Seeing a lot of reports that the missiles currently feel underpowered (v1.1.1). Does everyone share this opinion? If so, I'll see about increasing the effects of the segments.

Originally posted by syy1125:

Seeing a lot of reports that the missiles currently feel underpowered (v1.1.1). Does everyone share this opinion? If so, I'll see about increasing the effects of the segments.

i think the best is to make no downside but the effect are reduced significantly. so it wont be complicated

I feel like its far too easy to reach the point where the payload module is just wasting missile parts, because you've already reached the point where you one-shot any component or drain all the energy from every system within 16m of the impact point, because we can't modify the affect area of the missiles.

If payloads also increased the affect area, or they were proportional to the final damage modifier maybe, or if we got a "Burst" module to increase the blast radius (maybe at the cost of damage, so you can spread out the blast more but it will do less to each point in the blast area as a consequence) this would resolve a lot of that issue.

This is especially a problem with how much the missiles cost; you could destroy far more tiles with, say, 20 4-part missiles than 1 80-part missile focused on payload and payload only, even assuming the target has absolutely no point defense or shields to defend against the missile, because that 80-part missile will hit (i don't remember the blast radius off the top of my head, so assume 4m) about 48-ish tiles (pi * 4^2), pi rounded to 3 for simplicity, for an absolutely RIDICULOUS amount of damage, of which about 99% will be wasted. meanwhile, those 20 4-part missiles can hit about the same number, EACH, for far less damage, but even they can destroy internals easily, and 2 or 3 close together can destroy armor, so for the same cost you can either annihilate a small section of armor or internals, or you can hammer through that same armor AND damage internals further in, if they all follow approximately the same path.

The same applies to EMP missiles, except even the base missiles can deplete just about all the power from any component in their blast radius, so there isn't much of a point to increasing their payload except to counter a decrease.

Originally posted by JC12231:

I feel like its far too easy to reach the point where the payload module is just wasting missile parts, because you've already reached the point where you one-shot any component or drain all the energy from every system within 16m of the impact point, because we can't modify the affect area of the missiles.

If payloads also increased the affect area, or they were proportional to the final damage modifier maybe, or if we got a "Burst" module to increase the blast radius (maybe at the cost of damage, so you can spread out the blast more but it will do less to each point in the blast area as a consequence) this would resolve a lot of that issue.

This is especially a problem with how much the missiles cost; you could destroy far more tiles with, say, 20 4-part missiles than 1 80-part missile focused on payload and payload only, even assuming the target has absolutely no point defense or shields to defend against the missile, because that 80-part missile will hit (i don't remember the blast radius off the top of my head, so assume 4m) about 48-ish tiles (pi * 4^2), pi rounded to 3 for simplicity, for an absolutely RIDICULOUS amount of damage, of which about 99% will be wasted. meanwhile, those 20 4-part missiles can hit about the same number, EACH, for far less damage, but even they can destroy internals easily, and 2 or 3 close together can destroy armor, so for the same cost you can either annihilate a small section of armor or internals, or you can hammer through that same armor AND damage internals further in, if they all follow approximately the same path.

The same applies to EMP missiles, except even the base missiles can deplete just about all the power from any component in their blast radius, so there isn't much of a point to increasing their payload except to counter a decrease.

Yes, the HE explosion radius is indeed 4m. In the recent balance update I did make it so that payload module slightly increases the explosion radius. I'll continue to play with the numbers a bit more to see what feels right.

Something that specifically upgrades the explosion radius might be interesting... I'll look into it.

Thanks for your feedback!

I’m obsessed with nuclear missiles, so I’d be more than happy to help mod some in. I think a good balance can be made by being ‘realistic’ about nukes, with large radius but low penetration heat damage.

Specifically, I think the system as-is can do nuclear missiles. I’d heavily draw from the ingame maps and defs.
Maybe use a hidden value determining texture display when launcher end parts are arranged? Plus, that could also tell the loader and modules to calculate the new missile values for balance.

Lots of work, but I’ll see what I can do to mess around in the code

I still maintain the idea that the actual launcher should remain vanilla size and they should be buildings you could use the graphics from the factories and things like that to make each room unique. The Buffs should be stronger requiring less rooms maybe a simple recolor of the missiles so when you look at a ship you can tell which ones are possibly the super strong missiles. The missiles are still vulnerable to being shot down therefore they can be very powerful and not worry about having to balance them too much because other really strong weapons in the game are harder to counter. Making them require more parts, command points and space is already the balancing.

Maybe add a new buff that changes the actual speed of the missiles, and I still also maintain that the range debuff needs to be looked at because it can be so short that they're not even considered missiles anymore more like rockets. The buffer missile speed or some of the other Buffs do not have to be percentage based they could be just flat out bonuses

Hey do you think you could make a modular Thruster system I know that in another mod the buff system was used by one by one tiles to make particle acceleration guns so I'm curious if you could make modular thrusters every section you add makes them stronger I don't know if you'd still be able to make them link up to engine rooms but it's a thought

I'll be playing around with the numbers, expect a balance update in the near future.

Originally posted by Good_Oatmeal:

@Binaryclock03
@syy1125
I almost forgot to ask, would you be willing to list all the different parts and their sizes, stats and descriptions on the mods description page? I have been very reluctant to subscribe to the mod simply for the lack of information of what the mod currently entails. Thanks again and have a good day.

In addition to this mod try GA the silo missiles can be placed inside the ship.

Originally posted by Good_Oatmeal:

Originally posted by IronSides:

In addition to this mod try GA the silo missiles can be placed inside the ship.

@IronSides
Which mod is that? I apologize for my confusion.

GA.... top mod

@Good_Oatmeal Sure, when I get back to my computer later today I can update the mod description.
GA = Galactic Allegiance. It's one of the most popular Cosmoteer mods. IIRC currently it mostly adds a variety of weapons.

@Good_Oatmeal Description has been updated.
In its base form, the modular missile system consists of a loader and a launcher, and is identical to the vanilla missile launcher (except it doesn't have nukes and mines - nukes are still work in progress and mines have been moved to a separate system). Vanilla missile launchers are 2x4 btw.
I haven't really given any thought to a 1-wide missile launcher, but that's an interesting idea. It could fit in this mod, though it'll have to stay in the backlog for a while (or someone else can do it, that's fine by me too).

I'm not sure if this was intentional or not, but the shrapnel damage values for HEAT seem far too high.

4x launchers with 2x payload and 1x fuel modules placed on a fast ship can absolutely wreck a whole fleet of ships. Reactors behind several layers of armor can easily be destroyed and take out most smaller ships in a single hit. While looking at the files to manually rebalance the mod I found that modular_missile_heat_shrapnel.rules has damage for HitOperational set to 1500 and HitStructual to 1000. Chopping off a 0 for each value still allows the HEAT missile to destroy internal structures like corridors in a single hit, but doesn't immediately cripple ships that aren't surrounded by 10 layers of armor.

If dropping down to 10% makes HEAT too weak then 20% or so should do.

@Choppah HEAT missiles already do only half the damage per missile compared to normal HE missiles (HE missiles do 15000 damage in a 4m radius, HEAT is 1500x5). It is supposed to be strong against smaller ships, where its 5 meters of armor piercing really makes a mess of ship internals. It falls off against larger ships that often have layers upon layers of armor.
Further reductions to damage may be necessary, but I don't think it needs to be as drastic as a 10x decrease.
(I originally wanted to make HEAT missiles fragment immediately when it exits armor, similar to how it behaves in FTD. It was intended to make spaced armor more relevant. But I haven't found a way to do that so I settled for 5m piercing.)