Recognized Swarm Missiles Fix

[Scythe7]

SHORT VERSION: Swarm missiles should miss the area of the ship that they are targeting, so that they land as many shots as the other shotgun weapons. Anyone who has seen Sven_The_Slayer in the StarSide tournament knows that swarm missiles are overpowered, and they wouldn't be if they mostly missed smaller ships and each missile didn't always land on target.

After combat-testing many ships in PvP, PvE, and EvE I have come to the conclusion that Swarm Missiles are totally overpowered. In case anyone doesn't know, Swarm Missiles is the name for a missile+missile weapons system, and it launches many weak core-seeking missiles. Ships armed with Swarm Missiles absolutely crush their enemies in tournaments. The missile slave subsystem was intended to create a shotgun blast, effective against bih, close targets but not against fighters or turrets. Since the missiles are core-seeking, they are not only accurate but arguably the second most accurate weapon in the game, after the lock-on missile. Antimissile point-defense turrets can shrug off most missile fire, but they simply cannot shoot down all of the missiles in a large burst. The swarm missiles that get through the point-defense fire destroy the defensive turrets almost instantly. Swarm missiles are slow, but are still faster than the max speed and are very maneuverable. In practice it is almost impossible to outrun swarm missiles beyond their range, though it might be easier with point-defense turrets. Swarm missiles also do not require much particular skill to use. All these balance issues have led me to believe that swarm missiles are overpowered.

My proposed solution would not be a simple nerf to damage or speed or anything like that, because that wouldn't solve the main problem. Logically, the tracking systems in the swarm missiles would not be as effective as those in lock-on missiles. I think the developers should make it so that the missiles wouldn't be very accurate, tracking an area "near" the ship. Since increasing the blocks in the missile slave system increases the amount of missiles, it should also make the missiles less accurate. A 2to1 system ratio would make the missile miss the core by 15-25 meters, while a 1to1 ratio would make the missiles miss the core by 25-50 meters. Making the missile inaccurate would eliminate the problem with them decimating fighters and turrets. The missile would retain their anti-capital power, so it wouldn't be a direct nerf. The damage, speed, power cost, and reload time would remain the same, so it wouldn't break existing designs. The swarm missiles would still overwhelm point-defense turrets, but they wouldn't destroy them and just serve to tie them up for a while. The only issue would be that it might be a bit hard to code, but Schine is a good Dev team, so I'm sure they could do it somehow. Please comment suggestions and ask any questions you've got.

 

[Criss]

So... There is a new health system coming out. It is supposed to directly combat core-killing. A ship will have some sort of health based on block count and it won't be able to be killed until some level of destruction is achieved. Heat seekers will kinda be nerfed in effect. They won't be able to core kill in the new system. It will hopefully just spread the damage around more.

 

[MineCatFTW]

Assuming they haven't changed this yet, swarm missiles also ignore IFF. So in a fleet battle or similar you could end up destroying your teammates ships as well.

 

[sp33dfire]

Assuming they haven't changed this yet, swarm missiles also ignore IFF. So in a fleet battle or similar you could end up destroying your teammates ships as well.

Yep, thats one of the reasons no one I know uses them in fleet combat but Scythe7 has a point.
If you build a ship with jump drive and swarm missiles you can easily harm an entire fleet before jumping away. I don´t know if you know Stargate Atlantis so it ma be a useless example but if you know it, you will remember that the Daedalus has waited for the wraith base ships, beamed a warhead over and jumped away even before the wraith were able to locate the humans.
I think a miss-rate for swarm missiles is a good idea but hard to code so it may be easier to code the heat seeking better. I think swarm missiles wouldn`t be overpowered for fights if they do what they should and search for the heat signature - the thrusters. making enemy ships unable to move is a great way to decimate the fleet.
It would also be not so harmful to the ships from your fleet if you defend your outpost and destroy the team thrusters because while defending your outpost you should be near to a shop or a shipyard were you can rebuild your thrusters.

 

[Gandrac]

So... There is a new health system coming out. It is supposed to directly combat core-killing. A ship will have some sort of health based on block count and it won't be able to be killed until some level of destruction is achieved. Heat seekers will kinda be nerfed in effect. They won't be able to core kill in the new system. It will hopefully just spread the damage around more.

