• Synergy of loadouts - current balance changes are designed to let fighters deliver a lot more damage than they could in 4.86, so that we can make fights shorter. Most possible shotgun loadouts have been considered and ok'ed for now, that said if a particular loadout is too OP (in that it outclasses everything else), it should get looked at.
  
• Defence strats - dodging works against guns, not that much against missiles. I want well placed CMs to be the defence against missile users just as good dodging defends against guns. Take note that CM should not be a foolproof defence either, it should be fired at a specific time to allow a skill curve to form. Reports on CM effectiveness and ideas on how to improve them without making them a foolproof defence will be considered.
  
• Missile damage against components - specifically how many missiles does it take for an opponent to start losing guns in a typical fight, how many should it take. Now that missiles actually do damage, I guess this will start happening again so the discussion on whether this is desired or not (and if it is then to what extent) is open.
  

• One launcher per ship limit - this is done because due to the simplistic way freelancer handles missiles I am fairly convinced that it is impossible to balance missiles in such a way that they are useful, but also are not better/worse than guns. An additional (if small) problem is that of ammo limits, and that they are shared between launchers, and there is nothing we can do about this at this time. But a bigger problem is the fact that if you were able to mount 2 CBs at the moment rather than 1, you'd be able to instakill people so they'd have to be reduced in damage... at which point it would be useless to mount less than 2 and so on until we reach the point where they are just stupid. So they will remain as a support weapon of choice, and guns will always be the main battle weapon, sorry for ruining your dreams of missile boats.
  
• Returning them back to 4.86 balance - kind of obvious why not, but in case it isn't let me just say that having missiles that nobody uses (other than 3 noobs on the server who didn't yet realise that they were useless in 4.86, and will likely try to convince me otherwise anyway) is not a nice thing.
  

• Refire delay increase for all launchers to reduce spamminess.
  
• Countermeasures redesigned for tactical use (infocards may still be out of date).
  
• Ammo counts reduced slightly.
  

• Muzzle velocity for all missiles removed (note: they will still retain the current ship speed upon launch), small motor delay introduced (may be buggy, needs testing on server), missile motor acceleration increased in varying amounts to preserve missile top speed. Note that this is an important change, as it changes drastically the way missiles perform upon launch (slow to start instead of starting at mid speed, etc.).
  
• Countermeasures effectiveness slightly reduced to account for the increased response time.
  
• Cannonballs now have a larger explosion radius as well as a slight impulse effect for anti slide tactics.
  
• Catapult missile introduced (non seeking, decent ammo capacity, middle of the line damage)
  

• Missile tracking cones and max angular velocity slightly decreased.
  
• Countermeasures ammo limit largely increased.
  
• Fortress CM range and refire rate slight increase.
  

(09-19-2013, 12:14 PM)Kazinsal Wrote: Question.

Any chance of fighter torpedoes becoming, well, useful?

(09-19-2013, 12:34 PM)Jack_Henderson Wrote: If missiles (except the anti shield missiles) did good hull damage, but were not very useful against shield, you'd get the Hellfire tradeoff: "you need guns/mines to down shields => then you can missile the hull".

(09-19-2013, 12:34 PM)Jack_Henderson Wrote: Active Counter: CMs do work already if you drop them manually. It's however very difficult because of the missile spamminess (especially the insane refire of Firestalkers!). If missiles refire more slowly, CMing them with skill and evasive turns would already work. But CMing 5 incoming missiles via well-timed CMs and maneuvers at the same time ofc cannot work.

(09-19-2013, 12:40 PM)kikatsu Wrote: I want to throw the idea out that missiles should certainly keep their high damage and ability to hit, but I would advise lowering their refire rate (as you have mentioned) and reducing their ammo counts significantly.

If a cannonball launcher only held , say 12 shots (maybe tracking missiles hold 20-24.... paralyzer about the same), you can use those very sparingly to finish off fighters and you would not be able to spam them. Rule and mechanic wise, people can leave combat to restock their launchers, and it provides another exchange... high burst damage, very low stamina. You let a guy get away in combat, he comes back fully repaired, but now their is another risk of him suddenly being able to throw more burst damage around.... if he can't escape, he is down one gun in short order if he is bad with his missile usage.

(09-19-2013, 01:02 PM)Trogdor Wrote: Were the tracking improvements made to fighter missiles also given to cap missile turrets?

(09-19-2013, 01:35 PM)belarusich Wrote: About gun hardpoints:

May be create additional hardpoint for missile only at each ship somewhere in middle of it, so ship will look symmetric

e.g. shield hardpoint on eagle - replace with missile hardpoint, hide shield at the bottom of ship like on Falcon

You did like that with Phantom