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There are better solutions to kiters than the circle of death, which should be seen as only a stopgap.

Allowing tactical FTL will put an attacker behind the missile ship. Kiting and shielding all facings in the same ship would be very expensive and might not be possible at all in the standard build box. If the time spent in jump is kept low, the kiter will be forced to endure a point blank volley to its least favorable facing before being able to jump itself.

Making the whole combat area finite with wrap around (it's supposed to be orbital space around a planet so making it of finite extent is reasonable) would allow kites to dominate 1v1, but would make them vulnerable to getting pincered by fleets, which again means their vulnerability to the rear matters.

An objective could be implemented that grants the victory to the player who spends enough uncontested time in a small region without otherwise punishing ships outside it. (PVP only)

The AI could close range if not dealing damage to prevent pointless chases (PVE only and only while PD is a hard counter)

Missiles could be made a short range brawling or finishing weapon by making PD more effective at long range than short (eg. by making it fire flak with a minimum arming distance). This moves the kiting problem to large cannons and ion beams, but these don't fire around corners and there are two weapons in the range bracket and missiles would regain their relevance against ships that have lost PD to targeted fire.

Missiles could be made a short range brawling weapon by making their blast radius and damage drop with distance traveled (and therefore fuel used) such that covered shields counter them at long range but not at short range. This again moves the kiting problem to the next weapon group rather than removing it, but it's a more diverse range group.

Dalas120 My current plan is to include the first dev balance changes (without the PD power increase, tube reduction, or production reduction) in 0.13.7 and see how people react to those over time.

Kerensky classes and subdivisions of ships based on the age of their designs, which in turn can be implemented to created stronger and more interesting singleplayer progression and campaign playthroughs

"In the century before the Terran empire became an empire, we thought we understood ship design. FTL opened up the nearest stars, and our colonies out there grew strong. Then, the Arachnids came, and showed us that we knew nothing at all."

Dalas120 to make game balance you always must make trade of, missiles are much stronger in comparison to other weapons and second stronges weapon (E is far les stronger than missile. For me trade of for missiles are their cost in comparison with PD. Trade of for PD and shields which can fully stop them is that you must sacrifice space which you can use for weapons, so my favourite 100x100 ship ,has 132PD, one shield layer coverage against missiles which pass, and rest of space i covered with 6 ( yes six) big cannons, previous version had 8 big cannons but it was incapable to hold all misile spawners met, so i had to give them out to bring more PD.
Then we came back to balancing, my ship is misile kite/spawner killer and, all i have is to hold missiles til my weak ofence crack into enemy, Id rather increase offensive, but than I will loose, and from simple descrition of my ship you see, that gun ship withat least 6 guns and decent double (usualy i see triple) layers of shield , tear me apart with no trouble, and im not talking about that 30 guns walls. Than we came back to misile kiters which kill the wals ...
I see in missiles that they have splash damge which magicaly pass shield (while concentrated energy from laser or high velicity bulet do not) so even one passing trough is disaster, and well mader kiter has unlimited number of attends to pass (and of course that sometimes missile pas even strongest PD (no testing full pd ship to be considered)) while opponent has no chance to hit it. That lead to circle of death and that was first half of murder of kiters (scond part is forcing artificialy kiters to stay at range of their persuaders in AI led battles), Second category, missile spawners, is still efficient enough for people so just few minutes ago in mp:

as you can see, U missile spawner is most efficient way how to quickly destroy not ready opponent.
And then, we came to purpose design ship to kill exact opponent ship you already know, to beat it with 50% cost mean that you fullfill expected.
How its about cheap ship (1 mio) i know from your cry that missiles are weak. And to be honest im not aware what is best for 500K ion weas thrown just as solution example.

Now we have problem ,that we face different weapons strenght for different cost limit, and fun game is balanced game, Maybe you dont think so, but every weapon can be countered by something, but every solution for one way, always led to disadvantage in another way.

BTW, instal some of lateer version and try what real kiting is (I recoment 0.12.12) and find latest of Keylocke designe, you will see that 50% limit, is not so easy

So making missiles stronger, by making them able to pass all pd and shields coverage is not way to balancing. Even with the limited damage, thay just became second unstopable weapon. Then if will be not fair that other weapons can be stoped and missiles not.

@Dalas120
feel the difference.
0.13.6

sou your design was defeated, but specialy for you i had to increase previous number of PD significantly, still not 100% evective.
Dev I

Does i need to ad more coment?

