I have used missiles in every game but my first, where I used beams.

I do not see any downside to using them. They are cheap, antimatter is relatively common (compared to Elerium), you can attack from a couple hexes away

I’ve only used missiles they just seem loads better.

My understanding (which could be wrong because, after all, this is a mystery mechanic) is that kinetic weapons are more effective against planets, bases, and nests and worse everywhere else. What's more confusing is that shields work against any type, not just the type that matches their color.

I wouldn't read too much into any of this because I suspect it is all going to be rebalanced before release.

Not if you have a few fleets available. Use 2 to soften up the defenses a bit and attack with the 3rd fleet. It's not a complete gamechanger but a nice little extra on top of already very strong missiles.

Ah, here is that pic of my sadness... ;o

-tid242

Quoting tid242,

reply 9

Reduced 54%

Original 1504 x 772

 

Ah, here is that pic of my sadness... ;o

-tid242

damn, that is horrible i gotta ask though, was this before the ranges were equalized? or is this recent?

Quoting tid242,

reply 12

Quoting Basilisk83,

reply 11

damn, that is horrible i gotta ask though, was this before the ranges were equalized? or is this recent?

 

That was 0.81 (fresh 0.81 game, not a carryover).

Although, since this pic makes kinetic look SOOO bad, as a full disclaimer, I don't recall if this fleet went into this fight with a full tank of hitpoints.  But even as such, the point defenses would've led me to believe that missing some HP wouldn't have been that big of a deal...

 

I'd have to go back and pull an old save to see what the starting HP actually was.

edit: did any of the balancing actually change for 0.90, or is the combat dynamics the same from 0.81 to 0.90?

-tid242

rate of fire, accuracy, and range have been equalized for all weapon types. and the fact that your fleet took 214 dmg while only dealing 82 with those weapons and defenses is still huge, whatever way u look at it

I will also add my voice to the "missiles are the only way to go" conclusion.  The ability to do ranged attacks as well as direct combat is a huge advantage, especially with large fleets of small ships.  I have found that I can destroy starbases, shipyards, and enemy ships with ranged attacks and never have to engage them in direct combat.

I also agree with the voices that say that the attributes of the 3 weapon types need to be seriously adjusted.  One of the intriguing aspects of the game should be the decision about which weapons and defenses you choose to develop and use to equip your ships.  Knowing that missiles will always be the best option kind of kills that part of the game.  Hopefully, our voices here will be the impetus necessary to get the developers to focus on this.

Or they could simply publish how combat works instead of making it a mystery mechanic. The idea that we should have to reverse-engineer how combat works is ludicrous.

i thought this at first too but i'm really not so sure now. the release is supposed to be in like a month they said, and missiles have been op since alpha. at this point you'd think they'd be just working on the bugs and typos and minor balancing and updating the ui to have accurate descriptions for things, not making major combat changes. they honestly dont seem too interested in balancing or diversifying combat for galciv4 beyond the new missile ability and sieges taking a few turns, which are both actually out of combat. they weren't even planning on including the battleviewer until they got tons of angry feedback from people saying that they wanted and expected it to be included. they seem to have the stance that unless there is another big movement like the one that they had for the battleviewer they're not going to make any big changes to combat. and the most recent changes they did was to make accuracy, rate of fire, and range equal for all weapon types. still not quite sure how ship roles work either. like a month to go though apparently... unless there is a big movement from the community i think they're going to be fine with having missiles be op and fleets being very simple. hard to balance a special ability like the ranged missile attack too when the other types have nothing special like that and missiles have no downside. and even if they do make balancing changes soon they're hardly leaving any time for testers to properly evaluate it and make possible changes based on their feedback.

Unless the community shows that we really care about this, i dont think they're going to care about it that much. they're usually focusing their time and attention on other matters and dont see enough feedback for wanting changes to combat.

btw i've seen no evidence that kinetic or shields work like that... and they just said they're keeping the r/p/s aspect so i dont think they would do that with shields...

I am not liking the missiles.  They seem OP.  It seems like other weapons should have ranged attacks as well even if we give missiles a bit more range, there needs to be a downside to that.

Or... balance out combat, and add a situationally useful and appropriate perk to Beam & Kinetic.  I had proposed something on the discord that got limited accolades (unless everyone liked it after I went to sleep or something). 

I had proposed something along the following:

• Missile: as they are - get a ranged attack that's useful situationally.
• Beam: - Give +sensor range as a % or square root of beam strength.  Allows a player to potentially outmaneuver fleets on the map due to slight vision advantage.  Thematically appropriate because beams can be used to ping surroundings to gain awareness (ie radar, sonar, etc).
• Kinetic: - Give % or square root of kinetic strength as armor damage.  Damaged armor heals at same rate as ship heal rate.  Allows kinetic ships to gain an edge in longer more drawn out campaigns and wars of attrition.  Thematically appropriate as repairing armor would be similar to flat out ship repair - long and extensive overhauls.  Shields coming back online would be merely recharging batteries, chafe would be merely stuffing more glitter on the chafe-catapult, etc.  But fixing armor that got shredded by incoming projectiles would be overhaul type of work. 

So missiles wouldn't need to get a "take  away" for an ability that players might or might not use if Beam & Kinetic got a similar perk that may or may not be useful/used/noticed by players.

In addition to overall weapon balance pass So that "regular" battles, play as balanced game of musical chairs for itemizing/outfiting/planning against an enemy ..

People have some other, and more extensive ideas on weapon balancing, etc.  And I'm not really have been participatory to those discussions - my main concern is just having weapons/defenses that are "good enough" that there's some choice in the matter and unbalanced weapons don't disrupt from my macro-game.

-tid242

That's interesting. I also worry that giving range to everyone will make missiles less special.

I wonder if it would be cool if kinetic attacks disabled repair for a time?