The problem is not with missiles, but rather with the fact that there is a destroyer with a bonus to carrying weapons, but none with a bonus to carrying defenses. It takes a long time to get to the ship chassis with defense bonuses. Missiles just happen to be the best weapon, with their unique functionality, to take advantage of this balance problem in the early game.



You also have battle cards to deal with this. But you do start at a disadvantage to missiles at that stage of the game.

Missiles are unbalanced, not necessarily overpowered. What makes them unbalanced is the fact that they retain full lethality even if the ship that shot them is dead 2 seconds after combat starts. This is in effect, the source of the whole glass cannon syndrome in multiplayer.



IMHO missiles should suffer a significant tracking/accuracy penalty if the ship that shot them is dead before they impact their respective targets. Until something like that is implimented, cheesy glass missile boats will remain the dominant shipbilding methodology in multplayer.



Think of it this way, if a ship is equipped with lasers or kinetics and dies early, its' damage potential drops to zero...If missile boats die early their damage potential remains 100%. So, no defenses are required so long as you pack in all the missiles you can so as to guarentee you will overwhelm amost any defensive arrangement.



Zazen