be, it looks simple but it could be a coding nightmare, so I'll obviously let Alex decide.
What do you guys think?