Fractal Softworks Forum

Starsector => General Discussion => Topic started by: DeltaV_11.2 on April 09, 2015, 06:01:02 PM

Title: Heavy Missile Mount
Post by: DeltaV_11.2 on April 09, 2015, 06:01:02 PM
I'd like to see some more options for the heavy missile mount. Right now all there is is Cyclone Reaper and Hurricane LRM. Both of these are good weapons, but them being the only weapons for the mount leaves it kinda underwhelming. I suppose I can stick a medium missile weapon in the mount, but that is kind of a weak option. Small and medium missile mounts give lots of options in terms of weapons and role, but large only has two roles, and they're both HE missiles that are only really useful against capitals.
Title: Re: Heavy Missile Mount
Post by: Dri on April 09, 2015, 06:10:56 PM
I agree we could use another Lg Missile that isn't just more of the same missile but in larger numbers like the reaper launcher is. The MIRV is... less than stellar.
Title: Re: Heavy Missile Mount
Post by: Megas on April 09, 2015, 06:15:44 PM
MIRVs are good now that they regenerate.  They are a true fire-and-forget weapon.

One large missile I want to see is a heavy Annihilator with either lots of rockets and/or regeneration.
Title: Re: Heavy Missile Mount
Post by: Xanderzoo on April 09, 2015, 06:25:36 PM
I want a large Annihilator too...
Title: Re: Heavy Missile Mount
Post by: TJJ on April 09, 2015, 06:39:43 PM
Mine Launcher!

Phase cloak + short range homing ability.

Restricted to a heavy mount, so they don't become a 'spam the entire map with them' type weapon.

No doubt there are such weapons in several mods as proof of concept.
Title: Re: Heavy Missile Mount
Post by: MesoTroniK on April 09, 2015, 07:26:27 PM
You really do not want a large Annihilator weapon, the medium is broken enough. The concept of a large rocket launcher has merit of course but not by scaling up existing weapons, but something entirely new in my opinion.

Also no mines, the AI does not understand how to deal with a weapon like that and this was tried as mod content before.
Title: Re: Heavy Missile Mount
Post by: MesoTroniK on April 09, 2015, 07:54:59 PM
To make a huge AOE warhead requires some scripted trickery so the AI can understand and defend against it, The Mayorate mod has such a weapon.
Title: Re: Heavy Missile Mount
Post by: Pushover on April 09, 2015, 09:01:04 PM
I kinda want to see a big brother of the Eel. Just a reasonable HE missile. Or turn it into a general purpose energy/EMP damage missile.
Title: Re: Heavy Missile Mount
Post by: Tartiflette on April 10, 2015, 12:11:00 AM
A combo launcher that fires 2 (improved) sabots and 2 (less improved) harpoon... And 2 (not improved, these are already crazy) Salamanders for good measure! The perfect ship killer missile mount. 20 ammo of each. 10 seconds delay.
...
So OP  ;D
Title: Re: Heavy Missile Mount
Post by: Megas on April 10, 2015, 06:15:23 AM
You really do not want a large Annihilator weapon, the medium is broken enough. The concept of a large rocket launcher has merit of course but not by scaling up existing weapons, but something entirely new in my opinion.
Yes I do.  Medium Annihilator is not "broken".  I do not think it has enough ammo.  New is good, filling out missing stuff, assault weapon in this case, is good too.  All we have in large missiles is unguided nuke (Reaper) and guided nuke (MIRV).

By your logic, we should not have Cyclone Reaper.
Title: Re: Heavy Missile Mount
Post by: Megas on April 10, 2015, 01:34:02 PM
Annihilators are one of the few non-regenerators that is effective at what it does, and it is not so overpowered that ships cannot defend against it.  Annihilators have low enough ammo that they will run out early in a long fight, although at least they are not empty after a few shots like Harpoons and Sabots.
Title: Re: Heavy Missile Mount
Post by: HELMUT on April 10, 2015, 01:51:23 PM
Annihilators's biggest strength is being a spammable 400 dps gun at 0 flux with very good ammo capacity. Because of the number of missiles, it tends to overload PDs and block incoming projectiles. Like all missiles, they really become scary when you mount several of them.

As far as i know, only the Enforcer (to some degrees), Dominator and Onslaught can properly spam Annihilators. The AI is a bit underwhelming with those but mounted on a flagship, i'll always take Annihilators over any torpedoes.

As Megas said, they are not the best in long fights, especially if you are playing with a solo flagship. However they felt very strong if you had a whole fleet to back you up during the battle.

