Petition: Can we get a rework for functioning missile weapons?

[Azmodael]

Stellaris was released on the 9th of May, 2016. Seven months later we have patch 1.41, but for the eternity of this time the explosive weapons line and the small craft line have been unusable, or to use a milder tone underperforming. First it was the PD accuracy bug, then came the range doubling and finally the 1.3 debacle. Here is the list of problems that currently needs to be adressed.


Problems:

1. Missiles fly slowly compared to other weapons. With every battles you use a couple of ships of your own before you start to inflict damage yourself. This cripples missiles in the early game when every ship counts.
2. Missiles can be hardcountered by PD. No other weapon type has a hardcounter. A single flak cannon can counter 2 missiles weapon slots and still do good damage in the absence of missiles or small craft.
3. S, M and L sized missiles have the same hit points. A single P slot can shut down L sized weapon.
4. Overkill damage. No other weapon loses damage on overkills!
5. Missiles in flight destroyed on host death. No other weapon loses damage in this manner!
6. Plain damage without special bonuses. M and L sized wepaons of other types get armor penetration, but not missiles! The only other weapon with plain damage is Autocannon, it has the same tracking as missiles, but nearly twice the damage.
7. PD targetting code favors hitting ordinary missiles over Whirlwind missiles. PD appears to ignore whirling missiles due to their high evasion, making them fail in their designated code as PD fire sponge.

Now let's check what you get to balance out all of these problems

1. Highest range in the game plus 70 tracking, Only good against corvettes in the very late game when evasion is stacked. Range is insignificant since missiles are only good for shooting at corvettes which form the first line of ships. Autocannon also provide 70 tracking, but also 75% more damage than missiles.
2. Lowest damage of all weapon types. Actually on par with Lasers and higher than Disruptor, but both of these outperform Missles vs Armor/Shield respectively.
3. The dubious benefit of using Torpedos and Small Craft. More on these below.

Torpedos and Small Craft

First of all let me say that using Torpedos and Small Craft without missles against even the smallest amount of PD will end in disaster.

Post-rework Space Torpedos are actually decent. It's what missiles should have been. Energy Torpedos and Small craft, however, suck.

Energy Torpedos targetting code doesn't mesh well with the rest of the targetting code. ET like to strip the target of shields, however, the rest of the fleet is only shooting at several ships at once. Having many ET in your fleet makes them "ping" every enemy ship to strip it of shields, then immidately start regenerating. Non-ET weapons meanwhile focus fire your ships and actually kill them.

Small Craft promise some high damage numbers, which they don't actually deliver. Bomber shield penetration only plays nice with Space Torpedos, using mixed fleets with bombers and other weapons means bombers target the hull, while other weapons try to strip the shield. Shield usually drops faster then the hull, meaning Bomber shield penetration does nothing. Bombers and torpedos also underperform against targets that are close to the armor cap compared to Plasma.

Missiles and multiplayer

Missiles are utterly unusable against human opponents, because stacking PD hardcounters them. Currently missiles have so many problems that building PD is not even needed. However, any fleet trying to use Torpedos/Small Craft against a human opponent will see heavily stacked PD and will be completely annihilated with minimal losses for the PD fleet.

PD weapons are really cheap to swap designs. Trying to hardcounter Shields/Armor to counter Energy/Kinetics means swapping utility modules on all of your ships, which is expensive.

And finally, an illustrative examples of how horrible missiles are -> http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum...g-missile-weapons.989777/page-2#post-22225976

Please, if you want to see more ship combat divercity sign/agree with this and hopefully out voices will be heard and 9 months after release we will be actually able to use explosive weapons.

 

[Summin Cool]

What about tripling the Mineral cost of point defences and nerfing PD damage?
The Medium/Large missile HP issue needs to be solved.
Along with swarmer missiles being targeted last.

All other issues I feel are solved via buffing missile damage/dps.

 

[I am Sovereign]

Stellaris was released on the 9th of May, 2016. Seven months later we have patch 1.41, but for the eternity of this time the explosive weapons line and the small craft line have been unusable, or to use a milder tone underperforming. First it was the PD accuracy bug, then came the range doubling and finally the 1.3 debacle. Here is the list of problems that currently needs to be adressed.


