The Missiles are a Lie (analysis)

[jalapen0]

It's a micro ship, but it's really a teeny tiny ship. It does not have NEAR the stats of a full ship, and alot less to track. I mean, it might have some hp, speed, turning radius, current target, and a couple other things with a pointer to the graphic on the screen. But I really don't see why it would be a huge calculation to change target and for it to try and get there.

 

[terrycloth]

Well it is the missile plus the smoketrail. With a chance of multiple missiles per launcher being in space at any given time as shown above.
As far as Weapon projectiles go, Missiles are just the worst of the bunch as far as GPU processing is concerned. It is thier very nature.


Currently projectiles are not even considered to retarget. To properly do retargetting they might have to turn each and every missile into a sort of "micro ship". Put 10 missiles on one BB, that would be 10 extra ships the game has to calculate. Per salvo that has not yet reached the target.

And the vanishing can also happen if the launching ship is destroyed, wich should not trigger retargetting (and let us not try to retarget a missiles whose launching ship has been killed; no access to accuracy and tracking values would make that infeasible).

I think it was planned for the Cloud Lighting to actually jump to nearby targets. If so, the expansion of projectiles to allow jumping could also allow missiles to retarget.
Indeed the process of retargetting for Jump and Retargetting for Target loss would be extremly similar.

You definately don't want the missile to do the retargeting -- it'd get the range wrong, for one thing. You want the original ship to do the retargeting when one of its missiles is about to be deleted due to overkill. You could even spawn a new missile that started closer to its target or something? I'd expect changing the target on the original missile would be easier but who knows.

Having a missile whose launching ship was destroyed at least continue towards the original target would be ideal for balance purposes. If you wanted it to retarget ou'd have to use a placeholder accuracy, but that makes sense since any targeting assistance from the original ship would be gone. Figuring out how far it has left to fly is more problematic.

 

[Sossen]

I would also like to add that missiles as a weapon class wouldn't be viable even if all of these overkill and PD issues were solved. None of the missiles get armor penetration - just 10% of armor penetration would almost double the damage output vs 90% damage reduction. Even then the base damage is lacking. A small missile only gets more base DPS than a small mass driver if the target has something like 80% evasion after discounting tracking bonuses. Large missiles do get significantly higher tracking and accuracy than other large weapons, but they only beat mass drivers for base DPS once the target has 15% evasion after discounting tracking bonuses. And this isn't even taking PD into account. The only case where missiles as a class could be viable in their current state is if your opponent only fields corvettes.

I would really like to see considerably higher DPS and armor pen on missiles to make them viable at all times. Point defences shouldn't be a way to completely shut down a missile fleet. Instead PD should be a requirement to even the playing field vs a missile fleet.

 

[FullMetalFox]

Almost everything you've read about missiles is wrong.

Most people never bother to look beyond the visible, or even think about how much goes on behind the scenes to cut down loads, not even the 4x nerds, so no suprise there. But you also got some stuff wrong.

In general, only a single volley of missiles will be drawn at a time. You can hear the sound effect of each volley, but no new missiles appear (this is on max graphics settings). This can easily result in 4-5 invisible missiles flights waiting to strike.

MAX_GFX_MISSILES = 50
This also exists for projectiles (MAX_GFX_PROJECTILES = 100)

So there is your reason as to why there are invisible missiles, even in one volley. Any missile beyond 50 just gets its draw state turned off to save hardware load.

The invisible missiles strike much earlier than the visible effects, apparently travelling about twice as fast. Basically, when the visible missiles are half-way to their target, the invisible missiles they represent hit. There is still a noticeable delay before hitting even when ships enter into a furball.

While all other weapons are direct action types, missiles run thru some additional timings and if states. My guess is those are based on straight distance and "should be speed", but dont take into account the longer travel time due to cruving, pseudo acceleration and such.

From a programming point of view this also makes a lot more sense compared to having to calculate two tracking objects instead of one...

