Missile-Specific Balancing

[Valiant70]

I hear "missiles are overpowered" rather frequently. I don't think it's missiles as a whole as much as it is some specifics about missiles that make certain combinations overpowered while others are useless.

Overview: This isn't a nerf to missiles as a whole. It's a nerf to specific aspects and a buff to others, along with a redistribution of ability among different missile systems so that they all come into play. This includes more and different systems with lock-on, the possibility of dodging locked missiles, a more balanced and interesting explosive effect, and implementation of unused effects.

Part I: Lock-on change:

All lock-on missiles need to be changed so that ships have a chance to dodge them. They should lock and seek only ahead, meaning that if something is maneuverable enough to dodge out of their sensor cone, they lose lock and fly straight. Heat-seekers will lock onto anything that passes in front of them if this happens.

Missiles firing out the sides of a ship may still lock onto something in front, but the lock must be established before firing. Heat-seekers can no longer find their own targets. The ship must be aiming at a target to lock onto.

Part II: Slave systems:
How it is now:

• Default (no slave): Like all current default weapons, these are weak. It's hard to hit anything except at close range.
• Cannon: Fire faster but never hit anything as the missiles move too slowly.
• Missile: Mount these on your titan to fire over your shoulder and hit Luke Skywalker before he can launch that pesky proton torpedo. The only drawback is that you may massacre your allies as well, but if you're lone wolf titan it doesn't matter anyway.
• Beam: The UBER MISSILE! These have almost no drawbacks and should be used almost exclusively.
• Pulse: The special attribute of this missile is that it is both useful and balanced, although the UBER MISSILE overshadows it under most circumstances.

How it should be:

• Default (no slave): Standard lock-on time, range, speed, lock cone, and damage. Good workhorse missile.
• Cannon: Faster rate of fire, instant lock-on, and smaller turn radius in exchange for lower damage and speed. Infrared seeker can pick up radar-jammed ships but not cloaked ones. (They lock on in a limited cone like others. No more over-the-shoulder noskill-shots.)
• Missile: Spread fire without lock-on. Increased damage per volley in exchange for lock ability, but less damage per missile as there is more than one missile.
• Beam: Faster, longer flight at the expense of turn radius, a longer lock time, and a narrower lock cone (easier to dodge/break lock).
• Pulse: Mega missile! Massive damage and blast radius, but very slow with no lock on and a monumentally slow rate of fire. Best against stationary targets or against large targets at point-blank range (bomber weapon).

Part III: Effects
How they are now:

• Explosive: Always use this. This is part of the reason people consider missiles overpowered.
• Ion: Occasionally use this if your explosives can't crack shields.
• Overdrive: Nothing wrong with this, but why use it when you could use explosive?
• Push/pull/stop: Like all weapons, these are purely situational.
• Everything else: What the heck is this for?

How it should be:

• Explosive: Splits the warhead into several smaller ones on impact. This increases overall block destruction on soft targets, but not against armored ones.
• Punchthrough: Shaped charge. Overall block destruction volume and width is less, but it goes deeper.
• Pierce: Charge strikes and imbeds in the hull, then detonates, generating a shockwave that damages internals somewhat even if the armor can't be broken (important after HP/armor update).
• Ion: Works fine.
• Overdrive: Works fine and is no longer overshadowed as badly by explosive.

TIP: If you still want multi-missile swarms with lock-on, mount several lock-on outputs in different locations on your ship. They don't really have to spread out first to look cool.

 

[nightwalker_007]

The area effect of missiles should be blocked by other blocks, not spread out over a large area. This is the biggest problem with missiles.

I had a suggestion once that destroyed blocks remain present as transparent broken frameworks, which an astronaut could pass through, but also a healing beam could fix if the required materials were in stock. If we added this to the game, then made it to where only beams could penetrate beyond this damaged shell, then would detonate on the surface of ships rather than punching all the way through.

With this, adding beams and cannons to ships would make a lot more sense... and astronaut-based assaults on large ships even more important.

 

[friendofvampires]

This actually sounds really balanced and thought out, +1

I would like to point out that missiles can be shot down, and while I've never personally experimented with it, that is a drawback to take into account, though its somewhat countered by swarm fire

 

[Keptick]

Good news, some additions and fixes to anti-missile turrets, such as faster turn rates, different AI accuracy settings for different things (FINALLY), and a bug that caused them to fire behind the missiles have been made! That means anti-missile turrets will be extremely viable, and should hopefully bring missiles back in line with the other weapons. That's if you use PD turrets of course (which you should).

