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Author Topic: Fast missile racks use with recharging missiles  (Read 1024 times)

TaLaR

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Fast missile racks use with recharging missiles
« on: July 05, 2020, 02:37:51 AM »

FMR can work with finite missiles to burst the target faster.
And works even better with cooldown-based missiles, the only one in vanilla being Salamanders.

However, FMR is atrociously bad with recharging missiles like Pilums. You don't get significant burst like rapid-firing Harpoons/Sabots, neither you get sustain of Salamanders.

Maybe FMR should also boost recharge proportional to it's natural rate? For example for Pilums, which recharge at about half firing rate, 1 FMR charge should restore close to half clip.

Or at least stock variants for FMR ships used by enemies shouldn't focus on Pilums.
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Serenitis

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Re: Fast missile racks use with recharging missiles
« Reply #1 on: July 05, 2020, 01:38:55 PM »

Here's a list of all the vanilla missiles and thier cooldown times:
Spoiler
  • Small - Reaper - 5 sec
  • Small - Atropos - 1 sec
  • Small - Hammer - 1 sec
  • Small - Swarmer - 5 sec
  • Small - Annihilator - 5 sec
  • Small - Salamander - 25 sec
  • Small - Harpoon - 1 sec
  • Small - Sabot - 1 sec
  • Medium - Harpoon - 8.25 sec
  • Medium - Sabot - 8.75 sec
  • Medium - Salamander - 25 sec
  • Medium - Annihilator - 0.5 sec
  • Medium - Pilum - 15 sec
  • Medium - Proximity - 3 sec
  • Medium - Reaper - 15 sec
  • Large - Reaper - 15 sec
  • Large - MIRV - 15 sec
  • Large - Squall - 10 sec
  • Large - Swarmer - 5 sec
  • Large - Hammer - 5 sec
[close]

There are very clearly some missiles which are not going to benefit from bypassing thier cooldown timer because it's trivial and would probably be over by the time you reach to press <F> anyway.

The recharging of the missiles doesn't seem particularly relevant as FMR will work just fine with any missile (that recharges or not), so long as there's ammunition.
Salamanders are only unique in this regard because they are the only missile type which does not use ammunition counters.

However, FMR is atrociously bad with recharging missiles like Pilums. You don't get significant burst like rapid-firing Harpoons/Sabots, neither you get sustain of Salamanders.
Comparing a direct weapon to a suppression weapon is never going to make the latter look good.
If I modify a Harpoon pod to recharge, does that make it bad? It works exactly the same as it did before, only now for longer. FMR still has the same interaction with it so long as there's any ammunition left, which there always will be now. So why is that bad?

Is it the partial salvo thing?
Because that's not really an issue, more of a self-balancing mechanism for bursty recharging missiles.
Even if you don't like that you can either change the recharge parameters to specify a higher number of missiles to load for each step, or just straight up remove the ammo counter (which might not be a bad idea for Pilum actually - just have them on the cooldown timer like Salamander).

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Goumindong

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Re: Fast missile racks use with recharging missiles
« Reply #2 on: July 05, 2020, 02:38:58 PM »

The main problem with FMR is that its not on "good" ships.

Its on the Condor, The Vigilance, and the Venture

Which is 1 medium launcher, 1 medium launcher, and 2 medium/2 small launchers... Not a terribly impressive amount of firepower that benefits from it(only really the medium launchers)
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TaLaR

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Re: Fast missile racks use with recharging missiles
« Reply #3 on: July 06, 2020, 02:56:00 AM »

@Serenitis

Looking at list of exact cooldown values, it's doubly obvious why FMR works best with Salamanders. Longest cooldown by quite far + the only one with unlimited ammo.

Ammo-free Pulims may be a good idea. They badly need a buff anyway.

@Goumindong

Yeah, Condor is a flop in every way. Drover is better as carrier due to system (including per-DP metric), about as good at spamming Salamanders (4x small ~= 1x medium * FMR) and way more survivable due to speed/flux advantage.

Vigilance is also a sad failure of a frigate. Every 4-5 DP combat frigate easily wipes floor with it.

Venture Salamander-spammer performs surprisingly well in sim duels (AI is not good at handling that many Salamanders. Hell, even player would have to waste a lot of time countering that). But having to pay for Militarized Subsystems means it performs worse in campaign than standalone sim duels.
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Igncom1

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Re: Fast missile racks use with recharging missiles
« Reply #4 on: July 06, 2020, 03:38:01 AM »


Vigilance is also a sad failure of a frigate. Every 4-5 DP combat frigate easily wipes floor with it.


That's a harder one as if it's armed with harpoon missiles it can do really really well, but otherwise is little better then some basic fire-support.

