Its not so much an engine limitation so far but that Paradox decided to improve other parts of the game first.
What the engine is capable of I can't judge yet.
What is the future of missiles?
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Its not so much an engine limitation so far but that Paradox decided to improve other parts of the game first.
What the engine is capable of I can't judge yet.
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The question is:
Do we need to wait to another big expansion to get non-broken missiles?
Purpose of this stats adjustment is giving missiles some niche (and removing them from don't_touch_it zone) with minimal programming effort.
Of course, next patches/expansions may turn missiles into something amazing and completely different (AoE, Retargeting, MIRV warheads etc.) but keeping missiles in their current, broken, state for next weeks/months is something I wish to be avoided.
Simple adjustment may be added in ANY patch, and is not interfering with any (possible or not) general overhaul in next expansions/patches.
Gameplay changes always come with big patches which are usually accompanied by an expansion. Minor patches in between usually are only bugfixes and minor adjustments which a missile change is not.
Ok, so my missile cruiser need to wait another ~6 months to be anything more then piece of crap, because editing one dozen of numbers, taking... hour? require "major patch" . Nice.
I have no idea if that is how paradox actually works in regards to balance.
+5-10ish% damage should fix it just fine rather than working around re-targeting.
+5-10ish% damage should fix it just fine rather than working around re-targeting.
No, damage buff won't fix anything, because damage is not an issue here. Even 200% damage buff won't make things better (it will just add unneeded randomness element to battle).
Issues?
- Missiles are slow
- Before missiles hit target, target will hit you with kinetics/energetics multiple times (range advantage is completely negated)
- Missiles are doing extreme overkills (it mean missiles cannot distribute their damage effectively - and this problem will negate any positive effect from any damage buff)
- Missiles are highly vulnerable to PD (it won't be the problem, if missiles would be HighRisk-HighReward weapon)
You obviously have no clue how project management works. You can't just enter some numbers by gut feeling, hope for the best, and get them deployed to the customers.
Keeping relatively simple things broken for months because of corporation bureaucracy isn't good practice for project management.
Well, if @Wiz gave me some hot code for missile changes, I'd be willing to test it for them against a bunch of different fleet compositions and scenarios to see how they perform.
If you think 200% more damge won't fix it test two supposedly even fleets, before buffing with +200% damge and then after.
-In short range matches, where both the target and the missile bearing fleet engage and fire at the same time, the time to effective dps drops for missiles.
However in optimal range, where missiles almost always have longer range - They get a volley in at the same time or before depending on the weapon. Therefore it depends on engagement range, a situational advantage - which is a good thing in my book.
-While missiles do overkill, it's avoided by spreading fire to more targets, and how many volleys to kill say a battleship compared to a corvette. Because the targeting data takes into account the maximum HP of the target. It spreads damage less against battleships, and more against corvettes and it often takes multiple volleys from a proportional amount shooters to kill any target. Therefore the overkill damage (additional volleys in flight included) isn't large enough to cripple the missile fleet, it's the lack of raw damage from the missile weapon.
The damage spreading is proven here: I pitted 25 Battleships with Large missiles against a fleet of 75ish corvettes
Therefore buffing missile damage will spread any overkill damage further and instead of increasing overkill, reduce the time to kill the opposing fleet instead.
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A single straight change does not work for a problem with this many variables - missiles do not need a tweak in one area, they need an overhaul. They suffer from overkill more than other weapon systems not because of a lack of damage when they hit, but from the fact that the calculations that determine how many weapons are fired at a given target do not adequately take into account in-flight salvoes (and the slow flight time exacerbates this further). They suffer from limited options in punching through shields and armor, which especially in the late game is far more important than raw damage. They suffer from the only type of defense that doesn't affect kinetic or energy weapons, where it is easy to completely eliminate the attacks of a largely specialized fleet and still be offensively capable against them. Even if you could find a situation where your one Clarkson-esque change would be effective, in most others it would be ineffectual or result in (legitimate) cries of "missiles are OP".
Do some more reading, then. A kinetic slug moving fast enough can easily have much the same impact as a nuclear missile.
Removing missiles from the weapons tree options would be a Bad Move- it'd remove player choice and leave us with only two weapons options to start with.
Missiles absolutely can be fixed, even by fairly "unobtrusive" stat tweaking to some extent. If they could retarget and persist, we'd have a solid foundation for them to be viable and have their own niche.
Which can be fixed by straight up buffing damage. Shortening the time to kill a fleet via increasing damage counters that downside which increases the time taken to kill a fleet.
It all balances out.
Moving the goalposts.
It isn't moving the goalposts to rightfully point out that a flat damage buff is not going to make missiles become balanced.
Pointing out that missiles suffer from a lack of anti shield and armour options in favour of overhauling missiles completely is. They already scale fine against other weapons which is the important factor.
General overhaul to missiles and strikecrafts might be the best option, but it might require a lot of work and will not be done before next expansion. We have 2 options for a moment:
1. Keeping strikecrafts & missiles in their current, broken, state, for next ~6+ months
2. Simple adjustments to stats (missiles: range, speed, damage; strikecrafts: in-battle replenishing, movement speed etc.) to make these items, at least, viable.
Overhaul is welcome, but 6+ months is a lot of time.
They don't, though. They're always much weaker than other weapon types. Because of problems with overkill and lack of persistence, which cannot be solved with a flat damage buff without resulting in unintended consequences in other places.
But kinetic force has no BLAST. It has almost to no blast force, only impact force, unless the casings somehow contain explosive. But clearly the game describes ballistics as kinetics, which means it's strictly a kinetic force; while missiles are clearly explained as explosive... there's a difference to how either one works in both space and on Earth. They should have slight ineffectiveness against shields though.
However, you make a fine point. Limiting players to two weapons is a bad idea. True. But the missiles are so bad in how the combat works in this game that it's almost unfair to be even among the choices. Missiles just can NOT compete with two other weapon types. Energy and kinetics, to me, are good balance on their own. And they have their own paths down the tech research roads. Missiles don't even get the same treatment. It's only torpedos, as lasers are to plasma cannons... except energy weapons get to have XL weapons like the kinetics do. And there's really no point of having an XL missile. It's better off if missiles get their own slots on top of the torpedo slots.
If anything, everyone should start with missiles. After all, rocketry is the bedrock of space travel... just make it a "special" weapon, adding AOE damage into the gameplay, giving more dynamic to how ships function (like "missile boats" for example, for sole long-range support combat). And for swarmer missiles, they should be able to target multiple targets at once, and increase the damage slightly to make up for the distributed damage.
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They are always much weaker? So why not buff them then?
The overkill issue isn't actually an issue, Damage is spread fairly effectively and overkill is insignificant as it's practically static due to the damage spreading.
Just what do you mean by a lack of persistence?
They're weaker because of the overkill and lack of persistence (by which I am referring to the fact that all a ship's missiles vanish if either the target or the originating ship are killed- meaning that in the time it takes for a ship's missiles to travel, it can be killed and all that DPS is wasted).
A damage buff alone will not fix this, least not in a properly balanced manner. The only long-term solution is to fix the overkill and persistence issues and then work from there.