Allow point defense and fighters to engage photon and neutron launchers

[Nerdfish]

Photon and Neutron launchers have very long range and does massive DPS.
They are dominating meta at the moment and take some fun out of designing ships.
How about allowing point defense modules and fighters to engage these two weapons ?
That would restore the balance between carrier and artillery battleships,
and provide some reason to fit modules other than neutron launchers and giga cannons.

 

[Tamwin5]

Multiplying any Base Tracking value less than 100 with a percent value will always result in a lesser bonus than adding a flat bonus of the same magnitude. For example, Base Tracking for an S-slot Mass Driver is 50 - adding a flat 20 point bonus results in a Net Tracking of 70, while applying a 20% bonus results in a Net Tracking of 60. This is more stark when dealing with small Base Tracking values (e.g., L-slot Mass Drier is Base Tracking 5, resulting in Net Tracking 25 for an additive bonus or NT 6 for multiplicative).

If you're instead comparing only compound multiplication of bonuses (e.g., BT 50 x 1.2 x 1.2 x 1.1 = NT 79.2) versus summed multiplication of bonuses (e.g., BT 50 x (1.2 + 1.2 + 1.1) = NT 75), it's still not a huge increase one over the other. And definitely not for Tracking, which is currently "balanced" around pure additive bonuses and has smaller Base values than those for Evasion.

Obviously the values would have to be scaled so that balance is roughly the same. Considering the basic weapons have a tracking of 50/30/5 for S/M/L, I think balancing for a tracking value of 40 would be about right. So what before was a +10 bonus to tracking, would now be a +25% bonus to tracking. This will make M slot weapons slightly worse against high evasion, but I think that's fine. S slots should be the ideal weapon against corvettes, otherwise they are just kinda useless. The nerf to the tracking value of weapons with small amounts of tracking is the main point of this change.

Basically all stellaris bonuses are summed multiplication. I don't see any reason to change that for tracking.

 

[WeeBigTerd101]

It's a photon torpedo, some kind of missile that contains a neutron or photon warhead. shoot up the guidance system and it misses.
A blob of particles inside some kind of containment field would be called ... a plasma cannon.

but it's not classed as a missile weapon is a game...

 

[Cordane]

but it's not classed as a missile weapon is a game...

Not currently - they were that way to an extent, at one point way back when. The graphical elements (especially icons) and fluff text still suggest something along that line, so it's not that big of a stretch to offer a return as an option to make them more "balanced".

 

[Vorpaliminal]

Just want to pop in and call OP a silly billy for mislabeling the initial version of the weapon when it's a PROTON Launcher. No photons were harmed in the deployment of these mighty weapons!

 

[Mcath]

Just want to pop in and call OP a silly billy for mislabeling the initial version of the weapon when it's a PROTON Launcher. No photons were harmed in the deployment of these mighty weapons!

Laser is basically a photon launcher but I don’t think laser weapons need balancing in any way.