For a large Annihilator... To be honest i also wanted something like this at one moment. Annihilators are very strong in numbers but very few ships can actually boat them with a large missile mount on top of that. The Astral have two large missiles but it's the last ship you want to send brawling the enemy. The Conquest also have two but forward facing, by using those you'll lose quite a bit of your broadside firepower.

The only vanilla ship that could become really scary would be the Aurora, 1 large Annihilator + 4 small ones. With the two medium energy for shieldbreaking, the Aurora could become really mean.

But other than that, a large Annihilator doesn't feel that threatening, mostly because there's no ship that can get the most of it.

A large Swarmer however, now this could be fun.
Title: Re: Heavy Missile Mount
Post by: Xanderzoo on April 10, 2015, 02:46:40 PM
I personally would love to put large Annihilators on the front of a Conquest. I'd fire, then engage my maneuvering jets and spin around releasing a hail of death at all my enemies. :)
Title: Re: Heavy Missile Mount
Post by: Megas on April 10, 2015, 03:13:29 PM
I prefer Annihilators over Reapers if I have OP to spare because the AI uses them effectively, either to kill enemies or screen itself from enemy fire.  AI is too conservative with Reapers.  The main reason I use Reapers over Annihilators, in small mounts, is OP cost.
Title: Re: Heavy Missile Mount
Post by: DeltaV_11.2 on April 10, 2015, 05:50:07 PM
Glad to see that other people think this is a good idea. :)

As for my thoughts on what would be good for the mount... One of the things I'd like to see in large missiles is some sort of anti-fighter PD measure. "Large mount swarmers," but I think that something other than just a vomit of swarmers would be appropriate. Something longer ranged, to provide area defense against fighter craft(currently nothing really does that). Other than that, there's the assault missile role. I've wanted many times to have an alternate to harpoon pods in a large missile mount. Either just more harpoons, or something that fufills a similar role- effective guided burst HE against most targets. A fire support weapon other than Hurricanes would be nice too, Hurricanes are great but tend to struggle to hit anything faster than a cruiser. Part of the attraction of missile mounts is supposed to be(IIRC) that they're very versatile, and both medium and small missile are. So seeing large missile get that breadth of options would be very pleasing.
Title: Re: Heavy Missile Mount
Post by: SafariJohn on April 10, 2015, 05:58:15 PM
How about a bomb-pumped laser missile of some kind? Would be interesting, at least.
Title: Re: Heavy Missile Mount
Post by: Pushover on April 10, 2015, 06:00:11 PM
Perhaps a proximity detonated missile would be good. Fits the role of anti-fighter/anti-frigate. Has a moderate splash (nothing so huge that the AI can't handle, but enough to hit multiple fighters in a wing).
Title: Re: Heavy Missile Mount
Post by: Megas on April 10, 2015, 07:12:46 PM
The game has a proximity bomb launcher (for medium mounts), but it underperforms, sadly.
Title: Re: Heavy Missile Mount
Post by: CopperCoyote on April 10, 2015, 10:20:39 PM
The proximity charge is my goto weapon for making the Venture more snipish. It's good enough that the pair of them will demolish the armor on incoming fighter wings, splat whole vollies of bombs, and it does a passable job at breaking ship armor. I just wish the proximity range was smaller for larger and larger hulls. That way they'd smack into the hulls of enemy cruisers and actually do the 500 explosive damage listed. It also has lots of ammo so it'll last though most even fleet fights.

They're also being potentially buffed soon with the PD tag
Title: Re: Heavy Missile Mount
Post by: Megas on April 11, 2015, 06:58:37 AM
I tried proxy bombs, but did not like them.  They are too slow, too hard to hit things, too easily defeated, and worst of all - cost more OP than more effective alternatives.  Proxy bombs have some ammo, but not enough to fire them like crazy.  I am skeptical that adding PD alone will be enough.
Title: Re: Heavy Missile Mount
Post by: CopperCoyote on April 11, 2015, 07:22:40 AM
Yeah now that ammo isn't an issue for ballistic mounts it's totally out shined by flak. It's a ppor weapon to give to NPC ships because they'll spam them. On the Venture (and Tartarus from SRA) it's a finesse weapon. They are used at the right moment for devastating effect. Not usually good for most ships either.

I'd like to have a large mount version with a higher refire rate. That's make Auroras Tartaruses and some builds of Conquests substantially better at dealing with fighter craft.

