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[Camael]

Wow... original topic totally gone, is it? No worries, at least I learned that I am not totally wrong here and a lot of folks share my concerns of missiles being at the same time overpowered and underwhelming. The issue here is that it's nigh impossible to balance out properly. Of course You want to keep the missile combat in play, but of course You want it to mean something so they don't get just another gun. The super-move analogy is actually pretty nice.
Plausible ideas I found to solve the balance issue:

Push the problematic part into the campaign game: So make missiles available and keep them awesome but make it costly supply-wise. CR is not the best mechanic for that, not for fighters either, as it simultaneously drains other stats which makes little sense...

Make it hard to "reacquire" during combat. So captains have to do something for missiles to come back. I actually think that would be the better move.
 - Missile Dumps/Supply Dumps as strategic points to capture in combat made me really itchy, I wanted to see this in game the moment I read it. It's horribly implausible (why not just carry those spare missiles in the cargo hold, why would it be easier to reload the racks there than anywhere else?) and it would make those points really, really important. Just imagine those enforcers hogging there blasting the battlefield with torpedoes over and over, being basically indestructable bricks for their class that's a cool but horrifying image...
- a reload sequence. That would definitely make a lot of sense. So it would be too dangerous and cumbersome to carry this reaper through the hallways during combat and push it in a tube... (no matter the thing is not primed) so it simply ain't done. In an analogy to flux venting a mechanic like that however would be plausible... captains' orders! Remove the safety-tape, do it! Now! - but, but, but, I have to monitor the reactor's energy readings and... - shut up! Missile duty!
In my imagination it should be a temporary CR loss (crew sets many tasks on AI-control and works elsewhere, not at combat stations) with CR quickly trickling back after the reload. And like the burndrives, getting hit in the hull during that time, especially on a missile rack should cause malfunctions, secondary explosions, the reload sequence to fail. Maybe something like this could be implemented. It would make a player vulnerable for a while, in turn giving him another big stick later.

Lock-on requirement for missiles... dunno. Does not sound right to me somehow.

And the AI keeping shields up/not venting/whatever while Your torpedoes are grinning at their soft, tender hull is not an exploitable flaw, is it? It's a classic threat reaction - I would be on my guard as well. So if You can exploit it, that is good tactics, not AI bashing. 

[DatonKallandor]

...one of the best ways to use missiles is to never use them...

In what universe is this the best way to use missiles? They kill things. You want to kill things.

In the universe where the AI will be extremely cautious as long as it knows you still have missiles ready to fire - this one. A missile might kill a thing if you launch it. A missile will significantly harm the AI if you don't launch it at all. Not that regeneration eliminates this, but it shifts the equation more towards "use the missiles", which is good for both players and the AI, because both benefit from missiles being less binary if you actually decide to use them.

[Megas]

And the AI keeping shields up/not venting/whatever while Your torpedoes are grinning at their soft, tender hull is not an exploitable flaw, is it? It's a classic threat reaction - I would be on my guard as well. So if You can exploit it, that is good tactics, not AI bashing.  

It can be both.  It is prudent to keep defenses up.  At the same time, this means my high-tech ship with short-ranged blasters and an unused missile can back off to about 900 range (past their 600-800 range weapons) and dissipate flux, while the AI keeps its shield up and hard flux remains.  If I have no missiles, this means if I go beyond 600 range, AI may lower shield or vent.  If I want to punch above my ship's weight and destroy the enemy one hard flux chip at a time, then I want something to tell AI to keep shields up when I need to withdraw to dissipate flux.  Currently, player can do that with tactical laser or other 1000+ range weapon.  If poking with tac laser will not work anymore, but missiles might, I will probably install a missile so I can continue to fool the AI to keep shields up and allow my ship to chip shields then kill.

[Thaago]

@DatonKallandor  (and anyone else who's done the edits to put in regenerating missiles)

Since you've tried it and found a regeneration that you like, could you share your csv file? I'd like to try it and see how it feels.

[Dark.Revenant]

See here: http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=11404.0

Note that it required a significant redesign of several missiles and lots of nerfs.

[Thaago]

Thanks, I'll check it out!

[Serenitis]

http://www.filedropper.com/weapondataregen

Basic setup is:
Anything that does 1000 dmg or less per shot reloads.
Anything that does >1000 dmg does not.
Big mounts reload faster than smaller ones.
No changes to damage or speed etc. (Possible exception: Squall. I can remember messing with some values, but can't remember if I reverted them or not. )

The AI will throw annihilators, proxies, swarmers, MIRVS and kinetics around with wild abandon.
It still is quite conservative with most guided HE, but is no longer limited to one or two encounters before it becomes a speedbump.
From the player side you have the same lack of limit regarding staying power (not counting CR) as the AI.
But both sides now have to ability to 'sacrifice' thier final strike ability to batter down shields with brute force. (Noted: The player is a LOT freer to use this than the AI.)
This is a somewhat mixed blessing, as it might allow you to overwhelm and kill one or two targets but will leave you with nothing else to fall back on for a couple of minutes. And even a minute is a long time under fire, a minute where the AI can do that to you.