It's all in the dev build, in case you want to check it out ^_^

 

[Valiant70]

Good news, some additions and fixes to anti-missile turrets, such as faster turn rates, different AI accuracy settings for different things (FINALLY), and a bug that caused them to fire behind the missiles have been made! That means anti-missile turrets will be extremely viable, and should hopefully bring missiles back in line with the other weapons. That's if you use PD turrets of course (which you should).

It's all in the dev build, in case you want to check it out ^_^

That's great, but it just makes default and cannon missiles all the more useless. That still needs to be addressed.

 

[Planr]

Missiles in and of themselves are not inherently overpowered. The environment and settings of the servers you play on will dictate what weapon setups are most effective for specific roles, and which are least effective for certain roles. Depending on sector sizes, speed limits for ships, and AI turret accuracy values, some missiles that would normally be deadly can become very impractical. There is a server for almost every missile-related gameplay preference out there, without the need to fundamentally change how missile setups in and of themselves function. Most of your implied disappointments with the current missile system mechanics are merely ones of circumstance and do not necessarily reflect an inherent problem in the system itself.

All lock-on missiles need to be changed so that ships have a chance to dodge them.

The point of lock-on missiles is that they're supposed to hit their targets as often as possible, meaning ships aren't supposed to dodge them. That's why their speed is greater than heatseeker missiles, which are actually dodgeable with small fighters. Besides, dodging isn't an issue anyway with adequate point-defense (though PD is something that needs to be worked on more for this to be as effective as it ought to).

They should lock and seek only ahead, meaning that if something is maneuverable enough to dodge out of their sensor cone, they lose lock and fly straight.

I really like this idea! This would be nice to have, and it could be a good balance for beam missiles. However, you have to remember that with how significantly lag impacts client-to-server connection in Starmade mutliplayer's current state, I can see this "cone of seeking-attention" making lock-on missiles very ineffective when a server is lagging, since the ships being "seeked" could be jumping all over the place due to lag, and the missiles (being handled by the server) could easily stop following a target simply because of lag making it glitch out of its homing cone area. This is an irritating side effect that can result in unfair gameplay for those who do not have good internet connections, or for all players using lock-on weapons on servers that are having latency issues.

a redistribution of ability among different missile systems so that they all come into play.

This statement appears to presuppose that not all missile types have a useful role in gameplay, which isn't true. All current missile types do come into play, just in different ways, which can also vary depending on server config settings (sector sizes, speed limits, and AI accuracy).

Here's my take on the current state of missile slaves, and their general roles:

• Heatseeker missiles (missile slave) are great against drone swarms, titan turrets, and for point-defense distraction.
• Siege missiles (pulse slave) are great for bombardments of stationary objects like planets and stations, as well as a potent weapon against titans. Or, they can provide a compact heavy weapon in a smaller craft at the expense of speed, reload time and power cost.
• Rapidfire missiles (cannon slave) are good for doing quick and power-efficient damage against stationary objects and titans when done in a large multigroup waffle formation (though I personally do feel they need a significant speed boost so they're more viable).
• Dumbfire missiles are the "poor man's missiles", having no slaves, so they're easier to produce a setup for (as well as requiring a smaller and easier-to-require variety of resources), but I do feel that they in turn ought to have a higher speed than what they have now to make them less crappy on most server environments.
• Beam missiles are effective when servers have high speeds and large sectors, as they can be fired from far away in another sector, and can hit targets quickly with minimal stopping potential by PD. However, they are not effective when servers have low speeds, as point-defense has a much easier time shooting them down. They are also not effective on small sectors when fired in close combat, as though point-defense is less of an issue up close, the large reload times can leave the ship firing them a sitting duck while an enemy ship armed with beam or cannon primaries can hammer away at them.

The only drawback is that you may massacre your allies as well

I'm 95% sure this issue with heatseeker missiles is a bug that has yet to be fixed. I really wish the devs would fix it already, so yes, you could say that because of this, heatseekers are not as desirable for use as they ought to be.

Beam: The UBER MISSILE! These have almost no drawbacks and should be used almost exclusively.

