Did they rebalance Missiles and Mines yet?

[TheSuit]

For a while now the Meta has been Guns and Lasers
Where Missiles \ Torpedoes are close to useless due to limited number and low damage compared to the amount cargo space it takes up.

Has this been rebalanced?

[wolf]

I use a combo of seeker missiles (also the engineered missiles) and pulse/mc

kill 'em all with that setup

[TheSuit]

Originally posted by wolf:

I use a combo of seeker missiles (also the engineered missiles) and pulse/mc

kill 'em all with that setup

Ya but are you actually a combat pilot? Or explorer?
I can't imagine Missiles being used as a Combat PIlot as you would easily run out

[wolf]

That is the downside yes

[wolf]

same for mc, somewhat

(though mine are engineered* so I'm good)

*efficient weapon + auto loader

[Rragar]

The point of these weapons never was to deal damage as a general use DPS weapon.

Torpedoes are intended to cripple a ship's internal modules by penetrating the hull and dealing splash damage inside. If you convert them to use the reverberating cascade effect, they can burnt out a ship's shield generator.

Mines were never intended for offensive purposes either, but as a defensive and area denial weapon. The reverberating cascade effect is also available for them, however, and this opens up the possibility to use them for dive bombing heavily shielded ships. You can also use them for carpet bombing ground settlements.

Missiles, once again, are not for general purpose but for tactical use, and better used to either cripple the offensive capabilities of unshielded ships (by applying splash explosive damage to hardpoints, which are fairly soft unless reinforced; this type of use can also break down module reinforcement packages much faster than other attacks) and apply a variety of special effects exclusively available for them. You can use lockdown/FSD reboot missiles to reset the FSD of targets attempting to flee from you, for example. There's a bunch of other things that you can use them for.

And now, we also have enzyme missiles which deal damage over time, of a sort that cannot be mitigated except by ships set up for anti-xeno activities.

[TheSuit]

Originally posted by Rragar:

The point of these weapons never was to deal damage as a general use DPS weapon.

Torpedoes are intended to cripple a ship's internal modules by penetrating the hull and dealing splash damage inside. If you convert them to use the reverberating cascade effect, they can burnt out a ship's shield generator.

Mines were never intended for offensive purposes either, but as a defensive and area denial weapon. The reverberating cascade effect is also available for them. You can also use them for carpet bombing ground settlements.

Missiles, once again, are not for general purpose but for tactical use, and better used to either cripple the offensive capabilities of unshielded ships (by applying splash explosive damage to hardpoints, which are fairly soft unless reinforced) and apply a variety of special effects exclusively available for them. You can use lockdown/FSD reboot missiles to reset the FSD of targets attempting to flee from you, for example. There's a bunch of other things that you can use them for.

And now, we also have enzyme missiles which deal damage over time, of a sort that cannot be mitigated except by ships sets up for anti-xeno activities.

So a few things here

1. Topedos
You generally don't fight MassIve Capital ships - since Torps don't home This would have been a great feature for Torpedos to be useful for. Instead Torpos in general use is a terrible idea you can use any other type of weapon and get better bang for the slot.

2. Mines
Its Space. There is very very little Area Denial..
Unless the Mine is the Size of a Planet.

What makes mines worse is the activation delay. So if you were being chased in an asteroid field ( the only place mines would be useful ) the delay timer would garuntee it would not activate in time against the ship chasing you. Unless you decide to stand still, hope they don't notice the mine and then let it hit them.

3. The only purpose for missiles which was Shoe horned decision was to fight the Aliens.
They instead should have made Missiles have higher capacity racks.

With NPC Supply Carrier Loitering nearby - so faction ships can refit and rearm.
For a game that wants to pretends to be "realistic" - one of the most important aspects in a war is ability to Resupply..

4. ( Not part of original complaint ) Fer Delance CPit.
No one in their right mind would put a giant bar in the wnishield in such a random location.



So Summary
Please don't standup for Horiffically Bad Decisions made by the Devs.
I get that you are desperate to find validation in terrible choices, but the way things get fixed, is by providing proper feedback of how terrible they are so they can actually be fixed.

