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[AdmiralRem]

I looked around and didn’t see anything new on this so here we go. I understand limiting missiles in general but having one, two and three missiles/torps for an entire engagement is..... disappointing. What I was thinking was what if there was a loooong cool down and it went by full reload not by missile. What I mean is after the third cebot is gone the cool down starts and when it’s done it reloads all 3 not one at a time. So in really long engagements they are still worth having. It’s seems like a good way to keep them viable especially on small ships with very limited ammo. Now the cooldown can just be  whatever is “balanced”. But it would probably need to be long. I don’t see this making missiles/torps too op and it would be nice to be able to have the option in long engagements.

Eh?

[Igncom1]

The more I think about it, the more I feel like missiles should behave like hanger bays with strike craft.

Smaller and more direct of course but I don't really see how it's all right to have a hanger with a bomber that drops torpedo after torpedo, but a launcher on the ship can't for some reason do that.

I'd be all right if they all has a higher OP cost to make them comparable to strike craft in carriers. As after all isn't a Griffin-class cruiser just a missile carrier? I mean at least that one can rebuild it's missiles are least the once.

That or let me put missiles into hangers and let them be launched from the flight decks directly.

[Gotcha!]

I've given all missiles and torpedoes a really slow replenish time, different per weapon, depending on missile/torpedo type.
So even in extended combat I can still occasionally fire some missiles.

I wouldn't mind seeing that in the game. I can imagine the crew slowly replenishes a missile bay's ammunition manually, instead of waiting around for the fight to end.

[Wyvern]

Very slow missile regeneration needs some additional limits - like making it only occur while CR is ticking down.  Otherwise you end up with problematic incentives like "Go hide in a corner for five minutes so your missiles come back".

I don't generally mind the larger HE missiles having limited ammunition (though only getting three shots out of a harpoon pod is annoying - I liked those better when they were two missile salvos rather than four.)  Since, after all, the point of HE missiles is to break armor, and armor is also a limited resource.

However, I'd be very much in favor of slow (but not very slow) regeneration for kinetic and anti-fighter missiles.  Since those are meant to work against things that aren't limited resources.

[xenoargh]

Very slow missile regeneration needs some additional limits - like making it only occur while CR is ticking down.  Otherwise you end up with problematic incentives like "Go hide in a corner for five minutes so your missiles come back".

This is mainly only a real problem with the (very few) cases where a player's ship is faster than the AI and also has a longer CR clock.  Well, depending on the delay. 

To put it another way, I have between 10-second and 2-minute delays on all the missiles; I have tested it for about a year now.  Generally, it's better for the AI than the player, all things considered, because the AI gets more chances to get missile launches right.

[Megas]

I would like missile regeneration even more now that fights are very long in 0.9.1a

[Thaago]

I like that missiles are fundamentally different from other weapon in (for the most part) being ammo limited. They allow for large bursts in power from either a ship or a fleet, at the cost of being short on ammo. They require more tactical skill to use than fighters or guns because of their limited nature - knowing which targets and when to use missiles on is important. They also introduce new fleetbuilding strategies, as different types of missiles work best with different combinations of ships.

My biggest problem with slow recharge though is that it incentivizes waiting around for the reload. I don't like game mechanics that promote idle play. I can see recharging missiles being introduced on anti-fighter missiles, though the Swarmer would need to be toned down a little vs ships and the Locust would need to be toned down a LOT.

The more I think about it, the more I feel like missiles should behave like hanger bays with strike craft.

Smaller and more direct of course but I don't really see how it's all right to have a hanger with a bomber that drops torpedo after torpedo, but a launcher on the ship can't for some reason do that.

I'd be all right if they all has a higher OP cost to make them comparable to strike craft in carriers. As after all isn't a Griffin-class cruiser just a missile carrier? I mean at least that one can rebuild it's missiles are least the once.

That or let me put missiles into hangers and let them be launched from the flight decks directly.

The main difference is that missiles are both on demand and also offer a much higher spike of damage than fighters/bombers, given the OP costs - at the cost of limited ammo. Bombers offer imprecise control at best - its usually either a matter of luck or overwhelming numbers that lets a bombing run do real damage.

[Megas]

Most ships in a fight will probably stay in the fight.  I doubt running away to reload will be a problem except maybe the playership in a solo fight.  Locusts with Expanded Missile Racks is practically unlimited ammo up to about midgame.  By endgame, that is probably more than half the fight.  (In early game, I probably value Locusts with Expanded Missiles Racks more than Plasma Cannon on Apogee, no need to aim.)

knowing which targets and when to use missiles on is important.

Tell that to the AI, who will probably pilot most of your fleet's ships (barring stuff like chain Reaper Afflictor flagships).  Even in case of chain-flagships, I had AI waste missiles before my command shuttle took over the ship.  (Not nice when AI fires half my Reapers because an enemy camped near my spawn point.)  Some missiles that are good for playership are bad for AI, or what were good missiles in endgame fights in previous releases are not so anymore due to capital spam.

Bombers offer imprecise control at best - its usually either a matter of luck or overwhelming numbers that lets a bombing run do real damage.

Astral is the notable exception.  Things die when a carrier-spec'ed Astral is on the field.

[AdmiralRem]

I guess my experience with missiles so far has been underwhelming. Sabots are great and don’t usualy get shot down. Harpoons can basically only be used when a ship is overloaded. Small size missiles become useless pretty quickly, salamanders are great! And the locus is pretty good in certain situations. But a lot of missiles just don’t cut it. A lasher can shoot down practically every friggin missile and it’s just a low tech frigate.