Problems:

1. Missiles fly slowly compared to other weapons. With every battles you use a couple of ships of your own before you start to inflict damage yourself. This cripples missiles in the early game when every ship counts.
2. Missiles can be hardcountered by PD. No other weapon type has a hardcounter. A single flak cannon can counter 2 missiles weapon slots and still do good damage in the absence of missiles or small craft.
3. S, M and L sized missiles have the same hit points. A single P slot can shut down L sized weapon.
4. Overkill damage. No other weapon loses damage on overkills!
5. Missiles in flight destroyed on host death. No other weapon loses damage in this manner!
6. Plain damage without special bonuses. M and L sized wepaons of other types get armor penetration, but not missiles! The only other weapon with plain damage is Autocannon, it has the same tracking as missiles, but nearly twice the damage.

Now let's check what you get to balance out all of these problems

1. Highest range in the game plus 70 tracking, Only good against corvettes in the very late game when evasion is stacked. Range is insignificant since missiles are only good for shooting at corvettes which form the first line of ships. Autocannon also provide 70 tracking, but also 75% more damage than missiles.
2. Lowest damage of all weapon types. Actually on par with Lasers and higher than Disruptor, but both of these outperform Missles vs Armor/Shield respectively.
3. The dubious benefit of using Torpedos and Small Craft. More on these below.

Torpedos and Small Craft

First of all let me say that using Torpedos and Small Craft without missles against even the smallest amount of PD will end in disaster.

Post-rework Space Torpedos are actually decent. It's what missiles should have been. Energy Torpedos and Small craft, however, suck.

Energy Torpedos targetting code doesn't mesh well with the rest of the targetting code. ET like to strip the target of shields, however, the rest of the fleet is only shooting at several ships at once. Having many ET in your fleet makes them "ping" every enemy ship to strip it of shields, then immidately start regenerating. Non-ET weapons meanwhile focus fire your ships and actually kill them.

Small Craft promise some high damage numbers, which they don't actually deliver. Bomber shield penetration only plays nice with Space Torpedos, using mixed fleets with bombers and other weapons means bombers target the hull, while other weapons try to strip the shield. Shield usually drops faster then the hull, meaning Bomber shield penetration does nothing. Bombers and torpedos also underperform against targets that are close to the armor cap compared to Plasma.

Missiles and multiplayer

Missiles are utterly unusable against human opponents, because stacking PD hardcounters them. Currently missiles have so many problems that building PD is not even needed. However, any fleet trying to use Torpedos/Small Craft against a human opponent will see heavily stacked PD and will be completely hardcountered.

Please, if you want to see more ship combat divercity sign/agree with this and hopefully out voices will be heard and 9 months after release we will be actually able to use explosive weapons.

You have my autograph signature.

Everything you said is true.

What about tripling the Mineral cost of point defences and nerfing PD damage?
The Medium/Large missile HP issue needs to be solved.
Along with swarmer missiles being targeted last.

All other issues I feel are solved via buffing missile damage/dps.

I dont think that minerals costs can be used to buff/nerf anything.

Minerals are the one thing in the game which will become very abundant after some decades into the game and no one realy cares about minerals costs anymore in SP.

 

[Azmodael]

What about tripling the Mineral cost of point defences and nerfing PD damage?
The Medium/Large missile HP issue needs to be solved.
Along with swarmer missiles being targeted last.

All other issues I feel are solved via buffing missile damage/dps.

Whirling missiles need to lose evasion, but get a lot of hp. This will make PD more eager to target them. Currently they are ignored because PD doesn't shoot at them because it correctly calculates it won't hit them. Targetting code is one giant mess.

Today all my missiles equipped fleet ignored the enemy corvette fleet to kill a 50% armored spaceport... I can only assume it's because the spaceport started shooting at them first and having 0 evasion. 80 corvettes lost to 50 corvettes + lvl1 spaceport due to this. He had 25 corvettes after battle ended.

You have my autograph signature.

Everything you said is true.


I dont think that minerals costs can be used to buff/nerf anything.

