Missiles locking

[bjg]

If you fire missiles, and the target gets destroyed - missiles are gone. But if the target escapes - they get redirected. Both types of behavior could be justified (or challenged ), but why the inconsistency?

[Zaskow]

Just not touched I suppose. I prefer variant with separate tech and mod for redirecting missiles.

[sven]

If you fire missiles, and the target gets destroyed - missiles are gone. But if the target escapes - they get redirected. Both types of behavior could be justified (or challenged ), but why the inconsistency?

It's inconsistent because at one point, I was worried that missiles were proving ineffective for system defense, as the attacker could just warp out any ships that were targeted, and then close with whatever was left.

However, I'm not certain it was a good idea. Changing the rules around missile redirecting is easy -- and I think switching to a tech-unlocked redirect, as per MOO2, may be the right way to go. But, if you believe some other behavior might be better, please share your arguments here

[bjg]

Tech-unlocking redirect is fine. May be a feature that can be turned on/off on each mount, since you have that functionality.

[enpi]

mostly every rule MOO2 had, is excellent, so I am absolutely for a sis variant of MOO2s "dauntless guiding system".

[evil713]

I agree with tech unlocking, but make it a missile mod, like a gun mod, make it cost more power.

if it was a damage mod make it cost more munitions.

[faijeya]

I like adding DGS as a weapons mod.

However, that will make fighters even more useless and won't help much in the late game against ridiculously powerful defense primaries.

[Arioch]

The plan is to give fighters additional avoidance to help improve their survivability, in addition to other balance changes. Right now they're not very viable.

[faijeya]

It's a usual conundrum for space games.
Either fighters are useless, either they are imbalanced.
That's because they share the role with missiles (a fighter is a hopefully reusable missile) and they can be killed exactly the same way as a missile.
For fighters and missiles to be balanced, fighter defense should be different from missile defense.
But then we run into ship design limitations, as free space is scarce.
I don't think there's a way out of this at this stage.

[Arioch]

Fighters are actually a little bit easier to balance than missiles. Missiles attack once and are destroyed, but fighters ideally survive to make multiple attacks, so you can increase their survivability and overall effectiveness without necessarily making them one-shot-one-kill monsters.

Right now each fighter only makes one attack before having to return to the carrier to rearm, and any decent point defense will wipe out a whole squadron before it can fire, so even increasing fighter damage wouldn't help that much. The things that can be done to improve the situation are:

• Increase the number of fighters in a squadron (and decrease each fighter's damage, if necessary)
• Give fighters a "dodge"; a chance that a point defense hit will force the fighter to abort its attack and waste its ammunition rather than destroying it
• Give each fighter more ammunition so that it can make more than one attack before returning to the carrier to rearm

[evil713]

Moo2 if I remember gave base fighters four attacks, but were limited to pd weapons whereas they get standard size weapons and a single shot right now.

It is worth mentioning that there are still two fighter classes to complete, the heavy dual damage attack and the star fighter independent action fighter.

[faijeya]

so you can increase their survivability and overall effectiveness without necessarily making them one-shot-one-kill monsters.

That's not the problem.
The problem is that in the current paradigm either fighters are worse than missiles, either they are better than missiles, because they aren't different from missiles - they deal damage not instantly, they have to close in to deal the damage, they are finite.

There are three ways:
1) either they are different - let's say missiles are finite, but fighters are infinite, however to launch the full squadron again you have to wait for the previous to return; or let's say fighters do not have to close in that much, giving them PD weaponry with the same radius as ship's
2) either they complement each other - let's add all the carriers a missile rack and make the fighters follow missiles closely behind, fighters will hide behind the missile/torpedo screen and protect the missiles/torpedoes from antimissiles, if they are made better than PDs and aren't useless like now
3) either fighters are more versatile with different support modules on the carrier giving them this or that boost or ability

All these ways require new mechanics and are quite labor-intensive.