[Talenn]

In an attempt to make missiles more useful in later stages of the game I have made several changes to the dynamics. So far, it has worked out OK in our hot-seat games...

1) Increased the cost of researching PD weapons to 12500. That way it takes a sizable investment to reach level 5 unlike before. In the default set it cost almost as many RPs to get to missile 3 as it did to get to PD 5 and the missiles at that level are NO contest vs them.

2) To cover against early missile dominance, I added in an early model PD cannon that is available with Ship Construction 1..ie at the beginning of the game. It is similar to a PD 1, but takes 30kt and can only targer seekers, not sats and fighters.

3) Completely overhauled Plasma Missiles as I thought they were utterly useless as presented. I decreased their size (35kt as opposed to 50), increased their speed a tad and made them harder to shoot down (more seeker hit points). This makes them an ideal companion for the 'ship killers'. They are faster and harder to knock down so they tend to get out ahead and draw the pd fire. On their own they dont do as much damage so it pays to have a good mix and that was the effect I was looking for.

Overall, I think they are fairly balanced in this way except vs the AI which still gets absolutely devastated by the 'missile dance'. Human players simply pack a few ships with PD weapons and/or tractor beams and prevent the 'dance' quite effectively.

Late game tends to have missiles relegated to the support role particularly to help draw fire from the fighters. Also, targeting enemy PD ships early in a battle can really help put the hurt on the enemy fleet if you have a reserve of missile ships waiting.

Talenn