nukes OP AF

[the_jevry]

100% optic tracking
50% heat tracking
they hit so fast you can barely see their models
in other words you can't dodge them or outrun them
they 2 shot dreadnaughts
anti-missiles DO NOT fire at them (no clue why, appearently they also have perfect scrambling technology wtf)
i got trough by hacking my dreadnaught to have 10x hp and i still lost 70% of my hp trough the journey

i get it if you want it to be hard
what i don't get is why the game rewards me like i own a single 15 mill ship because that is all i can maintain with it, but expects me to bring with me the entire battlefleet of the imperium of man to get trough the storyline.
this is complete BS
im keeping my 10x HP modifier because im done randomly getting wrecked by everything this game throws at you

[Ker]

Although I understand your frustration, fighting a fleet of vessels carrying nukes is not something you should be doing at this point in the story when you first encounter them. They are illegal for a reason.

You are provided an NPC escort fleet and told to sacrifice them if you have to in order to complete your mission.

So... run, don't get hit by the nukes. This isn't intended to be a fight, and it sure as hell isn't intended to be winnable by a lone dreadnaught. You are supposed to run from them.

[the_jevry]

Originally posted by Kiko:

ou are provided an NPC escort fleet and told to sacrifice them if you have to in order to complete your mission.

well in theory that sounds doable but this is what i usually experience
1: you leave the planet
2: you get attacked in ~2-4 seconds
3: you jump because the attack is a near endless wave of enemies
4: you arrive with your fleet, no nukes yet
5: you enter a nuke system, the previous 2 systems have disorganised your fleet resulting in you arriving first, or you arriving in front of your fleet, you can try and stay longer in the previous systems but oh no wait you cant, if you do that the enemy starts firing guns with large knockback,
essentially stunlocking you from jumping out until you die, and again the enemies are endless so you can't just clear them to get a save jump, i've often been "stunlocked" and i can tell you its not fun.
additionally the nukes target solely you

the only possible strategy i can think of to beat this mission which imo is still kinda cheesey is rip out your engines and get the worst ones possible, that way your entry velocity is so low you can olmost instantaniously jump trough systems

[Ker]

I absolutely feel you, so I hope I do not come across rude in the rest of this post:

One of the best solutions is that you can hold J to ready the escort fleets to jump with you as well.
Scram drives are also incredibly useful when doing so.

And yea ripping out your engines and replacing them with slow thrust+high turning is also very viable. But i agree that you shouldn't have to cheese the system like that.

There were some changes to how missiles worked in (0.)9.9 which did marginally increase the difficulty of this mission if i recall correctly. So this feedback is good for us to hear, especially as we rarely touch on or revise any of MZ's free worlds campaign

[Arias]

This mission was never balanced very well, imo, but that's gotten a pass because it's thematically appropriate- the mission is meant to be one of those game-changing moments when you realise how deep of ♥♥♥♥ you're in.

[Damy357]

when i did that mission i did it in some really small but very fast ship so it was much easier to dance around nukes, than when you run away far enough just jump away and repeat

[Zarinthal]

I had a jump drive and when I got sick of getting nuked, I just jumped through different routes until one of them avoided the nuke carriers.

[the_jevry]

well anyways for some constructive feedback
reduce optics tracking to 80% because if im correct thats what most missiles have, no reason imo to have a missile have 1350% total tracking power when 130% is defenitely enough
a pre-mission suggestion to go in with a small agile ship instead
-slow the missiles down because they are absurdly fast, and iirc nukes have to be pretty large to do the blowey up part, and i'd also enjoy actually seeing what 2 shots my ship instead of randomly seeing 2 large explosion appear on my ship followed by my ship itself exploding.
-slow the reload time down, it's a nuclear missile not a rocket-pod

-this is a big one, decrease the attack fleet size, the nukes are half the issue in the mission, the other half is the fleet making it impossible to jump away at a reasonable pace ESPECIALLY the tiny ships with high-knockback guns, heck i'd dare say the knockback guns are 90% of the issue.