[wolf]

Missiles work for me but yeah I'd love to double the ammo/clip size off course.

Don't know if I would call myself a combat pilot, I don't consider Elite to be primarily a combat sim in any way. I guess combat (in space) to me is about 65% of my ingame time and mainly sp. The rest is trading or ground missions, I should probably explore some more but I don't.

Lack of ammo is a thing across almost all combat platforms in Elite, though I must say the ammo boxes at bases are sufficient most times.

I would like to see a new military cargo rack, you know like hull/module reinforcement but to store backup ammo

[CaptainNebulous]

Missiles are quite useful when used in combination with the other weapons. But the key is to save your missiles for targets that are a true danger for your ship. No point in using them on a target that you can blow up within a couple of minutes without missiles.

I think a lot of people don't use them simply because they require more maintenance and strategic use.

As for mines.... honestly I've never even tried them. That's never really been my style in any game other than Rust and Arma.

[AJ24]

I use seeker missiles on my combat Mamba, with high capacity mod, funnily enough. Not gonna use those small hardpoints for much else, and when the timing is right they're very handy (or maybe I'm just desperate to find validation in terrible choices - wouldn't be the first time 🤣)

[JL::Jose-Juan Kenobi]

Mines have saved me couple of times, so they serve the intended purpose (running away with my T9, T7 and T6)

Missiles are handy to knockout modules, but yeah run out of ammo quickly. I like packhounds with High capacity engineering. Fun to watch small ships insta-blow up :-)

Torpedoes agreed, they seem to be for some very, very specific use, and for me have been basically useless.

So IMO, missiles and mines are fine where they are.

[Hobo Misanthropus]

Missiles were buffed (or bugged) in Odyssey, and inflict double damage. But they still succumb to PD's and shields quite readily. Seeker missiles are still exceptionally nasty in PVP if your opponent isn't ready for them (Either willing to micromanage silent running or has PD installed) but for PVE, their ammo economy makes them not worth the hardpoint unless you intend to jump into port often.

Mines have always been secretly OP. They aren't an offensive weapon, and as such will never have a place in any real combat meta, but they are simultaneously one of, if not the only weapon, that will completely body FDL meta in the right hands.

[Rragar]

Originally posted by The | Suit:

So a few things here

1. Topedos
You generally don't fight MassIve Capital ships - since Torps don't home This would have been a great feature for Torpedos to be useful for. Instead Torpos in general use is a terrible idea you can use any other type of weapon and get better bang for the slot.

2. Mines
Its Space. There is very very little Area Denial..
Unless the Mine is the Size of a Planet.

What makes mines worse is the activation delay. So if you were being chased in an asteroid field ( the only place mines would be useful ) the delay timer would garuntee it would not activate in time against the ship chasing you. Unless you decide to stand still, hope they don't notice the mine and then let it hit them.

3. The only purpose for missiles which was Shoe horned decision was to fight the Aliens.
They instead should have made Missiles have higher capacity racks.

With NPC Supply Carrier Loitering nearby - so faction ships can refit and rearm.
For a game that wants to pretends to be "realistic" - one of the most important aspects in a war is ability to Resupply..

4. ( Not part of original complaint ) Fer Delance CPit.
No one in their right mind would put a giant bar in the wnishield in such a random location.



So Summary
Please don't standup for Horiffically Bad Decisions made by the Devs.
I get that you are desperate to find validation in terrible choices, but the way things get fixed, is by providing proper feedback of how terrible they are so they can actually be fixed.

Then I'm going to provide some proper feedback to you here, so that you can fix a relevant problem:

The problem is not that these decisions are bad.

The problem is that these weapons are intended for tactical use, and you have failed to conceive such a use for them thus far. You have no experience using these weapon types or seeing them used against you, and when I tell you something that falls outside of your experience, you label it as a baseless argument by waving a fallacy at me (which, in case you weren't aware, also invalidates what you said). If you don't want to discuss this with people who have used these more often than you or have dealt with them before, then why did you bother with the thread?

