Mini-mod: LRM to cluster missiles

Thanks for both the link and the PM.

I keep most values similar, like pod size and refire rate, so that I get a somewhat steady barrage of missiles. A small pod size doesn't work for me, they run out too fast. So I need to keep it high but lower the damage per warhead to compensate.

They're meant to be mostly a deterrence rather than a primary kill option so they're unlike traditional missiles. In the several test battles I've played I noticed that guns still do most of the killing so I haven't gotten them entirely wrong, but they're still chewing up armor pretty fast. The values I use actually add up rather higher than the ones you sent through PM; you're right, and I intend to lower them.

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There's also the ECM (jamming) value to consider, if we keep it low then targets have more chances of not getting hit. Currently I simply arbitrarily assign Seeker_A to Seeker_D from LRM1 to LRM4, in order. Haven't really put much thought into it actually.

Do you know how well ECM / AMS works? We have the values (10,20,30,40), but what exactly are they, percentage? Doesn't look like it though, the ones rated 40 stop too many missiles to be 40%. Or perhaps it's a straight value, stopping everything rated below 40 and randomly stopping some of those rated 40?

[StarShatter]

I should really be asleep right now. But since I'm not.

The answer to the ECM/AMS question would be that there is a chance that they are confused/shot down.

JamRocket.script

function JamRocket(jamPower, antiJammer)
local pomeha = jamPower + 10 - RAND(30);
return pomeha > antiJammer;

So if you have a +30 system, its something like 30+10-R(30), and if thats greater than the "antiJammer" (this is stored on the rocket? and is modified by character?) the rocket will miss?

Hopefully you know the values/location of "antiJammer" and can make sense of this. lol.

And yeah, they should have a low "antiJammer", so they can tank the ECM/AMS.

Yeah, I've seen those. Jam value is assigned to ECM and AMS modules, while rockets all have a seeker reference which has a antijam value. Since you've shown that the jam equation works like that, we can insert intermediate jam values as well, e.g. 17, 25.

...

All this mention of jam is making me hungry

Edit:
I think I'll keep my cluster missiles antijam values average. My goal is to have them saturate the battlefield, not for quick kills -- you have gunnery and piloting specialists for that. This is more of a nod to the underappreciated missile specialists and gives the systems specialists something else to do when they're not repairing teammates.

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I still want to replace some existing missiles instead of just adding new ones. I'm fine with guns having 4 different levels of power because even the weakest guns are at least usable. You buy them once, then you use them forever -- until you replace them with better guns. Missiles, on the other hand, need constant replacing. Weak ones will just be a waste of money so I'm pretty sure most players realise this and simply save up to buy the better ones.

We have:

#M_Name_DF = S-4 Dart (4x unguided, 50 dmg)
#M_Name_MM = S-16 Mini (16x unguided, 50 dmg)
#M_Name_SM3 = S-18 Lance (16x unguided, 100 dmg)
#M_Name_SM4 = S-32 Hailstorm (32x unguided, 150 dmg)

#M_Name_SRM1 = SRM-6E Piranha (3x guided, 50 dmg)
#M_Name_SRM2 = SRM-8M Dagger (3x guided, 100 dmg)
#M_Name_SRM3 = SRM-15 Warhawk (3x guided, 150 dmg)
#M_Name_SRM4 = SRM-24 Scorpion (6x guided, 200 dmg)

#M_Name_AlienSRM = Alien Missile Launcher (5x guided, 200 dmg)
#M_Name_AlienPoisonTorpedo = Alien Nano Torpedo (1x torpedo, 50 dmg; 20 dmg x 45 sec)

#M_Name_LRM1 = LRM-7 Starshark (2x guided, 75 dmg, 350 range)
#M_Name_LRM2 = LRM-9 Avalanche (2x guided, 200 dmg, 450 range)
#M_Name_LRM3 = ALRM (2x guided, 300 dmg, 600 range)
#M_Name_LRM4 = LRM-12 Hornet (2x guided, 500 dmg, 600 range)

