Missile frigates are broken

Spamming missile frigates absolutely breaks the game. So far I've played 20+ games as Vasari Exodus and managed to effortlessly raze my way to the enemy capital worlds and wipe them off the map with a fleet composition made up entirely of kanraks. Same holds true for other factions but considering how innately aggressive the Exodus faction is, it's ridiculously hard to counter this particular tactic unless your enemy scouts you early and dedicates his build to maximizing PD defense. Missile frigates require a nerf or PD counters need to be seriously rebalanced to improve efficacy against missile frigates en masse (perhaps a research tree upgrade improving their role againts missiles at the cost of lower attack against strikecraft?). Regardless of whatever fix is decided on, the current state of missile frigates is too broken to make the game much fun anymore lol.

6,114 views 3 replies
Reply #1 Top

Hey, thanks for sharing this feedback!

From your description, I assume you are playing against ai? 

Missile frigates are indeed very powerful ships, as they have high pierce, which negates durability of almost any ship. This makes them specialists at killing capital ships as well.
However missile frigates, including Kanraks are not the absolute answer to the game. In fact Kanraks would lose both to Ravastras (light frigate) and Defensor Corvettes. However both of those ships, which counter Kanraks, would fare worse against capital ships.

Point defense balance is a very delicate matter, and we are constantly improving on it, as we address such concern every patch. If my assumption about ai opponent is correct, it's more of a matter to make AI more resilient to those kinds of strategies. If I may ask, what difficulty were you playing on?

Reply #2 Top

No, these were multiplayer games, although this tactic works equally well against AI opponents as well. I agree that there are some hard counters to missile frigates, but among other things, what makes kanraks superior is their insane range, which effectively means that the firepower of your entire missile fleet can be bought to bear on an opposing force much quicker than they can even with effective counters. They are also relatively easy to unlock (level II military for vasari exodus which means you can start mass production literally minutes into the game). As for the AI, this strategy worked equally effective on nightmare and insane difficulties.

Reply #3 Top

Chance to Miss - 

I think that missile ships should be strong against capital ships and large ships; that is their purpose. However, the counters should be better. Yes, PD should be good but not perfect, but instead of just buffing the PD, The missiles could have a chance to miss smaller targets. That would reduce the DPS of missile frigates significantly against their counters.

The smaller the target the less likely chance to hit. 

Suddenly an expensive missile ship fleet is taken out by a cheaper fleet.