ORIGINAL: Janster
Last few things, if combat is supposed to last several turns, and stuff, then 1 shot missile kills and those missile ships with AOE damage needs to go, or see a nerf, entire fleets vaporize in seconds. Also its hard to maneuver , and asking a ship to 'attack' another, leads often to it doing nothing.
I have been taking a quick look on the XML describing weapon types ( which can be found here: $(Program_Files)/Matrix Games/Armada 2526/XML/WeaponTypes.xml), and pondering over what looks as the average, run-of-the-mill laser a middle size ship might be mounting:
<BeamWeapon Name="Energy Beam">
<Description>
Energy from the ship's engine is stored then discharged in a brief concentrated burst
</Description>
<Restrictions Arc="0.36" Range="6000" TimeBetweenShots="10"/>
<Hints Value="1"/>
<Sound Fire="Medium Energy Beam"/>
<Beam PulseDuration="2"/>
<Effects Width="6" Start="Pulsed Energy Beam_yellow_Start" Middle="Pulsed Energy Beam_yellow" End="Pulsed Energy Beam_yellow_End" LinePixel="6"/>
<ImpactEffect Name="LaserShield" Size="80"/>
</BeamWeapon>
and the two missile types I have found:
<ModelProjectileWeapon Name="Tracking Missile">
<Description>TO DO.</Description>
<Restrictions Arc="0.2" Range="8000" TimeBetweenShots="15"/>
<Hints Value="0.04"/>
<Sound Fire="Small Missile Launch" Explode="SmallMissileExplosion"/>
<Projectile Projectile="Tracking Model" Duration="4.2" Velocity="2000" AutoResolveHitChance="1" DetonationRadius="200" ExplosiveRadius="800"/>
<Model File="Art\Effects\Meshes\Missile.X" Texture="Art\Effects\Missile.dds" Scale="0.4"/>
<Details StraightTime="0.5" MinRange="800"/>
</ModelProjectileWeapon>
−
<ModelProjectileWeapon Name="Long Range Missile">
−
<Description>
Stand off weapon that targets concentrations of enemy ships across wide areas of the battlefield
</Description>
<Restrictions Arc="-1" Range="24000" TimeBetweenShots="25"/>
<Hints Value="0.04"/>
<Sound Fire="Medium Missile Launch" Explode="LargeMissileExplosion"/>
<Projectile Projectile="Tracking Model" Duration="12" Velocity="2500" AutoResolveHitChance="1" DistributedSearch="true" DetonationRadius="200" ExplosiveRadius="800"/>
<Model File="Art\Effects\Meshes\Missile.X" Texture="Art\Effects\Missile.dds" Scale="0.7"/>
<Details StraightTime="1.5" MinRange="2000"/>
</ModelProjectileWeapon>
The items I have highlighted are the ones which - IMHO - are relevant to the tactical effects of the weapon in question. These are my guesses for the meanings of those items:
Arc - Pretty obvious, looks to me like FOV angle for the weapon in radians (?) and determines whether or not the firing ship will have to turn in order to change its bearing to the target. The "-1" one can see in the Restriction for LRMs looks to me it means that the weapon can be fired on targets on an arbitrary bearing.
Range - Self-describing.
TimeBetweenShots - Self-describing.
Projectile.Duration - My guess is that the number is giving the maximum flight time of the warhead.
Projectile.Velocity - Self-describing.
Projectile.AutoResolveHitChance - Quite clear: looks like one can tweak the chances for the projectile hitting its target when battles are automatically resolved.
Projectile.DistributedSearch - Not quite clear what does it mean. At first I thought that it meant that the warhead, rather than going along a straight line towards the target position, it would home into it - and therefore had to compute the shortest path to it as both the warhead and the target move. However, the other missile type does not seem to need to do any search.
Projectile.DetonationRadius - Obvious.
Projectile.ExplosiveRadius - What's the difference between the "Explosive" and the "Detonation" radius? The amount of damage it does?
Details.StraightTime - Not clear. Perhaps the amount of time the warhead will fly in a straight line before homing on its target.
Details.MinRange - Not clear either. I haven't looked closely enough at battles, but it looks like missiles have a minimal effective range.
If all my guesses above are right, yeah, it looks to me that missiles are significantly overpowered - depending on how one plays. My guess is that the designer was considering beam ships to be fast so they can close into missile minimal range - and therefore rape those bulky, slow, missile ships at leisure. So when fighting missile ships, one wants to have a horde of small, fast, beam ships, flying in an open formation charging into those missile-spewing-wall-of-ships.
However, I feel that both the ROF and the minimal ranges should be tweaked - and those detonation radius look to me to be a bit too wide. AutoResolveHitChance,
if it's not affected by tech levels, looks to me as completely unfair. In these files, there seems not to be any mention to the amount of damage inflicted to shields/hull by each weapon platform.
The bottom line: to me it makes sense
as long as the combination of LRMs and speed is not allowed by other game mechanics. I can't say anymore since I have barely played the game for half an hour...
Feedback from a dev would be greatly welcomed [:)]
