Jump to content

Welcome to the Forum!

The best place to exchange builds and ideas! Vote for the best ideas and suggestions here.

Join the Avorion Discord!

Connect with other passionate players and talk about the latest news.
Discord

DLC Avorion Into the Rift Out Now!

Now available on Steam!
Steam
  • 14

Missile weapon projectile overhaul


Xanatyr
 Share

Suggestion

Missile turret overhaul such that the projectiles launched are:

- fast, with some significant acceleration, potentially constant acceleration until their max range

- long(est) range

- can be intercepted like torpedoes via PDCs or direct fire

- smaller than torpedoes

- intended for long range damage application and for overwhelming PDCs

- ships should not be able to indefinitely outrun them, but carefully executed dodging near seeker missile terminal runs could cause a miss. The missiles would continue to seek as long as they had range to do so.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

14 answers to this suggestion

Recommended Posts

  • 0

The intercepting part would probably be hard to do and it would render the missiles a bit useless. Here is my take:

-Missiles should start slow and accelerate slowly towards higher speeds.
-All missiles are seeking, but seeking doesn't mean 100% accurate homing. Instead the rockets should turn like torpedoes and be outmaneuverable.
-Add slight buff to their shield piercing abilities so that we can have some alternatives to pulse cannons when it comes to punching through shields.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0

Missiles should definitely be overhauled, they are way too slow, and excessive missile spam seems to actually lag the game. In general there is an insane bias in this game toward hitscan weapons over weapons with a travel time, and missiles are probably the worst offender for not even reaching the target before a railgun has already pulverized it.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0

Missiles would need to be able to move insanely fast for some ships to not be able to outrun them.

23axtwjecbp51.png

So I don't think they will be possible to do. They would need to be like railgun fast.

Also missiles with the 'seeker' trait already continue to seek targets after they miss until they run out of range. The missiles in this game have a magic 360 degree view seeker head on them. 😄

  • Haha 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0
3 hours ago, Aetrion said:

Missiles should definitely be overhauled, they are way too slow, and excessive missile spam seems to actually lag the game. In general there is an insane bias in this game toward hitscan weapons over weapons with a travel time, and missiles are probably the worst offender for not even reaching the target before a railgun has already pulverized it.

I guess merging launcher turrets and torpedoes could be a solution to performance issue, meanwhile solving the cost/availability problem of torpedoes as well as speed problem of rocket/missile. A turret that launches what is currently called torpedo at a slow fire rate while maintaining the high damage/shield penetrating ability would be great.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0
On 10/11/2020 at 1:28 PM, TenguKnight said:

The intercepting part would probably be hard to do and it would render the missiles a bit useless. Here is my take:

-Missiles should start slow and accelerate slowly towards higher speeds.
-All missiles are seeking, but seeking doesn't mean 100% accurate homing. Instead the rockets should turn like torpedoes and be outmaneuverable.
-Add slight buff to their shield piercing abilities so that we can have some alternatives to pulse cannons when it comes to punching through shields.

 

Yeah, not sure on the difficulty to implement, but would be nice. PDCs acting as they are now - no overheat - does potentially render that useless. Not so much if there were some % chance to intercept - I have noted current missile terminal runs on some larger ships do weave as they get closer to the target. This could start earlier to help with the whole "PDCs just spam fire one direction".  

Instead of focusing on straight "range" for missiles, rolled values could focus on "flight-time", and "acceleration".

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0

Not sure when they changed it, but missiles don't always have the speed and range people think they do.

I was killing some pirates last night and I noticed while flying my ship around that missiles actually inherit the speed of the ship they are fired from. 🤔

So I decided to do a little testing with this to see just how fast I could fling missiles and how (if at all) this effected the range of the missiles.

My Explorer ship that I was using to test this had 2 launchers on the front of it. Right on the nose. I targeted a small asteroid from very far away and boosted up to max speed. My Explorer ship's top speed in afterburner is about 4,800m/s. I fired a volley of missiles out and the missiles slowly began to move out in front of my ship getting further and further away. I think I tried this the very first time I got a missile launcher in the game and I was able to out run the missiles. But this time it was clear that I couldn't, because I was going full speed when I fired the missiles. 😲

Just to be sure, I fired a volley while sitting still, then boosted to try to out run the missiles and I was easily able to do it.

Then I decided to see if the range of missiles was just based on flight time or distance from the point they were fired at. So I targeted another asteroid, got very far away from it boosted to full speed and fired a volley. Based on my sitting still test, it seems like missiles go about 1,000m/s on their own speed. So I figured that if I'm going over 4 times that speed, the missiles should get about 4 times the range. The range of my missile launchers says 27.26km so I decided to go out to 150km from the asteroid and boosted up to full speed. When I got to about 120km I fired a volley of missiles. I then slowed down and stopped before getting closer than 100km and watched my missiles fly off into the distance. After watching and waiting, I saw the impact of missiles and damage numbers coming out of the asteroid. There was not much left of it.

So missiles actually 'can' go faster than ships and 'can' have more range than torpedoes.

So many people think missiles are too slow and need an overhaul. I think people are just using missiles wrong. 😄

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0

@Vis I'd like to offer a suggestion on this...

 

They DO inherit speed but only until they're about to hit.

What I've noticed is missiles will move quickly as a result of my own movement, but once they get really close to their target they instantly drop down to their default speed.

 

At that point, the shots seem to miss a LOT as a lot of NPC ships casually fly at 1k/s+.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0

@Vis What you've essentially discovered is that missile launchers are best paired with old school dive bomber tactics.

Based on that information, I'd almost want to see a significant damage boost to the launcher, making them a high risk, high reward weapon and include the bit about inheriting the firing ship's speed to the weapon's description.

