Change speed of Fireball upon changing its direction

I am spawning a Fireball entity at a location and changing its direction to go towards a player, however the fireball speeds up a lot and I can't figure out how to slow it down. Here is what I have tried so far.

Code:

Location location = new Location(player.getWorld(), -268, 75, 84);
            Vector vector = player.getLocation().toVector().subtract(location.toVector()).normalize();
            vector.multiply(0.5f);
          
            Fireball fire = (Fireball) location.getWorld().spawn(location, Fireball.class);
      
            fire.setDirection(vector);

Here is a gif of the fireball for reference.

Edit: In case you are not familiar with fireball entity, you can not set the velocity.

 

@Irantwomiles Maybe this post helps somewhat?

 

I had actually looked at that post, the thing is I'm not launching from a player, but rather a Location. I did fix my issue, but I dont like the method. I had to use #setVelocity() instead of #setDirection(), but the bad part is that I have to constantly update the if I want to to keep going in the direction that I want. I believe the velocity is updated frequently for fireballs on the server side so I need to keep overriding it.

 

Fireball is still a Projectile either way.

Seems like a hacky way but, if it works it works i guess. :7
Though if you're using a runnable for this, i think i'd be better to have 1 runnable for all the fireballs instead of 1 for each fireball. (I'm no expert on performance though)

 

Yea I did do that. Though I don't like how I have to update it every 1/20 of a tick.