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On another thread someone mentioned missile chain-reactions where one missile exploding would cause other missiles in its blast radius to also go off, and so forth. This would have the effect of making missile spam a bit useless - one hits, the rest go off prematurely and cause minimal damage.

I did like the swarm missiles though, especially useful to make the target ship point defences not shoot my marines or shoot the missiles instead of me! So I'd like to see that continue.

As for dumbfire missiles (or rockets as they're usually know), why would such things be a thing at all, unless its to deliver more firepower or to be much smaller and thus fit many more of them in the rocket pods. In the old days of X3, dumbfire missiles were useless unless shooting stations. replacing all dumbfire missiles with rocket pods that held a dozen rockets instead of a single missile might be a worthwhile option though.

A major part of the problem is that missiles were kind of hacked into the game. They would "launch" at 0/0/0 of most ships which is the exact point that any AI ship would be shooting at.

Now if missiles had an actual missile launcher weapon/object to be launching from... no more issue.

Gazz wrote:A major part of the problem is that missiles were kind of hacked into the game. They would "launch" at 0/0/0 of most ships which is the exact point that any AI ship would be shooting at.

Now if missiles had an actual missile launcher weapon/object to be launching from... no more issue.

I'm with this! It happens in Freespace 2 so I don't think representing a launcher physically should be that hard...but that is something for the devs to say yes or no to.

Also I think represented launchers add some coolness to ships.

It doesnt even have to be a thing.

You define 2 points under the wings and... missile launch locations done.

mr.WHO wrote:...
It is not fun constantly see that AI blow itself up 0.5 second after missile launch and even I often get myself killed with my own missile....

I've never, ever been blown up as a result of me shooting my own missile. When I do suffer such mishaps, it's always the AI shooting my missile just as I launch it. And it happens vice versa: the AI launches a missile at close range and my weapons fire detonates it. They usually do that as a last ditch attempt to kill you when they're about to be destroyed.

That kind of behaviour is to be expected in close quarters fighting and can be prevented by being more careful when firing missiles. Personally, I don't see that it's a problem.

I would love to see some missiles like Nova torpedo.... Problem in XR that they or drones wore leaving skunk vulnerable to attack do to it being sitting duck. It would be fine if we fire and control them from inside of our capital ship

Nikola515 wrote:I would love to see some missiles like Nova torpedo.... Problem in XR that they or drones wore leaving skunk vulnerable to attack do to it being sitting duck. It would be fine if we fire and control them from inside of our capital ship

Novadrones kinda need that tradeoff since they blow half the cannons off a ship.

Stripped a Taranis almost completely clean just with 6 the other day. Just need to kill the escorts before trying then bombard the target from 10 km.

Drones are another issue. Assault ones are practically useless if you control them since you are a sitting duck as you said. The traitor drone also needs some sort of a stealth mode to be useful.

The hacker one I like since it can disable the cap shield if you already stripped a ship from other elements. However hacking a station for reduced production for the little amount of time it gives is really useless if you are playing the economy game.

This is probably why they are so powerful in XR(or ships surface elements week). If you take look at Hellbuster or even Sunstalker missiles can take small number of turrets if they are clustered together in same area. I was boarding Sucellus and it took me 3 or 4 Sunstlker missiles to take all engines out. I think this is more balancing issue than design. If ship could counter missiles like in X3 or if they make modules stronger this would work.

But this is probably why one ships can do all is bad idea. I'm hoping they do more specialized ships in X4. Hacking ships that are hard to detect or things like that.

It would be nice if we had some kind of missile counter-measure system like decoy launchers or ECM systems. Something apart from just turrets.

Slashman wrote:It would be nice if we had some kind of missile counter-measure system like decoy launchers or ECM systems. Something apart from just turrets.

I think this is why so many people liked the MARS mod Gazz made in the X3 series of games. When you had that mod running 80% of the missiles were usually shot down by the targeted ship and it's escorts if it had turrets. It basically fixed the press the IWIN button which was fire missiles enmasse and expect everything to blow up which took the challenge out of ship fights.

Yeah, but... while MARS was effective I wouldn't call it balanced.
It was more of a curiosity project to see how turrets (and missile defense in particular) could work if those ships really really meant it.

For a balanced approach you have to start with a design that makes it possible to balance these things.

I talked about it a bit here
https://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php ... 93#4696393
but you definitely can't just make missile defense better... which then only works for situations where missiles would be way OP to begin with.
Just pushing defense will never fix the absence of a solid design.

a more balanced way would be to diversify offensive and defensive capabilities. for example, in x3 there was only "shield" and "hull" (both just integers) you had to eliminate to destroy an object. a better way would be to replace "int shield" with a "struct shield" which has several upgradable components, electromagnetic shield, mechanical shield (hull), thermo shield, chemical protection, reflective ship hull against lasers etc ... and all the available weapon systems in the game target a specific type of protection, once 1 protection is down to zero, you can damage/destroy "surface components" and the actual ship/station/object ... the same could be done with missiles: give them different "charge types", chemical bomb, EMP bomb, nuclear/thermo bomb or the like to target a certain protection component

I suppose the idea of turrets as missile defence is that you choose - set them to defend or attack, so if you have them set to shoot down missiles, they're not contributing to attacking the enemy.

