Missiles n' Torpedoes

[Valiant70]

I would like to see one of two things:

1. Buff missiles and require ammunition for them.
2. Remove current missile systems and improve mechanics for guided warhead torpedoes. (might actually be better)

Why? This makes missiles more unique from other munitions. Manufacturing and storing the ammunition in return for a more potent weapon is a nice tradeoff.

If we just had a better (purpose-built) AI for guided missiles, block-based missiles would end up being more interesting. The current "missiles" could be re-branded as "artillery cannons." Increase their speed and remove guidance systems and you've got a pretty good gun.

 

[Asvarduil]

Personally, I think the current missile system needs many changes. Were it me, I'd be very severe in how I change it - it will probably provoke all manner of nerd rage - but I also have something no one might be expecting.

1. Missile default - launches a projectile that can be shot down. Has X ammo by default.
2. Mis/Can - Burst missiles; more cannons make a larger burst, and allow greater ammo capacity. Less damage per missile.
3. Mis/Mis - Twin-stage missile. Superior range. If the missile hits before stage separation, deals double damage. More missiles increase range, damage. Stage separation range determined by number of missiles paired to primary.
4. Mis/Beam - Guided missile. Improved range. More beams add range and accuracy of tracking action. Low ammo.
5. Mis/Pulse - Unguided nuke. HIGH damage. More pulses improve power and blast radius. Very low ammo.
6. Mis/Jam - Unstoppable missile. Reduced damage, no other stat changes, but projectile can't be shot down or targeted.
7. Mis/Sensor - Probe. A physical projectile is spawned that explores sectors for you upon entry. Probe self-destructs upon reaching maximum range. Maximum range is determined by number of sensor antennas. Very low ammo, long recharge.
8. Mis/Cloak - Mine. A physical projectile is spawned that travels a very short distance, then remains static. This entity can be shot, but cannot be locked onto with guided weapons. Damage increases with number of missiles. Low ammo.

Edit - Added the 'probe' configuration, Missile + Sensors, as well as the 'mines' configuration, Missile + Cloak

 

[Cluwne]

I like the idea of using ammo in general, but with a twist:
You split weapons into two, or more later in development, categories: conventional/ballistic/whatever you call it and energy weapons.
Beam and pulse belong in "energy" category, missiles are conventional. Cannons have their counterparts in both categories.

Here's the kicker:
Energy weapons need energy to fire and fire as fast as you can charge their capacitors.
Conventional weapons need virtually no energy to operate but consume ammo. They have fixed reload time that varies with weapon size and long range.

Ammo, whether universal or weapon-specific, is a resource you store in cargo system.
Every weapon consumes certain amount of that resource per shot. Though it is supposed to be limited, you still have to produce it somehow - enter ammo factory. Ammo factory can be placed on a ship but requires a lot of enhancers for a meaningful output. You'll have to dedicate a good portion of your ship to ammo production and still end up running out of ammunition from time to time.

Now, as we all know, small ships aren't known for their great reactor output. It stands to reason that by sacrificing some mass to cargo capacity they can cram enough ammunition to be able to properly defend themselves, at least for a while.
We can even go a step further and turn small fighters and bombers into something deadly. What with small profile and high maneuverability.

Imagine that, people could actually start using the pulse torpedo in actual warfare.

 

[Dr. Whammy]

I would like to see one of two things:

1. Buff missiles and require ammunition for them.
2. Remove current missile systems and improve mechanics for guided warhead torpedoes. (might actually be better)

Why? This makes missiles more unique from other munitions. Manufacturing and storing the ammunition in return for a more potent weapon is a nice tradeoff.

If we just had a better (purpose-built) AI for guided missiles, block-based missiles would end up being more interesting. The current "missiles" could be re-branded as "artillery cannons." Increase their speed and remove guidance systems and you've got a pretty good gun.

Aww yeah.