The new health system would make things look rather ridiculous and would also render swarms ineffective versus big ships. Swarms would eat up the ship until they reach the core and just continue to hit the protected core. After this point they wouldn't be abled to do much block damage anymore because of the empty space around the core. Furthermore the damage done to ships would look totally strange.

The problem with swarms is the accurate heatseeking.. but firing dumbfire missiles in a cone would propably be even worse. I think it would be better to limit the lock on capabilites of swarms. Just give them a fixed amound of lock on time (like 5-8 seconds).. after that they would become dumbfire missiles and just go straight.

 

[sgallaty]

I don't think they should go for the core at all - I think they should go after the nearest heat signature once armed.

'hot' items in order of preference -

EDIT: top priority should be -
Ejected chaff =)

Engines in use
weapons in use
other missiles in flight
charging warp drive cores
Engines recently used
weapons recently used
cloaking devices recently used
power generators
shield generators

if the target ship is 'cool', their signature will be too low for lock and the seekers will not lock on

 

[Scythe7]

The point of my idea was to protect small ships and turrets from the swarm missile which destroy them instantly, while also letting them retain their effectiveness against big ships.
To Vanhelzing (CrissTheNightbringer)
Even if the new health system is based on destroyed blocks, swarm missiles will still instakill fighters and turrets. My proposal is meant to combat that behavior by having the swarm missiles miss small targets but still blow up capital ships. The damage to capital ships would also be more dispersed, leading to cooler-looking wrecks instead of ships with one big hole in the side.
To MineCatFTW:
This friendly fire wouldn't be so much of a problem if the swarm missiles only did shield damage to larger ships and missed fighters.
To sp33dfire:
I had never thought of that tactic, thanks for the advice. Unfortunately, it would probably be very hard to make the swarm missiles engine-tracking because some ships have engine clusters all over, but it is a good idea nonetheless. Maybe they could target computers?
To Gandrac:
Great idea with the fixed lock-on time before the swarm missiles become dumb-fire! Maybe The lock-on time would scale proportionally with the primary-secondary missile-to-missile block ratio, so that more missiles would lock on for less time.
To sgallaty:
it seems like a good idea, but it would probably be rather hard to do on a large scale with hundreds of thousands of each "hot" item. I would think that the heat-seekers would target important blocks like computers and docking modules, but my point is that they should only hit in the general vicinity of what they were locked on to, which would make them behave like swarm missiles logically would.

 

[Criss]

Even if the new health system is based on destroyed blocks, swarm missiles will still instakill fighters and turrets. My proposal is meant to combat that behavior by having the swarm missiles miss small targets but still blow up capital ships. The damage to capital ships would also be more dispersed, leading to cooler-looking wrecks instead of ships with one big hole in the side.

I never said I was against cool damage on capital ships. I will never want core-based targeting. Never have. If they can make swarm missiles spread out across the hull of a ship that would be cool. As for fighters, I think they should get counter measures. A fighter should at least take critical damage for eating a missile.

As for turrets I think the update with rails will come with changes to turret behavior as well, or at least it was implied. Hopefully this means turrets won't be such a prime target soon. They are rebuilding a lot of old systems apparently. I'm betting turrets will be taken off the core-based system soon.

 

[Scythe7]

I never said I was against cool damage on capital ships. I will never want core-based targeting. Never have. If they can make swarm missiles spread out across the hull of a ship that would be cool. As for fighters, I think they should get counter measures. A fighter should at least take critical damage for eating a missile.

As for turrets I think the update with rails will come with changes to turret behavior as well, or at least it was implied. Hopefully this means turrets won't be such a prime target soon. They are rebuilding a lot of old systems apparently. I'm betting turrets will be taken off the core-based system soon.

I didn't think you were against cool damage against capital ships. I've seen your awesome Dragoon combat testing videos, and I know about the new health system and the rail system. My point is that the missiles have to lock on to somewhere, which is how they are programmed, but they should not always hit there. Think of Gratuitous Space Battles. In GSB, the missiles always missed fighters by a country mile. However is Starmade, the swarm missiles always hit, and are too fast for fighters to outrun. Because of the range of Starmade, slowing down the missiles would be impractical. Like other shotgun systems, not all of the attacks should land on target. The missiles are unique among projectile weapons in that the shotgun subtype is incredibly accurate, and I think they should land more like the shotgun cannon or laser.

 

[Calbiri]

There's several planned changes regarding the missile systems. Dealing with this clustering of swarm missile impact points is one of them.