[Ker]

It is actually a really big, really slow weapon, and it has no reload because it is a 1 shot weapon.

outfit "Nuclear Missile"
	category "Secondary Weapons"
	cost 1000000
	thumbnail "outfit/nuke"
	"mass" 10
	"outfit space" -10
	"weapon capacity" -10
	"gun ports" -1
	weapon
		sprite "projectile/missile"
			"no repeat"
			"frame rate" .25
		sound "nuke"
		ammo "Nuclear Missile"
		stream
		icon "icon/nuke"
		"hit effect" "nuke explosion"
		"hit effect" "nuke residue fast" 10
		"hit effect" "nuke residue slow" 10
		"die effect" "missile death"
		"inaccuracy" 1
		"velocity" 6
		"lifetime" 800
		"reload" 400
		"firing energy" 10
		"firing heat" 400
		"acceleration" .8
		"drag" .1
		"turn" 4
		"homing" 4
		"radar tracking" .5
		"optical tracking" 1
		"trigger radius" 30
		"blast radius" 150
		"shield damage" 9000
		"hull damage" 7000
		"hit force" 4000
		"missile strength" 200
	description "It has been centuries since the last nuclear war was fought, and until very recently, most people in the galaxy assumed that that era of chaos and destruction was forever behind us..."
	description "	[Nuclear missiles are a one-shot weapon: each missile occupies a gun slot, and after it is fired, the slot it was in is left empty.]"

[Ker]

the rest of the feedback though, especially on the front of the fleets, is something that will be considered during revisions

[Damy357]

yeah nukes are, if anything, under powered later when you go up to tier 2 ships. Btw, if you didnt know already, you can get nukes for yourself by choosing different path in NW story line ( you need to hand over "traitor" back to syndicate in order to go down this path ) but cloak generator is much better reward anyway.

[Ker]

We should never assume someone giving feedback on tier 1 storylines has access to tier 2 technology or storylines. This is in order to avoid spoilers.

[Amazinite]

Originally posted by Kiko:

There were some changes to how missiles worked in (0.)9.9 which did marginally increase the difficulty of this mission if i recall correctly.

The nukes stats weren't changed at all in the latest update, only the other human missiles. The only thing that was changed was a fix to how nukes fire; it use to be that a ship would fire every nuke it has at once, meaning that if you can tank one but not two and the enemy has two nukes, you're done for. Now nukes will fire one at a time based off of the reload time.

[Ker]

Originally posted by Derpy Horse:

Originally posted by Kiko:

There were some changes to how missiles worked in (0.)9.9 which did marginally increase the difficulty of this mission if i recall correctly.

The nukes stats weren't changed at all in the latest update, only the other human missiles. The only thing that was changed was a fix to how nukes fire; it use to be that a ship would fire every nuke it has at once, meaning that if you can tank one but not two and the enemy has two nukes, you're done for. Now nukes will fire one at a time based off of the reload time.

Yall going to tell me that isn't a change to the missile that directly marginally increases the difficulty by making it harder to dodge the nukes in question as they are being stream fired rather than volly fired?

Do a double kickflip, right now.

[Amazinite]

The nukes are fired from Mantas, which have a wide span between their guns. Seems like it'd be easier to me to dodge two nukes fired nearly 7 seconds apart from one another than to dodge two nukes coming at me from different positions at the same time. Two nukes fired at the same time is also more difficult for anti-missile turrets to deal with, as even if they destroy one the other one is right next to it instead of 7 seconds behind it.

Another change with v0.9.9 is that blast radius weapons will have their damage taper off with distance, so if you use your fleet as a nuke shield you'll be able to dodge a good portion of the damage if you're still caught inside the blast.

[Ker]

Easier to dodge eight missiles on the same path, at the same velocity, which were fired at the same time, than to dodge a streamed salvo across several seconds and positions.

132 pixels isn't all that large of a wingspan. The missiles very quickly optimize to the same path and stack atop each other when volly fired rather than stream fired.

I do not think this is all that big of a deal, it's just another excuse to revise and rebalance some of the free worlds stories.