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Author Topic: Want more ships specializing in missiles  (Read 20407 times)

Megas

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Re: Want more ships specializing in missiles
« Reply #15 on: April 20, 2015, 01:25:11 PM »

Quote
If you're in a position to pin something with 'overwhelming firepower', then you don't need to fire missiles at it as well - it's already probably half dead (and shortly fully dead), and those missiles have an opportunity cost that might bite you later.
Not always.  Sometimes, my ballistics simply raise flux, and then the Pilum swarm that was a second away from impact, does its job by turning a destroyer or cruiser from full health to low health or dead in an instant.  Pilums can speed things up in a long battle, when time is valuable.

Pilums are often fire-and-forget that can be left on autofire, except maybe for those with Fast Missile Racks.

Long range weapons means they have long range.  It does not mean they are effective.  Tachyon Lance is a joke, and player does not have all day to kite with it as in previous versions thanks to peak performance timer.
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SafariJohn

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Re: Want more ships specializing in missiles
« Reply #16 on: April 20, 2015, 02:11:42 PM »

I'm thinking right now that 250 for Pilums was too high, but 125 is too slow. 125 means a Vigilance can outrun its own Pilums even without the 0-flux speed boost.
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Schwartz

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Re: Want more ships specializing in missiles
« Reply #17 on: April 20, 2015, 02:56:31 PM »

Yes, right now they are too slow and their armor's thin as paper. I think a reasonable middle ground would be to up their speed a bit, make them better-armored but give the LRMs a slower rate of fire.
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Megas

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Re: Want more ships specializing in missiles
« Reply #18 on: April 20, 2015, 04:30:44 PM »

Pilums fire slow already, and that will not hinder ships with Fast Missile Racks and/or fleet of many ships full of missiles.
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MesoTroniK

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Re: Want more ships specializing in missiles
« Reply #19 on: April 20, 2015, 04:46:03 PM »

I'm thinking right now that 250 for Pilums was too high, but 125 is too slow. 125 means a Vigilance can outrun its own Pilums even without the 0-flux speed boost.

SS+ increased Pilum speed to 175 which feels nice in practice.

Zibywan

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Re: Want more ships specializing in missiles
« Reply #20 on: April 21, 2015, 05:03:31 AM »

I second upping pilum speed, and slashing their guidance system.

A fire support ship that's launching missile barrages from 1500-2000 distance units away still won't have to aim very precisely because the missiles have a long time to get on target. They would actually make it to the fight before the fight is over though.

This would also solve the "pilum cloud" problem some people are mentioning. Once the pilum misses it's intended target it MIGHT have enough juice to come back for a second pass, but will probably make a half turn and burn out.
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Unfolder

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Re: Want more ships specializing in missiles
« Reply #21 on: April 21, 2015, 11:25:00 AM »

Piliums are just a pain in the butt to balance aren't they...haha
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DeltaV_11.2

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Re: Want more ships specializing in missiles
« Reply #22 on: April 22, 2015, 11:43:57 AM »

If you want to check for yourself, use the console and SS+ to get a fleet of 5 to 10 archers with pillums and ECCM. Nothing can stand against them.

And if both sides have them it's a Honnor Harrington's level of destruction in the first salvo, with maybe a couple of survivors and no way to counter it.
Specialized missile ships should be compared against specialized PD ships. Paragon with Guardian PD and a pile of PD lasers? Astral with a horde of fighters? As other people have commented, Enforcers with flak guns?
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Tartiflette

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Re: Want more ships specializing in missiles
« Reply #23 on: April 22, 2015, 02:14:58 PM »

Err no? It should be compared against average ships of the same class. A ship able to kill any ships that don't have a loadout specifically tuned to counter it is the definition of overpowered. And even if you do find a loadout that can survive your missile ship, if it can't counter attack it's useless.
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Morrokain

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Re: Want more ships specializing in missiles
« Reply #24 on: April 22, 2015, 02:20:36 PM »

Well when my mod is finally released (need the new features and plenty of time to add content so it may be a while lol) there will be missile specialized ships that can only equip missiles. But that's because I have changed missiles to be more versatile and work differently than Vanilla and the variants and weapons are much better at dealing with them en masse.

They are now sort of like a 3rd weapon option along with ballistic and energy weapons. They have their strengths and drawbacks.
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Sproginator

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Re: Want more ships specializing in missiles
« Reply #25 on: April 22, 2015, 02:54:17 PM »

Well when my mod is finally released (need the new features and plenty of time to add content so it may be a while lol) there will be missile specialized ships that can only equip missiles. But that's because I have changed missiles to be more versatile and work differently than Vanilla and the variants and weapons are much better at dealing with them en masse.

They are now sort of like a 3rd weapon option along with ballistic and energy weapons. They have their strengths and drawbacks.

I'm intrigued, mod link?
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whatdoesthisbuttondo

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Re: Want more ships specializing in missiles
« Reply #26 on: April 22, 2015, 03:12:45 PM »

Err no? It should be compared against average ships of the same class.

Still, they should be compared on a one against one basis. If we do, there are a bunch of destroyers (and frigates even if flown well) that can deal with the Archer quite nicely without being gimped with a specific counter-fit.

They do scale better than most destroyers once you increase their numbers though, as they don't block each others attack vectors like brawlers do.
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Aeson

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Re: Want more ships specializing in missiles
« Reply #27 on: April 22, 2015, 03:41:37 PM »

Err no? It should be compared against average ships of the same class.

Still, they should be compared on a one against one basis. If we do, there are a bunch of destroyers (and frigates even if flown well) that can deal with the Archer quite nicely without being gimped with a specific counter-fit.

They do scale better than most destroyers once you increase their numbers though, as they don't block each others attack vectors like brawlers do.
One on one performance is a very, very poor way of determining balance between two things, especially when at least one of those things is intended to be used en mass rather than singly or as a small component of the fleet. If you're going to introduce ships with an armament which consists primarily of missiles, you need to worry about what a fleet of those ships can do to an 'average' opposing fleet, not just about what one of those ships can do to a single opponent. A single missile ship tends not to be all that scary, unless we're talking about the arsenal Onslaught or something like that. Get a bunch of them together, though, and it becomes a much different story.
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Tartiflette

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Re: Want more ships specializing in missiles
« Reply #28 on: April 22, 2015, 04:15:50 PM »

I should add that I have two missile specialized ships in Scy, but I had to give them huge drawbacks to keep them in line. And still, one of them is still a bit on the OP side. In my case it's the absence of non missile weapon (save 1-2 small slots for PD depending on witch ship), a 40% CR cost per deployment and a slow CR recovery. I think they are balanced when equipped with Scy missiles, but with pillums and ECCM it's not the case.
The point being: you can make a missile ship balanced, it just won't be a super fun/useful ship in the end.
« Last Edit: April 22, 2015, 04:22:49 PM by Tartiflette »
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whatdoesthisbuttondo

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Re: Want more ships specializing in missiles
« Reply #29 on: April 22, 2015, 05:19:17 PM »

One on one performance is a very, very poor way of determining balance between two things, especially when at least one of those things is intended to be used en mass rather than singly or as a small component of the fleet.

With the mechanics that are currently in place, missiles will always scale way better than any other weapon type because they exist in 3d-space while other weapons exist in 2d-space. The same holds true for other massive alpha damage weapons against steady dps types btw.

I'm honestly not convinced by the argument that they're supposed to be used exclusively in packs of 10 and more, in fact they scale up quite well in small fleet engagements of 5v5 and they do behave there.
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