Missiles suck because they overkill INSANELY compared to direct fire weapons

This has been a much discussed issue since release, even just counting how many missiles are already tracking a target would be a great improvement. But the whole target picking code needs some improvement anyways, see "lets fire on that mining station that just came into range instead of the enemy fleet"-since-realease-issue.

That is, until you account for point defense. NOTHING in point defense makes sense. The system is full of black-magic and basically impossible to sanely mod.
I modded the PD to 100% accuracy, a 2.5 CD, and to deal only 1 damage

Im reading accuracy, but that makes me have to ask if you did consider tracking values, as well as the missiles evasion values. Because if you didnt, then there was still a lot of RNG gods having some fun pranking your experiment.

Please fix reload stats so it stops crashing Stellaris. This made this testing EXTREMELY painful.

Well i can at least agree to this request

Find a way to draw more missile salvos. If you cut to showing only a single missile per ship (instead of one per launcher per ship) you could get more salvos on screen. Consider making grouped missiles particles so you can get multiple missiles on screen for each ship but only use one particle. Reduce missile trail particles, they are kinda long. Maybe have the trail length decrease quickly so that by the time the next salvo launches the salvos in the air have minimal tails.

Meh, how about a slider for all those MAX_GFX defines instead? Not like you would enjoy having 6000 missiles on your screen anyways.

Increase the base missile speed, just for visual purposes, speed 5 is comically slow. Heck, the invisible missiles are hitting earlier anyway, so maybe at least increase the visual speed? Bonus points for matching visuals and actual impact.

Agreed on speed, gets even more funny when some Speed 4.2 cruisers get chased by 50 missiles.

 

[GloatingSwine]

Im reading accuracy, but that makes me have to ask if you did consider tracking values, as well as the missiles evasion values. Because if you didnt, then there was still a lot of RNG gods having some fun pranking your experiment.

Nuclear Missiles have 0 evasion anyway.

 

[I am Sovereign]

Missiles are a lie, there is only plasma.
Through plasma, I gain armor penetration.
Through armor penetration, I gain damage.
Through damage, I gain victory.
Through victory, the game is broken.
The plasma shall free me.


*cough and kinetics ofc*



In 1.2 It were lances.

I am quite annoyed that there is only one get to go weapon every few patches.

 

[FullMetalFox]

Nuclear Missiles have 0 evasion anyway.

Alright, guess it has been some time since i played vanilla, could have sworn they would start out at 10%.

 

[solops]

Missile re-targeting and other possible behaviors should be added over time by researchable techs.

 

[Risa]

Missile retargetting, if implemented, should be enabled from game start, because intant weapons effectively "have" this trait always.
Missile speed should be doubled. All weapons' range got doubled from 1.1 to 1.2, but missile speed remained the same 5. That put missiles into disadvantage.

As for extra traits for missile, I partially agree for the need. Lasers have armor penetration, mass drivers have bonus shield damage, while missiles have no damage-relative trait. I suggest that each missile (and explosive torpedo) hit on target grants a stackable armor penalty that only appliable to other missiles and torpedoes. This is to simulate missiles' superb accuracy that can hit the same weak point on armor repeatly and dig a hole on it.

 

[Dalinski]

If missiles are magic, should Spiritualist empires should get bonuses to missile damage?

More seriously though, good work OP. In-depth research and analysis is always appreciated. I absolutely second your request to fix reload stats because having to exit to desktop between test runs is akin to torture (am I the only one who has Stellaris taking several minutes to launch?).

Pretty typical of modern games, replacing your Hard Disk Drive with a Solid State Drive makes a big difference in load times.

 

[The Founder]

MAX_GFX_MISSILES = 50
This also exists for projectiles (MAX_GFX_PROJECTILES = 100)

So there is your reason as to why there are invisible missiles, even in one volley. Any missile beyond 50 just gets its draw state turned off to save hardware load.

I wonder if that is 50 missiles per launching ship. I mean with a really high fire rate (like the OP's incredibly high one) it is not wonder the limit was reached.