I don’t know I feel like they are just a tad off. Like I said some are fine but overall seems like it needs a facelift.

[Thaago]

I think the AI is 'alright' with missiles, though a bit on the conservative side with their use. They tend to use Harpoons pretty well, sabots acceptably though I wish they would alpha strike with them more, and Reapers reasonably well... though they tend to NOT use them against overloaded targets, which I find deeply annoying. At least they hit with them.

I guess my experience with missiles so far has been underwhelming. Sabots are great and don’t usualy get shot down. Harpoons can basically only be used when a ship is overloaded. Small size missiles become useless pretty quickly, salamanders are great! And the locus is pretty good in certain situations. But a lot of missiles just don’t cut it. A lasher can shoot down practically every friggin missile and it’s just a low tech frigate.

I don’t know I feel like they are just a tad off. Like I said some are fine but overall seems like it needs a facelift.

Its a case of expectations: "finisher" type missiles are just that. They aren't supposed to be able to get through a ship's shields or active defenses while they are operational, but are instead supposed to quickly kill overloaded or venting ships. To me this is a good thing, or they would be even bigger "I Win" buttons than they already are.

A few Harpoons is relatively harmless. A dozen will instantly pop a destroyer (the front 3 mediums on a Dominator are essentially 3 instantly dead enemy destroyers if their flux has been raised and/or overloaded). This makes Harpoons a really good choice for 'junk' fleets, as even a 8 D mod enforcer can carry 24 of the things.

Side note: Harpoons are more anti-destroyer weapons than anti-frigate, they just aren't maneuverable enough without ECCM, which is expensive. Swarmers are good anti-frigate though, and have lots of ammo.

[chancoco]

Someone had a personal mod that tied weapon use to modded ammunition, which sounds pretty neat to me. On paper, it'd bring a dynamic relationship between missiles, cargo capacity, and give an incentive to bringing more logistics ships. The missiles will still be finite, limited by cargo space and resources.

There'd be a lot of work converting everything, though, since not all missiles mounts work the same. Missile size, how much space they take, how much inventory clutter it would introduce, how to make it so manufacturing/buying them wouldn't suck a new player dry of credits, how AI ships would be affected since they don't actually use inventories. There's also the question on how it affects performance and how it can be integrated with other mods. It definitely won't be a solution as simple as adding a cooldown.

Basically, I talked myself out of this one...  this concept is terrible! Cue Statler & Waldorf.

[Thaago]

Welcome to the forum!

I've certainly posted a lot of things that, upon reflection, were terrible ideas, so I'm right there with you.

[Darloth]

Just thought I ought to point out that the Missiles and Sundry mod exists if you want to go check out for yourself how this might feel.

[Flying Birdy]

I guess my experience with missiles so far has been underwhelming. Sabots are great and don’t usualy get shot down. Harpoons can basically only be used when a ship is overloaded. Small size missiles become useless pretty quickly, salamanders are great! And the locus is pretty good in certain situations. But a lot of missiles just don’t cut it. A lasher can shoot down practically every friggin missile and it’s just a low tech frigate.

I don’t know I feel like they are just a tad off. Like I said some are fine but overall seems like it needs a facelift.

Sabot is one of the best missiles; it mainly just takes some understanding of how its used. You can't fire it too close to the enemy or else the enemy PD will hit the sabot rounds while it is still in its initial phase. So to use it well you need to know just how far the enemy PD will reach.

Most of the small mount missiles are meant for knocking out a single enemy ship. So for instance, HE missiles like reapers or harpoons really only give enough damage to kill a single ship. Similarly, small mount sabots are really supposed to flux out one single ship. You use your small missiles to flux out a key enemy ship with high flux that you would normally stand zero chance of killing or instantly knock out that Venture or Dominator bricks that would otherwise take ages to kill. They're not supposed to help you with everything, just provide enough power to kill one super important target.

And a common misconception is that missiles need some kind of replenishing. If you get expanded missile racks, a lot of medium and large missiles ammo can easily outlast a fight duration. For instance, 1200 locusts take around 270 seconds just to finish firing if you fired non-stop, every single time it is off-cd. A medium reaper pod with exapnded missile racks would still take 150 seconds to run out of ammo if you fired non-stop every time its off CD. The only medium/large missile that I found to actually be limited by ammo are sabots, and even then its rarely the case with judicious use in fights.

If you want to try missiles and test their power level, I strongly recommend piloting the odyssey as a missile boat to learn some of the mechanics. Sabots rounds are accelerated if you fire them during plasma burn, which guarantees them hitting your target. The odyssey, with 3 medium sabots pods, fires 6 accelerated sabots at a time. There really only a two ships in the entire game that can shield tank 6 sabots without fluxing out. Plasma burn + Sabot + hurricane MIRV and your enemy is dead without firing a shot.

[TaLaR]

Sabot have 2 uses:
- Hitting above your weight category in SO-like manner. You can kill some ships otherwise impervious to you, but very few of them. (AI is not persistently aggressive enough and too wasteful for such builds)
- Stalling when you begin to lose flux war. (what AI uses them for)

Using Sabots against more or less equal opponents is waste - you could optimize your flux profile and win without relying on limited ammo instead.
They also lose some efficiency in large battles (accidentally hitting fighters, getting hit by projectiles, enemies being able to hide behind allies when fluxed out) compared to 1v1 duels.