So, I saw missile spamming in a group fight the other day. They SERIOUSLY, need a tune down in the amount of ammo (or damage), given the fact that the chased target couldn't do crap and died in less than 2 minutes to firestalker spam. (I was one of the spammers, shame on me)
Make cannonball have around 12 missile, firestalker around 24, paralyzer around 24 sidewinders around 18 ammo.
Also, with this amount of missiles, LFs and HFs lose nearly any use in group fights given the fact that a spam of cannonballs will insta kill them. Think of a 5 vs 5 snub-ball, LFs and HFs will die in a matter of 2-3 minutes.
LF and HF do not instantly die to missiles, as some think. But sometimes they get hit (in crontrast to guns). They also do not get insta-ed when hit. Cannonballs are not nearly deadly enough. But LFs are not the ultimate troll-survivability machines any more and can be hurt. This part works.
Reducing the survivability of an outnumbered target that relies on full dodge is also a 100 % good thing. No one likes it when someone can run for 10 minutes before you finally drained the bots.
Generally, the system works well.
Missile spammers run out very fast.
They trade a short-lived advantage at hitting hull for -1 gun.
Tactical use of missiles allows for some longer use in a fight.
No further reduction of missile numbers is necessary for Cannonballs and Sidewinders, at least. I don't know about Firestalkers, though. Always found them a little weird, so I did not use them much.
Please keep in mind that the large number of missiles / fight at the moment is a bug. Every pvper who has a bit of a clue of how to do it launches with full 70 Cannonballs, etc. But that will be fixed.
I'd be behind the idea of cutting the ammo count like Pancakes said up there. If you want to look at it from a lore perspective too, I am guessing that missiles are not exactly the smallest things, you probably could not cram many onto a ship.
But anyways, yeah, missiles, they hurt a good deal, but I think they should run dry pretty fast. That way you can have very deadly burst damage but you can't really spam them around and you would have to pull out of a fight or have someone resupply you if you wanted to keep it up. Or force someone to really think about when to launch one.
Also yeah that is good, the ability to hit a dodging/running target with a missile... I mean about time that we had that. I really hated that before missiles could not hit a target unless you were flying right at it and he was flying right at you.
Currently, missiles are fine in 1 on 1 combat, but in something bigger, they are insanely effective.
If earlier one Pro can easily kill nearly infinite number of newbies, now he'll be simply firestalkered to death quickly enough.
So number>>skill in VHF combat, just like it were in capcombat in .86
There should be solution, for example energy-based CMs, so they will consume power instead of ammo(like flaks)
From my expirience with missiles in .87 my take on this is as follows:
The damage on missiles is nice; I have no problem with shield:hull ratios whatsoever.
Improved tracking on ammo weapons makes them reasonably effective in combat.
In my opinion the problem with missiles is their 1) Speed and 2) Refire
1) Having the ship speed added to the overall speed of missiles is good. Therefore I suggest nerfing the speed of the missiles to 2/3 or even 1/2.
2) Simply halve the refire of all missiles. Spamming becomes less effective, the dps is halved, aswell, and the other player has a reasonable amount of time to prepare for the next incoming missile.
Countering missiles relies heavily on reflexes and expirience - Predicting when a missile will be fired and knowing when to fire CD/CMs.
And, frankly, reflexes and expirience is not what I associate with the common discovery player. Therefore improving on this issue will fix the problem, imo.
Edit: I don't think missiles should have any kind of delay, it hinders gameplay in the same way lag did in .86.
You people know that you could just set the CM to "active" in your gun list and it will fire whenever a missile/torp/CD is aimed at you? ... Though that wastes CMs a bit, it also can ensure you do not get hit at times at which you couldn't hit a CM button fast enough. (imo ships should be able to carry more CMs, maybe 100 or so)
I feel like Cannonball missiles to a bit too much damage. The Sidewinders I tested felt alright though. Overall it's hard to tell, since I tested them in Conn where most fights don't include using BB, so it's probably both fine in the longer fights.
Overall I like how missiles are now, as far as I saw it. Ammocount is a bit questionable, I feel like the amount we have right now is alright: instead of cutting that down it'd be better to up the CM count, but not too high, of course.
Having something that doesn't solely rely on factors which made pvp fights in previous versions rather painful for some is quite nice, now even players who don't spend all day training PvP can at least do something against an enemy. No long can a single person wipe out a whole group of people easily without a scratch, but it is also not like one side doesn't have missiles. Missiles are the same for everyone, no matter what faction or ship they are flying.
I really like them as a new factor to pvp, something which should make fights a little faster.
But in the end we'll still have to see how it all turns out when the server is running in "normal" mode again and (hopefully) some more people are online and server load and lag increases.
Even with CM active you still get hit by missiles if they are fired when you are very close to the enemy. That's why i asked for the lock on timer/ delay because right now missiles are a no skill easy way to kill fighters/bombers.
current off-time player count: 20-30 // current peak time player count: 50-60
player count that it is balanced for : around 120-130 for peak times before 87
secondly:
the entire point of missiles is to allow pilots with lesser skills to score kills. the downside is a shorter mission time and higher maintenance costs due to ammo.
vanilla did that fairly well actually. i am not sure how many players the vanilla multiplayer allowed - but i think it was below 100. - so missiles had a fairly good tracking - they also did a HUGE amount of damage due to explosion damage vs. partially destructible ships - but when ran out of ammo, the ships efficiency was reduced greatly - even more if you consider that many missile based fighters use pulse guns as their support weapons.
now - missiles were changed because this community does not like being killed by a weapon that requires less skill, no matter the downside. the victim of a missile does not care if he was fired upon 70 times or 3 times. - he sees an opponent that "obviously (cause how could it be different)" has less "skill" than he has - and still beat him up. he does not care if the missile he died to cost 10k or 3 million.
missiles still cost more than guns - and shorten the mission time severely. - so they must have a balance vs. guns - and the natural balance is to allow the pilot to focus on other stuff than keeping the aim-point on the little red cross. hence - yea - missiles require less skill - that IS THE BLOODY POINT - and no - they do not require "no skill" cause if you fire them randomly your chances to ever defeat someone are zero. you still have to force your opponent into a flight pattern that suits you - and you have to time your shots - you also have to put your opponent into a state where he does not "twitch fire" a CD or so on you.
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