I really don't like how you worded this statement, because it has an implied presupposition that beam missiles are very effective on "almost" all server environments, which is grossly inaccurate. If you go on a server with low speed limits for ships or/and small sectors, beam missiles are at a significant disadvantage. They can either be shot down by point-defense (either due to a slower speed because of a lower server speed limit, or due to if a server has large sector sizes to give PD turrets enough time to react and shoot them down), or their long reload times on servers with small sectors leaving you very offensively-defenseless between reload times if the enemy has a cannon or beam primary weapon.

Default (no slave): Standard lock-on time, range, speed, lock cone, and damage. Good workhorse missile.

I personally think all default missiles need is an increase in relative speed. There's no reason for them to have lock-on, because then they will be too similar to beam weapons. They ought to stay unique via their inherent simplicity.

Cannon: Faster rate of fire, instant lock-on

When it comes to AI using rapidfire missiles, "instant lock-on" would be reflected in that faster rate of fire you talked about. However I really think cannon missiles ought to just be very fast with a fast reload, but short range and no lock-on. So like dumbfire missiles, all they could really use is a relative-speed boost.

Missile: Spread fire without lock-on. Increased damage per volley in exchange for lock ability, but less damage per missile as there is more than one missile.

Changing the damage done per block by a missile-missile setup is going to damage the balance in the current weapon system, as each block is intended to add a specific and balanced amount of DPS to the overall array. Increased damage in exchange for a loss of lock-on is not an acceptable trade-off, as it's disrupting the balance in DPS per block contribution. However, an increase in damage in exchange for an increase in reload time would work as it wouldn't have to change the DPS per block added to the array.

Also, I need to address this statement you made at the end of your post now:

If you still want multi-missile swarms with lock-on

You worded your statement here in a way that gives me the impression you're confusing the heatseeking and lock-on mechanics. Missile-missile setups never had lock-on ability, they heatseek (automatically chasing targets without the need for them to be "locked-on" to).

Beam: Faster, longer flight at the expense of turn radius, a longer lock time, and a narrower lock cone (easier to dodge/break lock).

I'm fine with this, missile-beam setups are best used as anti-capital ship weapons anyway, and losing lock-on is not an issue when the weapon setup is utilized by AI. Beam missiles already have a very long reload time, so the "longer lock-on time" doesn't really strike me as necessary, however. Locking on is not an issue for AI turrets, as that's a client-sided on-your-screen kind of thing.

Pulse: Mega missile! Massive damage and blast radius, but very slow with no lock on and a monumentally slow rate of fire. Best against stationary targets or against large targets at point-blank range (bomber weapon).

This is how pulse missiles are now, but due to the implementation of point-defense, they are given lock-on ability to make them more likely to hit their target, in a weird sort of counter-balance against their easier chance to be shot down.

Part III: Effects
How they are now:

• Explosive: Always use this. This is part of the reason people consider missiles overpowered.
• Ion: Occasionally use this if your explosives can't crack shields.
• Overdrive: Nothing wrong with this, but why use it when you could use explosive?
• Push/pull/stop: Like all weapons, these are purely situational.
• Everything else: What the heck is this for?

Explosive effect is not the system to "always use". I personally rarely use explosive effect missiles as a primary weapon or something I "always use" on my ships, as doing hull damage can be done in a variety of ways. For me, I have practiced and studied starmade PVP combat rigorously in-game, and in my experience I've found that getting the enemy ship's shields down is much more important than having explosive missiles for destroying their hulls. The explosive setup really isn't all that more powerful than regular missiles, it just increases the radius damage a bit, with minimal power cost.

Ion is the tertiary effect I use the most, by far. StarMade ship combat is almost always about survival, or "kill or be killed". If you can drop the enemy player's shields, they'll almost always try to jump out ASAP, thus meaning that focusing on shield-busting is generally the most effective way at eliminating enemy player threats. So, I personally use missiles with a beam-ion setup mounted on AI turrets as my primary long-range weapon, alongside beam-beam-ion and cannon-cannon-ion weapon setups for close-quarters combat.