#M_Name_T1 = T-4 Eraser (1x torpedo, 500 dmg)
#M_Name_T2 = T-6 Hellbringer (1x torpedo, 1000 dmg)
#M_Name_T3 = T-9 Supernova (1x torpedo, 2000 dmg)

#M_Name_MIRV1 = MIRV Swarm (1x, 4 warheads x 80 dmg)
#M_Name_MIRV2 = MIRV-2 Tornado (1x, 8 warheads x 120 dmg)
#M_Name_MIRV3 = MIRV-3 Reaper (3x, 10 warheads x 200 dmg)

Of course, damage isn't the only consideration; some of the better missiles are simply just hard to find. That excuse doesn't work for me though, I'd rather that they be buyable anywhere. With that in mind, I'll be tossing out and replacing the ones coloured in grey.

My reasoning: with unguided rockets most of the time you don't hit anything. If you save them for capital ships that means most of the time you're flying around with rocket slots occupied by something useless (unless you enjoy watching missiles wasted shooting at fighters and missing all the time). So it's an easy decision to toss the 2 most worthless unguided missiles.

The short range missiles were also an easy decision. They're all very similar, only difference in damage. So why have 4? I'll drop the first two.

I'm leaving the alien types alone. They're (1) not buyable, and (2) very rare, only carried by aliens. So I'll just ignore them.

LRMs. I guess some people like the sniping range. In that case I'll just drop the weakest one, and the best one since it shares the same range as the second-best one. You can break some scripts by sniping the enemy before getting close enough to let the mission script trigger them, you know - I'm actually doing you guys a favour

Torpedoes. Do we really need 3 types that essentially only differ by damage? Seriously? I'm ditching the weakest one.

MIRVs. Mmm, blame these things for getting me interested in fixing missiles. I'm not even sure I want to keep any of these originals around. Then again, some people may prefer damage rather than cloud the screen with missiles, so I'll just ditch the first one.

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That means out of the total 20 base missile types, I'm replacing 8. They'll all be whack multiwarhead types, and I'll try not to follow the same big-bigger-biggest style. Mostly I'll probably vary the number of warheads and explosion colours. It occured to me that I could borrow the alien torpedoes' poisoning effect but I'm not really a fan of that. All this editing will mess up the balance, of course, but that's where your comments come in

Edit:
Fixed wrong stats

[StarShatter]

Small Note: If this missiles do a lot of damage (relative), and are fired by a missile specialist. It's VERY easy to take out one of your own allies.

45% passive bonus to damage, and X5 from Deadly Missiles... The ever so humble 20 damage projectile becomes a hefty 145 damage spray of doom! And considering how many missiles there are in 1 pod you can fire A LOT of them in the duration of Deadly Missiles. Also adds a fairly large boost to AnitJamming. (With 5 uses of DM per system, its pretty easy to keep up)

I'd give cheaper ones with more warheads to System Specs. Just to distract enemy ECM/AMS. Unless of course you don't have a Missile Spec, but I love Missile Spec. The ammount of damage you can do with 1 Warhawk is amazing, take out entire groups in 1 missile.

Even short range MIRV like this, with 4 med damage warheads would be cool. Ones made more for killing few weaker targets, or doing big damage to one hard target in the middle of a dog fight. But games in space need to be somewhat over the top.

For my game I reduced the costs for all missiles ~25% just to make buying so many less of a pain. Considering doubling the pod size (& .: availability, as shops stock in pods). Though I found a way to get unlimited money using 1 ALRM and 1 Cheap Ship.


Edit: Considering following valky's little guide to add in a T-5 Smilodon, I prefer that style of ship to the Hrimthurs-T. Even with just armour bonuses its a better ship! If it goes ahead, I'll have it done this weekend. Add a system slot or two for a radar & something.

Whoops, my huge edit came in while you were posting.

I know about the ally damage thing, that was another huge thing which really annoyed me about missiles. Especially if you activate the salvo skill; good god, that one seems friggen' designed to kill the attacking pilot half the time as well.

Which is why I like the tiny multiple warheads; they've got really small blast radii so unless you fire one point blank or an ally is stupid/unfortunate enough to get in the way, we should have less of those incidences.