Yet another call for explosive super-weapons... Let's see how long it takes for the haters to read only half of your post then chime in; calling it OP.

(grabs fire extinguisher and popcorn)

 

[GDPR 302420]

So force an ammo requirement and buff missiles because "muh unique weaons"?

Missiles are already unique enough, there is currently no need for any changes at all.

 

[Valck]

Oh sweet. Ammunition. Next you'll want fuel as well, and crew that require supplies.
</sarcasm>

 

[Dr. Whammy]

Called it!

Don't worry! I've got this!!!

[doublepost=1504867110,1504866621][/doublepost]For the record; this

Spoiler

can't one-shot this

Spoiler

<Sarcasm> Sure. Missiles are just fine the way they are... </Sarcasm>

 

[Valiant70]

So force an ammo requirement and buff missiles because "muh unique weaons"?

Missiles are already unique enough, there is currently no need for any changes at all.

Hello! If you've got a constructive argument against ammunition that we haven't all heard a million times, I'd love to hear it.

Oh sweet. Ammunition. Next you'll want fuel as well, and crew that require supplies.
</sarcasm>

<sarcasm> What? NOOOOO! Don't ever make maintaining ships a real challenge!!! </sarcasm>

 

[GDPR 302420]

Hello! If you've got a constructive argument against ammunition that we haven't all heard a million times, I'd love to hear it.

My argument is constructive.

You state the reason you believe missiles exclusivly should require ammo is because you want it to be more "unique"

If you have an actual reason why for the sake of game balance or what not why you believe that missiles should require ammunition then I'd love to hear it.

So far, it seems like you yourself want missiles to require ammo rather then this being needed for game balance.


I am all for consumable resources such as fuel, crew and supplies for ship functionality but requiring missiles exclusivly to require ammo seems pointless.

It seems to be more of a "I want/think it looks cool" then an "This is needed" kinda suggestion, much like missile lock on warnings that was proposed awhile back.

 

[Nickizzy]

What about this:
Beams and pulses require no ammo, only high energy. Cannons require some energy, and some ammo. Missiles require no energy but lots of ammo.
Beats and pulses become economy weapons for larger, more long term ships. Cannons are a middle ground for stations and ships with a supply chain or in the small scale. Missiles are for short term battles by fighters, or for burst damage ships like gankers and seigebreakers.
The calculations for ammo are:
Cannons: 5 ammo, 5 power per damage
Missiles: 10 ammo per damage
Beams/Pulses: 10 energy per damage

 

[Dr. Whammy]

What about this:
Beams and pulses require no ammo, only high energy. Cannons require some energy, and some ammo. Missiles require no energy but lots of ammo.
Beats and pulses become economy weapons for larger, more long term ships. Cannons are a middle ground for stations and ships with a supply chain or in the small scale. Missiles are for short term battles by fighters, or for burst damage ships like gankers and seigebreakers.
The calculations for ammo are:
Cannons: 5 ammo, 5 power per damage
Missiles: 10 ammo per damage
Beams/Pulses: 10 energy per damage

I kinda like this idea but we'd need to account for weapons customization with regard to size.

How about this?
- Link a cargo storage system to the weapons computer to determine its magazine size. Refill your magazine when it runs dry.
- Manufacture separate, missile and cannon ammo types, with missiles being more costly due to no energy requirements.
- Consider using lenses, "energy crystals" or even coolant as ammunition for lasers.
- Ammo should have mass like any other cargo
- The ammo system calculates the number of 'rounds' available for a specific weapon by dividing the ammo contents of your magazine by the amount of ammo required for a single shot.

 

[Valiant70]

I am all for consumable resources such as fuel, crew and supplies for ship functionality but requiring missiles exclusivly to require ammo seems pointless.

It would be more interesting and add an additional layer of design if all missiles were block-based. For this to work I believe it should be possible to make a fully functioning light missile with about four blocks, otherwise they'll be too large for small fighter-bombers to carry any.