Minerals are the one thing in the game which will become very abundant after some decades into the game and no one realy cares about minerals costs anymore in SP.

The problem is that if you see enemy has missiles you only have to swap a few modules for cheap PD slots. But if you have armor and enemy has plasma you need to swap every single armor module on your ships for reactors and shields to counter his plasma. Countering missiles costs less than 1k minerals in the late game. Countering Plasma/Kinetics costs 20-50x times more.

 

[Wyrm]

I find it silly that missiles have such a low velocity. If you look at the muzzle velocity of current railguns in development it's around 2,500 m/s
An ICBM, that is the fastest missiles we have on earth have a speed in excess of 7,000 m/s.

I think missiles should accelerate from launch, starting out slow and then just going faster and faster until they hit, or considering that will take a bit much real-time calculations at least give them a higher speed than they currently have.

 

[General Retreat]

Potential radical solution:

• Scrap PD, introduce an ECM aura module as a replacement. This is mounted on destroyers or anything else that should have PD. Effects are stackable and would reduce missile weapons and strike craft accuracy when targeting units inside the aura. ECM effectiveness would incrementally increase in effectiveness over researched tiers.
• Add a new utility item, ablative armour. Provides small armour boost and damage decrease against explosives.
• Missiles become hitscan weapons like everything else in the game. Projectile travel time is a graphics effect and nothing more. This removes retargetting issues and greatly reduces computational lag in large missile fights.
• Missiles gain a range and DPS boost, refire reduction(?). Ideally, missiles become effective against armour, neutral with shields and suffer with ablative. Energy are effective with ablative, neutral with armour and suffer with shields. Kinetics are effective against shields, neutral against ablative and suffer against armour.

 

[folk+]

Please let me know if you have specific ideas for changes I could adopt in http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=815747064

EDIT: I've been told that this post looks like me plugging my addon. Anyone who inspects my addon list on Steam and sees the other 25+ addons I have and realise that I've almost never linked to anything on the forums before, understand that I did not actually post here to plug.

I do genuinely want input. Specific, detailed, input.

 

[RgZera]

The whole concept of missiles is going to suck ALWAYS. It simply cannot be balanced as long as all other weapons are instant and do not share overkill and lost in space damage.

The only solution could be to add a script that checks average damage of missiles and divides the targets HP with that number. Then once the given amount of missiles are inbound towards the target all weapons of the fleet stop firing. But this even after adjusting for regen (all missiles do not hit in the exact same time and damage is still random between 2 numbers for each missile) is still subject to PD fire. I dont see any reliable system to accurately account for PD and would most likely result in sending small packages of damage that will be taken care of or bigger overkillk than ever in order to overcome PD. So give high tech missiles 200 % evasion and break the game in other ways just to try and fix something else.

Even increasing missile speed and adjusting weapon cooldown so at a single time there is not 2 salvoes inbound wont solve shit. Or giving weapons burstfire would only not work on missiles as long as targeting is non existent since it either focuses all weapons on 1 ship OR equally distributes damage among ALL enemy ships in range (both of which is terribly stupid)

You cant just give higher damage to missiles because they will dominate too hard early game when people have few ships and still suck in big fights with 80 % of dps wasted.
You could keep them very short ranged so each ship only has a few others in range and could focus those down but short range fits lasers a lot more. (hard to focus a beam at long ranges)

So best paradox can do quickly is give a pseudo random distribution to missile targeting. That way some of the damage will be wasted on ships that regenerate and other parts of the damage will still overkill ships but not as much (if you adjust the numbers right) Even better than random distribution is to make missile damage not fluctuate at all so something like 150-150 damage and calculate how many of those rockets you have to fire to kill a given ship AND add 30% damage on top which will be the overkill treshold (even regen should not be nowhere near 30 percent so number can be tweaked) and after that for each PD launch 1 more missile for buffer. This method ofc would be harder on performance so not recommended (and faaaaaaaar from a real solution anyway)

Or making missiles instant and introducing ECM jammer auras so the whole system is like accuracy vs evasion (fuck variety right?)

My opinion? Accept that the game has only 2 weapon categories and leave missiles as decoration. Only other option is to nerf other weapons to be projectile and fuck up performance..