I equip my ship with a waffle-cannon setup of cannon-cannon punchthrough for close-quarters hull damage, and missile-beam-explosive in small numbers but lots of groups for long-range hull damage. I'd say explosive effect makes up only 5% of my ships weapon setups at any time, and it's usually enough, as most missile damage is very powerful in terms of "totaling" ships, since you can't really repair them once damaged like that unless you want to do it by hand and know your blueprint inside and out.

Why use Overdrive when you could use explosive? There's a few reasons why: It is the best weapon to equip bases with when it comes to tertiary effects for any weapon primary, as it does huge shield damage, and also guarantees 100% destruction of all blocks within a non-changed hull radius. Power supply and recharge for bases is almost never an issue if you're stocked on resources, as you're not worrying about space as much when you don't have to be concerned about mass, intertia or turn rates. So overdrive tertiary effect is the best thing ever for base defense, and really to me means that there's in turn no reason to give some sort of stat buff to bases when it comes to offensive stats.

Also, any weapon type with cannon slave (or no slave at all) and then overdrive tertiary effect is quite effective as a mass-damage weapon when done on a smaller setup. Since power costs for weapons scale exponentially (and damage scales linearly), and overdrive multiplies that power cost by 500% (5 times), it makes a decent weapon on small weapon setups, though it'd kill the power for sure if scaled up in size alongside a larger ship. I have a frigate design that has a small but powerful beam-no slave-overdrive weapon setup, and it works great for the ship's size. Missiles with cannon and then overdrive would probably work just as effectively for my ship.

Push/pull/stop are indeed purely situational. Not much to say there cause I agree with you on that.

"Everything else": I'm likewise aware that pierce and punch-through do not serve a function for missiles currently, but really I don't think that's much of a problem. The way missiles work kinda makes those tertiary effects impractical or problematic, depending on how you'd implement those effects with missiles.

But let's say we were to include those two effects in the mix for missiles. Here's how I see it:

Punch-through: Would launch a quick succession of missiles in groups of up to 7 (like the average # of blocks cannon/beam weapons go through with punch-through) that would impact the hull like normal missiles, but since they were launched in a quick succession, there's a delay between when each missile hits the target, meaning one missile hits the surface, then the next hits behind it, and so forth. The damage per missile could be scaled down with each missile that's fired, so the 1st missile would be the most powerful, and the last one being the least, kind of like how it is for cannons and beams with punch-through.

Pierce: Would fire just a single missile per group. Would do no damage to shields, but the explosion center when the missile detonates would be offset forward-wise on the missile projectile, so that the explosion center and its radius damage would occur a bit ahead of where the missile actually strikes, meaning the explosion would happen inside the ship without requiring the missile itself to go through the ship and then explode. To dictate how far off from the missile's impact site the center the explosion would occur, the radius of the missile explosion damage would determine the distance offset from the missile's point of impact on the outer hull to the explosion center. I can draw you a diagram of this later, to illustrate what I mean. A picture speaks a thousand words

===========================================================================

As an end to this large post I've just made, may I suggest that when making threads about suggestions for gameplay mechanic changes, you should avoid using 'treknobabble'. When talking about game mechanics, don't use phrases or words that imply the existence of ambiguous mechanics/systems/content that do not actually exist in the game, as that makes your suggestion more confusing to read, and less easy to understand. Some examples:

Infrared seeker can pick up radar-jammed ships but not cloaked ones.

Explosive: Splits the warhead

Punchthrough: Shaped charge.

Pierce: Charge strikes and imbeds in the hull, then detonates, generating a shockwave that damages internals somewhat even if the armor can't be broken (important after HP/armor update).

If you still want multi-missile swarms with lock-on, mount several lock-on outputs in different locations on your ship.

I don't do this to be carping, but Starmade does not currently have:

• "Infrared seekers". If you meant to refer here to the "heatseeking" mechanic that missile-missile setups have, please simply state that rather than using the ambiguous phrase "infrared seeker".
• "Warheads" for missiles. Saying this implies that missiles have multiple physical components, which is not the case at all. It'd help if you reworded that part so it makes more sense.
• "Shapes" for missiles. Missiles do not currently have a physical model but merely appear as a 2-dimensional image, therefore talking about missiles having shapes is confusing and ambiguous .
• "Charges" for missiles. Missiles in StarMade are non-physical objects that deal a radius of damage to a target when they come in contact with it. If by "charge" you meant to refer to the fact that missiles explode and deal radius damage, it would've helped if you stated so.
• Missiles "imbedding in the hull". Missiles currently explode immediately when they touch a target. If you meant to also suggest the implementation of a new mechanic for missiles acting like "sticky bombs" and sticking to a ship's hull (and then exploding after a period of time), or alternatively missiles passing through solid blocks up to a certain point and then exploding, then that would have been helpful to clarify in the OP.
• "Shockwaves that deal internal damage". If by this you meant a missile exploding inside a ship's interior rather than exploding upon contact with the outer hull, it would be helpful to have made that clarification. However if you are talking about some sort of EMP discharge or something, or a ripple-effect of damage, no such mechanics currently exist in StarMade.
• "Lock-on outputs". What does this mean? Is this talking about some block system that allows a weapon system to use lock-on mechanics when its slaves and tertiaries do not already do so? If so, that's a very unique idea that you should've also included as a suggestion in the OP along with your other ideas for missile system changes (though it's an idea i disagree with).

Overall your idea has good points, but unfortunately does not appear to consider all the variables involved in the missile system's function during gameplay, since those complex variables mean that there may already be a decent "fix" for your (what I assume is) gameplay troubles with missiles that prompted you to suggest these changes. However, your idea of the "cone of tracking" for lock-on and heatseeking missiles is genious, and I agree that such a mechanic would be very nice to see included in the game.

 

[Keptick]

Oh yea, I forgot to mention that missiles now have different turn speeds.

Edit: Source is Lancake , you might want to ask him for more info on that (but don't harass him :P)

 

[Valiant70]

The point of lock-on missiles is that they're supposed to hit their targets as often as possible, meaning ships aren't supposed to dodge them. That's why their speed is greater than heatseeker missiles, which are actually dodgeable with small fighters. Besides, dodging isn't an issue anyway with adequate point-defense (though PD is something that needs to be worked on more for this to be as effective as it ought to).

We'll have to see how the PD updates affect the effectiveness of missiles.

I really like this idea! This would be nice to have, and it could be a good balance for beam missiles. However, you have to remember that with how significantly lag impacts client-to-server connection in Starmade mutliplayer's current state, I can see this "cone of seeking-attention" making lock-on missiles very ineffective when a server is lagging, since the ships being "seeked" could be jumping all over the place due to lag, and the missiles (being handled by the server) could easily stop following a target simply because of lag making it glitch out of its homing cone area. This is an irritating side effect that can result in unfair gameplay for those who do not have good internet connections, or for all players using lock-on weapons on servers that are having latency issues.

Rubberbanding (jumping around) is a problem with bad internet connections and will be until Schema works some more magic with client-server communications. It doesn't seem to me that this would affect anything more severely than it does now except for heatseeking missiles (because they would have to be pointed at the target like other weapons). Missiles and their line of sight would be handled server-side. You might see them all over the place, but the server would still know where they are and calculate accordingly. If anything, this could potentially give a single client with a bad connection an advantage, as the ship might rubberband out of the missile's lock. If your connection is so bad that you can't aim, then you can't aim, period. The limited cone won't make any significant difference.

This statement appears to presuppose that not all missile types have a useful role in gameplay, which isn't true. All current missile types do come into play, just in different ways, which can also vary depending on server config settings (sector sizes, speed limits, and AI accuracy).

Here's my take on the current state of missile slaves, and their general roles:

• Heatseeker missiles (missile slave) are great against drone swarms, titan turrets, and for point-defense distraction.
• Siege missiles (pulse slave) are great for bombardments of stationary objects like planets and stations, as well as a potent weapon against titans. Or, they can provide a compact heavy weapon in a smaller craft at the expense of speed, reload time and power cost.
• Rapidfire missiles (cannon slave) are good for doing quick and power-efficient damage against stationary objects and titans when done in a large multigroup waffle formation (though I personally do feel they need a significant speed boost so they're more viable).
• Dumbfire missiles are the "poor man's missiles", having no slaves, so they're easier to produce a setup for (as well as requiring a smaller and easier-to-require variety of resources), but I do feel that they in turn ought to have a higher speed than what they have now to make them less crappy on most server environments.
• Beam missiles are effective when servers have high speeds and large sectors, as they can be fired from far away in another sector, and can hit targets quickly with minimal stopping potential by PD. However, they are not effective when servers have low speeds, as point-defense has a much easier time shooting them down. They are also not effective on small sectors when fired in close combat, as though point-defense is less of an issue up close, the large reload times can leave the ship firing them a sitting duck while an enemy ship armed with beam or cannon primaries can hammer away at them.