Manufacture of missiles would provide an interesting infrastructural challenge without switching ALL weapons to an ammunition system. If we go with Cluwne 's idea, we'll have three distinct categories of weapons:

• Ammunitionless energy weapons (beams and energy blasters)
  
• Projectile weapons (cannons, artillery cannons)
• Block-based (missiles and torpedoes)

Diversifying weapons in this manner would enrich the combat system.

 

[Dr. Whammy]

It would be more interesting and add an additional layer of design if all missiles were block-based. For this to work I believe it should be possible to make a fully functioning light missile with about four blocks, otherwise they'll be too large for small fighter-bombers to carry any.

Ummm... What?

While an older design (pre-slabs), his little fellow is only 11m x 11m x 7m. My new fighter/bombers will follow a more conventional size range like an F-14 Tomcat (18-19 meters) I anticipate no problems carrying an increased payload internally as well as externally. I estimate that I can pack 8-18 of these 8 meter long torpedoes internally and even more, externally.

We already have the blocks to pull this off. All we need is a warhead buff and better AI.

 

[GDPR 302420]

It would be more interesting and add an additional layer of design if all missiles were block-based. For this to work I believe it should be possible to make a fully functioning light missile with about four blocks, otherwise they'll be too large for small fighter-bombers to carry any.

Manufacture of missiles would provide an interesting infrastructural challenge without switching ALL weapons to an ammunition system. If we go with Cluwne 's idea, we'll have three distinct categories of weapons:

• Ammunitionless energy weapons (beams and energy blasters)
  
• Projectile weapons (cannons, artillery cannons)
• Block-based (missiles and torpedoes)

Diversifying weapons in this manner would enrich the combat system.

Weapons in their current state are varied and balanced (for the most part)

Such a change does nothing from a balance perspective and it seems like one of those "I want/think it would be cool" suggestions rather then a "This is needed for balance" suggestion.

Diversifying weapons in this manner would do nothing, the combat system and viable weapon layouts already exist, there is enough unique properties of weapons that adding in another variable would be unnecessary complication for no reason other then "It looks cool"

Also, if you wanted block based missiles the whole time, its already been implemented. Go search up warhead torpedos, there are a few designs on the forums already.

But this suggestion seems to be nothing but a "I think this would be cool" then something actually needed for balance or combat variety.

Combat is pretty balanced atm, there is plenty of variety, plenty of viable tactics and plenty of fun to be had.

Perhaps its best to wait until the upcoming Systems2.0 before you consider any changes to weapons.
[doublepost=1504881439,1504881192][/doublepost]

For the record; this

Spoiler

can't one-shot this

Spoiler

<Sarcasm> Sure. Missiles are just fine the way they are... </Sarcasm>

This sounds like a personal lack of knowledge of weapon design as opposed to missiles actually being underpowered.

 

[Asvarduil]

This sounds like a personal lack of knowledge of weapon design as opposed to missiles actually being underpowered.

A problem that has been the case since I bought the game a couple of years back, that persists to this day is not 'OMG Missiles OP!' Rather, it's 'All the other weapons suck.'

A 'recent' (about a year ago) update that buffed Cannons with an inherent explosive effect was welcome, but it didn't empower them enough to make them 'worth it'. Cannons have good range, but they just don't do enough damage. Enhancing them with secondaries...just isn't that good. Cannons seem best used in Cannon+Cannon anti-missile turrets.

Beams hit hard enough, but have very limited range; if Cannons are a really bad rifle, then Beams are really awesome pistols, but therein lies the problem. The lack of range and large power consumption kind of hurts their utility, especialy with missiles, a long range weapon, being the best weapon in the game. I will say that Beams being a hit-scan weapon is nice, though - not needing to lead shots is incredibly helpful. Unfortunately, the long recharge time seriously mitigates that benefit.