- In regards to torpedoes: I don't use big ships much, but I carry an Electronic Countermeasures module in my Fed Corvette specifically in case I ever run into somebody that launches a volley of reverberating cascade torpedoes. If I have 4000 shields and 5 activations of dual cell banks (each dual activation replenishes around 2000 shields), whoever fights that thing is gonna be in for a very long fight if they don't have specialized anti-shield weaponry or overwhelming numbers. And if you take direct torpedo hits on an unshielded ship, it may not disable everything outright but it's gonna deal enough module damage to trigger malfunctions across multiple core internal modules, and it's gonna make your ship unreliable for whatever remains of the fight.

Torpedoes are slow, but they do indeed have homing capabilities and point defence can't shoot them down fast because they soak multiple hits. They're still the only weapon with the reverberating cascade effect and with homing capabilities.

And they are not, as you claim, "for capital ships" which don't have shields to begin with, and where the key systems are scattered in such a way that you can't deal splash damage, nor require specialized ordnance to penetrate a hull and damage what's inside.


- Mines: I was once bounty hunting in a community goal site with a commander in a Krait Mk2. He was killed by a guy in a Viper Mk4 who had 2 mine launchers and 2 missile launchers. How? The guy in the Viper laid out minefields and then goaded the Krait guy into giving chase. I figured they were reverberating cascade mines and warned the guy against it, but he didn't listen to me and decided to fly through the mines. I had to fly around the minefields (my ship had no anti-mine/missile defenses) in order to properly give chase to the Viper. After a few salvos, the Krait's shields went from 95% to 0% when the shield generator burnt out due to reverberating cascade.

The Krait guy then tried to jump out, but the Viper guy killed him with FSD reboot missiles, since the Krait guy apparently overspecialized in shields and never upgraded the hull, and the missiles kept him from jumping out. This exemplifies the area denial: do you want to keep your shield generator intact? You can't destroy the mines? Then you have to avoid going near the mines.

I also have used reverberating cascade mines for dive-bombing kill-stealing commanders with big ships in community goal sites. I get fed up with their kill-stealing, I drop the mines, they don't fully realize what's happening to them until their shields drop from full to none and then they get the hell out of there which is exactly what I wanted them to do.

The mine arming time isn't a big deal since you just have to launch them in advance so that they'll be around where you want them to be by the time they're armed and the target gets there.

And I also pointed out that you can carpet bomb ground settlements with mines. This will soften them up for when you deploy your SRV or proceed on foot.

I explained very clearly what missiles can do to the hardpoints of unshielded ships. What do you imagine happens when you're flying an Alliance ship, all of which have a very tightly packed cluster of top-mounted hardpoints, and you take a missile blast on that area? It doesn't matter if your hull laughs at the damage, which it likely will since these ships emphasize the hull tanking trait. Explosions there are gonna wreck your weapons. And it doesn't matter if your hull is at 99% if your guns are broken: if you have no guns, you can't fight. And while most ships don't have their hardpoints as tightly packed as those, hardpoints do still tend to come in clusters in some form or another, in most ships.

Have you ever seen what happens when you have heat-based weapons installed and then you fire a packhound volley, modified to increase heat on the target, against people who use overcharged power plants (which apparently is a lot of people)? Between the heat from their weapons and whatever other systems they're using, you can put them constantly in an overheat state, especially if they have no long-term active cooling solutions like thermal vent lasers. Do you know how many ships I've seen in which the shield boosters break mid-fight due to overheat damage? It's a hard counter against fools who neglect thermal management as a consideration in their setups.

Now, the enzyme missiles are actually better used against normal ships, not aliens. Normal ships have no resistance against those things whatsoever, and those missiles can be useful to counter hull tanks. Thargoids resist that stuff and you usually have to snipe their modules anyway, which is something that the enzyme missiles don't do.

And the bar in the Fer De Lance is of no consequence since the bulk of the steering is done with the radar; you don't need to physically see the target ship in front of you when you're opening fire. You need to align the targetting reticles, which still do their job regardless of that bar, and regardless of whether or not you're in full dark conditions and not using night vision. Even if you had a blanket covering your cockpit, you'd still be able to fight because of those reticles alone. The only thing you'd be unable to do with zero visibility is dodge or navigate through/near structures or asteroid fields since you do need your eyes to see that something is coming your way, and that bar in the middle isn't gonna make you blind to a space station, an asteroid, or unfriendly fire coming your way.

