Regular Point Defense (as opposed to ECM beams) seem to be having a hard time after the missile buff. In particular I’ve noted that even point defense specialist cruisers can get overwhelmed very easily.
In the picture below there’s a cruiser with 3 Hi-Speed point defenses and a PD Scanner being bombarded by a ship with 4 Fast Missile Launchers. (The lower ship has only just entered range, and isn’t relevant.)
I found that over about 7-8 missile salvos the defence cruiser could not stop even half of the incoming missile damage, even with this relatively light bombardment. Its efforts were almost futile once the second ship joined the attack.
Part of this might be because of Empire cruisers immense shield radius and poor placement of weapons slots for point defense and that doesnt help. But when you dedicate most of a cruiser to just shooting down missiles it should be giving good performance. You sacrifice a lot of damage when you seriously invest in point defence.
Granted that’s not exactly a valid statistical sample size, but this is something I’ve noticed in general with point defence post patch shrug
I’m curious, were you seeing the PD turrets miss the missiles they were going after, or were they just not firing enough to knock them all out?
There is a tracking speed stat in the data files for Point Defense turrets, which might need updating to hit the new, faster missiles. I’m not sure exactly how a missile’s speed compares to a ship’s speed though. Anti-Fighter missiles, which I’ve just been testing, have a listed “missilespeed” of 0.52 in version 1.12, but they move across the screen about as fast as some of my 4.23 speed rocket fighters. Perhaps clifski can clarify the situation.
They usually hit the missile they were targeting, though not always. 2 out of 3 were hits I would say. Though the missiles were fast enough that they only got one or two shots at the missiles coming in.
The PD might need both tracking speed and range improvements to get the same performance against missiles they had before.
You could also give point-defence just enough armor penetration to be able to shoot down unarmored fighters. This might make putting armor on fighters more attractive when they have to attack frigates / cruisers. Very fast unarmored fighters would then be primarily used as a dedicated anti-fighter platform.
When I started playing the game, I built missile ships, and I couldn’t figure out why they sucked. A few days after ditching them, I read about their DPS and fuel, etc. Then, they got a speed increase. They are better, but they are still the worst class of weapon in the game. They are the aesthetic choice. Which is sad, cause I really wish I could use them functionally.
I think making PD a broad spectrum choice would be better as well. Especially since the actual anti fighter guns are a joke at this point.
I agree, lumping point defence into one weapon class that deals with both fighters and missiles would give the best of both worlds. Of course in tandem with this missiles would need a serious boost to their effectiveness, as I’m not seeing the nightmare scenarios people are mentioning of PD being utterly ineffective. When I place a couple of PD tanking ships up front very few missiles reach them. Perhaps 1 or 2 launcher’s worth out of a volley from 2 or 3 ships will ever reach them. The ones that get through don’t give shields any serious grief.
This sounds ideal. It would cause fighters to be split up into three broad categories - unarmored interceptors (who would have a purely defensive anti-air role), armored fighters to take on these unarmoured fighters, who could clear the way for the heavily armored bombers, who would take the battle to the enemy.
At the same time, it would provide a serious counter to Rebel unarmoured superfast fighter spam. If you make it so that the PD ONLY defends against fighters that fly under the shields, it gives bombers an advantage for remaining outside of the shields to do their work.
DarkFenix
I have noticed that PD has trouble against fast moving projectiles such as rockets and fast missiles. I haven’t tested it thoroughly.
I would like PD to be more effective for the same reason I want missiles to be more effective - if PD and missiles are not effective, then choosing to take them is not really beneficial to me.
As an aside, there are other mitigation effects that may be considered - perhaps a tractor beam can catch a projectile and slow it down, or maybe PD could become usable against other types of projectile (eg plasma), or even the ship itself gains firepower the more it’s shields are damaged…there are also the more mundane defences such as flares or possibly the target’s ship computer scrambling and taking control of the incoming missiles.
