I know this is a somewhat unpopular issue, as most like to see the game completely twitch based and anti-strategy based, but it needs to be addressed all the same.

In a real space combat scenario, missiles would be far more widely used and available, considering the fact that they'd be more inclined to hit their target than a projectile, as well as having a high enough yield to destroy most ships. I realise that having missiles that could destroy a Vendetta ship would totally suck ass, but missiles being as useless as they are is just stupid. Your suppost to resort to close range weapons when you run out of missiles, not from the get go.

And thus I have suggestions two-fold.

First, missiles in general should have a speed of at least 200 m/s, allowing one to run from missiles if they're disinclined to fight.

Second, I believe hive and other NPC ships should more widely apply missiles to combat, including the Pirate ships in the Grey space sectors.

The avalon should still be a slowass bastard though.

Also, I'd like to suggest bombs as well. And I don't mean a bigger missile or rocket, I mean an actual bomb that you drop from your ship, and continues at the same speed and in the same direction as your ship was when you dropped it. This would be a great addition, considering the idea of 'bombers' for usage against capital ships.

Technically, if we were following physics, mines would act like the bombs you suggest. If you're moving, they move with you. Problem is server load.

rockets should be faster than missiles as they dont carry any of the guiding system (weight) that missiles must.

a 200m/s rocket would make more sense than a missile.

at 150m/s, a missile would also feel right.

but the faster missiles are, the less maneuverable they are.

and jettisoning cargo should deter rockets & missiles (aka, cargo should trigger proximity range).

I think missiles are very good now. When used right, they do a good job of taking out slower targets, and even light fighter make a point not to ignore them completely.

I would like to see slightly more deversification of missiles. Even after you can get chaos swarms, there are sometimes still good reasons to use stingrays. But chaos swarms completely obsolete locas swarms, and geminis completely obsolete all other small port missiles. I would like to see the obsoleted types modified slightly to give them specific roles. Example: The choas fire much faster than stingrays, and have much better guidance and proximity fuses. But the stingrays do slightly more damage per load, and are much lighter to carry. Choas and Stingrays lend themselfs to different roles.

Yes, I too would prefer to see the current missiles modified to offer some advantages than the whole system revamped.

200m/s missiles are a lazy pirate's dream. Don't even have to aim them and they'll catch up with a Moth on their own.

Yes, missiles are nearly worhtless. Pvp only swarms ever seem to hit, and that only happens when the player targeted either doesn't notice them or turns into them accidently. THE BOMB IDEA ROCKS!!!!

Reminds me of a divebomber in WWII- it takes skill and it takes daring because you have to maintain a certain trajectory in order to get a hit- but it would look cool. Imagine a flight of divebombers, each with one large bomb attached the underside, swooping in close to the capital ship and detaching their bombs. That is a sweet idea.

Missiles just need to be more 10x as pricey, take much more space inside a ship, and be DEADLY, requiring chaff or electronic countermeasures to evade. By deadly I mean if they hit the target loses 50-75% of their hull. A fighter could only carry one or two such missles, while a rag onthe other hand could take 4.

The last point, Tamion, is called the Swarm Missile Launcher.

Nah, Swarms are easy to evade. Just run around in circles till they dissapear. Also, each ship can carry a zillion reloads of swarms.

Edit: Well, not a zillion, but too many

Swarms are easy to evade when fired at the wrong time. They are quite effective if used correctly, that is, up close and fired just before the target changes directions (i.e. when it loses momentum). Against IBG Centurions and IDF Valkyries, though, they might not ever be the right choice.

Swarms would be better if they acted like how the devs originally wanted, where they launch in a bunch of directions, and don't follow the simple "swarming" pattern that they do now, but all choose different paths to intercept the target. Then they wouldn't be the one-dimensional threat that they are now, but become a much more difficult set of threats to evade. Of course, the total magazine would have to be reduced to only one or two shots.

Why's that, CP? Assuming they function as you described, only a few of the bomblets from any given swarm would likely impact the target.

yea, but don't you think things could get incredibly spammy really quickly with lots of swarms flying in all different directions?

The properly swarming swarms would ideally hit the target with at least one of the missiles, rather than being pretty much all or nothing, but that is an incredible advantage if it can knock your opponent's light fighter around and give you time to train your guns.

But the advantage of gaining at least some hits must be outweighed by something. Sure, the swarms don't have a ton of shots to begin with, I think that if their tracking ability is significantly increased (like this could possibly do) then you wouldn't need as many shots to get the job done.

Hmm... I think swarms are the wrong direction to go. The point is to make missiles that fire once, are very expensive, and are very effective. Swarms are pretty much the opposite of that, and even if they did perform as CP said they're supposed to they'd still be spammy in small quantities. What we need are single missiles with enough power to almost destroy an opponent that can be launched without warning and require electronic counter measures or chaff to evade.

Problem with that is that after you blow 5,000 credits on a single shot and manage to kill the bad guy, he drops.... nothing, or something so worthless as to make it pointless. Perhaps when ship prices rise (and equipment prices accordingly) picked up salvage will actually be worth more than the missile used to get it. Make missiles as deadly as they are in modern air combat and add the matching anti-missile protection and you've got an interesting dogfight.

I am not sure I agree with your assesment of the situation.
You say it will create interesting dogfight. IMO it will destroy the dog fight we hae now and replace it with a missile based one. Not necessarily a bad thing, but something that will be resisted by most.

True. There is no dogfighting with missiles.
Fine example of this is Cunjos "i have safety on swarms" type of dogfighting.
You dogfight with him and if he is about to lose the fight he swarms you.
Very fair and interesting tactics /sarcasm intended/.

I for one am very very reluctant to improve missiles. They were only nerfed slightly from back in beta when missiles were rediculously good. I think that people feel that missiles are useless now because they don't have the comparison of what the beta nerf did to them. (For an example, a gem/neut vult was incredibly deadly) While stingrays and the lower level missiles are agreeably useless, gems and swarms can still be used very effectively if one puts some strategy behind it. Look at relayer, she's great with swarms and she does not spam them. And Gems are still great at picking apart heavier targets.

Missiles have their uses. The thing is that to use them well, you can't think of them as "fire and forget". You have to be aware of the right time and direction to fire them. As for spamming, in my opinion it hurts the spammer more than the spammie. Once the spammer looses all his missiles at once, if the target just turbos around till the missiles run out, while staying near the spammer to keep him from fleeing, now he's got a prime target with an empty tube of missiles. You have to use them with precision in order for them to be effective. This is the way it should be, IMHO.

Stingrays are actually decent bomber weapons imo.

The only missiles I can't think of a use for are fireflies and yellowjackets.

well there was that missile suggestion I made a while back, but I lost the link...

If one more person tells me RelayeR is compenant with swarms when fighting anything aside from a rocket rag or a moth, I'm gonna lose my cookies.

Personally, I feel that missiles should be things that SUPPLEMENT a dogfight, and aren't supposed to replace dogfights completely. So if swarms only have one or two shots, then there's pretty much no way that you could outright destroy a fighter. You'd have to do at least some work with rockets or guns.

If the current missiles were specialized in some way, (one is long range, but unmaneuverable, one is short ranged, and extremely maneuverable, another is powerful but slow, etc) then the makeup of dogfights would change significantly. Pirates might use long range missiles to finish off crippled traders trying to run, a person who loves dogfighting could use the short-ranged, maneuverable missile to get that last elusive hit, etc.