 

[Pavane]

While I agree that there should be a missile review, explosive weapons are neither unplayable nor unwinnable. The latest 1.4 tweek to explosive torpedoes helped a lot.

I am in the late game of a large galaxy. The Prethoran Scourge arrived on the far side of the galaxy and is contained. I just conquered my neighbouring awakened Fallen Empire, placing me second in relative power on the Empire List just behind another awakened FE and I now control 25% of the galaxy. I have only used missiles and explosive torpedoes during the entire game. No energy weapons at all. No kinetic weapons other than point defence.

I am playing exclusively with Hyper Drives, that other "broken" technology. I have reverse engineered Jump Drives, and I have been offered Psi-Jump Drives as a research option, but I have not used them.

Lastly, I have not built any battleships other than around four grand battleships (military dictatorship) when the opportunity arises. They never survive their first battle because they attract so much attention from the enemy fleet. I rely on large fleets of torpedo cruisers, point defence destroyers and torpedo boats. I'll post a screen-shot when I win.

Here are the ships:


Here is my fleet, depleted after just winning the last war:

 

[RgZera]

Sorry 1 more idea that came to mind.

Make a late game missile tech thats like ancient drones from stargate. They would have 100% shield penetration BUT they would still act like shield damage role weapons.
By directly damaging hull and having their damage spread out as much as possible they would not waste much damage as long as there are enough ships. Once the number of enemy ships are reduced and the missile fleet is superior it doesnt matter anyway. If they lose ships equally the ratio stays so its all fine.

Either give them higher average damage or armor pen to keep them competetive. The ships HP regen is no factor at all since the highest you can get is like 6 % per MONTH.

The matter of PD is trickier. You cant just mix weapons because they will shoot the shields and waste their dps while not tanking for missiles. So add fast firing decoy missiles with no damage that have priority when fired at by PD. 1 decoy should tank as many PD as its slotsize would dictate. So 1 M is like 2 PD. The decoy should be a real deal to make properly as it should adapt to the attack speed and movement speed of the missiles. So if someone uses long cd torpedoes the decoy would have to store charges and fire several missiles along with the torpedos each time they fire. The speed of the decoy would need to match that of the torpedoes. In a mixed environment with missiles and torpedoes with all different fire rates and speeds the decoy would lose some of its value. And ofc standardising all missile weapons with the same fire rate and missile speed is just terrible

But anyway something along the lines of using dedicated decoys to counter dedicated PD would be ideal. (once the PD is neutralised strike craft may get too OP or still useless if they dont regenerate in combat)

 

[RgZera]

While I agree that there should be a missile review, explosive weapons are neither unplayable nor unwinnable. The latest 1.4 tweek to explosive torpedoes helped a lot.

I am in the late game of a large galaxy. The Prethoran Scourge arrived on the far side of the galaxy and is contained. I just conquered my neighbouring awakened Fallen Empire, placing me second in relative power on the Empire List just behind another awakened FE and I now control 25% of the galaxy. I have only used missiles and explosive torpedoes during the entire game. No energy weapons at all. No kinetic weapons other than point defence.

I am playing exclusively with Hyper Drives, that other "broken" technology. I have reverse engineered Jump Drives, and I have been offered Psi-Jump Drives as a research option, but I have not used them.

Lastly, I have not built any battleships other than around four grand battleships (military dictatorship) when the opportunity arises. They never survive their first battle because they attract so much attention from the enemy fleet. I rely on large fleets of torpedo cruisers, point defence destroyers and torpedo boats. I'll post a screen-shot when I win.

Yes but take a look at PD that gains atk speed and damage from repeatable upgrades. Whereas your missiles might get the atk speed but they dont seem to have the hull upgrades.
So in the end as the game goes on missiles are countered harder and harder by the same amount of PD.

My personal favourite is swarmer missiles though. No worries about PD, short ranged and good damage. Even the fallen empire that uses missiles does well. Not as good as the other fallen empires though (but thats mostly because of the armor pen of their weapons)

 

[I am Sovereign]

Sorry 1 more idea that came to mind.

