Hello everyone! we've got another F&I balance thread for you all, covering tentative plans for missiles in the Winter expansion plus a hurricane fittings nerf that doesn't really need it's own thread.
I'd like to start off by reminding people that everything in these F&I threads is open to changes, however there are some significant balance issues being dealt with here that will need to be solved in one way or another. There are also some details that remain to be ironed out but we wanted to get these ideas out to you all as early as possible.
I'll start off with the orphan announcement. In the Attack Cruiser thread we also announced changes to medium gun fittings. We're going to be changing the hurricane at the same time but I wanted that thread to stay dedicated to the specific cruiser balance instead of getting derailed so we're moving that here.
Since we planning to reduce the powergrid needs of all medium artillery by 10% across the board, we are also planning to subtract 225 PG from the Hurricane, leaving it with a base powergrid of 1125.
The upshot is that fitting a full rack of 720s with a MWD and LSE and full mids and lows will require a RCUII and either an ACR or PG implant. Also fitting a standard shield autocane with neuts and LSE will require dropping a few guns down to 220mm.
The hurricane will likely receive significantly more changes when we get to battlecruisers in the balance pass, but this is designed as a compensation for the drop in Arty PG and to help alleviate the problem of Arty ships having so much free PG when they use autocannons.
The meat of this thread however is about missiles. There's a number of missile changes we have planned for the Winter, including the already announced buff to light missiles, a nerf to heavy missile range and damage to put them in line with other long range cruiser weapons, a rework of all T2 missiles so they become usable, and the expansion of both tracking enhancers and tracking disruptors into the realm of missiles.
All Missiles
Increase missile acceleration so that real range is much closer to the client assumed range of flighttime*speed against a stationary target. This means a slight range buff for all missiles, and missiles will act in a way that is more intuitive to newer players.
Light Missiles
-Explosion radius reduced from 50 to 40
-Damage increased by 10% (rounded to closest digit)
-Affects all variant light missiles, including FOF.
Heavy Missiles
-Base flight time reduced by 30%
-Base velocity increased by 6.66%
-In total, base range reduced by ~25%
-Damage decreased by 20% (rounded to closest digit)
-Affects all variant Heavy missiles, including FOF.
Tech Two Missiles
-At the moment Fury missiles at Light and Heavy sizes have a faster explosion velocity than precision missiles, we'll be fixing this defect as part of the changes.
-Remove ship penalties from tech two missiles (ship velocity and signature radius)
Precision: Increase bonuses to explosion velocity and explosion radius, increase damage to match T1 missiles, reduce flight time slightly
Fury: Increase damage, increase penalties to explosion radius and velocity
Javelin: Just remove ship penalties
Rage: Reduce range, increase damage slightly
Tracking/Range Mods and Ewar
-Modify tracking enhancers and tracking computers to affect:
Max flight time (with optimal range script)
Explosion radius and explosion velocity (with tracking speed script)
-Make TDs affect Missiles
Tracking speed disruption script lowers explosion velocity and explosion radius
Optimal range disruption script lowers flight time