Have you ever thought about a circumstance where a non-homing cluster missile might be just as effective as the rapidfire ones, but possibly easier to score a hit with? That's what I had in mind with when I suggested moving the heat-seeking capability. Spread fire and heat seeking are both abilities that have potential to increase chance to hit. It makes sense to me to separate them.

Whether people use cannon-slave missiles now or not, I've never seen them do anything impressive. In my opinion, one situational missile (pulse-slave missile) is enough, and the rest should be viable in multiple situations if possible. If you have to use them at point-blank range to do anything, they're underpowered IMO. Like you said, they at least need a speed increase (and I would argue for a massive speed increase).

Default (no slave) missiles will have to have a massive speed increase to be useful as they are. My that I mean they would have to go almost as fast as slow cannon rounds, otherwise you'd never hit a moving target. I liked the idea of giving them balanced, all-around capability, and then trading off different aspects of that capability with the cannon and beam slaves.

I'm 95% sure this issue with heatseeker missiles is a bug that has yet to be fixed. I really wish the devs would fix it already, so yes, you could say that because of this, heatseekers are not as desirable for use as they ought to be.

This is honestly a reasonable drawback if you could actually control what in the flipping star system the things lock onto! In all honestly though, I would prefer that heat-seekers included an IFF system (Inquire Friend-Foe; IRL technology that tells if something's friendly) as they would almost certainly have such a system IRL and it would make combat less frustrating.

I really don't like how you worded this statement, because it has an implied presupposition that beam missiles are very effective on "almost" all server environments, which is grossly inaccurate. If you go on a server with low speed limits for ships or/and small sectors, beam missiles are at a significant disadvantage. They can either be shot down by point-defense (either due to a slower speed because of a lower server speed limit, or due to if a server has large sector sizes to give PD turrets enough time to react and shoot them down), or their long reload times on servers with small sectors leaving you very offensively-defenseless between reload times if the enemy has a cannon or beam primary weapon.

I'm just describing the game as I have observed it. This may be the result of a bit of oversight which may eventually be fixed.

Here's my theory: In large sectors, it's harder to hit ships at maximum weapon range, meaning effective range is somewhat more determined by accuracy than game code (which is good). The drawback is that homing missiles (heat-seeker, lock-on, etc.) do not see a similar decrease in accuracy. They need to have their turn radii scaled proportionally to sectors (or a similar change) in order to keep sector size from drastically altering meta. PD accuracy should probably be set higher by the owners on large-sector servers too, but that's kind of obvious.

I personally think all default missiles need is an increase in relative speed. There's no reason for them to have lock-on, because then they will be too similar to beam weapons. They ought to stay unique via their inherent simplicity.

If we can't change damage per weapon block, there's only one way to balance dumbfires against homing missiles, and that is speed. However, you can only make them go so fast without it being stupid. Plus, beam slave is supposed to be the fast one! The only way to hold true to the beam slave's general purpose while maintaining flat DPS per block and balance between types of missiles is to give the default missile a lock-on ability.

I see your point about making them inherently simple and I agree, but I see an all-around-good weapon as another form of simplicity, as it makes the weapon easy to use.

When it comes to AI using rapidfire missiles, "instant lock-on" would be reflected in that faster rate of fire you talked about. However I really think cannon missiles ought to just be very fast with a fast reload, but short range and no lock-on. So like dumbfire missiles, all they could really use is a relative-speed boost.

In that case they would become dumbfires as well, and I really, really don't think we need more than one kind of dumbfire. Like I said before, beam slave is theoretically supposed to be the fast one, and the only way to balance that is to give lock-on to other missiles. Now don't forget that any homing missile besides heat-seeking can be turned into a dumbfire on the fly by launching it before it locks.

Changing the damage done per block by a missile-missile setup is going to damage the balance in the current weapon system, as each block is intended to add a specific and balanced amount of DPS to the overall array. Increased damage in exchange for a loss of lock-on is not an acceptable trade-off, as it's disrupting the balance in DPS per block contribution. However, an increase in damage in exchange for an increase in reload time would work as it wouldn't have to change the DPS per block added to the array.