It's also be nice to have regening ammo on them.
Title: Re: Heavy Missile Mount
Post by: cardgame on April 19, 2015, 01:46:46 PM
I'd really like something like the Tornado AM Battery from the Mayorate mod. Failing that, a better Pilum-style LRM launcher would be decent. 6-8 at once with more ammo and maybe better tracking.
Title: Re: Heavy Missile Mount
Post by: Solinarius on April 19, 2015, 05:36:59 PM
I had this idea for the charges that I think would simultaneously make them better and more interesting. Wish I knew how to mod it in :P... a single mount could launch two charges at something like a 45° crossover angle and they could be given very lite tracking capability. This would give the charges the ability to bracket ships, making it more difficult for them to dodge. If the launcher were given more ammo, it could be a quite an effective fire support weapon.
Title: Re: Heavy Missile Mount
Post by: xenoargh on April 19, 2015, 06:57:55 PM
I completely agree that the Large Missile Slot is the most underwhelming, under-utilized thing in the weapons (even worse than Large Energy, if barely).

I'd welcome any number of power-tools there.  A six-shot Pilum; a heavier version of the Annihilator; a Macross-style pod-launcher that was a one-shot area-denial device or death-blow weapon with a nice, slow initial launch and dozens of mini-missles.  A bigger Reaper that was one-shot but was basically a nuke with an AOE.  Basically, something big, dramatic and interesting; it's a missile slot that isn't common (heck, it's probably the rarest slot in the game, other than Universal) and it deserves some oomph.

A Sabot launcher that actually killed capship shields, even... oh wait, who am I kidding, lol.
Title: Re: Heavy Missile Mount
Post by: Xanderzoo on April 19, 2015, 07:06:41 PM
A Sabot launcher that actually killed capship shields, even... oh wait, who am I kidding, lol.

I'd actually like a Sabot launcher that fires six missiles with a half second delay. That would keep the enemy's shield down for a while and allow me to fire some high explosive damage weapons.
Title: Re: Heavy Missile Mount
Post by: Shuka on April 24, 2015, 03:13:20 PM
Its funny because mods have some pretty cool large missile mounts, like the trebuchet launcher which is probably hella OP.

What are the best missile ships? For example I really like having a Conquest capital ship around because it has 2 large missile and 2 medium missile mounts which amounts to a pleasing amount of missile spam. It seems any small ships with medium universal mounts I stick missiles in there and try to get some good missile spam going.

Really I just like having tons of missiles fly around while I pew pew in a sunder or karkino
Title: Re: Heavy Missile Mount
Post by: SafariJohn on April 25, 2015, 08:00:39 PM
How about a bomb-pumped laser missile of some kind? Would be interesting, at least.

http://i.imgur.com/cGhZh.jpg

Well, it looks like David sketched some concept art for just such a thing a long time ago. Reference Gorgon and Hydra directed energy munitions.

Gallery: http://imgur.com/a/nJ6Sk#15
Title: Re: Heavy Missile Mount
Post by: Tartiflette on April 26, 2015, 01:50:18 AM
We asked for years to be able to spawn beams like other weapons but Alex said "not going to happen!"
Too bad because apparently it was planned (http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=881.msg8818#msg8818) at some point but never finished/removed/too buggy.
Title: Re: Heavy Missile Mount
Post by: DeltaV_11.2 on April 28, 2015, 06:20:44 PM
If you want, just make a weapon that spawns a high-speed and long bolt. It'll look kinda beam-ish.
Title: Re: Heavy Missile Mount
Post by: MesoTroniK on April 28, 2015, 07:03:04 PM
Except it does not actually act like a beam, especially how it interacts with scripted fun things that exist in some mods.

There is possible ways to cheat a proper beam look and function, but it would be stupidly complex and never truly work 100% right.
Title: Re: Heavy Missile Mount
Post by: OOZ662 on May 05, 2015, 11:21:01 AM
I'd be inclined toward basically a bigger version of BRDY's Gonodactylus-class's Hammerclaw missile. A big metal spike that steers like a tall Kerbal rocket with no control surfaces or inertia systems but deals rather massive kinetic damage and imparts a push hitting something with its shield down.
Title: Re: Heavy Missile Mount
Post by: Steven Shi on May 10, 2015, 07:43:24 PM
Late to the discussion.

For missile ideas, just look at SOTS 2's torpedo/missile tech tree. Visually or mechanically, you have to give credit to the people at Kerberos for creating some really unique weapons.

i. A Kinetic Kill missile to break through shields quickly instead of using close ranged sabot or slow nukes.
ii. A bomb pumped laser warhead bypassing the point defense.
iii. A slow moving energy torpedo that becomes weaker after being hit by PDs but can act as a PD magnet for other missiles.
iv. An AOE damage-over-time corrosive cloud warhead. Big dmg but potentially friendly fire dmg.
v. Multi-purpose launch vehicle - deposit mines, cry baby, jammers or other utility warheads from a distance.
vi. Phased/cloaked skipper missiles a la that Wing Commander movie.
vii. EMP missiles just to use SS's own mechanics.
viii. Magnetically charged missiles that's strong against the more effective laser PDs but weak against kinetic PDs. Or vice versa. This can be a ship module that just adds additional stats to existing missiles launchers.

