Will Banks make missiles great again?

[AndragonLea]

If all they did is add more damage to all the missiles we keep losing to overkill already or the ones that just disappear to Pd and/or destroyed launch platforms, they might as well not have bothered.

That's not a band-aid, that's placebo. "Just make them believe they work better now"

No offense, but I'd rather they don't wee on my shoes and tell me it's raining.

If they don't want to recalculate, they could just have your fleet target a different ship per salvo and only retarget a ship if it has been hit by a salvo but survived.

That would potentially make them weak to shield regen builds (get hit, regen up before the next salvo is tasked, repeat forever) but that's what photon torp corvettes or disruptor cruisers are for.

 

[The Founder]

If all they did is add more damage to all the missiles we keep losing to overkill already or the ones that just disappear to Pd and/or destroyed launch platforms, they might as well not have bothered.

Overkill is only an issue, because they do not do comparable damage after Overkill has been accounted for. Even if only 1/4 of the missiles do damage, if they deal 4 times as much as all other weapons it would roughly work out.
If the number they buff is the speed, that would drastically cut down on Overkill and PD loss.

I agree that a retargetting rework would be better. But I maintain that we will likely not see it this patch. But even if that does not make the missiles competitive for Players, a buff would at least make it so that AI empries using them would suck less.

 

[Peko?]

A damage buff wouldn't be ideal, but it would definitely bandaid the problem pretty effectively if it was a significant buff. The biggest problem with a damage buff would be a high on-paper fleet power compared to actual performance

I'd love to see AOE missiles for XL... :]

Also, it wouldn't surprise me if the ship designer AI routine uses DPS as an important factor when choosing loadouts.

 

[TheDeadlyShoe]

I suppose they could mechanically remove travel time from missiles entirely, so they work the same behind the scenes as other weapons...

 

[Grubsnik]

You could increase missile speed, torpedo speed and point defense firing rate by a factor 3, that would help a lot. It would still have overkill issues at the onset of an engagement, but I would expect it to be significantly less. While they were tweaking, they might also reduce the T3 Point defense, so it didn't automatically 1-shot T5 missiles

 

[Cubia_]

I suppose they could mechanically remove travel time from missiles entirely, so they work the same behind the scenes as other weapons...

Then how do you make PD work? More interestingly, how do you apply that kind of change to strike craft? It doesn't work thematically and with how missiles work under the hood it probably wouldn't work at all.

You could increase missile speed, torpedo speed and point defense firing rate by a factor 3, that would help a lot. It would still have overkill issues at the onset of an engagement, but I would expect it to be significantly less. While they were tweaking, they might also reduce the T3 Point defense, so it didn't automatically 1-shot T5 missiles

I as well as others have tried this route. It doesn't work that cleanly. Missiles and PD are practically magic when it comes down to it, particularly when you start testing them and half of the missiles delete themselves - not because of overkill either, they just delete themselves. Messing with missile speed, PD fire rate, red laser firing rate (of all things), missile range, and more will all affect the effectiveness of missiles (and strike craft) to where sometimes all missiles will straight up disappear upon firing (this happened when I tested a speed change), PD will almost completely stop almost any volley (a slight buff to PD fire rate did this), overkill somehow getting worse (going both up or down in damage or speed), and so on. If it wasn't a big part of the game thematically I wouldn't mind seeing them disappear just for the sake of developer and modder sanity. Only the people that made this magic could possibly understand this (and I'd love to see an explanation!). Further reading can be found on these two posts going deeply into missile / PD mechanics: One which discusses a lot of missile mechanics which aren't talked about or known, Two which shows 50% of missiles delete themselves (video included).

 

[TheDeadlyShoe]

Then how do you make PD work? More interestingly, how do you apply that kind of change to strike craft? It doesn't work thematically and with how missiles work under the hood it probably wouldn't work at all.

Theres innumerable ways they could make PD work, and afaik strike craft don't suffer the mechanical flaws that missiles have atm.

 

[Cubia_]

Theres innumerable ways they could make PD work, and afaik strike craft don't suffer the mechanical flaws that missiles have atm.

Well they're both countered by the same thing: PD. They also suffer from the issue where they all get deleted if the host is killed, rather than just keep doing their job until the battle is over (understandable from a coding perspective for craft but not so much for missiles). They also have really serious travel time issues which can be a massive pain in the backside if you try to run them. Missiles are worse, but strike craft tend to be put on as glorified PD against the scourge. Sure that one H slot can have higher paper dps than a spinal mount, but because of it's travel time all that dps is lost (ignoring how flak destroys them before they get to target).
As for PD, if there is an uncountably long list of good implementations could you care to give me a hand on how they might work?

 

[Kayden_II]

You can also decrease the Power-Costs of Missiles, Torpedos and Strike-Crafts on the Ships ...
In this Case, the Ships don't need so many Power-Reactors, so that They have more Slots left for Armour and Shields, Which makes Them more durable in a Battle ...
1 Solution for 2 Problems: A Buff for weak Missiles/Torpedos/Strike-Crafts + An Approach, Which concerns the Dis-Apperaing of M./T./S-C in the Case, that their Ships are destroyed ...