Then we can go to this:

In Dev Teror win in seconds. So, then you go to multiplayer and just from today in big ships i fight 3x teror 2x upgraded teror by player, 3x other missile spawner, 2x ship swarms. With enoormously stronger missiles are big ship over. I supose that from 2,5-3 mio credit you can stack enough missiles to beat everything with first voley,

On live, my cannon walls lose to equalizer's missile U - on dev they win every time. In live, my tournament armadillo loses every single fight to the terror's missiles - on dev, it wins 50-50. I could show you plenty of other examples of ships that die to missiles on live but win on dev. This is not a massive buff to missiles, but it does rebalance missiles vs different ships. Ships that relied on PD to shoot down every single missile are now weaker. Ships that use a combination of PD, shields, and armor are now stronger.

Mc2 Then if will be not fair that other weapons can be stoped and missiles not.

How do you stop large cannons? Or electrobolts? Or any other weapon? You can't stop them unless the enemy ship is <100k. Shields will get focused through and armor doesn't last forever. The only way to stop regular weapons is blowing them up.

On live, missiles are the only weapon that can be completely stopped. On dev, missiles are like other weapons and can no longer be 100% blocked.

Dalas120 Dont pretend being dolt, you are the one who know how to nulify any damage.

my tournament armadillo loses every single fight to the terror's missiles - on dev, it wins 50-50.

Do I understand corectly that new missiles are made to fit exactly one ship of one player?
Sorry, but not specialized ship armarilo which can beat specialized other ship with 20% of resources sounds really very crazy?

Nice to know that wall beat missile spawners in Dev, that is good, because I saw missile spawners as counter against walls.

Tell me then where the stone paper scissors factor is ?

Atarlost
The Pyrrhic nature of singleplayer, needing to pay for so many repairs in a very pitched battle will bleed your money faster than you can earn it, is also a good point for PVE.

https://i.imgur.com/ekd0zww.jpg

Dalas120 True is that that coolroco design is very bad, but there you can perfectly see it

I prefer taking no damage, but way of shield yoursel by armor until you get enough close to deal with teror is possible way too, you have my respect for finding different ways of fight.

You are talking about not good antimisile ship from that one used for test (printscreen) or from video, they are really with huge difference.

And here we go why you dont understand my, it is not money what counts in battle, it is efficiency. Verry easy example, you can fight me with air rifle ,where one shos cost 0,01 $, but id rather pay 1$ for 0,45 bullet for proper rifle, than you can argue that in recalculation to money your death count only for 1% and you should use you next 99 shoots to make maney invested equal. And from real cost perspective, to kill me by air riffle pelets you have to shoot hundred times time before you realy make any harm to me. Than you can calculate your cost efficiency.

By the way, did you tried to fight thry U spawner by you wall one by one ?
you are stuck in one ship thinking, but try imagine that you have fllets, and Equalizeru ships made circle so you can not flank any of them, and you always can engage one spawner by one ship, how many of your ships will lose before you broke into spawners defense?

I strongly disagree with you on this. $6k gets you 1 l. cannon with 12k health. $6k gets you 20 pieces of armor with 80k health. Clearly cannons make a terrible substitute for armor.

Just imagine -We can make a fight, I will have one small cheap axe/sword/dagger, and you get as much armour as possible with thousand times price. Rule is simple ,you have to beat me with no action, just by strenght of your armour, so ,It nice to replace weapons by armour, and even nicer to have a lot more durability, I´m not sure i this is the way, maybe i get heart attack before i crack into your nice armour.
BTW do you know why knights disapear, why cities have no more huge fortifications around them, and so on?
I know that it sound so romantic, but for that kind of fight when knihgs armoured hit each other for ages, is boring.
For me, is replacing every single cannon which can shoot at enemy, by death weight, just wasting of money, no matter hom much hit points armout has.

more fun without a stone-paper-scissors system of weapon counters.

Here is fundamental of our disagreement, your intention is that averages ship equiped with ale weapons with some reasonable mixture is more fun,

For me is more fun when you have combination of specialized ship which are excelent at one style, and can substitute another, but are extremly weaker agains some conter style. you intewntion si to makye any peeks more flat so there will be no need for purpose designes.
And, maybe you do not enjoy it, but when i play MP and preview of ships are not one, i really have big doubths if i choose good design to counter what is awaiting me, and that feeling when you find yout you choose well canot be buyed( when you gop to your biggest obsesion, money).

