What would happen if we removed missiles?

[Gerion]

This is just a thought experiment I had running in my mind for some time now.

The short thought is: Remove the missile weapon(s) from the game. How does it influence the game?

Well, firstly, fights would go longer on average. Right now, the moment your shields are down, you will most likely eat a missile close to the core, instagibbing the ship (and you). This delicates other weaponry (cannons and beams) to secondary roles. Removing shields and ocassionaly stopping the enemy plus missile defense (when it works). This is also (part of) the reason why armour is so useless. When a missile can blow a hole thats half your ships radus, a few blocks more won´t make a difference.

Secondly, turrets become more useful. A decently sized missile (always speaking relative to target size here) will most likely destroy most of the turrets even if it doesnt penetrate the motherships shields. With only beams and cannons, you would actually have to target the turrets specifically to take them down. This means turrets being alive longer and therefore playing a bigger role in fights between capital ships, even if the turret itself is rather small.

And lastly, drones (my little nightmares) would become less dangerous. Right now, drones equipped with missiles will wreck turrets and move on to wrecking ships in a rather small time frame with few counter measures available (the biggest one being swarm missiles, which are not fleet action friendly at all). With only cannon/beam drones, they would still remain dangerous to smaller ships and turrets, but bigger ships could withstand their attacks on their armour alone. Of course, without the swarm missiles and the possibility to hit drone racks with a missile (destroying/crippling many/all drones).

Would this mean we didnt have explosive weapons? No. You still have the explosive effect to do area damage and piercing/punch-through. And I would highly suggest reworking the detonators to allow for actual torpedos/guided missiles to be build and be effective while also being able to be hit by turrets and ships targeting them.

 

[Nauvran]

Well as how the AI works today, you can set it to shoot after missiles.
Therefore you can have specific defensive turrets that only aims for incomming missiles.
And if you do this right then it would almost be like playing without missiles and you would most likely have an advantage over your enemy.
For example the devastating missiles with the giant radius (also known as nukes) are very deadly for most ships, these missiles have very high damage and can destroy most ships very fast, to counter this Schema and the team have made them very slow, so that it is you can try to dodge the missiles and/or try to destroy them before they hit.

So no, there is absolutely no reason to remove the missile system as a weapon.

 

[jpf190279]

Missiles are the only weapon in the game that can be nullified, by that I mean you can stop them from having an effect by shooting them down before they hit. You can't shoot down cannon fire or beams or pulses, only missiles. This is why they have such huge advantages over other weapons because they also have a massive disadvantage.

Missiles are as much a part of star made warfare as shields or cannons, removing them just make no sense. They are a viable weapon type with enough of a disadvantage to stop them from getting overpowered.

Now think of the disadvantages of the other weapon types and only the pulses come to mind as having an obvious one. Cannons were ridiculously over powered and over used in the game over year ago especially when it came to cannon grids. Rows and columns of stacks AMC in line to get better concentrated fire on a single point for them nice core drilling effect, now with having added different effects we have removed the need to do this.

Missiles are perfectly fine, people just need to think harder about defending against them.... I agree that in the previous release prior to v018 you never had enough time to track down and shoot down incoming missiles, but with the engagement distances being seriously upped in v018 you have plenty of time and space to outrun and shoot down waves of incoming missiles.

 

[Andir]

Now think of the disadvantages of the other weapon types and only the pulses come to mind as having an obvious one.

I don't even understand pulse weapons... they have no range that I can tell and it's just like a wave that emanates from your ship?

 

[jayman38]

It might be a fun mod, just not a good option for the default game. Likewise, build a mod where all weapons are converted to missile systems.

 

[Mr.Steam]

I really love missiles, but I do think they could use a little tweaking. Like the larger the missile, the lower the turn rate. Also requiring refillable missile racks might help balance. In know these have been suggested before.

 

[Gerion]

Well as how the AI works today, you can set it to shoot after missiles.
Therefore you can have specific defensive turrets that only aims for incomming missiles.
And if you do this right then it would almost be like playing without missiles and you would most likely have an advantage over your enemy.
For example the devastating missiles with the giant radius (also known as nukes) are very deadly for most ships, these missiles have very high damage and can destroy most ships very fast, to counter this Schema and the team have made them very slow, so that it is you can try to dodge the missiles and/or try to destroy them before they hit.

So no, there is absolutely no reason to remove the missile system as a weapon.

But the question wasnt if we should do it. It was what the effects on the game would be. Hence this thread not being in the suggestion part of the forum.

 

[Thalanor]

If I understand @keptick 's manifesto on ship relationships in starmade correctly, then missiles are needed to make specialized small craft worthwhile (read: fighter-bombers taking out capital turrets with high alpha damage block removal weapons). Removing them would severely weaken small entities like drones and fighter(-bomber)s, because only large ships could take out a chunk of blocks efficiently and as such even pose a threat (punch-through wouldn't help a fighter take out a capital turret unless it is moving relatively slowly to fire multiple shots into the same hole).

 

[Nauvran]

But the question wasnt if we should do it. It was what the effects on the game would be. Hence this thread not being in the suggestion part of the forum.

I was simply leaving a comment on why we should not get the missiles removed :P

and it would probably get the game halfway back to when we didnt have the weapons update. So a few weapons being used for everything.
People would overuse weapons systems like rapidfire punchthrough guns or similar.

 

[Gerion]

I was simply leaving a comment on why we should not get the missiles removed :p

and it would probably get the game halfway back to when we didnt have the weapons update. So a few weapons being used for everything.
People would overuse weapons systems like rapidfire punchthrough guns or similar.