You definitely don't need to use a 'scale up small/medium mount' philosophy to make large missile mounts interesting. Missile are suppose to be more VERSATILE in combat after all.   
Title: Re: Heavy Missile Mount
Post by: sotanaht on May 11, 2015, 12:27:11 AM
Its funny because mods have some pretty cool large missile mounts, like the trebuchet launcher which is probably hella OP.

What are the best missile ships? For example I really like having a Conquest capital ship around because it has 2 large missile and 2 medium missile mounts which amounts to a pleasing amount of missile spam. It seems any small ships with medium universal mounts I stick missiles in there and try to get some good missile spam going.

Really I just like having tons of missiles fly around while I pew pew in a sunder or karkino

In vanilla, you are pretty much stuck with Vigilances.  Which is fine, since medium missile mounts are probably all you want in vanilla.  Some people might mention the Doom or Venture, but they are no where near cost effective and only even decent for about 5 seconds.

Mods, I recommend the Junk Pirates' Hammer or the Interstellar Imperium's Decurion at the frigate level.  The Decurion is a little more survivable, but costs twice as much logistics and doesn't have the fast missile racks.

The Citadel Monolith is my favorite Capital level missile ship, with 3 large and 7 medium universal slots, and umpteen million small fixed point defense slots, you can load it with whichever missiles you want and it doubles as a great fleet support ship.  It's not nearly as efficient, but it's a lot hardier than the frigates.

There aren't really any good destroyer/cruiser choices AFAIK.  The cruisers are generally less efficient in terms of slots-per-deployment-cost than the monolith, so you might as well have the tougher and more all-around useful capital.  There are very few destroyers with large slots even in the mods, and they can't compete with the frigate swarm's medium slot firepower.  None of them that I know of would make a good missile ship.
Title: Re: Heavy Missile Mount
Post by: Midnight Kitsune on May 11, 2015, 09:47:26 AM
There aren't really any good destroyer/cruiser choices AFAIK.  The cruisers are generally less efficient in terms of slots-per-deployment-cost than the monolith, so you might as well have the tougher and more all-around useful capital.  There are very few destroyers with large slots even in the mods, and they can't compete with the frigate swarm's medium slot firepower.  None of them that I know of would make a good missile ship.
The archer in SS+ is my go to missile ship. It has FMR AND 3 med missile mounts! All on a nice little destroyer
Title: Re: Heavy Missile Mount
Post by: Dark.Revenant on May 11, 2015, 12:31:04 PM
Soon to be no FMR, but still very effective.
Title: Re: Heavy Missile Mount
Post by: Midnight Kitsune on May 11, 2015, 12:45:32 PM
Soon to be no FMR, but still very effective.
Yeah don't remind me...
Title: Re: Heavy Missile Mount
Post by: Euqocelbbog on May 12, 2015, 10:41:59 PM
Soon to be no FMR, but still very effective.
Might I ask what ability it will be replaced with? I also really like the Archer but it definitely gets pretty crazy with 3 medium missiles and FMR.
Title: Re: Heavy Missile Mount
Post by: sotanaht on May 13, 2015, 04:50:24 AM
There aren't really any good destroyer/cruiser choices AFAIK.  The cruisers are generally less efficient in terms of slots-per-deployment-cost than the monolith, so you might as well have the tougher and more all-around useful capital.  There are very few destroyers with large slots even in the mods, and they can't compete with the frigate swarm's medium slot firepower.  None of them that I know of would make a good missile ship.
The archer in SS+ is my go to missile ship. It has FMR AND 3 med missile mounts! All on a nice little destroyer

Slightly better than the Vigilance's unless you need frigate speed, but worse than Hammers and Decurians, both of which have 2 medium slots for 5 deployment, 1-2 logistics.
Title: Re: Heavy Missile Mount
Post by: Dark.Revenant on May 13, 2015, 08:07:09 AM
Decurions are getting the slots changed, because the intention wasn't to allow missile spam.

Hammers are straight-up OP.
Title: Re: Heavy Missile Mount
Post by: Unreal_One on May 18, 2015, 10:57:20 AM
What I'd like to see from heavy missile mounts is some kind of drone catapult. Maybe it launches a half dozen point defense units that orbit the mother ship, or it could launch a terminator that seeks out enemy ships until it runs out of power. Basically, the ability to turn a ship into a CAM ship. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAM_ship)