Balance issues with new tactical missiles

[lL1l1]

Seraphim

The increased Seraphim missile speed lets the Seraphim TML directly hit any TMD (including Aeon) and hit around 7 units behind a Cybran TMD (and probably more for other factions).

Aeon

Aeon MML constantly overshoots and misses terribly, especially near the minimum and maximum of its range. 15 Evensongs can barely kill this line of mass storages on +6 game speed: Also, it may be worth looking into if the new aeon missiles have a slower travel time, which could impact their MML's effectiveness vs TMD.

Cybran

Cybran missiles have terrible guidance after splitting (I think because they were made zigzaggers), leading to removing some gameplay elements and introducing RNG damage. In my opinion, the split missiles are meant to be reliable damage to make up for Cybran's 1 HP missiles, but now they are more like aesthetic fragments that happen to have a damage attached. Specific Changes:

• Cybran TML can no longer critically damage TMD reliably. It used to be able to target a TMD and 2 split missiles would always hit the TMD for 933 damage (833 split dmg 2 split hits 0.56 special TMD armor). Cybran TMD has 950 hp for reference.

• Cybran TML can't reliably strike at targets behind TMD by using the split missiles' guidance; it's too random now. In my opinion it's a little too powerful for such an early game unit, and should only have short range guidance to kill TMD, but here is the defense for long range guidance nonetheless:

  • When grazing a TMD, other factions' 2 hp missiles would survive and deal 6000 damage (deleting wrecks). Cybran would have 3 split missiles and deal 2499 damage (destroying t2 pgens and t2 mex. Notably UEF t2 pgen is left at 1 hp).
  • At the cost of not destroying wrecks if grazing, cybran TMLs can fly directly over TMD to deal 1666 damage. This would cost 2 250 mass missiles to kill a mex and leave an around 200 mass wreck.

• Ironically, Cybran TML's split missiles are more accurate against targets far from the split than ones near the split location.

• Cybran MML can no longer chip away at TMD with 2x10 damage split missiles guaranteed every shot. It now can rarely hit full missiles on TMD if the split missiles randomly decide to fly over and behind the TMD. This doesn't make up for the missing chip damage since it's completely random. A viper's split missiles completely missing their target:

• Cybran Strategic Submarine has completely ineffective split missiles, massively hindering its 1 HP missile compared to 3 HP aeon/uef. Considering 3 HP can fly over TMD, it should undoubtedly retain long range guidance on its split missiles. Before anyone mentions it, this does not balance out the stealth of the sub; that is balanced by the 9500 -> 10500 mass cost and 200 energy upkeep.

[Garanas]

Interesting point of view on the Cybran missiles - I only considered the splits to be aesthetics and not actually functional.

We can reduce the zig zagging factor to make them a little bit more reliable.

[IndexLibrorumProhibitorum]

I've seen the Aeon missle ship also overshoot its targets, similar to what you reported for the TML.

[lL1l1]

I'm working on a fix for all this, I have cybran missiles like 90% done, just need to get the splitting behavior to be consistent. For Aeon, the MaxZigZag needs to be reduced as the missile closes the distance, and the ground targeting offset should be set to slightly negative from some testing with Torrent. Also Torrent was meant to be reworked to be less accurate, but none of the changes had that effect, I'll address that later. For Seraphim, I'm thinking of making a way for the missile to slow down as it reaches the end of its flight, so that we can keep the unique high velocity but without it being broken against TMD. UEF also has some issues with TML killing TMD, but their speed can be reduced by only ~15% and they're fine.

[Garanas]

Some problems related to TMLs / TMDs are tackled here: https://github.com/FAForever/fa/pull/5782