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[Tartiflette]

I liked that system, but IIRC the missiles were built in? I'd imagine it would be difficult to transfer to a ship with variable missiles, since those have widely varying ammo counts/relevance that can't be easily abstracted. It would probably end up strongly favoring one certain type of missile. Think e.g. about single shot reapers, when would they be reloaded, early or late after system activation?

The PD were built-in but not the 6 other medium mounts. And when I played a bit with it in campaign, it worked fine with all missile. The ammo is usually balanced with the damage per shot: you don't have missile weapons with both high damage, high ammo and short cooldown (I forgot to mention that using this system activated the cooldown of all the weapons too).

[Gothars]

*It's nearly impossible to wipe out entire Mercantile Fleets, though - those Hermes are faster than everything you can get and escape far ahead of even the fastest fighters, like Thunders.

I have two dedicated pursuit Wolfs with SO, Unstable Injector, and aggressive lvl.10 Helmsman officers. Those babies pull 328 and phase skip. They catch anything. He, this is going to be fun

The PD were built-in but not the 6 other medium mounts. And when I played a bit with it in campaign, it worked fine with all missile. The ammo is usually balanced with the damage per shot: you don't have missile weapons with both high damage, high ammo and short cooldown (I forgot to mention that using this system activated the cooldown of all the weapons too).

Mh, OK, I'm not sure. If it works I'd like it in vanilla

[Alex]

I made a similar ship system in Seeker for the Clipper: it's a toggle system that reload the missiles progressively (like 2% of the max ammo per second) and lock every weapons in the meantime. Of course that's logical in this case because all it's weapons are missiles, even the PD. Anyway it work pretty well and don't seems overpowered.

Hmm. Seems like that'd be tough for the AI to use well. Also a bit boring for the player, isn't it? It sounds like this encourages them to find a nice quiet spot and spend 50 seconds reloading.

Yes, that seems OP. 90 or 120 seconds would seem more appropriate. Why are you not a fan of that? Seems simplest.

Just not a fan of long cooldowns. Encourages waiting around (even if there's the peak timer) and just in general isn't as exciting. Plus the longer it is, the more there's pressure on the player to not "waste" it which can make them not use an ability at all. The last is probably not a danger here, though, given the nature of the ability.

[HELMUT]

I wasn't super hot about Tartiflette's idea at first too. But now that i think about it, it could actually work.

Yes, single shot torpedoes will take forever to reload. But i don't think anyone is ready to wait 50 seconds just for 3 small launchers to reload, especially in a cruiser with one large and two medium with remaining ammo. Plus i think the full Reaper Gryphon was kinda on the overpowered side anyway. And it's not like replacing the Reapers with Annihilators will make it less of a monster that it currently is.

And a good point! This would (maybe) give us a reason to finally use Atropos for their slightly shorter reloading time.

...

Emphasize on the maybe.

[dragoongfa]

Just got the Gryphon and I can't really comment on it yet, in the one battle I used it however it did blow through two destroyers and three frigates so I am willing to tolerate the CR issue when I have to use it.

Also I just boarded a pirate Kite which had a single crewman left just for the lolz. I was in the midst of a drunken stupor after beating a concentration of three pirate fleets that ambushed me when I jumped out of a system. Must have ordered my marines to go in butt naked after sending an armor suit and heavy weaponry in first in order to even the playing field. Didn't like those 22 marines anyway

[Alex]

Also I just boarded a pirate Kite which had a single crewman left just for the lolz. I was in the midst of a drunken stupor after beating a concentration of three pirate fleets that ambushed me when I jumped out of a system. Must have ordered my marines to go in butt naked after sending an armor suit and heavy weaponry in first in order to even the playing field. Didn't like those 22 marines anyway

Yeah, I literally just fixed this bug. The problem was the effective strength of the marines for the action was being capped, but the casualties were being based on the uncapped strength. Right now, you're basically guaranteed to lose a third or so of your marines any time you board, regardless of enemy strength. Again, now fixed

[Clockwork Owl]

Just got the Gryphon and I can't really comment on it yet, in the one battle I used it however it did blow through two destroyers and three frigates so I am willing to tolerate the CR issue when I have to use it.

Also I just boarded a pirate Kite which had a single crewman left just for the lolz. I was in the midst of a drunken stupor after beating a concentration of three pirate fleets that ambushed me when I jumped out of a system. Must have ordered my marines to go in butt naked after sending an armor suit and heavy weaponry in first in order to even the playing field. Didn't like those 22 marines anyway

Dat guy was on rampage eh? 22 kills, heck.

