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[Megas]

MIRV is useless without ECCM.  With ECCM, it is effectively the most expensive missile to use.  The ship has to build around the missile to make good use of it.  Player does not need to invest so much OP with something like Locusts.  I would not mind MIRV getting weaker if ECCM was not required to make it useful, or if MIRV costs 18 OP or less if ECCM is required to make it usable.

[Thaago]

The Hurricane is very strong currently, having a damage potential of about 7 harpoons each from much longer range. It is one of the best missiles to get at least some damage through a functioning PD screen as it has so many submunitions, and it can often bend shots around narrow or unfolding omni shields. It certainly costs a lot of OP to get it fully online, but the results are extremely good. Locusts are pretty good anti-small ship (fighters, frigates), but against larger targets its a mildly useful pressure weapon to tickle hull/shields and thats it.

[Megas]

The Hurricane is very strong currently

It better be very strong after all of the OP I pay, 25 OP for MIRV AND more OP for ECCM.  Even then, it shoots slow and smaller targets can still dodge them.  I have to give up something to get everything MIRVs need to work, and even then, MIRVs are mostly good against large targets instead of everything.  (Small ships dodge them too easily.)

Whenever I try MIRVs without ECCM, I get one, two, three hits out of the whole swarm against a big ship, and the damage is minor.  Underwhelming to say the least.  MIRVs without ECCM is something to use only if I have nothing else useful.  ECCM is huge for MIRVs.  To the point that MIRV feels more like a 40+ OP weapon due to ECCM being a requirement to use it effectively.

Locusts are pretty good anti-small ship (fighters, frigates), but against larger targets its a mildly useful pressure weapon to tickle hull/shields and thats it.

But against hull, it takes a huge chunk off.  Or it did before officers with defense skills became commonplace in 0.95.

[Amoebka]

On one hand, I sort of agree that Hurricane could use a nerf. But on the other hand, we get crazy big buffs to armor tanking this patch, so nerfing HE starts feeling scary. Bricks that take 2 minutes to kill aren't terribly fun to fight against.

[Thaago]

Its all a plot to boost the harpoon gang.

[Vanshilar]

I find in my automated fleet testing (let my fleet go under pure AI control in full assault mode without player input after getting objectives to deploy the max 60% of battle size and then gathering up the fleet together, against 2 Ordos fleets) that the Hurricane very frequently ends up being the biggest damage-dealer of all the weapons, whether with ECCM (Odyssey) or without ECCM (SO Apogee).

The Hurricane has very high damage potential, dealing up to 500x11 = 5500 damage every 15 seconds or 367 HE DPS, hit strength 500, but the refire delay can be decreased to every 10 seconds with Missile Specialization, which increases this to 550 HE DPS, hit strength 500, with no flux cost. Obviously not all submunitions will hit, so the actual DPS will be lower than this, but in a crowded battle there's a pretty good chance that they'll hit *something*.

Hurricanes can also fire through your ships, like other missiles, meaning that (with their 2500 range) even backline ships can contribute a lot of damage. The submunitions, despite being unpowered, will also go through your ships, so you don't have to worry about friendly fire.

Most importantly is how the missile interacts with the AI. Because the damage comes in a single big burst, a lot of times the target won't be prepared for it and won't have time to retreat, leading to outright destruction. That fulfills the missile's role as a finisher. But just as important, in the current version of Starsector, the AI often won't chase after weakened targets to finish them off, letting them get away. The Hurricane, because it was launched well in advance, will often end up hitting (and thus finishing off) the target after the firing ship has decided to not pursue, ensuring that targets get destroyed and the battle advances.

With Expanded Missile Racks and the Missile Specialization skill, you get 30 shots, which lasts for 300 seconds of battle. That's enough to chew through roughly 1.5 Ordos fleets, running out at the end against 2 Ordos fleets, but by that time the fleet should be in cleanup mode anyway.

(Note on the combined screenshot: the Apogees were actually using SO as well, even though it wasn't in their name, as were the Hyperions.)

[attachment deleted by admin]

[The2nd]

After a lot of testing, I found having accelerated shields greatly helped in catching shots when the Medusa teleported in to attack. Adding accelerated shields as a standard built-in hullmod to the Medusa would really help its survivability. And maybe a small increase in armor by 50 and hull by 500 for the occasional shots that do make it through.

