I suggest removing the “cartridge” feature and making all secondary weapons more of a consistent weapon. What I mean by this is make the reload times longer, but remove the long wait between uses. So an example would be:
Instead of lots of damage over a short time, then a loooooong wait for the next charges, it is more consistent time between shots and no need to wait through that agonising reloading period.
I like the current system with cartridges.
The amount of missiles per cartridge is a pretty interesting balancing factor. We just need a little more missile variety. But one could also add missile types which do not come with cartridges in addition to the currently available ones.
Instead of single missiles with longer reload or the current cartridge system, how about a stockpile system that merges these two ideas?
Maximum stockpile size would be same as current cartridge size, and as soon as any missiles are used, new ones are built at some steady but rather slow pace, one at a time.
Maximum stockpile size would be same as current cartridge size, and as soon as any missiles are used, new ones are built at some steady but rather slow pace, one at a time.
I’m one of those people that does not use their missiles carefully 
I like offloading a full cartridge in rapid succession on people!
Instead of single missiles with longer reload or the current cartridge system, how about a stockpile system that merges these two ideas?
Maximum stockpile size would be same as current cartridge size, and as soon as any missiles are used, new ones are built at some steady but rather slow pace, one at a time.
I love this idea! And after the initial burst of usage, the output would stay more consistent! But stockpile max would have to be larger… So many things to take in to account… *mumbles to self while walking away*
You have to be careful so we don’t get missile spam either. Saving up a ton of missiles and launching them all at once will cause issue
Catridges have been added for better balancing and less missile spam. So far we see no big issues with catridges that would require to remove them.
Current cartrigde system specifically encourages people to go for “missile vomit”, because every moment the cartridge is not empty and reloading you’re wasting potential firepower you could dish out during a battle. People can just cycle ships and keep on spamming missiles/nukes/whatever.
The alternative system I brought up in my previous comment would encourage more controlled use, and keep the total amount of missiles available during a battle at a minimum. Especially if the maximum amounts of stored missiles would be reduced (while making the rebuild rates a bit faster than otherwise), because then cycling ships wouldn’t allow for any significant advantage regarding missile spamming (though nukes make an exception here).
^