Went home for lunch and was playing a bit of a new hard human 99 stars game. Captured a Yoral heavy cruiser with a couple of light cruisers and was gleefully refitting that bad boy into two fusion reactors and a pile of turbolasers when it hit me.... This ship was trivial to deal with, that's why I'm refitting it. Covered in missiles, heavy shields, and it was a joke to swat them all down and board the thing. Our people just figured out what shields are! If the Yoral had equipped even one decent direct fire weapon they would be picking over the corpses of OUR ships, not the other way around.

Thinking back over the course of the entire previous game (normal human 99 stars), missiles were a joke the whole time. I was disappointed when I saw that the battleship had two such slots required. I can't think of a point in the game where my enemies missile weapons even presented a speed bump, and the hardest fights I had were VS marauder battlecruisers armed with railguns.

Missiles are too easy to shoot down, and they are the only weapons to stop firing during an engagement without taking a lick of damage. The ease of shooting them down is only compounded by their speed; the first round of an engagement will usually have a lack of reachable targets, but those missiles are kind enough to fly on up and present target practice to the rest of the fleet. Two rounds of missile swatting and most of the enemy fleet is just a shooting gallery.

This current game, even without the accuracy mod, I'm getting 80% to strike with regular lasers and every hit is a kill. Previous game I remember routinely seeing >100% hit rates with non-defense weapons.


I think missiles either need more ammunition by default, or to be more difficult to shoot down (particularly with non-defensive weapons), or even both. Maybe some techs to boost missile evasion/defenses as a direct counter to weapons getting boosted accuracy? Shields for missiles? Missiles bypass shields?

Hell, those light cruisers of mine covered almost as much ground in one turn as the missiles do; maybe they should be faster too.

TL;DR Missiles feel weak and might need some buffs.

I don't think the problem you're seeing (and I see too) is necessarily with the strength of missiles. I think it's more to do with the AI's propensity to equip missiles and nothing else. So all you have to do is ride out the missile attack and then the AI must retreat because it's out of ammunition.

I do notice that even my ships with extra magazines are running out of missiles in just a few turns, which seems less than it was before.

In most previous builds an all-missile ship was the way to go, so it's fine with me if beam weapons are getting the upper hand for a bit. Every time there's a change in mechanics or weapon power, it takes a while for the AI to catch up.

Agreed with topicstarter.

Missiles are easy weapon to counter. At some point AI cruisers whole filled with missiles are joke. Some mods specific for missiles are required.

I'd certainly agree that non Point defence weapons ought to have a hard time hitting missiles and maybe fighters.

On the other hand I'd prefer that PD weapons didn't have ther ability to shoot at ships or planets

PLEASE do not make point defense weapons mono-purpose; Any weapon that's 'shoots small stuff only' is REALLY boring. I'd be fine with reducing the effectiveness of non-PD weapons against projectiles though; right now one could argue they are too effective.

The core problem with missiles/torpedoes (and fighters for that matter) is the classic issue with any games that has intercept-able projectiles; if the enemy isn't prepared the missiles are awesome, if the enemy IS prepared the missiles get shot down with no effect. And I think the original poster is right in that the second case is FAR more common than the first case in the game right now.

Right it does seem like beams get better and better at shooting down missiles and missiles don't really get faster, tougher or better at evasion as their tech goes up; it seems like only damage improves. I'd think that higher tech missiles would improve in all of areas, and allowing some sort of shield penetration or other weapon enhancements like beams do would be helpful.

I also agree that more than two shots by default might make sense.

-Will

I would say missile mods yes, changing missiles or pd no.

Missiles are one of the few things that have no mods and except for damage are not truly upgradable or adaptable.

Giving them things like a sprint mode, or a decoy package they can deploy infront of themselves before hitting pd range should be on the table.