I love the idea to buff the Medusa by giving it accelerated shields as a built-in hullmod !

Also I feel like it is too rare. This patch, I barley saw it, have never used it and I cant remember fighting against it.

[Anvel]

After a lot of testing, I found having accelerated shields greatly helped in catching shots when the Medusa teleported in to attack. Adding accelerated shields as a standard built-in hullmod to the Medusa would really help its survivability. And maybe a small increase in armor by 50 and hull by 500 for the occasional shots that do make it through.

I love the idea to buff the Medusa by giving it accelerated shields as a built-in hullmod !

Also I feel like it is too rare. This patch, I barley saw it, have never used it and I cant remember fighting against it.

Faction-specific ship, common in Tri-Tachyon shops. And yes compared to Sunder or Hammerhead it's underwhelming and lucks considerable firepower and shield coverage for a long fight. Build-in accelerated shields wouldn't solve this, ship needs hardpoints changed (for example all weapons slots universal) or something like that, another problem is its shield coverage, even with forward shield and shield size hull mods it cannot get even close to 360 shield coverage so it's super vulnerable in late-game fights.

[q-rau]

IMO hurricanes having less submunitions would be fine if they had slightly better tracking. In my experience unless you are fighting capital-scale ships half the submunitions wind up missing anyway. Going from 4/11 hitting to 4/9 hitting wouldn't be much of a nerf :p.

At any rate I usually use locust anyway, sure they aren't great at anything but on a big-gun ship with vulnerable arcs they're good at getting rid of pesky frigates and strike craft without eating your whole OP budget the way Hurricane does.

[DaShiv]

I love the idea to buff the Medusa by giving it accelerated shields as a built-in hullmod !

I'm definitely a fan of adding more built-in combat hullmods to make ships more varied and flavorful (for example, ECCM on Odyssey, Advanced Optics on Astral, etc). Accelerated Shields on Medusa would definitely help the AI handle the ship system better and help justify its DP price premium without directly boosting its offensive stats, and fits with the flavor of Medusa being an "advanced" ship.

Armored Weapon Mounts with the new recoil reduction would also be a nice, not-too-high OP freebie that would also be thematic for an underpowered low tech ship or two. In fact, IMO something along those lines using built-in hullmods would work better than the flat armor/hull buffs that some of the low tech ships are receiving, since it limits the potential for stacking armor too high when base armor values are increased. For example, it'd make more sense to improve Legion survivability using built-in armor hullmods instead of base armor so that armor stacking remains more of an Onslaught build strategy.

[Jackundor]

I hereby express my displeasure with the changes that the pilum will get.

not bc i like the pilum or use it at all.

but because i will have to either change one of my mod weapon or find something else to compare it to.

might need to do both.

grumble grumble grumble

[Jackundor]

also, what will RESET_BARREL_INDEX_ON_BURST do?

[Maethendias]

hurricanes are amazing for self piloted legion 14s... you have like 40 ammo on them with expanded missiles AND the missile skill, PER hurricane launcher... so around 80 hurricanes if you slot in both l missiles (dont recommend that tho)

put on all medium ballistics hyper drivers and you have a perfectly jazzy legion

[Grievous69]

Aaand you have a Legion with 4 Mining pods, and 0 capacitors. Cool idea on paper but I still say Hurricanes need too much to make them good. They turn from "decent HE long range pressure with low ammo" to "pinpoint accurate HE slap of god".

[Megas]

Aaand you have a Legion with 4 Mining pods, and 0 capacitors. Cool idea on paper but I still say Hurricanes need too much to make them good. They turn from "decent HE long range pressure with low ammo" to "pinpoint accurate HE slap of god".

It is like this already with Hammer Barrage on Legion14.

I agree that MIRVs cost too much to be useful (ECCM and Expanded Missile Racks, though nearly all missiles need Missile Racks).  MIRVs in early releases did not need ECCM to work fully.  They were weaker and more easily stopped, but at least they worked out-of-the-box back in the day.

And if double MIRVs are what I want, I probably would take Conquest instead of Legion14.