so, once again just in short version
@Walt
Purpose build test ship is best solution to say difference between versions when you use same ships, new Dev bring much stronger missiles. That is simple Fact. (did not had time to test newest one)
How you handle it is different story, if you make game more funny by keeping unstoppable missiles, or more balanced and boring by stoppable missiles is up to you.
Time then show what players consider more funny.
No cannon ship limited by direct view can beat ship equipped by indirect shooting weapons.
It simple matter of fire line, who bring to fire line more fire power, or who has longer fire line, win.
In cosmoteer both sides have equal weapons = equal fire power, so only fire line aspect matters.
To make it easier understand lets go to 100x100 square ships.
In Cosmoteer vanilla, for direct view limited weapons has fire line maximum length 100 blocks. And using missiles on ship make equal fire line from direct view and additional 200 blocks of fire line made from missiles which you have nothing to stop.
So having PD on non missile square ship will even reduce fire power, than non missile design is enormously outgunned.
And now you can sacrifice some of you firepower to PD, to stop missiles, for having defense against strongest weapon, which is at least can be annulated, but still you are outgunned. So, putting enormous number of crippled PDs instead of weapons and still be unable to counter all missiles does not sound like good idea.
And as you can see, even totally covered ship with PD cannot stop missiles from good design, that is the issue.
Of course clever designers try to prolong their fire line by shaping ships, but you still have lots of space covered by pd instead of fire power.
This is what I see.
I´m not sure which way is game planned to go, but I have feeling like only one supported efficient design style is to make tanks which will punch each other until one give up, no maneuvering, no different types of strategies.
So, from my point of view, and what is see from Kerensky, missiles vs. PD are ok, good designer can handle huge number of missiles in equal design cost, but when any missile leak, than you have trouble, and that is fair enough.
And for people who do not like missile kiters, you build in circle of death.
@Equalizer
I´m used to old design, so I use it, and, I used it before, so for testing I stick with that one, still I think is much better than any others design no need to us your own bit stronger 😃
@Krenesky Good, you test even BH with small ships, nice to know 😃
And I agree with your findings.
@Dalas120 I Think you get stuck in 1 mio tournament designs. Free your mind from it, if you want to have missile ships stronger, play without circle of death which was specially created to cripple missile kiters, you can hardly blame missiles for being underpowered, when they main strength has been already cut down
Next
We are talking about 1-1 ship strength.
We know that fleet of walls is better than single ship. And Equalizer ship is made to 1-1 combat, no facing fleets. If you want to test with the same budged, use your walls one by one without making repairs of Equalizer ship instead of all at the same time.
And honestly, all that walls you can see is result of artificial crippling fast missile kiters due to circle of death.
I hope, that some clever designer of missile kiters, will come with ship capable to beat that one design hegemony in1 mio cost level. But even when not, making radical changes to game balancing due to one cost category and misbalance all others sound bit ridiculous, do you think?
Problem is that we have only one winning condition, that lead (together with that crazy kamikadze AI behavior) to one best possible type of designs, they may differ only from cost perspective, as for 1 mio looks that wall is solution, and for 8 mio only missile spawner is best, for 500K ion beams, and so on. Different winning condition could made designs bit different, as we can see now. You will hardly send fighter to bomb enemy planet, and bomber to chase down enemy convoy of supplies…
Next thing is that even massive ships/walls has enough agility that it can turn enough fast to always face enemy, I thing that this is something to be rebalanced, than could designs, which count on enough speed to flank enemy, be more successful.