[Thaago]

Oh man! Finally got my hands on some 14th Battlegroup Enforcers and they fight as well as they look. Between the armor multiplier (which acts on top of heavy armor) and the ten extra OPs they really rock. I can't wait to get some Eagles!

[Megas]

I planned on sticking with basic Enforcer for the higher speed... until I noticed they have more OP, about +14 with +30% OP.  Combined with better flux stats (and armor, which I care less about), it is worth the slight speed penalty (thanks to have mobility system when needed).

[Ghoti]

I have two dedicated pursuit Wolfs with SO, Unstable Injector, and aggressive lvl.10 Helmsman officers.

http://alienencyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/GSS_Suicidal_Insanity

Regarding the missile reloader, I have to agree with the other suggestions. Reload one missile hardpoint per use. Then you can have a non-crippling penalty.

how about:

 - activate the subsystem
 - Take the lowest ammo missile hardpoint offline
 - generate hard flux for 10 seconds
 - at the end of 10 seconds reload the hardpoint, bring it online.
 - let the user trigger subsystem again

a full, instant reload of all missile hardpoints isn't the only option for this.  

[Alex]

Regarding picking one weapon to reload: this seems like it'd be kind of hard for the player to accurately predict, hmm.

Might be that an AI fix is more in order here. In my testing it behaved well; clearly I missed some problem cases.

[Megas]

I finally got a chance to try a Gryphon with max Missile Specialization, and while it can make ships disappear quickly, it was not as overwhelming as I thought.  For soloing fleets, there are probably more efficient options.  However, if you want enemies to die NOW, bring a Gryphon and spam Harpoons and MIRVs.  If you do not want to use kinetics to attack shields, then Safety Override is useful for the Gryphon because the range penalty does not affect missiles, Gryphon will probably burn through CR to reload missiles quickly before peak performance is a problem, and Gryphon desperately needs more speed and dissipation.

If anything needs changing, the Gryphon special should have a cooldown to prevent accidental double-use.

Maybe the special could be limited to three or so non-renewable charges, and they do not remove CR.  Missiles usually have less than full ammo at low CR.

Or... instead of a special, give the Gryphon a builtin hullmod that greatly expands capacity (like Expanded Missile Racks, but +200% capacity instead of +75%), then give it no ship system (or a weak one like flares).

[Ghoti]

(I'd select from the currently active weapon group, myself)

btw. I tried testing the gryphon in the simulator and I couldn't get it to inappropriately use the subsystem either.

That said the AI is really conservative with missiles unless it thinks it's gonna die, so it doesn't fly the ship very aggressively.

oops, never mind, it brought itself into low CR to reload 20% depleted rockets.

this was the loadout I used: http://imgur.com/kHK08PL

[Alex]

Hmm. I'm really liking the idea of a hard-limited number of uses, going to keep that one in mind.

That said the AI is really conservative with missiles unless it thinks it's gonna die, so it doesn't fly the ship very aggressively.

Right - although with the hefty CR cost or limited uses on the system, that seems appropriate. If it was a short cooldown, then yeah, more spamming would be good.

oops, never mind, it brought itself into low CR to reload 20% depleted rockets.

this was the loadout I used: http://imgur.com/kHK08PL

Thanks, that helps!

[Baqar79]

Regarding the Gryphon:

As someone that hasn't used it, do the missiles reload by drawing on it's own Combat Readiness ?
If so (just an idea, but born out of ignorance, so sorry in advance!), it makes sense to have some sort of limit to the number of reloads; just prevent any reloading of missiles that would drop the CR below 40% (or whatever seems reasonable).  More CR, means more reloads.

I also wanted to know whether these might possibly be bugs:

• XIVth fleet ships can be purchased on the black market - should this be possible (IMO it makes sense for them to be only available through the Hegemony)?
• Tachyon lance appears to bypass shields occasionally (doing hull damage, despite the opponent still having shields up), i'm not sure though if this is part of how the weapon functions though.

An old issue, but i'm still finding that the computer AI doesn't seem to vent when it needs to correctly.  I've seen venting in the middle of being bombarded on all sides, but when out of weapons range of an enemy opponent, the AI controlling your ship seems to keep the shield up and refuses to drop the shields or vent to dissipate flux.