Playing around a bit with Squall, I wonder just how much the change to do less armor/hull will really weaken it? Around 80% of its overall damage in combat is to shields anyway, and the ship will presumably have other means to do anti-armor/hull damage. So the in-development change (keep same anti-shield damage, but reduce armor/hull damage -- essentially the same as reducing its hit strength) doesn't really seem to affect things much in the end. Unless it encourages the target to armor tank more or something. It'll still be very effective to spam Squalls into the bulk of the enemy fleet since it basically acts as the long-range artillery softening up the enemy fleet before ballistic/energy range combat begins. Seems like it'll still be the go-to for a large missile slot.
Tested using 10 Gryphons with Squall, 2 Harpoon Pods, 3 Breach SRM, a HVD, and Xyphos, with officers having Systems Expertise and Missile Specialization among other skills, as well as Legion XIV with 2 Squalls, 4 HVD, 4 Cobras, 1 Heavy Mauler, and 4 Railguns as flagship, having Missile Specialization among other skills (and Expanded Missile Racks), against triple Ordos with 6 Radiants totaling 1253 DP. Flagship was on autopilot and this was played largely using command map (switching to the battle mode just to watch the fireworks mostly). For the Legion XIV, the results from the Detailed Combat Results mod ended up being:
Weapon Total Shield Armor Hull %Total %Shi %Arm %Hull
Squall 114608 92688 6601 15319 31.43% 40.86% 24.21% 13.85%
HVD 109833 78141 5562 26130 30.12% 34.45% 20.40% 23.63%
Cobra 98290 37999 5145 55146 26.95% 16.75% 18.87% 49.87%
Heavy Mauler 24302 4767 9278 10258 6.66% 2.10% 34.03% 9.28%
Railgun 17644 13233 680 3730 4.84% 5.83% 2.49% 3.37%
(Each of the % values refer to how much of that type of damage did the weapon contribute. I have no idea why some of the numbers are red.)
Basically, even though the 2 Squalls ran out toward the end (about when the final Radiants showed up I think, though not sure), they still outdid the 4 HVD due to their shield damage (although this was in a battle with swarms of other missiles from the Gryphons, so the HVD's only got to work when enemy ships got close enough; but the Legion XIV had ITU, Gunnery Implants, and Ballistic Mastery so that range was really far). But their contribution was mostly anti-shield anyway and they didn't contribute that much to armor or hull. So I don't think the change would really affect things that much. This is against triple Ordos so against anything less, there shouldn't be any concerns about the Squalls running out all battle, so their share of the damage would be higher.
Similarly, the average for the 10 Gryphons was:
Weapon Total Shield Armor Hull %Total %Shi %Arm %Hull
Squall 64905 51741.6 2494.7 10668.7 49.23% 65.83% 17.47% 27.38%
Harpoon 48583.1 17177.2 8572.8 22833.2 36.85% 21.85% 60.03% 58.60%
Breach 11099 4115.5 2900.8 4082.7 8.42% 5.24% 20.31% 10.48%
HVD 5832.2 4569.5 200.5 1062.3 4.42% 5.81% 1.40% 2.73%
Xyphos 1426 999.6 111.6 314.8 1.08% 1.27% 0.78% 0.81%
(Note that Detailed Combat Results does *not* include the scripted 250 armor damage per hit for Breach, so its armor damage was actually higher than recorded.)
The Squalls only did around a quarter of the hull damage, and much less than that of the armor damage. But it contributed the far majority of the shield damage, which would be unchanged. In fact it contributed about half of the total damage by itself.
Basically it seems like the Squall coupled with some other weapons for anti-armor/hull would still be a really potent combo, without the change really affecting the combo's effectiveness very much. I don't know how much people rely on the Squall's anti-armor/hull damage for the change to do much.
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