Nerfing Missiles (this is sure to make me popular)
Missiles aren't unbalanced, it just that people almost universally overlook or discount their disadvantages.
1. Missiles don't work in a Nebula. At all. If missiles are your only weapon, you're screwed.
- This is somewhat negated by the fact that a 'Real Stars' game will have NO nebula systems in it, but in my opinion that's a bug with the real stars setting.
2. Missiles are expensive. I can build entire ships for less than the cost (in money and minerals) of filling the magazines of a missile cruiser.
3. Missiles have a shallow damage template, requiring them to average more total damage to cripple or destroy a ship.
4. Missiles are very weak in a jump point assault - or defense. They gain no benefit from short range, save in the rare case where they deny anti-missile defenses multiple shots.
5. Small, cheap anti-missiles can kill missiles at a spectacular exchange rate - something like 3-5% of the build time & cost.
6. The mechanics of missile targeting and 'to hit' leads to wildly inefficient use of ammo. It's not at all unusual to score a spectacular overkill, or underkill, on opponents.
7. Most people seriously under-armour their ships. My frigates have 12 layers of armour, my battleships 24 to 30.
7a. Most people - especially at low tech levels - seriously under-shield their ships. In player vs player fights I've had a single battleship absorb the entire magazine capacity of my opponent's missile squadron without blowing up.
- Granted, low-level shield tech is crap but it's not
that expensive in terms of RP to improve it up to the level usefulness.
8. Missile production is slow, and ammo is hard to get to the ships. I conquered one NPR when it withdrew all its (empty) cruisers to re-arm, and another when it simply ran out of ammo on an empire-wide basis. In both cases I lost 2-3 initial battles.
TACTICALLY, missiles are very strong. STRATEGICALLY, they are fairly well balanced if you take adequate care to properly run your empire and plan for missile expenditure. Most people don't, leading to them scoring crushing victories in 3-5 fights, then being one turn from extermination, whether they realize it or not.
When I fight missile empires, the fights go one of three ways:
1 - The enemy runs out of missiles before I run out of ships. My survivors crush his entire fleet.
2 - The enemy runs out of reloads before I run out of fleets. My survivors crush his entire empire.
3 - The enemy runs away faster than I can chase. My survivors occupy what space I will, and wait for the enemy to return.
While I frequently lose battles, I never lose the war because I ruthlessly exploit the weaknesses of missile-armed opponents - especially
economic weaknesses.