When we go to reality, you can try to persuade US navy stop making higly specialized ships and to build just one type, which can dive, can work as carrier and has lots of fire power and armour, still kepeng astonisching sped and stealth abilitie? does it sound crazy?

What game lack is not need to make designs average, but bring more winning conditions, to make all types of ships more usable. Now just beating other ships as the only winning condition is not so funny.

Walt The Day the Tech tree Comes is the Day I Say "Challenge Accepted".

Sombreroman

I was playing on the dev build, with reduced missile damage, 2 tubes instead of 3, and reduced missile factory production rates. And it really hurts missile damage output quite a bit, I think that was a factor in the battle. Before, when all your PD was functional, you were insulated from crazy missile damage. But in large ship battles like this, well your PD gets shot away a lot, being a rather fragile system. That's when crazy missile damage really starts to take it's toll, when PD is sheered away.

Now, however, missiles are much more consistent trickle damage, and their impact is really not felt. So rare do I see a ship with that telltale hole pattern created by repeat missile strikes. Really not liking the missile change the more I experience it. They just feel less impactful in battle, more of a nuisance to be swatted at with nerfed PD and absorbed by shield coverage than any kind of serious threat that needs to be prioritized to be dealt with. But then the design of missiles and the way they work, they can't really be dealt with as a priority, you can't flank and rear shot a well protected, highly maneuverable ship to target the missile launch systems like you can target any other weapon firing directly at you.

It is a conundrum.

Relevant thoughts copied from my No Mod SD Thread.

Umm I am not sure if this discussion has been concluded but I get the impression that the PD kill chance against missiles in the first dev build maybe be a bit too low.

For stationary ships it might be fine but when ships have significant velocity relative to each other the approach velocity of missiles seems to make missiles by pass point defenses at much higher rate.

Previously, PD could often react "just in time" to shoot down high relative velocity missiles. This now appears to translate to >75% PD penetration for high relative velocity missiles against the same point defenses.

As a consequence, the space effectiveness of forward PD appears to be very poor. Instead of using 2 forward hull edge cells for point defense it appears to be better to use just use more shields. (Rear and side PD still seems fine.) Also the amount of energy needed for PD to destroy missiles doesn't appear to be that much lower (~800 energy per missile assuming 50% hit rate) than the energy needed for shields to block them (1200 energy). The only major advantage of PD over shields is no constant power drain.

Alternatively, PD could have longer range and lower energy usage.

Seems that we'll see what will happen when 0.13.7 comes out. Personally, I think that the current PD/missile balance needs improving, but I cant say for sure that the new balance is good (I haven't downloaded the dev)

I would suggest that the balance is tested in the RC, and see what people think of it then.

Equalizer As a consequence, the space effectiveness of forward PD appears to be very poor. Instead of using 2 forward hull edge cells for point defense it appears to be better to use just use more shields.

Yeah, I mostly agree with this. It might make sense to double both PD cost and PD effectiveness. But ultimately I guess it depends on the ship design and how valuable your forward space is. I agree that PD is vastly better than other defenses at protecting the sides and rear of a ship, which IMO is where they should shine the most. Personally I would be ok with PD as more of an auxiliary defense than the primary antimissile (something to take the "edge" off missiles instead of stopping them completely), but not sure if others would agree.

I hadn't considered relative missile speed and PD - you make a good point. Can you think of a good way to reduce the impact of relative speed on PD without adversely impacting other aspects of missile balance? Maybe vastly increase both PD fire rate and PD energy consumption (so PD can shoot off a full plasma battery on both fast and slow missiles)? Is it even something that needs to be changed? Missiles also suffer from extended time under PD fire when shot from side angles, which has the opposite effect of ships with high relative velocity.

Mc2 Ultimately the issue is that missiles are the indirect fire weapon in the game, while PD cannot indirect fire and requires forward surface area. If we balance missiles at 1m, they'll be too strong at 10m. If we balance them at 10m, they'll be too strong at 20m and too weak at 1m.

I think the only way to truly balance missiles across all ship scales is to either add a missile defense that is also indirect fire (e.g. interceptor missiles) or to add more weapons that can indirect fire (e.g. ion prism or stackable railgun).

As long as missiles are the only indirect fire part in the game, they will always scale differently and will not be balanceable for all ship cost levels.