It's more of a missile problem then the Vigilance's fault.
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TaLaR

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Re: Fast missile racks use with recharging missiles
« Reply #5 on: July 06, 2020, 04:05:50 AM »

Imo, Vigilance stats are way too low for a 5DP ship. Aside from 13 OP and 300 flux capacity even 2DP Mercury has as much or more in every combat stat.
Wayfarer despite being only a semi-combat 5DP ship is way more tanky, has a bit more OP and better slots, while being only slightly inferior in speed and flux stats.
Comparison against actual combat frigates ends even less favorably for Vigilance.

Medium missile + FMR is overvalued. Yes, a player cautiously abusing Sabots can squeeze a victory against most DEs with it, but doing the same with 4DP Lasher is even easier.
« Last Edit: July 06, 2020, 04:07:47 AM by TaLaR »
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Thaago

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Re: Fast missile racks use with recharging missiles
« Reply #6 on: July 06, 2020, 09:25:15 AM »

Vigilances are quite poor in smaller ship fights where we are used to using frigates, because they are awful duelists. Its only when fights start to get big - player with cruisers I'd say - that it becomes a pretty decent ship, because it can hide next to larger ships and be protected from frigate/fighter assassins. Getting 24 harpoons + FMR + an Ion Beam for 5 DP is an ok deal, especially as in DP limited fights the player often has a few "extra" DP left over, and it can be retreated once its out of missiles. Its probably overpriced and should be 4, but it gets kills.

For people who don't/can't use missiles, its a bad ship.
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intrinsic_parity

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Re: Fast missile racks use with recharging missiles
« Reply #7 on: July 06, 2020, 10:31:41 AM »

I haven't tried it, but doesn't current escort behavior work against the idea of missile support? Escorts almost never focus on the target that the bigger ships are focusing on, and smaller ships without any escort tethers in big battles just die very frequently in my experience.
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Goumindong

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Re: Fast missile racks use with recharging missiles
« Reply #8 on: July 06, 2020, 01:06:29 PM »

I should not have said they're not on "good" ships but rather they're on ships that cannot easily utilize them

The condor has 1 medium missile mount and generally doesn't want to be in a position where it would need to fire off its missiles rapidly. The Venture is a tank and can get decent use out of the ranks because it has 2 medium launchers. It can shoot sabot and then fire 4 reapers into your side. The Vulture has only one missile rack and tends to use missiles that are less necessary to spam real fast.(like Harpoons)

Like.. If you put fast missile racks on a Gryphon equivalent it would be strong(replenishing is probably better. If you put it on a conquest equivalent it would be hilarious. (can you imagine a single ship able to launch a volley of 4 MIRV at once!? you could launch an 8 reaper volley!). It would even be good on the Prometheus Mk II

The key thing that makes these probably work? A decent number of missile slots that have high cool downs. Of the small and medium launchers with limited ammo only the Typhoon Reaper Launcher, swarmer SRM, and annihilator rocket launcher, and annihilator rocket pod are unable to expend the entirety of their ammo in under a half a minute (all three take longer than a minute even). But the swarmer and annihilator have fast refire times as it is. With the Swarmer being able to fire almost on cooldown and the annihilator being able to fire in under 6 seconds. The Rocket pod is a continuous fire weapon and does not benefit.

So FRM is... really not valuable unless you've got a typhoon(15 second cycle) or something larger. And ideally more than one of them. And... the ships that have them can't really utilize those terribly well. (OK the Venture can)
« Last Edit: July 06, 2020, 01:15:10 PM by Goumindong »
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Thaago

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Re: Fast missile racks use with recharging missiles
« Reply #9 on: July 06, 2020, 06:10:46 PM »

I haven't tried it, but doesn't current escort behavior work against the idea of missile support? Escorts almost never focus on the target that the bigger ships are focusing on, and smaller ships without any escort tethers in big battles just die very frequently in my experience.

In general I don't know, but I just ran a test using The Last Hurrah: All default loadouts except for the 3 Vigilances, which I gave Harpoons, Ion Beam, Extended racks, and 5 vents/5 caps. I assigned each as as an escort to the Falcon, Falcon, and Eagle. No losses (on second try - first try I stupidly suicided the Conquest and lost... its not a very good Conquest, though the missiles are great for a player ship), all the Vigilances were a bit damaged (84%, 86%, 91%) hull, and all were out of missiles by the end (I changed craft to check). I don't think the Vigilances performed like super ships, but I saw a lot of harpoons hitting targets, and I saw the beams get some support disabling in.

I don't know if Combat Analytics works with missions? Probably not? I didn't have any mods on at the time so I'm not sure. Either way, they survived and did "good enough", and seemed to perform well as escorts.
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