Pulse weapons are interesting; if Beams are pistols, then Pulse is punching the other ship in the face, though pulse seems intended to be more of an anti-personnel, defensive weapon. I'd be happy if Pulse weapons were removed from the game, but maybe I just don't know how to use them properly, even years into this game. I've seen plans for 'Skoomer' drones that find an opponent, fly up to them, then spam pulses with tertiary effects intended to debilitate the other ship to death.

TL;DR - The problem with all the non-missile weapons, is that their downsides outweigh their strengths. The reason missiles are the best weapons in the game, is that they're balanced in the first place.

Now, if you want to say, 'But! You can just mod ${WEAPON} in the config files to be better by making the weapon do ${THINGS}!', I say: that's not a good rebuttal, because you're confirming my position that ${WEAPON} has an unfixed problem. Yeah, I can fix it for me, or on my server, but the developers can make that fix the default, and if that fix makes the game better for everyone, then they should. It's their job, literally.

 

[jayman38]

Maybe it might be worthwhile to replace the underutilized Pulse weapon system with an ammo-based alternate missile system that uses far less power per shot. (Limited ammo is a huge negative, but minimal power usage would be a decent balance to that.) In general, ammo-based missile launchers will be more fun in the game than Pulse. More fun and more utilization would be the defining reason for such a weapon change.

Have a certain maximum number of missiles per ammo-based launcher, and have the system s-l-o-w-l-y build new missiles as older missiles are fired, leaving room. Slowly as in 10% ammo storage restoration per day (server configurable).

Bonus: Add a new ammunition storage effect, which can be explosive like auxiliary blocks, and adds more missile storage to the mother missile weapon system.

You could have wildly different ammo amounts for each of the different secondary types. Example: 400 ammo for ammo-cannon dumb fires, 20 for ammo-beam lock-ons, 200 for ammo-missile multi-missile shotguns (each individual missile in the overall group-fire takes from the overall ammo count!), and 1 missile for an ammo-ammo nuke.

 

[Kelpaz]

Oh yes yet again your local neighsayer is here to tell why this is not a very good idea.

Hello! If you've got a constructive argument against ammunition that we haven't all heard a million times, I'd love to hear it.

A bigger ship will always be able to carry more missiles into battle than a smaller one, any benefit for having no energy requirement (or a smaller one) will be gone as a bigger ship will utilize this to the fullest.
To make it worse ships with AMS turrets will deplete the ammo carried by "fighters" without even getting dented making them kinda useless.

Missiles are already quite unique and balanced, it's the other weapons that needs a buff.

Warheads with better guidance has been suggested many times before in the form of having more AI settings, but it's something I can agree on.
I would add that the AI should turn on their radar jammer when launched.

I had to buff warheads on my server to give my players an extra edge.
Normal warheads do 2000 damage, my buff at 150K dmg and 15 meter range makes them a lot more useful.
It's pretty hard to deliver a warhead to enemies making them highly specialized.

Spoiler

My special operations corvette with warhead torpedoes on top

Unfortunately warheads currently has a crippling bug that makes them not detonate if a few have exploded recently.

 

[Dr. Whammy]

Quite frankly, every weapon in the game needs a rework and in several cases, a buff. Redoing the damage pulse and fixing the explosive radius for non-missile weapons would be a step in the right direction but that's a topic for another thread so I'll stick to the topic at hand.

While missiles have a large block destruction area, they have the weakest DPS of all weapons due to half of their numeric damage value being vented off into open space. Also, they're not very effective against advanced armor and any damage that exceeds 400,000-600.000 damage seems to be wasted due to blast radius limits. It's pretty obvious that missiles need to be looked at when a 500,000 damage missile can't even one-shot an 11 meter long fighter; advanced armor or not.


When I place realistically sized SAM turrets on a planet it takes forever to kill a fighter of this size. The following image describes what it takes for missiles in the 75,000-150,000 damage range to kill one of these small craft.


