If you look through the forums a bit, you can find plenty of offhand comments about problems with missiles, starting with the part where down-teching is the standard solution for missiles, something that would eventually result in a race to the bottom. (As I will show, though, even a race to the bottom isn't worth it for missiles as they currently are.)



So, a list of problems that have been observed with missiles:

[LIST=1]

Flack has greater accuracy at a given tier than missiles. Other weapons' defenses are less effective than the weapons.

Flack can fire once every round, but a missile takes three rounds to arrive on target.

All missiles from a ship are fired at the same target in a given phase, limiting effectiveness against small targets.

Missiles tend to do less than three times the base damage of equivalent-tier beams, but beams fire four times a phase.

Boosting beam weapon damage may increase their ability to pierce shields, but boosting missile damage does not improve intercept evasion.

[/LIST]



Number 1 is pretty egregious, but it's easy to fix: missile launchers should have their evade chance set to at least an equivalent evade chance to the flak's intercept chance. Currently, the top flak is at 205 intercept chance, but the top missile is at 150 intercept evade. It's the same all the way down. With the basic 8T flak module you must get if you don't go for the missile and deflector instead, you can reliably intercept a 12T missile launcher (100 intercept vs. 101 evade), and that goes up to the 14T one (115 vs. 110) with Accelerated Magnetics. The 9T interceptor can intercept the 16T missile with that boost, and it takes 6 ships with the stacking defense boost to have the 9T interceptor intercept the top (20T) missile. (The 8T one just barely isn't enough for a guarantee at 148, and the 9T one can almost do it with five at 148.4.) For that matter, I haven't even factored in admiral bonuses, and you can easily get +20% to +50% defense bonuses on your heroes if you want to.



Number 2 is also pretty bad, IMO, but mostly because of the way it interacts with 1. Fortunately, there's an easy way to paper over this problem, too: make each missile launcher fire three projectiles and divide the projectile damage by three. This has the valuable side-effect of making it easier to compare with laser weapons, as well, because there's an argument for missiles doing less damage, but I think 3/4 of laser damage is potentially reasonable where 2/3 isn't. With three projectiles, the flak cannons can take their shot in each of the approach rounds, and people can watch nervously (for about 10 seconds) as the incoming swarm of missiles gets whittled down.



Number 3 is introduced as a failure, but I think the solution is actually to turn it into a feature. Describe missiles as capital ship killers. As it stands, the top-tier missile does 500-620 damage. That's enough to potentially blow cruisers and battleships out of space in a single shot. Make it so that a single top (20T) hardpoint will reliably blow a stock, unplated cruiser or battleship apart with a single shot and the best middle (14T) shot will take out a corvette or destroyer in one shot. The equivalent lasers currently can do that with three shots that hit. (Actually, not even the 14T lasers can do that, but the 16T shots from both do it pretty handily.) Make missiles the thing big, heavily-defended ships throw at each other because they pack a single-target punch. My damage-boosting ideas might not even go far enough in my opinion, actually, because beams will still be at least as good in DPR and have better target spread. For better or for worse, the solution to this is probably to nerf beams, but that's for another topic. (Kinetics can keep their higher damage... closing to close range takes fortitude.) These later comments are what I was referencing in number four, actually.



Finally, my point in number five is that I want missile evasion boost power mods to go with the damage boost power mods, which is to say I want a modest single-ship one and a weaker stacking one. 15% and 5-10%, paralleling the defensive mods, seems about right. (Heck, the stacking damage boost mod is 10% to the defensive one's 8%!) Put them somewhere up the middle of the tree... Put the stacking on on Applied Quantum Stability and call it a Real-Time Targeting Coordinator, for all I care! I just want it possible to get as a way to counteract the defensive arms race beyond just putting more launchers on my ships.



I'm not firmly wedded to these ideas, but I feel like this is a good starting point for a discussion. Thoughts?

This seems to have gotten lost in Nosferatiel's culling, I feel justified pulling this back up to the top page. Are there seriously no other suggestion threads talking about making missiles not underwhelming? I can't seem to find any, but I want some feedback on this.

Missiles are still probably better then kinetics. Honestly though I think it's more lasers are too strong rather then missiles are too weak. Then again I'm hesitant to make any defense modules less powerful as weapon modules are ALREADY considered better uses of space then defense.



Honestly I think EVERY defense modules should be more effective then an equal tech level weapon module per tonnage. The weapon module is always useful- the defense against only a single type of weapon- the counter should be superior when the two are matched.

