Missiles should be an entirely independent hardpoint system.

[aRJay]

....

Missiles are fundamentally an independent weapons system. They could be floating in empty space, activate, and function perfectly effectively. So while they might add some weight, they wouldn't take any power or distro drain, and because they're entirely independent of the ship, the models can literally just be attached to any point on the outside of the ship, requiring minimal or no modification to the existing ship models. This is especially true because drag isn't a factor, like it is with aircraft in the modern day.

This 20th century aircraft model of missiles really doesn’t fit in well with the ships in ED which are on the whole enormous in comparison.
Gaffer taping the missile permanently to the outside of the hull in areas that aren’t affected by any existing features such as heat vents and hard points is going to limit reloads just like existing torpedoes.

 

[CMDR D Noize]

Not particularly. Weight, maybe, but given these are entirely independent and external modules, there would logically be no major heat, power, or distro changes to these ships.

Content that is never used is pointless. Making that content into something that is actually useful, meaningful, and distinct, is an excellent way of taking that content and bringing it to prominence.

But players do use them and by that same token, I never use Frags, Rails or Plasma Accelerators as they're not my cup of tea.
Should I be allowed to glue a bunch of them of them to the outside of my ship with little or no negative effects?

 

[CMDR D Noize]

Or how about slapping an extra Shield Generator on the hull of my ship that effectively doubles my shield strength with no downside?

 

[Abysinth]

I have an entirely missile based FGS which is kind of fun, but expensive even with mats for synth'ing. It works, but could really do with escorts. I tried the same thing with a T10, good too but too expensive. I think the pods under the T10 should be special wpns points otherwise they are just there for the pretties

 

[Rat Catcher]

I have 5 racks of Pack Hounds (engineered high cap + various experimentals) on my Beluga - the third volley melts the ship and GPU concurrently

 

[Danieros]

Another point - while going for maximum speed of thrusters takes a lot of planning, I don't feel that you can reach the maximum weight of thrusters even if you try hard for it and G5 your thrusters which reduces the optimal mass and still end up as a gain.

I feel like making use of these torpedo/missle hardpoints while it won't hurt your distro much, it would allow you to make much heavier ships.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Much to the contrary, I think separate hardpoints is the ONLY way to make missiles an effective choice, for the reasons I outlined above. Of course, some ships would have more and some would have less, but for the most part, having a few extra missile hardpoints wouldn't be nearly as important as having an extra primary hardpoint, simply because primary weapons provide so much more damage in the long term, especially weapons without ammo limits.

Having missiles be based on separate hardpoints also fixes almost all the problems that were faced with missiles historically, because a big part of why they were so powerful was because you never knew what you had to prepare for. Preparing for an enemy without missiles is completely different to preparing for an enemy with missiles, and if you came up against someone you're not prepared for, you're likely to lose.

Separate hardpoints handily removes that step; EVERYONE has missiles, of whatever flavor they should choose, but also in extremely limited supply. This means EVERYONE needs to prepare for them, including point defense, ECM, etc, and thereby automatically capping their potential power. The net result is combat that is more complicated, but because everyone is on equal footing, no more imbalanced.

Yeah, sorry, i don't want my choice of how i outfit my ships removing.

 

[Iskariot]

No no no no no no and no to all of this.

For a start there’s a lot of players that do use missiles, I have several ships equipped with a variety of Seekers and Pack Hounds.
They’re a great secondary weapon for new players that are still learning the ropes of space combat and haven’t figured out the more advanced or specialised weapon load outs.

Pretty much all of these “new” missiles already exist in one form or another with the application of engineering but are insanely overpowered and with severely restricted ammo capacity.
Liz Ryder would become effectively redundant along with several options from a handful of other Engineers.

It would mean removing several Power Play weapons which I'm sure a lot of players would be none too happy about when all their time and hard work is removed from the game.
It would also require reworking every single ship in the game and taking time out the FDevs busy schedule to implement them and add the necessary specialised hard points (Military Optional Slots already annoy a lot of players as is) when people are already complaining that they haven't addressed other long standing issues that actually effect gameplay.

It also fundamentally misses/ignores the concept of "trade-offs" as do the repeated requests for "Universal Limpet Modules" and "Integrated Flight Assist Computers".
You can't (shouldn't) have everything and that's something I love about the design of this game, you have to think about your ship design and carefully consider your options and the pros & cons that come with them.

And then there's the added power consumption, heat generation & extra mass that would be required to accommodate these new specialised hard points on top of the load outs players have already built.

If anything, some new Missile variations/Engineering options would be more than welcomed but not at the expense of content we already have.

No worries. It won't happen anyway. FDev is not going to invest even a second of their time in this.
There are much more important points of improvement that also have not been addressed ever since they got mentioned years ago.

 

[CMDR D Noize]

No worries. It won't happen anyway. FDev is not going to invest even a second of their time in this.
There are much more important points of improvement that also have not been addressed ever since they got mentioned years ago.

And that was exactly one of my points

 

[DemiserofD]

Or how about slapping an extra Shield Generator on the hull of my ship that effectively doubles my shield strength with no downside?

...You mean engineered shield boosters? Because that pretty much already exists.

Of course, shield boosters are made for prolonged use, require significant power, and need to interface with your other internals to properly function, so it wouldn't make any sense to attach them just anywhere. You'd attach them where they can access internal power and interface with your other systems; namely, on utility ports.

