Missile launchers at the moment basically vary between two different possibilities.
1. They're overpowered. This is when you're attacking unshielded enemies, where a single missile absolutely shreds external modules, and a homing missile is pretty much completely undodgeable. This makes them extremely powerful against small ships and fighters.
2. Far more often, they're completely useless. They're useless against shields, they're useless against point defense, and they cost you a weapon slot to get there.
I'd really like to see missiles be turned into a weapon meant largely to take down larger ships. Smaller ships and fighters should be able to dodge them via skillful flying; they shouldn't need a point defense to achieve this.
So with that in mind, I'd like to see missiles changed from traveling at a constant velocity, to accelerating constantly as they travel, with no speed limit. So you fire them and they start at the same velocity as your ship, and accelerate by, say, 600m/s/s. So after 1 seconds they're going 600m/s, after 2 seconds they're going 1200m/s, and so on.
Second, I'd like to see their perfect accuracy removed. They should fly somewhat irregularly, making active dodging very possible, the smaller the ship, the more possible it would be. A small ship should be able to dodge via skillful play.
This means that if a homing missile is dodged, it has to do a huge looping turn to come back around a second time. It means that ECM could be fairly effective against them for once, because the slower acceleration gives more time for players to react to them.
Larger ships, by contrast, would need to equip ECM or Point Defense, and given the high speed, even they wouldn't be fully effective.
Given the lower general accuracy, missile damage could then be ramped up substantially, enough to make them actually threatening to larger ships.
I think this would go a long way towards making missile-type weapons a viable choice in many types of combat.
1. They're overpowered. This is when you're attacking unshielded enemies, where a single missile absolutely shreds external modules, and a homing missile is pretty much completely undodgeable. This makes them extremely powerful against small ships and fighters.
2. Far more often, they're completely useless. They're useless against shields, they're useless against point defense, and they cost you a weapon slot to get there.
I'd really like to see missiles be turned into a weapon meant largely to take down larger ships. Smaller ships and fighters should be able to dodge them via skillful flying; they shouldn't need a point defense to achieve this.
So with that in mind, I'd like to see missiles changed from traveling at a constant velocity, to accelerating constantly as they travel, with no speed limit. So you fire them and they start at the same velocity as your ship, and accelerate by, say, 600m/s/s. So after 1 seconds they're going 600m/s, after 2 seconds they're going 1200m/s, and so on.
Second, I'd like to see their perfect accuracy removed. They should fly somewhat irregularly, making active dodging very possible, the smaller the ship, the more possible it would be. A small ship should be able to dodge via skillful play.
This means that if a homing missile is dodged, it has to do a huge looping turn to come back around a second time. It means that ECM could be fairly effective against them for once, because the slower acceleration gives more time for players to react to them.
Larger ships, by contrast, would need to equip ECM or Point Defense, and given the high speed, even they wouldn't be fully effective.
Given the lower general accuracy, missile damage could then be ramped up substantially, enough to make them actually threatening to larger ships.
I think this would go a long way towards making missile-type weapons a viable choice in many types of combat.