I don't really have an opinion on those ships, although I preferred the Smilodon since it has two guns to the Hrimthurs' single gun (plus the name Smilodon refers to that cool big cat). Of course, now that we're making missiles less useless I'll have to reconsider many things.

Wait, wait... isn't Deadly Missiles X5 an active perk? It's not too bad compared to if it were a passive perk that was in effect all the time. Still, you're right, it's something to bear in mind. Which is why I prefer more warheads, so I can make the base damage really small. I recall using Deadly Missiles X5 mostly to give torpedoes that extra punch when attacking stations during the endgame missions, but that's about it. Most of the time I was more afraid of friendly fire, ugh.

Edit:
I need to restore the original data files because I mixed too many scripts up. Ugh. I've been playing with Goblin Wizard's Mothership mod, and while the stuff it changes doesn't overlap much with what I'm poking around, I did screw up restoring some scripts from a clean game instead of his.

[StarShatter]

Scorpions have a pod size of 6? </nitpick>
And SRM-8M Dagger are never to be doubted, they are some what better than the Warhawks in battle since they don't have such an AoE. But I don't care too much about Dagger, I usually snipe anyway pewpew. SRM Snipe into crowds is pretty neat. :O THIS ISN'T A MISSILE STRATEGY THREAD!

Earlier enemies that usually have poop missiles, and will now be getting these better, more advanced, crazy missiles. Which will effect difficulty, but not so much balance if they don't become tooooo good. Simply raise the importance of good missile defense, and putting EXP into it.

And yes, deadly missiles is active. If it was passive, I wouldn't get it at all... Useful for snipes or in loose combat where you can avoid the blast radius. Very devastating... Though it often leads to F8F8F8F8F8, until you get a decent hang of it (Or stop using it haphazardly, I use it like I can 1v30 pirates ). Definitely prefer it to the 100% Launch Speed one.

Using DM-3 with LRM/SRM/MIRV makes them into superweapons. Using with a Torpedo is probably overkill/useless, not being able to spread the damage out so much (LRM+DM-3 is basically a torpedo). MIRV-3 with deadly missiles dominates everything. Mother ship deals with Capital Ships better than fighters, so it's more efficient (kills/time) to spend missiles on fighters. Hailstorm does more damage to single target (per pod) than torps anyway.

I guess I went off topic on random missile strategy.

Oh yeah, Scorpions are a 6-pack, I forgot to edit that line when I copypasted stats from the other missiles. You're right about the Hailstorms too, and since they're already in a nice large 32-pack that's why I'm leaving them alone.

Missile strategy discussion is good actually, it helps us understand how other people play the game. Otherwise I might just go crazy making changes that break other strategies. I want the mod to be fun, not overpowering. Although I still think the strategy of sniping enemies from outside their radar using LRMs is cheap ...

I hardly use the active missile skills actually, far too many bad experiences with the blast radius hitting self / allies as well. I use torpedoes on stations, it takes like 20 Supernovas to actually destroy one, ugh... so the DM skills aren't overkill there. I've never used torps for capital ships, just focus all your fighters on them and they go down. Think about it: depolarize, hacker attack, (gun) burst attack... gunnery skills are just too strong. Not to mention the few times I fight capital ships my own team is all over the place, using torpedoes will pretty much guarantee someone gets caught in the blast as well.

Then since I noticed most gunships have heavy guns but no rocket slots, I figured I might as well fix rockets, at least that will bring support ships up to par a bit. Because, really, light guns are pathetic. I did think of modding the light guns, but the guys on the Elite Games forum said they're meant for support ships - and that is a valid point. Meh.

We'll only have a problem if gunships start packing multiple rocket slots. Which the Matarice does - and I'm totally exploiting it for testing, hehe - but its shield/armor/system slots aren't good so I suppose *one* ship like that is ok.

Edit:
I've solved the MultiRocket thing (see "Modding SW3?" thread) so now we've got even more options to play with. We have the basic MIRVs, now we can launch multiple rockets directly, or even combo them and make multiple MIRV launches. The skies are going to be bright with the light of fireworks tonight, lol.