Missiles, by contrast, are made for extremely short-term use and function independently, so don't require any connection to your other internals and can be slapped on just about anywhere.

 

[DemiserofD]

Yeah, sorry, i don't want my choice of how i outfit my ships removing.

Actually, your list of choices would increase significantly! You'd have the entirety of current well-balanced weapons, AND the ability to choose between a variety of missile types!

If what you want is choice, this sounds like a win-win to me!

 

[DemiserofD]

This 20th century aircraft model of missiles really doesn’t fit in well with the ships in ED which are on the whole enormous in comparison.
Gaffer taping the missile permanently to the outside of the hull in areas that aren’t affected by any existing features such as heat vents and hard points is going to limit reloads just like existing torpedoes.

It may on some ships, which obviously wouldn't have as many missile ports as others. Other ships might be less effected and could have more. Fortuitously, this could coincide largely with which ships are currently powerful and which ships are currently weak. FDL might get 1-2 missile points, Mamba might get 2-3, Dropship might get 5-6.

 

[DemiserofD]

Another point - while going for maximum speed of thrusters takes a lot of planning, I don't feel that you can reach the maximum weight of thrusters even if you try hard for it and G5 your thrusters which reduces the optimal mass and still end up as a gain.

I feel like making use of these torpedo/missle hardpoints while it won't hurt your distro much, it would allow you to make much heavier ships.

That is true. But most builds aren't so massively influenced by weight that a few tons will make more than 1-2 speed difference either way. Not a build killer, by any means.

Racing ships wouldn't have any missiles, but that's no real surprise.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Actually, your list of choices would increase significantly! You'd have the entirety of current well-balanced weapons, AND the ability to choose between a variety of missile types!

If what you want is choice, this sounds like a win-win to me!

Ah, no. Because you probably are not counting the part where i said i don't want an increase in overall firepower. So for every missile slot added to a ship an equvalent hardpoint would be removed.

Otherwise what you are proposing is straight up power creep, and we've had more than enough of that.

You know what FD's response to implementing your suggestion would be? Yup, more bullet spongey NPCs. All that extra firepower would simply go towards taking down more shields and more hull.

 

[DemiserofD]

Ah, no. Because you probably are not counting the part where i said i don't want an increase in overall firepower. So for every missile slot added to a ship an equvalent hardpoint would be removed.

Otherwise what you are proposing is straight up power creep, and we've had more than enough of that.

You know what FD's response to implementing your suggestion would be? Yup, more bullet spongey NPCs. All that extra firepower would simply go towards taking down more shields and more hull.

Power has already crept, with engineering providing significantly more in the way of defenses than offense, most notably with shield boosters. When Engineering was released, ships gained around 70% DPS, but around 500% durability. This would only be moderating that change, and in fact REVERSING some of the powercreep we've already experienced.

At no point in my suggestion did I imply or suggest that shield values should be buffed to compensate, so using that as a reason for this change not to happen doesn't make any sense. If they did that, that would obviously be wrong, but that's an entirely separate change that has nothing to do with this.

 

[CMDR D Noize]

...You mean engineered shield boosters? Because that pretty much already exists.

Of course, shield boosters are made for prolonged use, require significant power, and need to interface with your other internals to properly function, so it wouldn't make any sense to attach them just anywhere. You'd attach them where they can access internal power and interface with your other systems; namely, on utility ports.

Missiles, by contrast, are made for extremely short-term use and function independently, so don't require any connection to your other internals and can be slapped on just about anywhere.

Nah I straight up mean a weightless, non-power consuming, zero heat generating extra shield generator on the same terms as your proposed magical missiles.

Or

If FDev did choose to implement these magical missiles that have next to no detrimental effect of ship builds then I want to be able to cover every last spare inch of my Hull with Point Defence modules to counteract them (can you sense the sarcasm yet? ).

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Power has already crept,

Exactly, and its crept more than enough already. FD's response to that power creep was to make ships in CZ stupid bullet sponges.

At no point in my suggestion did I imply or suggest that shield values should be buffed to compensate,

I didn't say you suggested that. I'm saying, based on history, it would be FD's way of countering the increased firepower.

Another point i just thought of, it would basically make using missiles mandatory. Don't use them, you're not getting the full DPS of your ship. And after FD buff the defenses on ships, you're going to need that extra DPS.

 

[DemiserofD]

Nah I straight up mean a weightless, non-power consuming, zero heat generating extra shield generator on the same terms as your proposed magical missiles.

Or

If FDev did choose to implement these magical missiles that have next to no detrimental effect of ship builds then I want to be able to cover every last spare inch of my Hull with Point Defence modules to counteract them (can you sense the sarcasm yet? ).

Oh yes, I sense it. Doesn't make any sense, but I sense it!

The entire point of the suggestion is that you'd need to sacrifice some small part of your current "stack as many shield boosters as can possibly fit" utility loadout in exchange for missile defense. This means you actually need to think about it, rather than the current case where you use one of a tiny pool of weapons, and ignore missile defenses entirely.

So yes, if you want to sacrifice some of your shield boosters for point defense or ECM(which would be much more useful because there are less total missiles flying), then the suggestion is working exactly as intended!

 

[CMDR D Noize]

Doesn't make any sense

Much like this entire thread

 

[Vedmo]

So if someone snipes these external missile modules on your ship they blow up, chain react, and blow you to a thousand little bits, right?

If so, I'm on board. Throw a nuke in there too for good measure.