GCU Grey Area wrote: ↑Sat, 25. Mar 23, 14:39
Think it's more a case of giving the player the choice of how many launchers they want to fit on each ship, from none at all to all of them. Overwhelming majority of the ships I had in previous X games never fired their missile launcher even once. Would have gladly fitted an extra gun in it's place if I'd had the opportunity.
Conversely there are circumstances where it's decidedly useful to have a ship with more than one launcher. In most X4 games I end up building an M ship armed with just a single gun & every other hardpoint fitted with a torpedo launcher. This ship has a very specific role. I use it to flip sector control where it is contested & I I'd prefer someone other than the current owners to have control (e.g. prefer ARG to control Second Contact II rather than ANT).
I park at max heavy torpedo range & fire sufficient volleys to eliminate the admin module on each of their defence platforms. I use multiple launchers so the final volley can be launched before the first one hits & I can be well away before anyone even thinks of shooting at me. Often call such a ship the "Administrative Assistant".
The problem I see with this is that it works the other way around too. In my video you can see I'm using Scimitars with Spectre missiles. Spectre missiles are not even the strongest missile in X3, yet they are more powerful than X4 torpedoes ever could hope to be, doing 260.000 damage per hit. For reference, the PPC (the equivalent of plasma turrets on X4) does 11,340 damage per hit, not even 1/10 of a Spectre missile can do. A Torpedo in X4 does 17.246 damage and an Argon plasma turret does 2.420 per hit, the difference is still pretty high, but far more closer. A torpedo in X3 does 1.000.000 damage lol. Now, I'm using 30 Scimitars, each can fire 1 missile at the time, imagine if I could remove the guns and they could launch 6 at the same time each.
The problem with the ability to fit multiple launchers is that if you balance around it, then single missiles are too weak, and if you balance it around single, powerful missiles, then those powerful missiles become ridiculous when you can fit multiple launchers. Example, light smart missile does 657 damage, that it is too weak, but if you have a frigate with 4 launchers, now you are doing 2648 per salvo, that's basically a plasma hit, although you only have room for 25 rounds. A fighter with 4 launchers would only have room for 5 rounds.
If we buff the damage by 5 times, 3285 damage would be fine on its own, but with 4 launchers it is too much.