I had forgotten about that. A speed increase (not as fast as beam but still faster than default) would be a more suitable.

I'm fine with this, missile-beam setups are best used as anti-capital ship weapons anyway, and losing lock-on is not an issue when the weapon setup is utilized by AI. Beam missiles already have a very long reload time, so the "longer lock-on time" doesn't really strike me as necessary, however. Locking on is not an issue for AI turrets, as that's a client-sided on-your-screen kind of thing.

The longer lock-on is intended to make these less usable in furballs/dogfights as they fly so fast that PD may not be able to hit them when they fire at close range. This prevents them from having a flat advantage over default missiles other than the overall size of the weapon. The increased cooldown is the part that strikes me as unnecessary, especially with the upcoming PD fix.

You worded your statement here in a way that gives me the impression you're confusing the heatseeking and lock-on mechanics. Missile-missile setups never had lock-on ability, they heatseek (automatically chasing targets without the need for them to be "locked-on" to).

I was using "lock" generically as it is used in modern aviation. Seeking a specific heat signature is another form of lock.

This is how pulse missiles are now, but due to the implementation of point-defense, they are given lock-on ability to make them more likely to hit their target, in a weird sort of counter-balance against their easier chance to be shot down.

I honestly thought of pulse-slave missiles as the true dumbfires, being high damage but low accuracy. I thought the lock-on had been removed, but I'm not sure as I haven't built a bomber in a while. IIRC, these currently have a severe speed nerf, which I think should be removed to counter-balance PD rather than adding a lock. It just makes more sense to me. The model I proposed has enough lock-on missiles already (3 of 5 types).

Explosive effect is not the system to "always use". I personally rarely use explosive effect missiles as a primary weapon or something I "always use" on my ships, as doing hull damage can be done in a variety of ways. For me, I have practiced and studied starmade PVP combat rigorously in-game, and in my experience I've found that getting the enemy ship's shields down is much more important than having explosive missiles for destroying their hulls. The explosive setup really isn't all that more powerful than regular missiles, it just increases the radius damage a bit, with minimal power cost.

Ion is the tertiary effect I use the most, by far. StarMade ship combat is almost always about survival, or "kill or be killed". If you can drop the enemy player's shields, they'll almost always try to jump out ASAP, thus meaning that focusing on shield-busting is generally the most effective way at eliminating enemy player threats. So, I personally use missiles with a beam-ion setup mounted on AI turrets as my primary long-range weapon, alongside beam-beam-ion and cannon-cannon-ion weapon setups for close-quarters combat.

I equip my ship with a waffle-cannon setup of cannon-cannon punchthrough for close-quarters hull damage, and missile-beam-explosive in small numbers but lots of groups for long-range hull damage. I'd say explosive effect makes up only 5% of my ships weapon setups at any time, and it's usually enough, as most missile damage is very powerful in terms of "totaling" ships, since you can't really repair them once damaged like that unless you want to do it by hand and know your blueprint inside and out.

Why use Overdrive when you could use explosive? There's a few reasons why: It is the best weapon to equip bases with when it comes to tertiary effects for any weapon primary, as it does huge shield damage, and also guarantees 100% destruction of all blocks within a non-changed hull radius. Power supply and recharge for bases is almost never an issue if you're stocked on resources, as you're not worrying about space as much when you don't have to be concerned about mass, intertia or turn rates. So overdrive tertiary effect is the best thing ever for base defense, and really to me means that there's in turn no reason to give some sort of stat buff to bases when it comes to offensive stats.

Also, any weapon type with cannon slave (or no slave at all) and then overdrive tertiary effect is quite effective as a mass-damage weapon when done on a smaller setup. Since power costs for weapons scale exponentially (and damage scales linearly), and overdrive multiplies that power cost by 500% (5 times), it makes a decent weapon on small weapon setups, though it'd kill the power for sure if scaled up in size alongside a larger ship. I have a frigate design that has a small but powerful beam-no slave-overdrive weapon setup, and it works great for the ship's size. Missiles with cannon and then overdrive would probably work just as effectively for my ship.

Push/pull/stop are indeed purely situational. Not much to say there cause I agree with you on that.