But in General, I would balance all Weapon-Types in this Way ...
Energetic Weapons consume the highest Amount of Power on a Ship, then Kinetic Weapons and lastly Missiles/Torpedos/Strike-Crafts.

 

[I am Sovereign]

@Wiz
What about strike crafts?
Pls do no forget about those.

They suffer from many things as missiles do and are atm in a desolate state too.

 

[Vahouth]

IMHO what missiles need the most is the ability to switch targets once the first one is destroyed. Through a tech maybe? That's how MoO handles it, by researching the Dauntless Guiding System.

Strike crafts on the other hand need a greater evasion vs PDs.

Just my 2 energy credits.

 

[forfor]

My question is whether missiles will receive some kind of pen stat. (Maybe Shield pen?) of the 3 base weapons, lasers counter armor, while guns are kindve generalist, making guns inherently optimal from my view given the way the ai designs their ships. Missiles don't have a similar niche. They have high base damage, but don't have any particular pen or bonus stats. They are also extremely easy to counter with pd. A battleship with high armor mitigates 90% of their damage, while a battleship with decent shields mitigates them altogether because shields, and they lack any particular advantage against shields.That's not even counting point defense. So what's even the point of using missiles even without point defense? What they need is a strategic niche of their own, maybe shield pen, or bonus shield damage. (Lasers already counter armor) Maybe super high accuracy that defines them as good against small ships even in larger forms.

 

[terrycloth]

Then how do you make PD work? More interestingly, how do you apply that kind of change to strike craft? It doesn't work thematically and with how missiles work under the hood it probably wouldn't work at all.



I as well as others have tried this route. It doesn't work that cleanly. Missiles and PD are practically magic when it comes down to it, particularly when you start testing them and half of the missiles delete themselves - not because of overkill either, they just delete themselves. Messing with missile speed, PD fire rate, red laser firing rate (of all things), missile range, and more will all affect the effectiveness of missiles (and strike craft) to where sometimes all missiles will straight up disappear upon firing (this happened when I tested a speed change), PD will almost completely stop almost any volley (a slight buff to PD fire rate did this), overkill somehow getting worse (going both up or down in damage or speed), and so on. If it wasn't a big part of the game thematically I wouldn't mind seeing them disappear just for the sake of developer and modder sanity. Only the people that made this magic could possibly understand this (and I'd love to see an explanation!). Further reading can be found on these two posts going deeply into missile / PD mechanics: One which discusses a lot of missile mechanics which aren't talked about or known, Two which shows 50% of missiles delete themselves (video included).

The '50% of missiles delete themselves' thing turned out to be the half damage from being out of energy hitting the guy who was doing the tests. There was a version of that thread on these forums where that eventually came out.

 

[I am Sovereign]

PDs realy should try/be able to shot at swarm missiles so that they actually could well swarm them....


Edit: Okay thats it no need to make them mechanical wise to be multiple rockets as it could increase lags in big fights.

 

[Sheriff Godwin Law]

PDs realy should try/be able to shot at swarm missiles so that they actually could well swarm them....

Yes, absolutely.

even better would be if they werent not only visualy multiple missiles but also mechanical wise (where they are actually just one rocket).

No. Too many game resources. I lag enough on big fights already, making me lag even more by calculating speed and targeting for a swarm of missiles instead of a single swarmer wouldn't be ideal.

Another thing they can do is provide standard missiles, torpedoes and hangar craft a flat evasion buff for every swarmer missile within PD range of them.

 

[Alex_brunius]

It seems to me that the core of the issue with overkill is that all ships target the same target to begin with. Why not simply put a maximum of say 5 or 10 ships being allowed to target the same target if there are other valid targets in range? That should get all ships (not only missile) to spread their fire around bit more reasonably.

 

[The Founder]

It seems to me that the core of the issue with overkill is that all ships target the same target to begin with. Why not simply put a maximum of say 5 or 10 ships being allowed to target the same target if there are other valid targets in range? That should get all ships (not only missile) to spread their fire around bit more reasonably.

Focusfire and Overkill.
Random fire and underkill.
You use one, you get the other. Holds true as far back as Age of Empires:

The problem is that Regeneration (shields and HP) might apply ,so random firing would upgrade the side with regeneration massively.

 

[CuddlyKitten]

Confirmed that missiles won't get changed in wiz AMA for Utopia but that combat rework is most likely coming in Banks (1.6, Stellaris: Art of War?)
Will get buffed though. So probably still not the power gaming solution but hopefully useful from an RP standpoint.

 

[I am Sovereign]

Confirmed that missiles won't get changed in wiz AMA for Utopia but that combat rework is most likely coming in Banks (1.6, Stellaris: Art of War?)
Will get buffed though. So probably still not the power gaming solution but hopefully useful from an RP standpoint.

More importanly PDs and Flak have to be nerfed also. Otherwise those "buffs" need to be gigantic.

 

[TheDeadlyShoe]

Stellaris already uses a system where fleets try to focus fire just enough to not overkill. It just doesnt work for missiles.