Don't even bother trying to take out a fighter while using another fighter armed with missiles. You'll be at it for quite a while.

In real life, missiles aren't like machine gun bullets. You don't just throw a bunch of them at your target until the mags run dry, reload then start over. They are supposed to be high damage one-shot kill weapons meant to heavily damage, destroy or disable enemy craft. I used to be opposed to an ammunition mechanic but as time went by, I realized that energy consumption for missiles makes no sense and neither does unlimited ammo.

Regarding the argument about a fighter running out of missiles before it can damage a larger craft; The truth is, you are probably already unable to kill that larger craft with missiles anyway since all the enemy guns are aimed at you and your missiles. You'll either get shot down or the enemy AMS will block all your missiles. On the other hand, a group of fighters trying to break through a wall of flak to simultaneously drop their high damage/limited capacity payload is a more realistic scenario.

Regarding warheads; Taking into consideration all previous opinions on warheads, the fair way to do this is to give them a massive damage buff; to say 500,000-1,000,000 (maybe even beyond) and a bigger radius ...BUT change the shield pass-through mechanic so that only 5-10% of the damage makes it through the shields. At 10% of 1,000,000 damage there would be roughly 50,000 shield pass-through damage after a 50% damage reduction due to the explosion mechanic. 2 layers of advanced armor should be able to stop that.

There should be safeguards to prevent griefing, which we can discuss and we also need AMS turrets to prioritize warheads over missiles.

Let's have a constructive discussion this time and see what we can come up with.

 

[Valiant70]

"I want/think it would be cool" suggestions

What exactly is wrong with this sort of suggestion? With a system rework in the oven and a weapon rework around the corner, this is the time to discuss what we want.

Ummm... What?
View attachment 44562
While an older design (pre-slabs), his little fellow is only 11m x 11m x 7m. My new fighter/bombers will follow a more conventional size range like an F-14 Tomcat (18-19 meters) I anticipate no problems carrying an increased payload internally as well as externally. I estimate that I can pack 8-18 of these 8 meter long torpedoes internally and even more, externally.

We already have the blocks to pull this off. All we need is a warhead buff and better AI.

Cool. So about 8 blocks seems to work for a light missile?

A bigger ship will always be able to carry more missiles into battle than a smaller one, any benefit for having no energy requirement (or a smaller one) will be gone as a bigger ship will utilize this to the fullest.

Both large and small ships can utilize this bonus. Yes, large ships can carry more missiles of the same size or a similar number of much larger torpedoes. There are tradeoffs.

Why put missiles on smaller craft in the first place? A small stealth bomber can close in with an enemy capital ship to release ordinance with minimal thrust and defense, but a large warhead. If the bomber's close enough, AMS won't have time to take down the bomb.

To make it worse ships with AMS turrets will deplete the ammo carried by "fighters" without even getting dented making them kinda useless.

This points to the need for some sort of anti-AI countermeasure, which could also serve to balance AI vs. NPC crew. AI can be hacked or whatever, but crew cannot. If you want to spend the resources on crewed AMS, you get an unhackable anti-missile screen. Otherwise it can (and possibly will) be disrupted by cyber-warfare support ships.

 

[GDPR 302420]

What exactly is wrong with this sort of suggestion? With a system rework in the oven and a weapon rework around the corner, this is the time to discuss what we want.

Hopefull wishing is fine in itself.

Hopefull wishing that adds nothing new or serves no purpose is a waste of time which could be spent fixing bugs or adding actual gameplay, not just needless tweaks to existing systems.


You know what I want for weapons? I want them to be balanced, I want all existing choices to be viable and I want minelayers.

Forcing ammunition for 1 weapon exclusivly is pointless.
It does nothing for ship design, it does nothing for PvP and weapons are already varied enough to where adding additional variables would be too much complication, which would be ok if there was an actual reason for it other then "Its cool add it pls"