Weighing in on how this thread went.
You do know how to fly FA off, right? Maintaining your speed at an acceptable level while reverskiing is not exactly rocket science. Literally everything else you're talking about is irrelevant. Yes, you absolutely need to keep your modules protected when you're facing missile fire, that's why it's important to keep your PDT facing towards the threat, and to know where on your ship they are located.
I don't think Barnard is the inexperienced one here when it comes to FA off... I doubt that there's ANY PvP ship outside of like a cope viper can go remotely fast enough to reverse on a seeker.
Absolutely. In fact, everything I've seen here indicates to me that you don't actually have any experience with what you're talking about.
This doesn't deserve a response.
Uh, yeah? This isn't like other types of weapons; the missiles have a fixed velocity. That means they're moving towards you at an even more glacial 170m/s, giving your PDT roughly 4x the normal amount of time to deal with them.
Missiles move at 625 m/s for seekers and 750 for dumbfires. Your numbers are wrong. Even if reversing on them at the max an FDL can go in reverse (Some like 300-400ish), thats nowhere near enough.
If you seriously think that PDT can't deal with them at that speed, I'm not really sure what to tell you.
If you seriously think that they move at that speed, I'm not really sure what to tell you.
A man's got to know his own limitations.
Ironic.
That overload bug should definitely be fixed. Using it as an example of why missiles are overpowered doesn't sail, however; it's just showing that they're bugged and some players like to use exploits, but that doesn't say anything about how they're supposed to be.
But it says how they are, and its not in a player's power to fix...
Now, even with that build, you're still looking at a mere 264 missiles. That's 120 seconds of firing, and about 11k total damage, 66% of which is explosive(assuming what you said about it being added rather than converted is true). That means that a prismatic FDL would only need to double bank about once and the attacking player would run out of ammo before even breaking their shields, even IF 100% of missiles make contact. Premiums, of course, push this over the breaking point, but again, you're relying on 100% of your missiles making contact and synthesis to achieve what other builds can do by default.
Except other builds require skill. This only requires grind and brain dead flight patterns.
A point defense turret would only need to take out a mere 10% of incoming missiles to be more effective than a shield booster in this scenario, and I think we both know a properly-oriented PDT is going to take out far more than that. In reality you're looking at taking out more like 50% of incoming missiles, and gradually growing exponentially closer to 100% depending on how well the player flies and the density of the missiles.
Except in a hull tank you assume NONE hit because PDTs are inherently more vulnerable than a shield booster. Also, reversing on missiles isn't "flying well". It's flying braindead to counter braindead.
In other words, the build in question, in the current horizons build, is absolutely not a threat to shield tanks, even to a ship 100% built without missile defenses. This means that for most players, it's not worth sacrificing anything to become particularly more resistant to missiles, and missiles might as well not exist.
Because its a 0 skill weapon that does commensurately limited damage. I don't fully understand what you think missiles should be other than "haha seeking auto tracking weapon to kill anything that moves regardless of shields and hull that takes 0 skill and effort to use."
But that changes in Odyssey. Now we're at the point where damage is actually a serious threat, one that players must account for or they'll probably die. You can't survive on dodging and banks anymore.
"You can't survive on dodging" doesn't that counter your entire argument that you can evade them if you fly well and that it takes skill to evade? Also that means that No Skill weapon can outdo skilled evasion which is, flatly put, RIDICULOUS!!!! Effort and skill should ALWAYS be better than no effort no skill.
But with even a few PDTs, you can more than adequately deal with a significant portion of incoming missiles, but at the cost of lower shield total.
Knowing full well that PDTs are both unreliable, niche, and barely useful.
In other words, the higher damage of missiles has actually made them relevant for once, and weakened the shield meta for the first time as well. Both good things.
Its not weakening the shield meta so much as DELETING ALL HULL TANKS. It STRENGTHENS the shield meta. Your logic is completely nonexistant!! Missile damage buff is applied INDISCRIMINATELY to both shields AND hull.
As far as hull tanks are concerned, I've never said that hull tanks are good. In fact, I've said the exact opposite. But a hull tank with 2-4 point defense at least has a chance of shooting down all the missiles coming after him, not to mention being able to use Silent Running to break target lock and slow down the rate of incoming missiles.
Why do you use
4 point defense instead of heat sinks or boosters to help your biweave stay up a bit more. It doesn't help that hull tank modules are IMMEDIATELY VULNERABLE, have effectively 1/3 the hp pool of a shield tank, and are vulnerable to corrosion and scramble spectrum. You say that it hurts shield tanks, but in reality this buff hurts hull tanks EVEN MORE than shield tanks.