"Everything else": I'm likewise aware that pierce and punch-through do not serve a function for missiles currently, but really I don't think that's much of a problem. The way missiles work kinda makes those tertiary effects impractical or problematic, depending on how you'd implement those effects with missiles.

But let's say we were to include those two effects in the mix for missiles. Here's how I see it:

Punch-through: Would launch a quick succession of missiles in groups of up to 7 (like the average # of blocks cannon/beam weapons go through with punch-through) that would impact the hull like normal missiles, but since they were launched in a quick succession, there's a delay between when each missile hits the target, meaning one missile hits the surface, then the next hits behind it, and so forth. The damage per missile could be scaled down with each missile that's fired, so the 1st missile would be the most powerful, and the last one being the least, kind of like how it is for cannons and beams with punch-through.

Pierce: Would fire just a single missile per group. Would do no damage to shields, but the explosion center when the missile detonates would be offset forward-wise on the missile projectile, so that the explosion center and its radius damage would occur a bit ahead of where the missile actually strikes, meaning the explosion would happen inside the ship without requiring the missile itself to go through the ship and then explode. To dictate how far off from the missile's impact site the center the explosion would occur, the radius of the missile explosion damage would determine the distance offset from the missile's point of impact on the outer hull to the explosion center. I can draw you a diagram of this later, to illustrate what I mean. A picture speaks a thousand words

Part III was honestly not as well thought out as the rest, and is based primarily on my PVE experience. I'll let you have this one as your knowledge of PVP is better.

As an end to this large post I've just made, may I suggest that when making threads about suggestions for gameplay mechanic changes, you should avoid using 'treknobabble'. When talking about game mechanics, don't use phrases or words that imply the existence of ambiguous mechanics/systems/content that do not actually exist in the game, as that makes your suggestion more confusing to read, and less easy to understand. Some examples:
I don't do this to be carping, but Starmade does not currently have:

• "Infrared seekers". If you meant to refer here to the "heatseeking" mechanic that missile-missile setups have, please simply state that rather than using the ambiguous phrase "infrared seeker".
• "Warheads" for missiles. Saying this implies that missiles have multiple physical components, which is not the case at all. It'd help if you reworded that part so it makes more sense.
• "Shapes" for missiles. Missiles do not currently have a physical model but merely appear as a 2-dimensional image, therefore talking about missiles having shapes is confusing and ambiguous .
• "Charges" for missiles. Missiles in StarMade are non-physical objects that deal a radius of damage to a target when they come in contact with it. If by "charge" you meant to refer to the fact that missiles explode and deal radius damage, it would've helped if you stated so.
• Missiles "imbedding in the hull". Missiles currently explode immediately when they touch a target. If you meant to also suggest the implementation of a new mechanic for missiles acting like "sticky bombs" and sticking to a ship's hull (and then exploding after a period of time), or alternatively missiles passing through solid blocks up to a certain point and then exploding, then that would have been helpful to clarify in the OP.
• "Shockwaves that deal internal damage". If by this you meant a missile exploding inside a ship's interior rather than exploding upon contact with the outer hull, it would be helpful to have made that clarification. However if you are talking about some sort of EMP discharge or something, or a ripple-effect of damage, no such mechanics currently exist in StarMade.
• "Lock-on outputs". What does this mean? Is this talking about some block system that allows a weapon system to use lock-on mechanics when its slaves and tertiaries do not already do so? If so, that's a very unique idea that you should've also included as a suggestion in the OP along with your other ideas for missile system changes (though it's an idea i disagree with).

I honestly thought this was extremely self-explanatory.

• Infrared=heat (DUH)
• Warhead is the boom.
• "Shaped charge" is a commonly-known term that means the blast goes in one direction like most IRL rocket-propelled grenades. Separating this into two words removes any semblance of sense.
• Imbedding, shockwave, etc. is more of an explanation of why it works rather than what it does. That one may need clarification.
• Lock-on (lockon missiles) outputs (weapon outputs, a term understandable to all starmade players) - was I just too concise? I'm not sure what your point is.

Considering the number of BOBBY AIs (or humans with similar intelligence?) that creep around on these forums you might have a point, but I was kind of catering to people with brains and some amount of sci-fi and technical knowledge like I normally do.

Spoiler: One-line, half-joking rant - Click only if you are not easily offended

DON'T TELL ME HOW TO WRITE, PUNK!