Missile re-targeting and other possible behaviors should be added over time by researchable techs.

Not really. This technique is well known and established right now. Called LOAL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lock-on_after_launch
Asuming you do not go for something like a Wire guided missiles anyway, at wich point lock-ons are a lie anyway...

It was in a Air Combat Simulation I played ages ago (and it was so far on the simulation side, I did not manage to get past the 1st level either way).

Retargetting while the launching vehicle is still around is a childs play.
Retargetting when the launching vehicle was destroyed? Well that might require something like AI.

Pretty typical of modern games, replacing your Hard Disk Drive with a Solid State Drive makes a big difference in load times.

We have been making the HDD's bigger and bigger. But the Physical Read/Write speed stayed at 100 MBit/s. So from a feeling point, Disks actually got slower.
From a practical point of view it was way overdue that we got rid of that old HDD tech. Next to x32 and IPv4 it was one of the biggest limiting factors in Computer Development.

 

[GloatingSwine]

Not really. This technique is well known and established right now. Called LOAL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lock-on_after_launch
Asuming you do not go for something like a Wire guided missiles anyway, at wich point lock-ons are a lie anyway...

It was in a Air Combat Simulation I played ages ago (and it was so far on the simulation side, I did not manage to get past the 1st level either way).

Retargetting while the launching vehicle is still around is a childs play.
Retargetting when the launching vehicle was destroyed? Well that might require something like AI.

Also, the issue is probably at its worst in the early game when the corvette spam is at its strongest. Locking retargeting behind tech wouldn't really fix the problem.

 

[Issen.]

I wonder if that is 50 missiles per launching ship. I mean with a really high fire rate (like the OP's incredibly high one) it is not wonder the limit was reached.

It is 50 total AFAIK. If you increase that limit, it'll look something like this (and also slow your game down by quite a bit ):

 

[The Founder]

It is 50 total AFAIK. If you increase that limit, it'll look something like this (and also slow your game down by quite a bit ):

Oh my god, it is fully of missiles!

 

[Karl244]

Very interesting data! One question, how many times did you ran your simulations? Did you always get the same results per simulation?
How do kinetic weapons influence the PD quality? How will fighters and strike crafts influence these results? This rises so many questions!

 

[bel3338]

Missiles are a weapon I've never really played in Stellaris, and by the looks of it I'm not about to try them any time soon, but a couple of posts got me thinking:

I ask to devs: would it be possible to give missiles AoE damage? Redistributing a portion of the raw damage of every invisible missile to an area of effect, or to every ships in a fleet that is targeted?
This could be a partial solution to the overkill mechanic…

As for extra traits for missile, I partially agree for the need. Lasers have armor penetration, mass drivers have bonus shield damage, while missiles have no damage-relative trait. I suggest that each missile (and explosive torpedo) hit on target grants a stackable armor penalty that only appliable to other missiles and torpedoes. This is to simulate missiles' superb accuracy that can hit the same weak point on armor repeatly and dig a hole on it.

Give missiles AoE damage, granting them a unique trait, but rather than target individual ships, aim between them, which would negate any need for retargeting. Now I don't know how you'd code for smart enough targeting of empty space between ships which are on the move (though I could see a new class of somewhat dumbfire missiles that detonate on proximity), but I enjoy throwing out random ideas on this forum

 

[Yenzen]

So when I noticed ships getting damaged by missiles before they could possible have hit, I wasn't crazy?

 

[The Founder]

So when I noticed ships getting damaged by missiles before they could possible have hit, I wasn't crazy?

Nope. Apparently they just were not drawn because that is too many damn missiles on the screen for any GPU.

 

[Razzlie]

Before, I thought missiles were merely bad.

Now, I know they are utterly busted beyond comprehension.

Not confident the crazy PD malfunctions and the imbecilic missile behaviour will be fixed anytime soon, sadly.

 

[solidprice]

I like the AOE buff idea.
Gives it something to stand out.