[TheSuit]

Originally posted by Rragar:

Originally posted by The | Suit:

So Summary
Please don't standup for Horiffically Bad Decisions made by the Devs.
I get that you are desperate to find validation in terrible choices, but the way things get fixed, is by providing proper feedback of how terrible they are so they can actually be fixed.

Then I'm going to provide some proper feedback to you here, so that you can fix a relevant problem:

The problem is not that these decisions are bad.

The problem is that these weapons are intended for tactical use, and you have failed to conceive such a use for them thus far. You have no experience using these weapon types or seeing them used against you, and when I tell you something that falls outside of your experience, you label it as a baseless argument by waving a fallacy at me (which, in case you weren't aware, also invalidates what you said). If you don't want to discuss this with people who have used these more often than you or have dealt with them before, then why did you bother with the thread?

The games Reviews Speak for it self. ( Mostly Negative ) and the most common complaint? Doesn't listen to community.

Tactical use is an excuse. The Game has littered top to bottom with terrible decisions.

30 minutes of flight to fly to a planet? Where player literally does not play the game.
You may as well have a 30 minute loading screen.

Its like being in a House without AC then using the "Tactical Reasoning", Look we may not have AC but tactically speaking - You lose weight by sweating! Its basically a Free Sauna!

If you want to see what tactical uses are you play games like Xcom or R6 Siege
When you have game that involves spinning in circles in open space as "combat"

Its not tactical use, that's about as real reason as Santa clause.
It's just terrible balance.
They could have made Missiles have Magazine Racks.
Fire 6 missiles then having to wait 70s to reload to a new rack.
Then increase the total ammo capacity to 30.

Even Freelancer did it exponentially better and it had one of the worst Voice Acting and planet side experiences I have ever seen. But its gameplay was rock solid. Fights between 2 factions felt like actual proper fights between 2 factions.

[funkynutz]

Originally posted by The | Suit:

For a while now the Meta has been Guns and Lasers
Where Missiles \ Torpedoes are close to useless due to limited number and low damage compared to the amount cargo space it takes up.

Has this been rebalanced?

Remind me, when did missiles/mines start taking up cargo space? they don't

[Kevlar]

Originally posted by The | Suit:

Originally posted by Rragar:

Then I'm going to provide some proper feedback to you here, so that you can fix a relevant problem:

The problem is not that these decisions are bad.

The problem is that these weapons are intended for tactical use, and you have failed to conceive such a use for them thus far. You have no experience using these weapon types or seeing them used against you, and when I tell you something that falls outside of your experience, you label it as a baseless argument by waving a fallacy at me (which, in case you weren't aware, also invalidates what you said). If you don't want to discuss this with people who have used these more often than you or have dealt with them before, then why did you bother with the thread?

The games Reviews Speak for it self. ( Mostly Negative ) and the most common complaint? Doesn't listen to community.

Tactical use is an excuse. The Game has littered top to bottom with terrible decisions.

30 minutes of flight to fly to a planet? Where player literally does not play the game.
You may as well have a 30 minute loading screen.

Its like being in a House without AC then using the "Tactical Reasoning", Look we may not have AC but tactically speaking - You lose weight by sweating! Its basically a Free Sauna!

If you want to see what tactical uses are you play games like Xcom or R6 Siege
When you have game that involves spinning in circles in open space as "combat"

Its not tactical use, that's about as real reason as Santa clause.
It's just terrible balance.
They could have made Missiles have Magazine Racks.
Fire 6 missiles then having to wait 70s to reload to a new rack.
Then increase the total ammo capacity to 30.

Even Freelancer did it exponentially better and it had one of the worst Voice Acting and planet side experiences I have ever seen. But its gameplay was rock solid. Fights between 2 factions felt like actual proper fights between 2 factions.

There is a reason why in the supposed "dueling leagues" things like guided missiles are not allowed.

There is also a reason why most of my pvp kills have been made with premium missiles or torpedoes.