I agree with your idea about missiles packing a big wallop. That's how it works in real world warfare. Look at WW2 naval combat. Literally hundreds of torpedoes could be launched during an air strike, but only a few would get through. And that is all it would take. One or two good hits would seriously cripple or outright destroy a ship.

rickynumber24 wrote:
2. Flack can fire once every round, but a missile takes three rounds to arrive on target.

This is the most annoying bug I have experienced.

Basically, it seems that the devs have decided that preserving the missile explosion animation must take precedence over all other factors. The result is that incoming missiles from enemy ships that your fleet destroyed in the first (or second) round of battle are time-warped to the final reporting round of the battle instead of being countered by the cards you played during round 1, 2, and 3.



So, 3v3 of the largest ships available & both sides have hero, maybe you spend dust on Ultimate Defense and Emergency Shelter battle actions with your hero, and use Nano-repair Systems in the 3rd battle round to heal any damaged ships. Round one proceeds as planned with the enmy firing kinetic and missiles at you while your beam weapons proceed to shred his ships and they are all destroyed by the end of the first battle round or very early in the second battle round. Either the the first flight of enemy missiles haven't arrived (or they did and you survived them with some damage and the few missiles from the enemy ships that survived to the beginning of battle round round 2 haven't arrived) yet, when the the battle clock fast-forwards to the reporting round. Then the damn missiles arrive, while you have no defenses up, interception does not work, no way of countering the damage or healing from it and 2 of your ships are destroyed, after the battle has supposedly ended.



I am getting frustrated at watching this happen all too often.



TL;DR MISSILES SHOULD NOT BE ABLE TO TIME-TRAVEL AND DESTROY SHIPS DURING REPORTING PHASE AFTER BATTLE IS OVER. PLEASE FIX THIS CRAP!

rickynumber24 wrote:
This seems to have gotten lost in Nosferatiel's culling, I feel justified pulling this back up to the top page. Are there seriously no other suggestion threads talking about making missiles not underwhelming? I can't seem to find any, but I want some feedback on this.

Sorry, but my culling redirects only last a day.



Edited the title.

Nosferatiel wrote:
Sorry, but my culling redirects only last a day.

To be fair, I had the misfortune of posting less than 12 hours before you began a culling.



Back on topic, I had a game (admittedly, this was with 0.48.x) where I trivialized every missile combat with two or three basic point defense modules and a hero to boost them. This was, for example, 20 or 30 ower: of defenses shooting down around 120ower: of attacking missiles, generally about 4-6 of them. (Given the tech level, the hero may not have been necessary, because I was playing Sowers, who had a defense bonus until the most recent patch.)

a4nic8er wrote:
The result is that incoming missiles from enemy ships that your fleet destroyed in the first (or second) round of battle are time-warped to the final reporting round of the battle instead of being countered by the cards you played during round 1, 2, and 3.

I am pretty sure this is not what happens. Yes, missiles take a long time to travel, and yes, it is possible to be hit by any weapon (not just missiles) after the ship that launched it is destroyed. But I am pretty sure that whatever flak or card is active during a phase, is used whenever the missile hits. So if you are hit by a missile in the reporting phase, it is because your phase 3 flak or card did not counter it.



If you have specific evidence such as a save game where you can see the opposite happening, please zip and attach to a post, with information about which system to attack.

HORATIO - Turn 104.zip

davea wrote:
I am pretty sure this is not what happens. Yes, missiles take a long time to travel, and yes, it is possible to be hit by any weapon (not just missiles) after the ship that launched it is destroyed. But I am pretty sure that whatever flak or card is active during a phase, is used whenever the missile hits. So if you are hit by a missile in the reporting phase, it is because your phase 3 flak or card did not counter it.



If you have specific evidence such as a save game where you can see the opposite happening, please zip and attach to a post, with information about which system to attack.

I don't keep saves (more saves = slower game load times), but here's one I encountered today. HORATIO - Turn 104.zip



Just load the save and wait, Hissho will attack when save is loaded.

I have run this about a dozen times, 10 of which the cards I played were not countered.

I used:

1st Battle Round; "Ultimate Defense" = lose 1 ship to enemy missiles.

2nd Battle Round; "Adaptive Strategy" = to increase damage to enemy in order to destroy the remaining ships faster (all are dead by 1/2 way through the round).

3rd Battle Round; Nano-repair System" = self explanatary.



Results: Depending upon how long it takes for last enemy ship to explode (can be anywhere from 2 to 5 seconds after enemy ship count is zero), 50% of the times I ran this save the final flight of missiles arrived during the Reporting Phase and caused damage, undoing the healing effected in 3rd Battle Phase. Watch your ships' health bar during the Reporting Phase.



I will work towards creating a game save that displays this issue more obviously.