Make a late game missile tech thats like ancient drones from stargate. They would have 100% shield penetration BUT they would still act like shield damage role weapons.
By directly damaging hull and having their damage spread out as much as possible they would not waste much damage as long as there are enough ships. Once the number of enemy ships are reduced and the missile fleet is superior it doesnt matter anyway. If they lose ships equally the ratio stays so its all fine.

Either give them higher average damage or armor pen to keep them competetive. The ships HP regen is no factor at all since the highest you can get is like 6 % per MONTH.

The matter of PD is trickier. You cant just mix weapons because they will shoot the shields and waste their dps while not tanking for missiles. So add fast firing decoy missiles with no damage that have priority when fired at by PD. 1 decoy should tank as many PD as its slotsize would dictate. So 1 M is like 2 PD. The decoy should be a real deal to make properly as it should adapt to the attack speed and movement speed of the missiles. So if someone uses long cd torpedoes the decoy would have to store charges and fire several missiles along with the torpedos each time they fire. The speed of the decoy would need to match that of the torpedoes. In a mixed environment with missiles and torpedoes with all different fire rates and speeds the decoy would lose some of its value. And ofc standardising all missile weapons with the same fire rate and missile speed is just terrible

But anyway something along the lines of using dedicated decoys to counter dedicated PD would be ideal. (once the PD is neutralised strike craft may get too OP or still useless if they dont regenerate in combat)

Thats actually a pretty nice idea especially the first one It would act like an shild ignoring AOE missile which could be quite effectiv in large numbers.

 

[The Founder]

The main issues are overkill and the overlapping of PD (that one ships PD provides another ship cover, something no other defense has).
To solve the Overkill, missiles would need to be able to retarget. Wich require the Combat Simulation to be changed accordingly.

As such the Missile rework we need would be on par with the Diplomacy rework we already got (remember Embassies?) and the Faction/Ethos/Unity rewok we are getting.
It would be nice to have a override for starting weapons (like you got for FTL tech). But otherwise you can easily ignore missiles as player.

 

[Azmodael]

While I agree that there should be a missile review, explosive weapons are neither unplayable nor unwinnable. The latest 1.4 tweek to explosive torpedoes helped a lot.

I am in the late game of a large galaxy. The Prethoran Scourge arrived on the far side of the galaxy and is contained. I just conquered my neighbouring awakened Fallen Empire, placing me second in relative power on the Empire List just behind another awakened FE and I now control 25% of the galaxy. I have only used missiles and explosive torpedoes during the entire game. No energy weapons at all. No kinetic weapons other than point defence.

I am playing exclusively with Hyper Drives, that other "broken" technology. I have reverse engineered Jump Drives, and I have been offered Psi-Jump Drives as a research option, but I have not used them.

Lastly, I have not built any battleships other than around four grand battleships (military dictatorship) when the opportunity arises. They never survive their first battle because they attract so much attention from the enemy fleet. I rely on large fleets of torpedo cruisers, point defence destroyers and torpedo boats. I'll post a screen-shot when I win.

Here are the ships:
View attachment 225507 View attachment 225508 View attachment 225509

Here is my fleet, depleted after just winning the last war:
View attachment 225510

Yes, stack enough military power against the AI and you will win, even with missiles. Prethoran also doesn't have any PD.

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

Paradox have to be well aware of the problems with missiles and I'd easily assume they're poking at ways to fix them on their own time.

A petition honestly seems kind of presumptuous to me.

 

[I am Sovereign]

Paradox have to be well aware of the problems with missiles and I'd easily assume they're poking at ways to fix them on their own time.

A petition honestly seems kind of presumptuous to me.

I dont think a petition can ever be presumptuous.
Its the good right of players to start/sign one. No one is forced to even read that thread.

And considering HOW LONG paradox is well aware of the problems with missiles and how the problem growed bigger with every major patch released, it is understandable that players fear that missiles will stay broken for a indefinitely amount of time.

 

[Pavane]

Yes, stack enough military power against the AI and you will win, even with missiles. Prethoran also doesn't have any PD.

Every time I post the results of a victory where I have used the naysayer's "broken" technology I get a few "yes but" replies: Yes you won, but....