Would that be bad though? Rapid fire (punch-through or not) can be countered by giving both your shields and your armour defensive effects (fast fire rate benefits those greatly, unless schema is using a logic that rivals an alien) and stacking multiple layers of armour. Again, something not done currently as armour evaporates against missiles.
And yes, you can shoot down missiles. It can actually be rather effective to do so. But even if one of them comes through, say good bye to your point defense turrets, as those will (probably) be gone. And with turret targeting the way it is right now, that might happen more often then you like.
Missiles in my eyes just create a binary state of combat above a certain weight class. Shields up? You are probably fine. Shields down? Missile, instant death.
Drone swarms and fighters would be fine I think. They would still swarm turrets and disable them quickly (again, derpy targeting prevents the turrets from killing them effectively) and then harrass the bigger ship. Another question here is: Should drones (7x7x7 max dimensions) actually take chunks out of bigger ships? Maybe yes. But not having the turrets of the ship fall in the first seconds of combat because of a hellstorm of missiles would even the playing field a bit, wouldnt it?

 

[whiterhino16]

*99% of my designs would go into the bin, for starters. Actually, *99% of designs on the site would go in the bin because most ships use them one way or another.

*Hyperbole. Still would be a lot.

 

[max stripe]

Would that be bad though? Rapid fire (punch-through or not) can be countered by giving both your shields and your armour defensive effects (fast fire rate benefits those greatly, unless schema is using a logic that rivals an alien) and stacking multiple layers of armour. Again, something not done currently as armour evaporates against missiles.
And yes, you can shoot down missiles. It can actually be rather effective to do so. But even if one of them comes through, say good bye to your point defense turrets, as those will (probably) be gone. And with turret targeting the way it is right now, that might happen more often then you like.
Missiles in my eyes just create a binary state of combat above a certain weight class. Shields up? You are probably fine. Shields down? Missile, instant death.
Drone swarms and fighters would be fine I think. They would still swarm turrets and disable them quickly (again, derpy targeting prevents the turrets from killing them effectively) and then harrass the bigger ship. Another question here is: Should drones (7x7x7 max dimensions) actually take chunks out of bigger ships? Maybe yes. But not having the turrets of the ship fall in the first seconds of combat because of a hellstorm of missiles would even the playing field a bit, wouldnt it?

i have no clue what ship u are flying sir. but on ships i fly a 30 swarm isanth group is dead in under a minute and all my turrets are still alive and kicking (sheild ur turrets it helps SHEILD THEM)

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

Bugs need to be fixed, such as the one that makes missiles deal massive damage to turrets if they hit the mother ship.

Spoiler

Missiles have seen some balancing tweaks recently, hulk missiles are extremely slow and sniper missiles now consume a lot of power.

Additionally when the HP system comes into play missiles will be important for destroying the blocks needed to kill a ship but they won't be a one hit kill, vaporize the core weapon anymore.

 

[KiloZulu]

Missiles have seen some balancing tweaks recently, hulk missiles are extremely slow and sniper missiles now consume a lot of power.

What's a hulk missile?

 

[Andir]

What's a hulk missile?

Missile with Pulse Secondary.

 

[Winterhome]

Oh.... Oh my...

You haven't seen my cannons.

I don't use missiles. They're too easy to shoot down.
If you use a well engineered cannon, you don't have to worry about silly little things like "fights going on longer", because you're cutting through more hull per second than a missile, and it goes deeper in a straight line to boot.

The game would be more brutal and short, I feel, because in the time you take to get a lock on a victim, you could have already shredded their hull with cannon fire.

 

[Andir]

Oh.... Oh my...

You haven't seen my cannons.

I don't use missiles. They're too easy to shoot down.
If you use a well engineered cannon, you don't have to worry about silly little things like "fights going on longer", because you're cutting through more hull per second than a missile, and it goes deeper in a straight line to boot.

The game would be more brutal and short, I feel, because in the time you take to get a lock on a victim, you could have already shredded their hull with cannon fire.

While impressive, I have to note that a barrage of cluster missiles have no lock time, strength in numbers, and all do some serious damage with little block requirements. I have one ship that is setup with 34/34 missile/missile (no third) and in two shots I can clear a pirate base turrets. A well equipped capital ship missile frigate could lay out far more and more deadly missiles without needing a target and devastate anything they lock onto themselves. And since they are heat seeking, they will keep targeting if something is destroyed.

 

[Gerion]

i have no clue what ship u are flying sir. but on ships i fly a 30 swarm isanth group is dead in under a minute and all my turrets are still alive and kicking (sheild ur turrets it helps SHEILD THEM)

Wrong end of the problem: Its not the ships I am flying, its the ships I stuff teh swarm with. Those come from the drone RnD thread, and you will loose turrets if you use them like you should (50% of the targets cost or mass in drones). Thats also the reason why my newer designs always have at least one swarm missile launcher and no turrets.

 

[aceface]

O_O what if!!! Hull was very resistant to missiles and would only damage internal systems??

 

[Chances_Ghost]

nerf missle explosion radius

its currently WAY to big. missle is king because all you need is a single hit with shields down and your going to kill any ship that doesnt have many layers of hardened hull or isnt extremly big in all directions.

most ship designs i see can be taken out by a single missle hit on the side/top/bottom and that shouldnt happen on ships the size im talking about (25-45k mass shouldnt get 1HKOed by a single missle)

the current missle mechanics encourage gigantism just to survive them