Missile Defence for Station Turrets still doesn't work

[Scoob]

Hey all,

As per title really. Setting station (non-missile) turrets to "Missile Defence" does not work. The turrets stop shooting entirely when this mode is set.

Perhaps the AI doesn't use missiles much, but that's not really an excuse. When my Defence Platforms ARE engaged by missile-using enemies, they take a LOT of damage.

If you use certain mods, which greatly increases the use of missiles - which is GREAT btw - this becomes a serious issue. Missile beats Station all the time, as they never try to shoot them down. I'd suggest that a default setting for a Station's M-Class Turrets be "Shoot Missiles First"... that actually works of course lol.

[dudu200508]

'Missile Defense' refers to making the relevant turrets attempt to intercept missiles instead of using missiles for attack

I wrong, the turret not intercepting missiles is another issue
I am not sure about this, I am not even sure if there is a mechanism to intercept missiles in the absence of players.

[Targ Collective]

Stations ignoring missiles is I think deliberate to make the player using missiles against defence platforms winnable. Defence platforms have enough potential turrets that no missiles could get through, which on Xenon platforms would make missiles completely useless. Terrans in particular are missile dependent. If stations start shooting missiles down then we need a missile that will get through station defences by dealing high damage, having high hp or immunity to point defences, and it will need to be fast to take less damage in transit.

So why not use it on ships?

NGL, the game needs a line of missiles that are designed just for stations - high damage and speed and main-battery grade range, and turrets often can't track most of them, but weak against shields. Stations don't have shields, see?

[LameFox]

I doubt it's intentional if the setting is still present. Removing it from the list would be a much more reasonable way to intentionally forbid missile defence on stations than allowing the behaviour to be selected, but breaking it...

[moako]

Stations ignoring missiles is I think deliberate to make the player using missiles against defence platforms winnable. Defence platforms have enough potential turrets that no missiles could get through, which on Xenon platforms would make missiles completely useless. Terrans in particular are missile dependent. If stations start shooting missiles down then we need a missile that will get through station defences by dealing high damage, having high hp or immunity to point defences, and it will need to be fast to take less damage in transit.

So why not use it on ships?

NGL, the game needs a line of missiles that are designed just for stations - high damage and speed and main-battery grade range, and turrets often can't track most of them, but weak against shields. Stations don't have shields, see?

Especially the Terrans are NOT missile dependent. The Asgard and his main weapon deals easily with a station and his weapon plattforms. This applys also for a Xenon station.

X-Universe needs a better defense against missiles and torpedos for stations and ships.

Missile and torpedos are too similiar. Torpedos should have a much higher explosive rate and be relatively slow, detectable and better protected(with a shield). So only with a high amount of torpedos a success against station/ship would be possible. But such a impact would also be devastating. A big torpedos should have the half impact of the Asgard main weapon and the small torpedos one eighth of the Asgard main weapon. Of course only few of the M ships class should be able to use small torpedos and there load cabability should be minimal. Only capital ships with their main weapons battery should be able to use big torpedos. For each fraction the implementation should be done a little different. Maybe the Terrans don't need torpedos. There Asgard ships and other weapons of their own are much more efficent.

For a L-missile-turret it should only be allowed to load big missiles and for a M-missile-turret it should only be allowed to load small missiles.
It makes no sense that a L-missile-turret has a load volume of 100 missiles. A big turret is necessary due to the bigger volume of the missile itself.
The load volume for missile should depend on the ship load capacity.

[Scoob]

If the game presents an option saying "Missile Defence" I expect it to prioritise Missiles. It doesn't. It's broken. The turrets turn off entirely, doing nothing. The setting is there, but broken.

Now, sure, in a 100% vanilla game, missile use seems pretty rare. Though I've been given a hard time by missile-wielding Pirates many a time - they just don't generally attack my stations with missiles. They should, it'd be easy mode for them lol. When you use mods that make missile usage more widely used though, then the broken station Missile Defence turret setting is glaringly obvious.

More control over station turrets is something that many of us have wanted for a while. With the number of L and M-Class Turrets each Defence Module holds, plus the regular modules that have M-Class Turrets, and the shear number of modules in total a station might have, I can see how this might be a very busy UI element to control all of it. However, some way to say "All L-Class Turrets: Shoot Capital Ships first", "All M-Class Turrets: Shoot Missiles First" would be great. We have a separate option for a Stations missile firing Turrets that, I feel, is largely wasted as vanilla missile use under AI control is rubbish. Far far too short a firing range. Being able to go into more detail, something like "All ARG M-Class Beam Turrets: shoot ONLY missiles" would be great, but perhaps a bit too much.

Thought: there's a Missile Defence option for Drones too on Drone Carrying ships - Frigates like the Osprey for example - however, that's never worked either. If a Station deployed Drones to take out heavier, slower-moving missiles and torpedoes, that'd work too.

Bottom line though, while improvements to Station Turret control would be very welcome, making what we currently have available work should be a priority. It does surprise me that so few people notice the broken Missile Defence turret setting for stations... "Shoot Missiles First" has become the default Turret command for me on ships. Certainly for M-Class Turrets. I then override L-Class to Shoot Capitals either first or exclusively, depending on the capabilities of the weapon.

[Targ Collective]

Longrange missiles on stations are available - Heavy Dumbfires are the missile screen I use. Terran L turrets use Bolt, Beam or Pulse as ammoless weapons and are outclassed by any Plasma weapons leaving missiles as their only option for Plasma-grade damage; I was using turret sizes as my basis of comparison. Comparing hulls will always lean into the strengths of the faction, even if as with Teladi low cost is that strength.