I don't understand the obsession with balancing weapons, FTL drives, traits, ethics, etc. because I design empires around themes without any consideration to min-maxing. Some weapons are better than others, as is the case with other components of the game. A competent player can find ways to mitigate any of the extra challenges that a thematic, sub-optimal empire design creates. The game is more complex than the relationship between two or three asymmetrical weapon types and there are no single choices that guarantees a lost game.

 

[Gaen]

You say it like the devs are never going to balance their game unless you stand up to them...

 

[Cordane]

The priorities in the OP's list should be to eliminate the hard counter of PD (including accuracy and damage by PD/resisted by larger Missiles), then the flight issues (speed, overkill, retargeting, continuation after launcher death), and last basic balance and speciation (making Missiles comparable in net DPD, through effective Armor, Shield, and/or PD penetration).

Because Missiles actually have to deal with PD - something that Kinetics and Energy do not - they should pretty quickly have a net DPD advantage over the others before PD is factored in. Part of this should be Shield and Armor penetration - if Kinetics and Energy can ignore PD, Missiles should be able to ignore (to a certain extent) Shields and Armor, just to start. The rest should be good, ol' fashioned firepower. PD should then only chip away at this DPD advantage, to where a reasonable amount of PD should result in fairly balanced damage between the three basic types. Just like overloading on Shields or Armor, an over-specialized defense should be exploitable, regardless of type.

The next place I would make changes is in PD: (1) change basic PD back into a Utility slot - no different from Shields and Armor; (2) set basic PD as a Phalanx-type personal defense, not fleet PD - again, no different from Shields and Armor; and (3) still have Flak Cannons and Aegis-style counter-missiles for fleet anti-Missile and anti-Strike Craft. Flak Cannons (whether kinetic or energy) should make due with high RoF and decent Tracking to balance poor range, low accuracy, and low damage - they're only supposed to help with the PD of individual ships, not eliminate the need for individual PD, and their stats should keep that in mind. Counter-missiles still wouldn't have much range, but better than Flak - making them better suited to anti-Strike Craft as each hit would cause more damage (overkill against Missiles).

Last thing would be to shift the Evasion profile from Corvettes at the top and down thru the capital ships but Missiles and Strike Craft effectively nowhere to be seen, to Missiles and Strike Craft at the very top, Corvettes maybe down a touch, and the bigger ships more or less where they are now. Add in ECM and possibly ECCM to account for decoys, jamming, and such to round things out - these would be similar to the current Evasion/Tracking setup but a second level, with many of the current Tracking bonuses for sensors actually being ECCM (at least part ECCM and part Tracking).

The OP was talking more about Missiles, but Strike Craft need some serious love, too. Especially considering the way that they've been managed re: damage to them (i.e., once defeated, not replaced until after battle), they should be treated more like ships, not weapons. Upon being launched, they should exist as a temporary "ship" or squadron/wing, and have their effectiveness diminished as elements are blown up. Once the battle is done, they should retreat to their carriers as usual, disappear and transfer their status back to their hangars (defeated SC would immediately update their hangars), and be repaired/replaced accordingly. (I would also recommend adding an available destroyer module with a hangar, probably with fewer/smaller utility slots to balance, in order to get Strike Craft into the game earlier.)

tl;dr - Missiles should be operationally at the same level as kinetic and energy, after accounting for PD; PD should start at the ship-only level and then move up to a limited fleet defense role; Missiles and Strike Craft should be Evasion kings, not afterthoughts; PLEASE FIX MISSILES AND STRIKE CRAFT!

 

[The Founder]

I dont think a petition can ever be presumptuous.
Its the good right of players to start/sign one. No one is forced to even read that thread.

Funny thing about that "good right" part.

We recently had someone starting a discussion literally with "I am a buying customer".
He had to be reminded that he bought a single computer game. He did NOT buy Stock in the Company to the point where he was a relevant shareholder.
And it was a single game that is working, by the way.*

If you start your argument with such a large helping of Entitlement, you can not expect to be taken very seriously. In fact people will propably argue agaisnt you to make clear that they are not like you.


*As the modding ability costs massive amounts of time and resources on the Developers side, the "time played with mods" counts here too. Without the game, there would be no mods in the first place.