Weapon balance

[Senlin]

Hey guys,

so, I have a very short timeplay so far, I just played one normal medium sized campaign (stopped when it was obvious I could conquer anyone and it was just grinding at that point, it was very early in game technology-wise though) and one hard on one step bigger map (currently having lots of fun, one enemy is still bigger than me and it's not clear who will win at the end). I'm writing that just to admit I don't have a lot of experience and my view of the balance might be wrong, so I'm mostly looking for information here and opinion from more experienced players.

Having said that, it seems to me that the game hugely favours missile weaponry, at least at the early-medium stage of technology advance. Just at the start, you can choose between laser and nuclear missiles with the latter being pretty much better in every aspect. More damage, more range. Sure, enemy might shoot down some of the missiles, but it's never going to be enough, unless their fleet is simply bigger and/or better than yours, in which point you would lose with beam weaponry as well. There is a bit of a snowballing required - you need to get enough ships going to get this tactic to work, but it's really easy as you can get missiles on destroyers.

When I first used beam weapons, it was incredibely unsatisfying. The range is ridiculous, basically can't use them for the first 2 turns (even more for bigger, slower ships) and when you finally get in range (that's at the point where you could use missilles without practically any risk of them getting shot down), you get unbelievably small damage out of it.

Am I missing something here? Sure, there is ammunition limit to take care of, but it's really big and you can increase it even further. In practice, I only reached the limit when I was trying to take down enemy planet with planetary defences and 2 starbases with not enough ships on my side.

Perhaps the balancing changes later in game with better technologies? I haven't really compared everything that's available there, but at first glance it seems that missiles technology is also properly upgraded further in the game.

This issue is further made worse by the fact that you can get better tier technologies for one kind of weapon without ever investing in other kinds. So I am now stuck with anti-matter missiles while having 1-2 tier worse other weaponry types. This does not encourage experimentation and changes. And I don't see any disadvantage for me due to not having the newest beam technology. I have defence anyway thanks to my anti-missiles.

So, once again, am I missing something?

[scheidermarkus]

Point Defense, Carrier and Fighters.

[Senlin]

Can you elaborate?

[Arioch]

The way you outfit your ships matters. If you're facing a lot of missiles, you need to equip your ships accordingly, with point defense weapons or carriers with interceptors. Just mounting the biggest guns is not always the right answer.

[Senlin]

Well, in my experience so far the point defence is just not nearly good enough. And AI doesn't seem to use interceptors against missiles at all.

Perhaps that changes later in the game or is more heavily dependant on which species you fight against.

[scheidermarkus]

In my opinion PD is very strong in this game. I Love in this game that you are able to find another way.

SiS even beats MOO2 in tactical Combat. In MOO2 it was top important who does the first round.

Greetings from Germany

[War]

Carrier swarms with strike craft > Missle hordes > Laser/Kinetic hordes
But if you make some sacrifical craft with PD and antimissles for your front line the Missle hordes = Laser/Kinetic hordes in my experience. I have, however, never actually run out of ammunition wrt missles/torps with any race.

[Senlin]

Yeah, I imagine carier swarms to be very good, but they seem to be much more expensive.

[Pherdnut]

Mass drivers, rails, and force beams are much better at range. No acc or damage loss. Driver damage doesn't look great but the lack of dissipation adds up. Missiles are the best way to throw down some serious damage, especially against harpy fleets which don't defend well against them. But drivers don't run out of ammo and are great at shooting missiles down and have shield-piercing against lower-tech shields. I tend to put missiles on smaller lighter ships that can fire and flee and mix it up with larger ships with drivers in the early game. Heavy lasers are no joke at close range in the early game but I prefer drivers.

[Senlin]

In my experience so far with missiles it makes so much more sense to only use them or not use them at all than to keep some balance. If you don't have enough missiles, they are going to get shot down and are just a waste. If you have whole army of missiles-only, the output is so huge that no PD is going to handle it, even if AI was actually able to use it to its full potential (right now it seems autofiring doesn't work in the full range of the PD weapons). Of course a human player could counter this by having a a major part of their fleet equipped only in the best PD (and no offence weapons at all), but that's highly situational and AI is not doing it (and I'm not saying it should).

Also - what is the range of the best beam PD weapons? This info seems to be only available in the ship editor, so I can't say before I get the technology. But it seems that the range is much slower than anti-missiles range (which is something over 20) and that is extremely important in practice, as it decides wheter 5 or 15 ships can shoot at incomming missiles and the issue is only getting worse later in game with bigger fleets and bigger/slower ships.

The ammo limits are really a joke, I keep extra munitions out of habit, but I don't actually think my ships are even using them in most battles.

[Red Bat]

Originally posted by froz:

In my experience so far with missiles it makes so much more sense to only use them or not use them at all than to keep some balance. If you don't have enough missiles, they are going to get shot down and are just a waste. If you have whole army of missiles-only, the output is so huge that no PD is going to handle it, even if AI was actually able to use it to its full potential (right now it seems autofiring doesn't work in the full range of the PD weapons). Of course a human player could counter this by having a a major part of their fleet equipped only in the best PD (and no offence weapons at all), but that's highly situational and AI is not doing it (and I'm not saying it should).

Also - what is the range of the best beam PD weapons? This info seems to be only available in the ship editor, so I can't say before I get the technology. But it seems that the range is much slower than anti-missiles range (which is something over 20) and that is extremely important in practice, as it decides wheter 5 or 15 ships can shoot at incomming missiles and the issue is only getting worse later in game with bigger fleets and bigger/slower ships.

The ammo limits are really a joke, I keep extra munitions out of habit, but I don't actually think my ships are even using them in most battles.

I've actually had mildy better luck mixing beam PD in with my missile ships than with pure beam or pure missile fleets. Cuts down on losses since you prevent mutually assured destruction from happening as much.

[Senlin]

Why beam PD when you have anti-missiles with superior range? I got some beam PD ships in my fleet from mercenaries and they were much worse in defending against missiles (because usually 1 or 2 were in range instead of 10-20).

And let's not forget that by skipping all the beam/mass drivers etc. technology lines I was able to get ahead in other technologies (or, to be fair, I was able to not be terribly behind the best enemy). It's easily skipping half of the technology tree.

In my newest game I'm going to try other weapons instead of missiles or carriers and see how that works out.

[enpi1234]

I think the little current imbalace of missiles could easily be reduced by reducing the standard ammo number. When your main combat tactic rely on firing all out missile salvos you should really be forced to build in extra ammo slots. But no biggie IMO.

[Red Bat]

Originally posted by froz:

Why beam PD when you have anti-missiles with superior range? I got some beam PD ships in my fleet from mercenaries and they were much worse in defending against missiles (because usually 1 or 2 were in range instead of 10-20).

And let's not forget that by skipping all the beam/mass drivers etc. technology lines I was able to get ahead in other technologies (or, to be fair, I was able to not be terribly behind the best enemy). It's easily skipping half of the technology tree.

In my newest game I'm going to try other weapons instead of missiles or carriers and see how that works out.

I usually just get missiles, then go for core techs, leaving anti-missiles till a bit later. The only faction that starts with anti-missiles is the Tinkers if I recall correctly, so beam PD works fine until then.

I actually personally didn't find carriers any better than missiles. All the same weaknesses, but it's easier for your strikecraft to be destroyed than it is for you to run out of missiles.

[Arioch]

We will be adding weapon mods for the later beam weapons, and this should bring direct fire weapons into line with missiles.

[scheidermarkus]

Reading about all these ship and fleet builds... I want some Multiplayer 😂