JSDD wrote:a better way would be to replace "int shield" with a "struct shield" which has several upgradable components, electromagnetic shield, mechanical shield (hull), thermo shield, chemical protection, reflective ship hull against lasers etc

That would do little benefit to the balance - That's mostly just introducing even more parameters and complexity. After you added all that you still need to go in and balance (which is now even more work).

Adding more combat utilities that do not serve as offensive weapons helps to increase specific defenses without increasing offense. Chaff, Flares, Counter-missiles, EMP charges for disabling of incoming missiles and so on. Being usables they dont represent "just another shield".

It doesn't really matter what you use but at the core, balancing is about having an attack and a counter for it.

Missiles do fall squarely into that but... the problem is in other game systems.
When you achieve "infinite funds" you are adding another element to the situation: All The Missiles.

Missile defense means can be set up to have a certain efficiency but if the player can casually fire 20x as many missiles then the intended balance will break.

That's one of the bits I had suggested above. Organically making spam attacks less effective than ones of ahh... reasonable magnitude. =)
But this is really just a low hanging fruit issue and cannot be seen in isolation. (because that's how this started...)

Killjaeden wrote:That would do little benefit to the balance - That's mostly just introducing even more parameters and complexity. After you added all that you still need to go in and balance (which is now even more work).

Adding more combat utilities that do not serve as offensive weapons helps to increase specific defenses without increasing offense. Chaff, Flares, Counter-missiles, EMP charges for disabling of incoming missiles and so on. Being usables they dont represent "just another shield".

So you would suggest adding more parameters and complexity instead of adding more parameters and complexity? =P

Consumeables are quite comparable to a shield because you have limited availability of an item vs limited (by recharge time) power of a shield.

The details don't even matter. All I'm saying is that you can't just "fix the balance" in beta.
You have to plan for a system that allows you to do so and then stick to your uhh... launchers without messing it up with "wouldn't it be cool".

So you would suggest adding more parameters and complexity instead of adding more parameters and complexity? =P

I was expecting this reply
Adding resistances/damage types to weapons, shields and hulls leads to a very large amount of new parameters. Adding missile countermeasures adds fewer parameters.

Gazz wrote:Consumeables are quite comparable to a shield because you have limited availability of an item vs limited (by recharge time) power of a shield.

Limited quantity (of uses) vs. limited available strength. But the available strength regenerates up to maximum capacity infinitely for no additional cost or logistical work, while availability of countermeasures does the opposite. The difference is quite large in that aspect (maintenance and running cost for the most part).

Killjaeden wrote:Adding resistances/damage types to weapons, shields and hulls leads to a very large amount of new parameters. Adding missile countermeasures adds fewer parameters.

That resistances/damage types for guns, shields and hulls means more parameters than resistances/damage types and countermeasures for missiles, shields and hulls is just something you said.
Also, the number of parameters is less important than them noticeably affecting gameplay.

Limited quantity (of uses) vs. limited available strength. But the available strength regenerates up to maximum capacity infinitely for no additional cost or logistical work, while availability of countermeasures does the opposite. The difference is quite large in that aspect (maintenance and running cost for the most part).

On an abstract design level there is no difference.
Consumeables are limited until you stock up from a nearby freighter/carrier.
Shields recharge over time.

Both have the effect of temporarily limited ability.
It's why games have stamina/energy bars.

Gazz wrote:Also, the number of parameters is less important than them noticeably affecting gameplay.

Wouldn't you agree that for the topic at hand, "Elemental type damage" vs. "common damage" has quite a noticeable effect on combat gameplay ?
And it adds as the more parameters the more different elemtents there are. Plus i raise the point that 10 poorly balanced parameters that each mildly affect gameplay still make for one big mess...

Limited quantity (of uses) vs. limited available strength. But the available strength regenerates up to maximum capacity infinitely for no additional cost or logistical work, while availability of countermeasures does the opposite. The difference is quite large in that aspect (maintenance and running cost for the most part).
On an abstract design level there is no difference.
Consumeables are limited until you stock up from a nearby freighter/carrier.
Shields recharge over time.

On an abstract design level, an asteroid is the same as a space station - but that doesnt say much. Specifics are important. What if you can't stock up on countermeasures just by teleporting them into your cargo bay? What if you can only requip them when you land on a ship or station with the tools or facilities to reequip consumables ?

Personally (and this is just me), I would first limit the number of missiles each ship could carry by separating cargo space from missile racks. This means you can't carry a gazillion missiles in your regular cargo that you can just offload into your launchers and keep firing.

This does a couple things:

1) Makes you think about a load-out to suit what you will be fighting

2) Reduces spam of missiles making them something to use at the right time instead of just all the time. (Want to reload from your cargo bay? Dock somewhere first.)

3) It makes more room in your cargo for other stuff to trade instead of sharing that with ordinance space.

The other thing I would do is introduce a countermeasure system similar to Evochron Legacy. In that game, missiles have a lock on system which requires some time to build a profile of the target ship. It takes several decoys to spoof a missile and they do this by literally beaming disrupting signals at the incoming missile until it detonates prematurely. So each counter measure adds to the chance of a successful disruption of the missile.

Killjaeden wrote:Specifics are important. What if you can't stock up on countermeasures just by teleporting them into your cargo bay? What if you can only requip them when you land on a ship or station with the tools or facilities to reequip consumables ?

Completely agree.

If you limit the means of resupplying you increase the opportunity cost of those.

If you limit shield recharge to something like "can't have taken damage in 10 seconds" or "incremental recharge speed over time" then shield energy is worth more.

That's how balancing works. =)