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[Serenitis]

I'm trying to think of how a large salamander would work

One potential way is to have it two-stage, like a big chunky sabot/pilum.
First stage is a large 'carrier'. Long ranged with decent speed, but poor turning and acceleration.
When it gets close enough to a target it 'pops' and releases a number of salamanders.

Nonsense

You could also in theory, re-purpose this into a generic 'carrier missile' chassis that's a large missile in it's own right.
On it's own it's long range but slow and tough, but does only area/proximity frag damage if it hits. Mediocre.
But it has a sub-muntion bay that is presented like a small fighter bay.
And you can put any other small/medium missile in this bay, and when the large missile triggers it releases a suitable number of that type of smaller missile aimed at whatever is nearby.

Like a configurable cruise missile. You pay the OP cost to fit the chassis, then pay again for the payload (possibly with some amount of reduction since you're only using the ammunition, not the launcher itself).

[close]

[Grievous69]

Honestly, large Salamander sounds like a pointless missile. Medium version can already feel like overkill since you either hit the engines, or you don't. If the target has 360 shields or any sort of defense on the engines, no amount of Salamanders is going to get through. Large Harpoon is pretty much the Hurricane, thank god large Sabots don't exist, I'm already sick of them dominating other mounts on some ships. And all this talk about general purpose missiles, when we're getting TWO large missiles that deal energy damage. At least read what the dev is working on before suggesting the literal same thing.

It was a minor complaint but I also agree with the person who mentioned ECCM and large missiles. Thankfully Alex already took care of that (written somewhere in the comments of the blog post).

[Serenitis]

Large Harpoon is pretty much the Hurricane

Keep seeing folk saying this, and I don't see it at all.

Harpoon is an accurate ship-to-ship weapon with excellent guidance that is non-trivial to avoid.
Hurricane is an inaccurate area bombardment weapon with minimal guidance that is easy to avoid.

Literally the only things they have in common is that they're guided missiles and do HE damage.
How are they the same?

[Amoebka]

They aren't the same at all. Not sure what fumes people are inhaling. Harpoons can chase targets very persistently, while MIRV misses 80% of its payload. AI also treats Hurricane as a pressure missile, and doesn't conserve ammo until the last 5.

My idea for large Salamander would be a relatively rapid fire continuous stream version with a larger cooldown for reload, rather than a large burst. Like Squall, but with Salamanders.

[Igncom1]

A big salamander, or dinosaur?, missile could be a full ship EMP missile. If it hits the hull then that is a full overload.

Don't get hit.

[Grievous69]

Harpoon is an accurate ship-to-ship weapon with excellent guidance that is non-trivial to avoid.
Hurricane is an inaccurate area bombardment weapon with minimal guidance that is easy to avoid.

Bruh you literally described one single property 3 times in a row, accuracy.

If you take a look at the big picture, both weapons are HE missiles that do their damage in packs instead of a single strong payload (like torpedo). Just to be clear, I'm talking about the imagined large Harpoon. It would work exactly the same but Harpoons would be even stronger since everyone here knows, they have better tracking. Thus, such a weapon would be annoyingly strong and easy to spam. Of course they're not a 1:1 replica but having a large Harpoon would bring nothing, except screw with the balance.

EDIT: I finally understand how Alex feels when people suggest the same weapon but bigger/smaller.

[SCC]

Both Harpoon and Hurricane are finishers, more or less. Hurricane requires a lot of set up to get good, though, which is rather limiting.

[Amoebka]

Hurricane is pressure, not a finisher. If a target is overloaded within range of harpoons, it's going down. Hurricane would just strip a bit of armor and that's it. The refire delay is too long and the large mounts are too rare.

[Brainwright]

Do people not realize most missiles suck without ECCM?

Seriously, try it.  Your Hurricanes will reliably converge on frigates.  Even Harpoons will cease to be puffs of confetti before modest PD.

Try it.

[Momaw]

Just to make sure I was accurately remembering, I went into the sim and tried to shoot down frigates with the Hurricane. Even if the target is overloaded it usually misses with half its payload and then the target survives because the reload time and flight time are so long. The Hurricane, is not a "large Harpoon".

As far as "the same weapon in multiple sizes" being a bad thing.... no?  Ballistic slots literally do this. A railgun upgrades to a hypervelocity driver, upgrades to a gauss cannon. They do approximately the same thing, they work the same way, just more damage and longer range. Or if you prefer something more shotgun-like, there's Needlers for all mount sizes. There's HE guns for all slots, there are shrapnel guns for all slots.  Energy weapons are an overall more varied group, but you still have options for "punching down": nimble targets might evade your plasma cannon but they aren't going to avoid a tachyon lance or high intensity laser.

I was not expecting this much opposition to variety. The existing Large missiles are pretty much all big cumbersome weapons best used against big cumbersome targets, and neither Ballistics nor Energy have this limitation.  I guess it's accurate to say "Wait and see" with regards to the future directed energy missiles, the Hydra might actually deliver on what the Hurricane attempts to do.

[Grievous69]

Bruh do people expect all large missiles to be like Locusts but do HE damage... You'd basically remove frigate from the game then. Also next patch the missiles lineup will have the most large options out of 3 weapon types, not sure where this "opposition to variety" is coming from.

[Amoebka]

Bruh do people expect all large missiles to be like Locusts but do HE damage... You'd basically remove frigate from the game then. Also next patch the missiles lineup will have the most large options out of 3 weapon types, not sure where this "opposition to variety" is coming from.

So 6 linked Harpoon pods on Retribution (24 burst size) don't remove frigates from the game, but a hypothetical large Harpoon (which doesn't even have to have larger burst size) would?

[Grievous69]

Medium missiles run out waaay faster than large ones.

[Amoebka]

So don't give this new large harpoon too much ammunition? Hammer Barrage (and Dragonfire) has 5 shots despite being a large. You are arguing about stats of a weapon that doesn't even exist. There's nothing inherently broken about large version of a Harpoon launcher, it can be balanced with numbers. Hurricane sucks as a finisher (and will suck even more), a weapon to fill the niche would be welcome.

[Harmful Mechanic]

The answer to a lot of these questions is to make test versions of them as minimods, and test them. Then you're talking about an actually-existing thing with definite, measurable qualities vs. theorycrafting in circles.