My experience of playing like this for a while is that it seems to make battles more fluid, and less prone lots of dancing around not really doing anything more than taking potshots at each other.
It also seems to make the early game a little easier as you have constant access to a decent output of spike damage, which is quite forgiving of mistakes. (As opposed to "oops, you've missed with all your shots and now you're -----d".)
And makes the later game a bit harder because the AI can just puke missiles everywhere if it thinks it can overwhelm you.
You definitely have to either have mad dodging skills or acually pay attention to building PD into stuff now though.

I haven't noticed any amazingly unbalanced behaviour/abilities, but I am having more fun.
This may or may not translate to other people.

[Megas]

AI fires Annihilators, Swarmers, MIRVs, and kinetics liberally even with limited ammo.  That makes mounting Sabots on AI ships for the purpose of an unblockable anti-hull (and anti-armor for small, thinly-armored high-tech ships) kill missile problematic.  MIRV was good when it was unlimited, but since it got limited ammo again, AI wastes nearly all of them, then hoards one or two.  Better to shield tank or dual-flak MIRVs until the attacker runs out (or saves its last), then fight.

I haven't noticed any amazingly unbalanced behaviour/abilities, but I am having more fun.

I probably would use other missiles more.  I ignore most because I need guns with staying power, not something that can knock out one or two ships out of a hundred ship death fleet.  Thus, reliance on regenerators (i.e., Salamanders or Pilums) or free or cheap one-shots.

That said, AI uses Annihilators very well, and greatly extends the lifespan of low-tech ships controlled by AI, especially Enforcer.

[DatonKallandor]

@DatonKallandor  (and anyone else who's done the edits to put in regenerating missiles)

Since you've tried it and found a regeneration that you like, could you share your csv file? I'd like to try it and see how it feels.

I made mine for that one sweet short-lived version where we had clips and didn't update it after that, but it looks like lots of other people have you covered. Sounds like the over-all gameplay impact is similar to what I did, but the details are obviously different (I didn't decrease max ammo but my reload rates were a little slower, so the spike damage was more similar to vanilla and the pauses between opportunities were longer - and I also cranked down the fire rate on a lot of missiles to make that part of missile spec actually mean something for most missiles).

No matter the details though, a ton of missiles suddenly become totally viable weapons, like swarmers (and with infinite fighters on the way, these are going to need a lot of help).

[Dwarfslayer]

Has the idea of regeneration being limited to a single missile been considered? Once the racks are empty they're useless, so might as well load up another warhead.

If missiles can regenerate to 1 when completely depleted it still allows some advantage for conserving ammo, but prevents the ability to kite out all of the MIRVs from an astral for example, since it will eventually be able to fire another one off once it runs out.

For what it's worth I think missiles (some of them) have decent uses as they are, not perfect but fine to use in support of other weapons (isn't that the general idea?). Perhaps a way to give your fleet officers individual orders about how trigger-happy they are with ammo based weapons (like the old Strike Weapons Free fleet order)

[DatonKallandor]

Flat ammo stuff is incredibly problematic, both the bonus and regen to a flat amount, in that it is incredibly good for a very small subset of missiles and complete garbage for most. The +1 ammo part of the skill is bad enough (making some missiles ridiculously effective, others only viable with the bonus and being utterly pointless for stuff like annihilators), having missiles regen to 1 would have the same problems.

[Megas]

+1 ammo makes the one-shots a great bargain, especially when combined with Optimized Assembly.  Why would I want to pay 3 OP for four missiles when I can get two for free?  It pushes Reapers over the top, and makes Hammers obsolete (why get 4500 damage when I can get 8000 for the same cost and function?)

[Serenitis]

The +1 ammo part of the skill is bad enough (making some missiles ridiculously effective, others only viable with the bonus and being utterly pointless for stuff like annihilators)

Maybe having the ammo boost as a %age rather than a flat value might work better?
A 34% increase in ammo capacity would exempt single and twin mounts (small mount torpedoes mostly) from getting anything, while anything with 3 or greater shots gets at minimum +1 and scaling up from there for larger capacity weapons.
That is if we're keeping an ammo boost skill at all. (Which might fit better in the logistics tree tbh.)

[DatonKallandor]

The +1 ammo part of the skill is bad enough (making some missiles ridiculously effective, others only viable with the bonus and being utterly pointless for stuff like annihilators)

Maybe having the ammo boost as a %age rather than a flat value might work better?
A 34% increase in ammo capacity would exempt single and twin mounts (small mount torpedoes mostly) from getting anything, while anything with 3 or greater shots gets at minimum +1 and scaling up from there for larger capacity weapons.
That is if we're keeping an ammo boost skill at all. (Which might fit better in the logistics tree tbh.)

Frankly if it exists at all I'd probably make it nice round 100%. That way every missile gets equal benefit, no weird outliers that get nothing or too much. Although ideally I'd get rid of the passive ammo bonus and simply make the ammo hull mod a nice 100%.

[Soda Savvy]

Here's a way to make regenerating missiles work: Make up a fancy blackbox system that can spit missiles out over an extended period of time(90 second+ for the absolute shortest), but for it to even start to work, you have to have hard flux to funnel into the generator. Pretend it's a 'flux lathe' or something that needs higher levels of power than most ships can generate normally without rolling systems blackouts. The more you get hit, the faster it can assemble missiles, up to the base time limit. So otherwise construction would either be glacial, or completely stopped.

But it gives you incentive to keep the fight going.