Will Banks make missiles great again?

[AndragonLea]

Agreed. Tinkering with the numbers will never help - missiles already have quite nice damage numbers, making them theoretically viable against anything that isn't running mass PD.

The problem is the long flight time, the lack of retargetting and the issue of the disappearing salvos when your ships die.

You shoot 2 to 3 salvos at the same ship while the enemy shoots 3 times and overkills 3 ships in that timeframe. Not only do the missiles those 3 lost ships of yours fired disappear with their motherships, but when the first salvo of yours hits and overkills the enemy ship, the next two salvos disappear as well because their target is already dead.

This issue persists through the entirety of the battle and I think it wouldn't even make much of a difference if you made missiles one-hit-kill enemy ships, because you'd still lose 3 ships for every 1 you kill.

We really need them to target another ship when their target is dead or to become massively faster so that only 1 or 2 salvos can target the same ship at any one time. Heck, it might even be possible to program them so that the first salvo targets one ship, the next salvo a second ship, the one after a third ship, and the fourth salvo targets any ship that survived the first three if any, otherwise it targets a new ship.

That way if the first target dies, none of the following salvos will go the way of the Dodo to pay respect.

 

[majber]

Missiles are indeed being buffed.

Can you please write more specific what exacly is changed?

 

[Meneliki]

In which way, if you don't mind my asking?
Are they gonna be faster or withstand more PD hits for example?
Or will the PD weapons receive an accuracy penalty?

I hope they get a faster travel speed and possibly some re-targeting to cut down on overkill.

 

[ashbery76]

Should be the highest damage dealers but with with the flaw already in the ganme of being able to be shot down and having no perks.

 

[majber]

I hope that wont be simple +5% damage or sth like that - that changes nothing.

 

[General Retreat]

I still think explosives should get shield and armour bonuses, with laser having an armour bonus and shield malus and kinetic getting a shield bonus and armour malus. At the moment kinetic is just leagues better than everything else.

 

[TwiceAHuman]

Ugh... But they never were quite great... A buff would be majestic, though...

 

[Alliegorical]

Missiles are indeed being buffed.

Who voted "disagree" to this post? Seriously.

 

[TheDeadlyShoe]

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... :]

 

[Elfwind]

Missiles are indeed being buffed.

Can we has any details? Some of the problems are just straight up being hard countered by either armor or shield stacking (heck even hp stacking) and point defense. D=

Missiles seem to be countered by everything!

They need an XL weapon that shuts down PD or removes armor or some sort of mega cluster MIRV bomb of aoe doom!

 

[Cagliostro]

I doubt you will get specifics until they're done balancing 'em. But that's just a guess.

 

[Sinister2202]

Missiles are indeed being buffed.

Aw yeah dude. Way to go. But don't just buff it, because I think the stats are quite alright. It's just the way missiles work in battles that most people have complaints about.

 

[Fourthspartan56]

Can we has any details? Some of the problems are just straight up being hard countered by either armor or shield stacking (heck even hp stacking) and point defense. D=

Missiles seem to be countered by everything!

They need an XL weapon that shuts down PD or removes armor or some sort of mega cluster MIRV bomb of aoe doom!

Honestly I highly doubt he will reveal the details here, it will most likely be revealed in a Dev Diary or changelog.

 

[Lothmar]

does the game have a extra large missile tech?

It might be just as simple as refocusing the 'Swarmer' missiles to serve this. Basically size it up and make it a very large missile that breaks up in mid flight and fires lots of smaller missiles to saturate an area.

Either that or an AoE explosion missile would be amazing.

 

[Bisougai]

My ideas to possible balance missiles :

1. Longest basic weapon range
2. Re-targeting based on a % chance depending on :
   1. Distance with the previous target (if too close it can't change direction)
   2. Distance traveled (if too high, maybe not enough thrust power to change taget)
   3. Weapon level (higher has better %)

 

[Obsidian One]

I dont think so they did something big,just a small tweak i guess so dont get much hope.Missiles were useless,it will be useless after patch too probably.

 

[melkor88]

That's good to here, I always prefer using missiles for RP reasons, even if they are not as great.

 

[CuddlyKitten]

I dont think they will do anything except to tweak some numbers and that is good.

If you want to fix missiles you need to rewrite a lot of code. We know a war expansion is coming at some point. Utopia brings things that we didnt even think off.

I would much rather see them band aid missiles now, think through space combat properly and then rewrite the code with awesome further changes planned instead off doing a serious fix for weapon balance purposes now and perhaps not making as sweeping changes as they could later on.

 

[terrycloth]

Missiles cannot ever be fixed with raw numbers, be it speed evasion or hp. We need retargeting.

If you make them balanced in early game mid and late game they fall off terribly. Instant weapons kill your ships and thus all inbound missiles that those ships fired before they hit. And even when they hit its 500% overkill...
If they are balanced for late game they will rekt everything early game big time.

They could be set to not focus fire and that fixes the overkill effect mostly but then your fleet is basically fighting one big ship that either gets destoyed or your fleet does. So for the enemy its a full fleet lost or just a few ships at worst. Add the shield regen to that and you are in a huge disadvantage because 50% more dps will still result in you losing your ships one by one and your dps with it.

Adding 100% shield pen along with not focus firing would eliminate damage lost on regeneration of shield but would not be too realistic now would it? Every single type of not instant weapon having 100% shield pen hmm

I saw somewhere written utopia and banks is the biggest paradox update ever. So i expect nothing less than a full mechanics overhaul in every aspect that badly needs it since release.

They did an awesome job with ethics (in my opinion) and to me it seems they fixed many concerning issues. It is my hope missiles and strike craft will be a legitimate way of warfare and we can say goodbye to the boring meta we have now. Always either plasma disruptor late game or tacyon and kinetic artillery.

Not that retargetting wouldn't be cool, but you could fix them early game just by increasing their speed (if I remember correctly; someone was messing with missiles and that was enough). That cuts down on the overkill because you have fewer volleys in transit at a time.

Late game everyone has multiple weapon types anyway, so missiles just need a niche. I think that's what torpedoes were supposed to do but everyone likes the energy torps better since they actually take shields down so that ordinary weapons can do their thing.

 

[Artigo]

The problem with a retargeting feature is going to be CPU load. Late game DoomStack battles are already the most taxing situation in the game, add the additional load from missile recalculations and I don't see how it's even going to be playable for rigs without top of the line hardware.