It's way slower than the normal one so it's not good for general mobility
It's inferior to the tank in combat, less versatile and at the same tech level so it's not good for killing nests either
For some reason it has half the shooting speed of the handheld rocket launcher which makes it specially bad for combat, surely this was not intended?

I honestly just wanted an armed hovercraft that can deal with the odd biter attack without having to sacrifice HALF of it's speed to do it, it's an incredibly harsh tradeoff for a terrible benefit, i just don't get it.

Few things to address here:

1. It is intended to be slower then the normal hovercraft in the same way the tank is slower then the car. The missile hovercraft is faster then the tank and should be more agile.

2. Not sure what you mean to the missile hovercraft is less versatile then the tank. It is faster and more agile then the tank, isn't damaged by trees/rocks like the tank, and can go over water? Do you have other suggestions to improve it's usability/versatility?

3. Shooting speed is not supposed to be half that of the normal rocket launcher/spidertron launchers. I will patch that in a moment.

The ideal of the missile hovercraft is a more agile, faster version of the tank. My original ideal was not the be 100% better in all ways, but I guess it should be in the way the vanilla vehicles are 100% better then the previous version. Maybe I should buff the health and possibly the resistance so that it follows in the line. I am always open to ideals and suggestions though I am not looking to make anything over powered and game breaking.

Update has been pushed. Check the changelog for all the changes. Pretty much buffs across the board for all hovercrafts. Please let me know your thoughts and suggestions for other ways to improve the mod and I will take them into consideration.

It's way slower than the normal one so it's not good for general mobility
It's inferior to the tank in combat, less versatile and at the same tech level so it's not good for killing nests either
For some reason it has half the shooting speed of the handheld rocket launcher which makes it specially bad for combat, surely this was not intended?

I honestly just wanted an armed hovercraft that can deal with the odd biter attack without having to sacrifice HALF of it's speed to do it, it's an incredibly harsh tradeoff for a terrible benefit, i just don't get it.

I have made further balancing adjustments to the missile hovercraft that should make it feel an improvement over the tank in combat. Please let me know your thoughts on the missile hovercraft now.

I have made further balancing adjustments to the missile hovercraft.

Wow i didn't know you'd actually address this and so fast to! Thanks for looking into it, i'll take a look at the changes, do some tests and make a proper feedback post soon.

No problem. I have also updated the mod portal main page with updated stats for each hovercraft. This way one can compare them to the vanilla vehicles on the wiki. Also, don't forget that hovercraft, like vanilla vehicles, are improved with quality if you have the DLC, which includes their weapons.

I have noticed I did not add in the mechanic the spirdertron uses to rapid fire it's four launchers to the missile hovercraft. Therefore, it does not fire as fast as I intended. I will fix this issue tomorrow as it is a bit too late to get started on that this evening.

Alright, seems that what I was wanting to do is not allowed on anything but spider vehicles (for some unknown reason).

Therefore, I have reduced the cooldown of the hovercraft's launcher turret by 25% to get the same affect. So it should now fire about 67% as fast as a spidertron. And the update is pushed so now test the changes and get back to me....tomorrow.....I am going to bed.

Any update on your thoughts after the changes?

Hi and sorry for the delay, life called and i couldn’t make enough time to do this for a while, here it goes:

To address somethings you said first:

Not sure what you mean to the missile hovercraft is less versatile then the tank

In the combat sense i forgot to add, with the multiple weapons the tank has it can deal with just about everything on Nauvis, while the missile hovercraft could at best kill one biter at a time with normal missiles for example, it now does it a lot faster but still one at a time.

My original ideal was not the be 100% better in all ways

I agree with this, but hovercrafts feel more like the car conceptually, and i don't think the car and tank are in the same line of upgrades, they serve different purposes, and the tank is already neatly balanced to fulfill the hard combat role, with that said i don't think it makes sense conceptually nor is necessary for any hovercraft to attempt to replace the tank. They could just be upgrades for the car only.

but I guess it should be in the way the vanilla vehicles are 100% better then the previous version.

But is this really true? There are only three vanilla ground vehicles in the game and they don't fully replace each other, if anything the spidertron beats the other options in convenience alone.

I’ve tested against various sized nests with explosive ammo and my conclusion is that, ironically, the missile hovercraft is somewhat equivalent to the tank, because of it’s speed and the greater area of explosive rockets it can actually deal with worms (the main threat in nests) better than the tank, although the tank is still faster at killing things in general, it often leaves more worms alive to damage the tank, and in exceptionally dense nests with behemoth worms the missile hovercraft can cheese them out and stay alive longer simply because it doesn’t get slowlocked to death as easily, although that would be a risky and painfully long nest raid, neither tank nor hovercraft would be an acceptable option for such nests i’m afraid.

So right now the missile hovercraft is not powerful enough to be a straight tank upgrade nor weak enough to be a predecessor, but what i find a bit weird is how sturdy it is considering it’s a supposed to be a hovercraft, it should probably have lower resistances and definitely not have more hp than the tank if you want to keep it equivalent, this wouldn’t even nerf it that much in combat since it already relies on speed, on the other hand if you want to make a straight tank upgrade you’d need to buff it somehow, but the main thing holding it back is that rockets are a lot weaker than tank shells.
Another option, assuming you’d want to change up your mod a lot, is to go with a ‘hovertank’ concept and just make a hovercraft with a tank cannon if you really want it to be an upgrade.

As for the laser hovercraft i did only minimal testing but i can tell that it’s really not suited for combat since it has no area damage, and also not good for mobility since it’s slower than the electric and normal, overall a 4th hovercraft just feels like bloat when, by then, most players are gearing up to leave Nauvis, and on the other side is merely the tiny convenience of having a fast armed hovercraft, i wouldn't use it to kill nests anyway in the same way i wouldn't use the car, at that point the mod is just holding on to the tradeoff of no weapons for speed like it’s sacred.
Considering it uses laser that would make it the ideal candidate for that role of fast armed hovercraft, and it would help to reduce the complexity of the mod a bit by just merging it with the electric.

So those are my thoughts, i might’ve said things in the form of ‘do this’ or ‘do that’ but take everything i said only as suggestions, as always it’s your mod and you get to decide what to do with it, i’ll be happy with just my basic fast hovercraft.

Thanks again for the thoughts and I will take them all into consideration.

I had actually been thinking about changing the missile hovercraft to more modeled after the tank all together instead of the car, but I can't make 3d models/sprite sheets. If somebody else wanted to take the time to do so I would be happy to donate a fair fee for such a thing. I don't want just some AI modeled something that doesn't fit the style of Factorio. A kit bashed tank hovercraft model like the normal hovercraft uses now would be just fine, but I do not have the time to do that myself sadly. I have thought about reaching out to Earendel about making a model for me because I love his Ironclad model.

As for everything else, I agree that the hovercrafts probably shouldn't aim to replace the others. The mobility of being able to traverse water is their main bonus. The weapons are just an added bonus to fend off running into a nest you see before the chunk loaded.

Thanks again and hopefully you can enjoy the hovercraft for what it is and those not interested in the combat hovercraft can disable them. I don't personally use the mod anymore, but if I did that is probably how I would use it.