Walt
So I spent this morning doing a lot of testing on the dev build, and here are my findings:
TLDR: I strongly hope this balance change does NOT go into the game. However I do I see potential in the intent, not in the current implementation though.
So how did testing go. Well first off one positive right away, I notice that huge flights of missiles have much higher performance. My computer doesn't go into slideshow once the Terror fires its first salvo. That delay added in I assume is the culprit there.
But the actual testing, I felt the result was not good. The changes are a resounding buff to missiles against all targets (big and small) and the one, best, and only defense against them has been neutered.
Personally, I like missiles as they currently are, but then I also don't play this game with ultra min/max designs. I like to design well rounded and cool looking ships as opposed to the kind of thing you see in multiplayer (totally flat ships, U ships, missile spammers, ships with isolated compartments, and so on). In other words, my most missile heavy 2M+ ships only have maybe 6 or 8 missile launchers max. I'm big on PVE, not PVP.
However these new missiles are brutal. They take away the one weakness that missiles had, their 'all in' salvo fire. If you could weather that storm relatively intact, you were pretty insulated against missiles. Now however, missiles are a never ending threat that you can't effectively deal with. Unlike all other direct fire weapons, the ability for missiles to fire perpendicular to a ship's facing means you can't focus target them to destroy launchers like you can focus fire every other weapon. Also, these side shot missiles are extremely good at not being shot down by the new weaker PD. PD can't even handle missiles fired directly at it anymore, so it's even worse as these deflection shot side missiles coming at your ship from the sides.
My favorite tactic to take on the Terror was to do a flyby. Send my fast ship not to directly engage the Terror, but to fly past it. Close enough that it unloads all its missiles, but fast enough and far enough away to simply dodge them all. Then the trickle fire from the Terror could easily be handled by a 1.5M ship with adequate amounts of PD. By adequate, I mean about 6-8 PD per side (front, sides, and back). That's really not as effective anymore to do, because the constant stream of Terror missiles is now a big problem during sustained combat.
That's the problem I noticed on larger ship combat, and by larger I mean ships that costs 1-3M each.
On the smallest ships (100k to 250k), missiles are just unstoppable. I remember the first time I played this game, it was a while before I saw an enemy missile ship, so I never used any PD. That first missile ship completely smoked my newbie ship, so I learned real fast how important PD was. So my newbie self equipped some PD, and I was able to fend off early game missile ships like the Pincer and Reckless Warrior, and continue my progression.
Now however, these small missile ships can't be stopped. A small ship, even with adequate PD, will lose to these 1 or 2 missile launcher other small ships are packing. Because some missiles are getting through when previous they were not, and it only takes a few hits to really cripple a small ship.
So with a universal buffs for missiles against big ships, and against small ships, I must say I do not like the changes.