Or perhaps make launcher damage proportional to the projectile's speed up to a maximum amount of damage per shot.

I'm with @TenguKnight that the launcher likely needs a relatively high shield penetration rating to make the weapon worthwhile, particularly in the late game. 

If balanced correctly, launchers could be a weapon suited for fighting some of the larger, slower moving enemies (pirate motherships, pariah, wormhole guardian, enemy stations) where a strategy of boosting towards the enemy and unloading until the turrets overheat would be highly effective. Building a ship to optimize these bombing runs and executing the maneuver sounds like a lot of fun too.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0
On 11/18/2020 at 11:07 AM, Atomik said:

Overwhelming the PDCs, couldn't this be done with multiple launchers? My meager empire just finds torpedoes too damn expensive to use, so i have not tried mount, say, ten launchers on a ship.

I think you haven't made the right investment, i.e. a low-tier Noble Metal Mine mid-way between the Barrier and the edge of the galaxy in the same sector as an NPC station and a bunch of cargo fighters that continually sell to that station. I've got one of those things, and it alone has made me ninety-seven million credits just with default production speed and 3 fighters. So for me, torpedoes are easy to buy - and considering the cheapest are around 5,000 credits, the price of 'Petty' System Upgrades, I can get around 20-40 and spam them as I please.

But I've never really relied on torpedoes, mostly because of their unreliability and the hassle of a.) lining up a shot and b.) prayers that they will actually point in the direction of the target and not in a random direction.

Compared to a single broadside from one of my Konigsberg-class Light Cruisers, which can fire indefinitely, and also take out any pirate ship in one hit. 

Torpedoes are still worth the investment, though, especially if you're either feeling vindictive or if you want to kill enemies fast. Unshielded enemies in particular. 

They work best as a finishing weapon, launched at a ship which is low on HP and probably has no PDC's left.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0
On 7/8/2021 at 5:08 PM, eduty said:

@Vis What you've essentially discovered is that missile launchers are best paired with old school dive bomber tactics.

Based on that information, I'd almost want to see a significant damage boost to the launcher, making them a high risk, high reward weapon and include the bit about inheriting the firing ship's speed to the weapon's description.

Or perhaps make launcher damage proportional to the projectile's speed up to a maximum amount of damage per shot.

Yes, I would like to see them add bombs to the game that are kind of like the missiles, but more damage than missiles and they have no speed by them self. They only inherit the ship's speed, meaning you have to fly at your target very fast, drop the bombs, then turn away and let them go coasting into the target. Then we can have space bombers in the game, and it will be space bombers done in the right way. Looking at you 'MG-100 StarFortress' (worst ship ever and in the worst Star Wars movie ever)... I wish Disney would just die already. >_>

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0
1 hour ago, Vis said:

Looking at you 'MG-100 StarFortress' (worst ship ever and in the worst Star Wars movie ever)... I wish Disney would just die already. >_>

OMG, I know!  I watched the first 2 + the one about the Death Star but couldn't watch anymore.  I still haven't seen the 3rd or any of the rest.

Sorry, derailing the topic.  *ahem*

 

--------------------------

 

On topic, not directed to anyone specific, don't forget that by increasing their effectiveness against NPCs, you're also increasing their effectiveness against you.  Personally, I find it highly annoying to have something fired at me that is able to track and the only way to avoid it is by running around all the time.  I'm not sure what the "right" way is to make these better, so I'm not going to vote on this at this time.  We may want to start with small tweaks first, though. 😉  My Weapon RNG Wrangler mod, I increased their flight speed by a few factors, but haven't received any feedback on that change.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0
11 hours ago, FuryoftheStars said:

OMG, I know!  I watched the first 2 + the one about the Death Star but couldn't watch anymore.  I still haven't seen the 3rd or any of the rest.

Sorry, derailing the topic.  *ahem*

 

--------------------------

 

On topic, not directed to anyone specific, don't forget that by increasing their effectiveness against NPCs, you're also increasing their effectiveness against you.  Personally, I find it highly annoying to have something fired at me that is able to track and the only way to avoid it is by running around all the time.  I'm not sure what the "right" way is to make these better, so I'm not going to vote on this at this time.  We may want to start with small tweaks first, though. 😉  My Weapon RNG Wrangler mod, I increased their flight speed by a few factors, but haven't received any feedback on that change.

For the bombs, if you see the attack coming you can just move out of the way. Unlike missiles, bombs will never have any seeking. This also makes the flight path of the bomber very predictable so you can intercept any enemies trying to do a bombing run.
So there are some down sides to space bombing, but this method is still a billion times better than those shitty bombers in The Last Jedi. Who ever designed those things needs to be fired if they haven't been fired already. I also never saw the 3rd movie, I completely quit watching Star Wars movies after The Last Jedi. >_>

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0
16 minutes ago, Vis said:

For the bombs, if you see the attack coming you can just move out of the way. Unlike missiles, bombs will never have any seeking. This also makes the flight path of the bomber very predictable so you can intercept any enemies trying to do a bombing run.
So there are some down sides to space bombing, but this method is still a billion times better than those shitty bombers in The Last Jedi. Who ever designed those things needs to be fired if they haven't been fired already. I also never saw the 3rd movie, I completely quit watching Star Wars movies after The Last Jedi. >_>

Yeah, sorry, I wasn’t referring to the bomb idea when I was commenting on the seeking.  The bomb idea actually sounds kind of nice, though I don’t know how hard it’d be to program the AI to use em correctly.

 

Certainly a lot of design decisions from those movies people should have been fired for. I mean, who ever heard of energy beam weapons that arc in space?!  I stopped watching any more after Last Jedi, too. 😛

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
 Share

×
×
  • Create New...