Missile Balance -- Seems a bit off

[Its Raisu]

Mostly a transfer from some discord conversation.

Currently, the main fighter missiles are: Paralyzer, Catapult, Cannonball, Firestalker, and Sidewinder
The rest are, well... downgrades from anything else available.

Paralyzer's stats:

• Damage | Hull: 100, Shield: 15050, Refire: 0.14
  
• Explosion | Detonation Range: 20, Radius: 65
  
• Tracking | Range: 1000, FOV: 35, Turning: 2.0
  
• Distance | Speed: 60 (+85/s for 4s), Range: 1720-2920, Max Speed: 400-600
  
• Ammo: 20
  

With the speeds that this reaches, even firing from behind a target that is thrusting away it is fairly useful.
Fast, low tracking, Disables just about any fighter shield when it hits.

Catapult stats:

• Damage | Hull: 2500, Shield: 1250, Refire: 6
  
• Explosion | Detonation Range: 0, Radius: 0
  
• Tracking | None
  
• Distance | Speed: 800, Range: 800, Max Speed: 800
  
• Ammo: 120
  

This one was a little odd at first, but it is basically a half-sized Hellfire Rocket Pod usable on Fighters.

Cannonball stats:

• Damage | Hull: 10000, Shield: 5000, Refire: 0.25
  
• Explosion | Detonation Range: 12, Radius: 50
  
• Tracking | Range: 900, FOV: 35, Turning: 0.75
  
• Distance | Speed: 1 (+33/s for 3s), Range: 852-2852, Max Speed: 100-300
  
• Ammo: 40
  

This feels about as close to a torpedo as you'll get with a fighter. Though it might as well be dumb-fired for anything larger than a fighter since it'll likely be beyond the 900 tracker range.
Slow, next to no tracking, large amount of damage when it hits the hull.

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With those three, each one has a clearly different feel and usage. Now we get to the oddballs.
Firestalker stats:

• Damage | Hull: 4000, Shield: 2000, Refire: 0.33
  
• Explosion | Detonation Range: 2, Radius: 15
  
• Tracking | Range: 1000, FOV: 35, Turning: 4.36
  
• Distance | Speed: 33 (+35/s for 2.5s), Range: 917-2617, Max Speed: 121-321
  
• Ammo: 70
  

Sidewinder stats:

• Damage | Hull: 3500, Shield: 1750, Refire: 0.17
  
• Explosion | Detonation Range: 12, Radius: 40
  
• Tracking | Range: 1000, FOV: 30, Turning: 3.03
  
• Distance | Speed: 60 (+35/s for 4s), Range: 920-2120, Max Speed: 200-400
  
• Ammo: 50
  

The only thing that really stands out between these two are the Blast Radius and Muzzle / Top Speeds. Yet, I'm not seeing enough of a difference from that to really justify using a Sidewinder. Could very well be missing something on my end. Especially when you consider the ammo of Firestalkers vs Sidewinders.

Sure, the thing to avoid is having missiles to where they are too strong and everyone is just using them and mashing them in fights for a one-click win.
However, compared to other torp-mount options, fighter missiles leave a bit to be desired.

[Rogue]

Small correction, Firestalkers can only hold 70.

I did around 40 minutes of testing with two friends. Here are the main differences:

The Sidewinder will hit in 85% in a duel (without enemy using CM). The 15% being some dead angles, weird directions your target is flying and distances that are too close.
In a team fight the Sidewinder will hit in most cases where CM's / CD's are not being used. The speed of the missile also lets you cover up the sound much more easy with a CD.

The Firestalker in a duel will hit only in 65% of the times if you opponent knows what he is doing. Even when the target is running from you, it is easy to dodge. In the pressure of a
team fight it also only goes up to 80%. However, it is much more easy to use as a spamming missile. The ammo count and short refire time supports that. Together with others using
CD's on the same target, more than often the target of a team fight can be easily baited to use all his CM's within a short time. Once that happens you the DPS is pretty decent.
But even here if the targets does manually uses CM's, that can be avoided.

Nonetheless, I agree that taking a closer look at missiles and the diversity might be a good idea.

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[Nepotu]

Sunslayer and starkiller should be brought back into the game. I don't get it why they were removed in the first place

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[Rogue]

And I know exactly why hehe

https://youtu.be/981mYq3s2yM?t=105

https://streamable.com/cw4ib

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[Nepotu]

Oh yeah..forgot this is disco where everyone cry to their mama when they get murdered. What can I say too difficult to use CD and CMs, you need a PhD for that

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[Rogue]

+1

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[Its Raisu]

Its likely I misread and saw the 90 from my Ripper ammo.

However, the hit-rate doesn't seem to make much sense when you consider what is behind the missile's tracking ability. The slower speed and higher turning capability + wider FOV should allow it to track onto a target much easier. As the target is coming towards you, its forward speed isn't all that important for reaching the target.

[DarkTails]

This iteration of the Sidewinder is actually useless, then again all the missiles are because it takes away from a CD, I rarely see fighters that go without a CD. BEfore the Aux slot got removed, Sidewinders were the premier missile with a 9k damage to hull. Not saying this should be changed back so drastically, but still, missiles need to be more useful.

And bring back Aux slots

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Boop. ~Spuddo
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Get booped on, nerd. ~Durandal
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Get patted, dork. ~Peti

[Lythrilux]

Never expect fighter balance to differ from the current meta because a vocal minority will always push to keep the status quo, and the balance team always panders to them.

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[Komitoza]

Oh yeah..forgot this is disco where everyone cry to their mama when they get murdered. What can I say too difficult to use CD and CMs, you need a PhD for that

Missiles were never really a problem in duels, nor were they problematic in very small fights, a 3 versus 3 at most. In such cases good timing and decent reaction times would out-do a missile without much issue.

The real problem arises when slightly larger group fights come into play, and 5-6 people are right clicking at you in a very audible and angry manner while your game keeps screaming incoming missile, and you're spamming countermeasures at the rate of a minigun so they don't derp out and get confused in order to survive the flaming flurry of projectiles. And don't you dare try and do an anchor while dodging to get an angle for your arc to fire a CD at at least one of them, even if you properly execute it you'll still be letting them close in even if its just a little bit, and the closer they are, the more it will hurt your rectum once you run out of CM's which happens in about 2-4 minutes after you became the target.

Missile balance is weird and I basically haven't slept in 2 days.

I want my fighter torpedoes back tho, you'd be surprised at how high of a skill ceiling they had.