Hey Steve, I was hoping for some fixes to PD in C#. Currently, and I know that this doesn't effect you as much, but PD falls off pretty hard in the late game. From some number crunching, it appears that the new missiles changes don't fix this issue either. Would it be possible to get a better PD balance in the late game to compensate for this?
Can you provide some numbers for how it falls off?
I came prepared. More specifically, PD gets worse than AMMs. It also makes a lot of sense that the first time AMMs are better than PD is the tech level after you said generally stop playing (Magneto-Plasma).
Not sure if Image links work, but I'll try it
This assumes the "best" AMM and the "best" PD for that tech level
Without any ECCM on the AMMs:
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/402321466839793664/530507553273020426/unknown.pngWith 0.25 MSP ECCM on the AMMs:
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/402321466839793664/530507750179078154/unknown.pngThis tracks the maximum target speed that an AMM or PD can hit whilst still retaining a 100% hit rate.
At early levels (convential-Ion) PD dominates, with over 2x the maximum speed possible to hit than AMMs at Ion (7022.7 km/s for AMMs, 16000 km/s for PD.) At Magneto-Plasma, AMMs over double in speed, jumping to 14694.44 km/s, not far off from the PDs maximum of 20000 km/s. Since this is where you said you generally stop, it seems pretty balanced. However, If you go to the next tech level (Internal Confinement), AMMs once again double in max speed, jumping to 28518.75 km/s, as compared to PDs 25000 km/s maximum.
AMMs only continue to grow more powerful, gaining roughly 50% speed per tech level afterwards (46k, 74k, 118k, 172k, 244k) capping out at 299k km/s at Beam Core Anti-matter. PD, comparatively, gains exponential growth, but at an extremely slow rate.
At Magnetic Confinement, PD has a max speed of 32k, then 40k, 50k, 64k, 80k, and 100k at Beam Core Anti-matter. As you can see, PD is nearly 3x as slow as AMMs at the higher techs.
Now I know that AMMs have to deal with ammunition, but I have never found it particularly hard to keep my missile ships supplied, and even with that constraint 3x speed seems a bit ridiculous. It also doesn't help that the racial Tracking Speed Bonus vs. Missiles techs do absolutely nothing as of right now.