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[Flying Birdy]

Having done three playthroughs now, I'm definitely feeling that all missiles became weaker than their 0.91 iterations. The missile boat builds I was previously using feels remarkably weaker now. I was not sure why until I considered the new missile skills in comparison to the old.

0.91
+25% missile speed and maneuverability (piloted ship)
+50% missile, rocket, bomb, and torpedo hitpoints (piloted ship)
+25% missile damage (piloted ship)

0.95a
+100% missle weapon ammo capacity
+50% missile hit points
+50% rate of fire for missile weapons

The loss of missile speed and damage is a significant loss/nerf. All we got in return was capacity and rate of fire.

While on paper that seems like a good trade-off, in practice missiles are never a weapon that benefits from being fired quickly (other than annihilators). Most missiles are targeted strike weapons used in very narrow time windows - for instance, firing torpedoes against an overloaded target. The ideal is to maximize the torpedo's likelihood to hit and ensure the maximum damage when it does hit and having more rate of fire certainly doesn't help. And while the missile ammo capacity is reasonable, it still feels lackluster as the loss of missile speed means less ammo hit and thus more wasted torpedoes.

A lot of the old effective missile builds are now also defunct because of this change. Double swarmer conquest used to be able to instantly knock out frigates if you had the missile damage and the other weapon damage perks; now it just barely gets past the shield. Triples Sabot + MIRV shotgun odyssey was pretty fun to fly, but the slower hurricane MIRV just feels underwhelming as a lot more of the warheads aren't hitting anymore unless it's a super slow target.

Happy to hear everyone's thoughts. Am I missing something?

[Harmful Mechanic]

Improved RoF is a far better bonus to be handing out than improved damage, because most missiles already represent a huge pool of flux-free damage you can dump on a target and having that get any better constitutes a win button. Harpoons are arguably broken at 750dmg/missile; they were definitely broken at 937.5dmg/missile with full missile skills.

Repeat for most of the rest of the missiles that are staples. Sabots were already good; did an extra 250 damage make them better, or break the game? Is there really that much difference between a Reaper at 4k damage vs 5k? And when you pair this with half again the durability, making it easier to get through PD... missiles were broken and now they're happily not.

[SonnaBanana]

100% increase in ammo is even more of a buff than 25% increase in damage

[Lucky33]

You can get ammo from the racks. And if you are going missile build from the start you have to use it till lvl 5. And ECCM since new skill doesn't provide it. Compared to this, skill effect is so-so. It doubles only the basic load-out but compared to racks it will be only x1.5. Take into account that some ships has fast missile racks so even the fire rate boost is reproducible via equipment alone. And if you already have Vigilance/Venture fleet before lvl 5, practical effect of the skill is more of a waste of the skill slot. On a ship with the FMR, System Expertise is more useful than Missile Expertise on a ship without FMR.

As far as I understand, this skill was meant to complement the ranged capital setup. Maybe.

[Low Settings]

I noticed this early when my 2 MIRVs don't kill stuff in one volley. It seems ok since you get more ammo but now locusts seems meh

[Locklave]

100% increase in ammo is even more of a buff than 25% increase in damage

But it's not for an AI captain. Even aggressive captains don't use missiles often enough. I should also point out 25% is the difference between them dying in 1 hit and them fully recovering flux and returning to the battle.

It's not just DPS, burst matters and it's literally the missiles job to do burst.

Guns = DPS, Missiles = burst.

The players ship is the exception to this because we aren't a dumb dumb like the AI lol.

[prav]

Am I missing something?

The ECCM hullmod got a substantial buff.

[sector_terror]

As a quick edition while I was rummaging through the java files. The damage increase for missiles is still present in the code, just commented out. At some point apperently Alex considered adding it

[Fenrir]

Most missile weapons do gain a moderate to significant benefit from firing rate, the 50% rate means 50% more burst for most small mounts and 50% more DPS for multi-salvo missiles. As we have gained 100% more missiles in mount which can steak with expended-missile-rack, small mounts require a shorter window for fire and larger ones still fire more persistently. The additional missiles launched also reduce potential damage lost from PD fire as now total missile health increased 50%. In theory, our missile weapons do even more damage than before in burst scenario involved only small mounts (with single mounts as only exclusion, mainly reaper) and suffer less loss due to enemy escort PD power. Although persistent mounts do less burst damage, the total fire chance has dramatically increased.

The missile weapons are now becoming more and more persistent than crucial, they fire more and more rapidly than putting all eggs in one basket to knock out at once. I believe Alex is asking us to drop the thinking inertia of equaling missiles to final execution purpose and use these mounts at every volley.

The missile maneuverability is indeed a considerable loss, I miss it, too.

[Anvel]

Missiles now at the position of fighters if 0.9.1, perk gives you +100% ammo and 50% ROF, hammer barrage+sabots now is even more creasy combination.

[Megas]

Not a fan of the ROF increase at Elite, because the point of increased capacity is to have missiles last longer in a fight, and faster rate offsets that.  Not what I want when looking for something that makes missiles more into an endurance option to rely on in a long fight.

Would rather have missiles hit harder at Elite because missiles stay as an endurance option with increased ammo.

[intrinsic_parity]

Not a fan of the ROF increase at Elite, because the point of increased capacity is to have missiles last longer in a fight, and faster rate offsets that.  Not what I want when looking for something that makes missiles more into an endurance option to rely on in a long fight.

Would rather have missiles hit harder at Elite because missiles stay as an endurance option with increased ammo.

I mean it will run out faster, but the fight will also be shorter. You do the same amount of damage in less time.

[KDR_11k]

Not a fan of the ROF increase at Elite, because the point of increased capacity is to have missiles last longer in a fight, and faster rate offsets that.  Not what I want when looking for something that makes missiles more into an endurance option to rely on in a long fight.

Would rather have missiles hit harder at Elite because missiles stay as an endurance option with increased ammo.

You don't launch missiles when there's no opening anyway so all it does is give you a few more opportunities to use openings without having your launcher pod still reloading from the last one.

[Megas]

You don't launch missiles when there's no opening anyway so all it does is give you a few more opportunities to use openings without having your launcher pod still reloading from the last one.

That is only true if I pilot the ship and if I do not put them on autofire.  (I may put missiles on autofire if I want to other things to deal with, like using plasma on Apogee or big guns on Conquest.)

For some missiles, AI may waste them.  I do not want AI to waste them all at once, and then be weak when it needs missiles but has none because it wasted them.

[Thaago]

The ECCM hullmod is now extremely good and makes up the difference. For officered ship, its a bit of an OP tax, which is annoying. But for non-officered ships, ECCM allows them to be excellent missile support ships (without needing an officer). Losing the +25% damage stings, but missiles are still extremely strong this version so I think its ok.

Increased firing rate for missiles is a very large buff for certain missiles (50% damage increase and 50% hitpoints of the ordinance stream), but only a moderate buff for others. More missiles fired = more dead enemies = an easier and faster fight. There might be a situation where firing missiles slower is better, but I haven't ever encountered it. Most of the time I want my ships to fire more often, not less.