My point was that a small ship shouldn't expect to stop a powerful missile.
I disagree. You're shooting an armed bomb. It shouldn't take much at all to set it off. Good example IRL, Mythbusters did a test on if you could shoot a bazooka round with a pistol and detonate it mid-flight. The short answer is yes, you totally can because of how sensitive the detonator is.
If a large ship can trivially fire WMDs willy-nilly at every little ship that happens by, then missiles need more balance to make captains think twice before unleashing the nukes.
And as long as missiles require nothing but energy to reload, this will never happen, I'm afraid. Now, if we had to use actual blocks of ammo for them, and the amount of ammo required increased with damage output, AND you couldn't just make more ammo on the fly, then missiles would be something you'd think twice about using.
Big ships are going to want quick kills. If its a question between 6 small shots that may or may not take it out, 1 shot that will probably take it out but might require another one, or 1 shot that will absolutely take it out no questions asked, virtually no one will fire anything but the nuke because, hey, if it vaporizes them, they've got all day to sit and reload. The only penalty to going too big is if it still isn't big enough.
Additionally, larger ships probably don't need to worry about smaller missiles getting through, and should have larger PD turrets prioritized on powerful missiles.
Not saying we shouldn't have scaled defenses. Just saying that it shouldn't take a turret the size of a mining ship to stop a nuke. Not when you'd still need a dozen of them to get enough coverage to actually ensure it didn't get through.
In any case, I'd rather have missile HP nerfed than have everyone start adding dozens of more powerful turrets, as this just leads back to gigantism.
Agreed.
Right now, from the looks of it, the answer is a HARD push towards gigantism again, that or be completely defenseless against missiles. And bigger ships for larger PDTs simply mean more room and power for bigger missiles, which will take bigger PDTs to stop, which means...
If PDTs aren't viable, then missiles are going to need an overhaul in how they function since their main balance point has been removed, IMO.
Pretty sure the whole thing will be tweaked eventually, so right now I'm making some smallish cannons that could be used for PDTs in the future if nothing changes, but mostly I'm just not going to build around the mechanic at all. I just don't think its going to stay in it's current form for long enough to justify that.