That still doesn't make them good, but that wasn't what was under debate; all I've ever said is that a ship with more point defense is going to shoot down more missiles than a ship with less point defense, the opposite of which is what was claimed earlier in the thread.
But it doesn't make a missile buff justified.
Please gain EXPERIENCE with the thing you wish to comment on BEFORE saying that it is healthy or unhealthy for it. Seekers are actively UNHEALTHY for PvP and making them viable is a NEGATIVE change.
If the target doesn't use countermeasures, yes. Hence the rock paper scissor style of gameplay and the reduced build variety, which was the original reason for the ban.
That doesn't make sense if paper and scissors take skill but rock is just easy to use.
Well yes, it's boring, that's actually what I said. But no, the low amount of skill they require is irrelevant,
In PvP like you suggested, it really sort of is.
Which have a massive damage penalty which you aren't mentioning
Which are balanced by chaff and a damage cut.
and chaff don't require much skill either.
Which exists to balance gimbals
Seekers turn the fight into "if you don't have the proper countermeasures, you've already lost, otherwise you've already won"
Except countermeasures don't really work. PD is overwhelmed by numbers and packhounds, and ECM is a useless button to press once every 10 seconds which is nowhere near what missiles fire in increments of
(unless you're taking extremes like with missile only builds, but that's actually another issue), but turrets and gimbals don't.
Because you can miss with gimbals and turrets. If you take turrets to a PvP fight you've lost. If you take gimbals to a PvP fight you need to work harder in order to overcome the dps cut.
Generally speaking, what makes PvP interesting isn't how difficult a ship or a weapon is to use, it's the build variety,
And encouraging no skill builds doesn't encourage variety. Buffing seekers means instead of PA meta its packhound meta.
not always knowing what's coming, being able to adapt midfight,
Adapt to a goddamn tracking unavoidable missile that's only moderately effective "counter" is ONLY ACCESSIBLE FROM THE OUTFITTING SCREEN. This point is so utterly ridiculous that I'm not sure what you're even trying to make of it.
etc. So again, seekers poor balance is a consequence of their poor design, both in PvP and PvE.
So you should buff them???? No. You shouldn't increase the power of no skill weapons.
Also pack hounds are an aberration and people shouldn't mention them to prove any point.
They exist and are very common, I don't understand what you mean by "aberration" when the majority representation of seekers in PvP is packhounds.
I don't want to be slinging mud here, but from my understanding, you're not very experienced in PvP, and as such your value judgements in weapons and builds are off compared to someone such as Sucette, Barnard, or others with actual experience with these.
Seekers?
That have arming time and distance?
Not a very long one mind you.
If you said dumbfires, then maybe... I managed to kill Anacondas that were using 4x PDT by firing those dumbfires close enough that they were resetting my own FSD (i had a grom bomb among those dumbfires). But that's not as easy to do versus a PVP player that knows how to fly its ship and avoids the head-ons that could give the opponent the chance to slip in not only a RAM, but also a load of dumbfires
Dumbfires require skill to use and can equally be evaded with skill, so buffing those a bit makes sense, though the fact they can take stuff like Drag, Penetrator, and Overload makes them decent in terms of use on small ships.
Back to Seekers: any ship with 2x PDT will be able to kill twice as many seekers incoming.
Not to mention it's enough to cycle silent run to break your seekers targeting
Seekers don't have a long time to lock. It's not like Torpedoes which take some 15 seconds to lock on with.
- which they can do at any time since they dont have shields to lose.
And inherently gain immense weakness to said missiles.
They can also pack an AFMU and keep the MRP fully repaired plus keeping repaired whatever hardpoint you might managed to damage (MRP can be repaired under fire, they dont get disabled while being repaired)
Said AFMU and MRP are less effective against missiles/protecting outer modules than against railguns, and are generally ineffectual defenses against missiles/explosives
No, the bane of the hulltanks are not the missiles.
The superpen Rails are.
Rails are dunked on by mirrorball, 2 mrps, and the fact that they take skill to use which is more than can be said for seekers. Rails generally target internals which means MRP effectiveness is greatly increased, coupled with high thermal resist, while explosive resists generally take more hrp fenagling to get to similarly high amounts as a mirrored hull thermal resist.
You dont even need to target modules - just to remember the general position of the PP in that specific hull and fire in that area. Granted it will take damage and PP cannot be repaired by AFMU
Well you need to hit for it to be useful and you need to aim. You don't need to do that for seekers.
