Does anyone employ Rockets as a bread-and-butter Cruiser weapon?
The rocket seems like a very good, cheap weapon. They appear to be good against shields, and reload and fire at a noticeably faster rate than the other missile types (I haven’t looked at fast missiles).
One of the biggest problems with rocket fleets is in being outranged by missile fleets. Otherwise, rockets appear to be at least reasonably effective as an additional (or even main) weapon, in battles involving otherwise mostly beam weapons.
Having a rocket capability, combined with some powerful beam lasers or fusion/proton beams, appears to be a balanced way to build a medium-ranged fleet. The rockets are for taking down shields, and the beam weapons are for raking unshielded cruisers. All of these weapons can engage outside the range of opposing cruiser lasers.
Of course, another other counter to rockets (besides long-range missile types and cruiser lasers) is in employing scrambler beams/point defense.
Range considerations aside, rockets appear to be the cheapest, most effective of the missile-type weapons.
The keys appear to be in hitting the sweet spot; getting inside opposing missile range, and staying outside of the range of enemy cruiser lasers; and of course, in bringing enough rockets to overwhelm any scramblers/point defense.
I have used rockets on a small number of my cruisers, mostly for cost considerations. But I seem to recall also liking that the rocket range coincided reasonably closely to the range of some of the beam weapons I was using, so I tried to maximize ship speed to get the cruiser into range to dump LOTS of weapon fire all at once. Good in theory, not quite ironed out in practice.
My [anecdotal] impression is that multi-warhead missiles completely dominate the other missile types, except maybe megaton missiles at closer range, due to the fact that point-defense is worthless against them.
I wouldn’t say I’ve ever used Rockets as a ‘bread and butter’ option, but the fact that they cost peanuts can be a nice way to bring lots more of them to the party. And at that point they aren’t half bad as a shield-killing weapon.
Check out my recent challenge for an example what I mean…it’s not at all serious but it does pack a lot of rockets onto a small map. It’s called Tribe Decree something or other, on the Lagoon Nebula.
i also noticed the quite good damage-frire rate relation of the cruiser rocket launcher, so
i’ve tried a cheap, fast fenrir cruiser with rockets and a laser pointer.
the idea was to get into range fast and spam the enemy with fast rockets.
however, i got mixed results, one time it was incredibly successful, the other time it was epic fail.
the thing i’m not sure about is, if, even with the target painter, the rocket output and accuracy is high enough.
an interesting question came to my mind: what determines the fire rate of missile-type weapons?
is it the fire interval stated in the weapon stats, or is it the fuel stated in the txt-file?
is seems the fire rate depends on luck, since the launcher can’t fire a new rocket until the previous one is destroyed, where the fuel comes into play.
i’m not that satisfied with the rocket launcher, i always think the same number of cruiser lasers could perform better.
I use it alot. A fast fleet with beam weapons for breaking armour needs something at range to kill shields. I find the rockets better than the CL for fast fleets with a keep moving option at range. I like them alot. They seem too fast for many of the defences against them. And they dont suck against fast ships, so they are more versatile.
For rebels, they are my bread, my butter is the beams.
I’ve only just started playing, and I’ve only tested this against singleplayer missions, but I made a cheap rocket cruiser and was pretty impressed with the damage output.
Federation Tiger Cruiser (Just because I’m still using Feds, not unlocked anyone else yet.)
Crew Module II
Power I
Power III
Shields II
Shields II
Engine III
Engine III
Proton Beam
Proton Beam
Cruiser Rockets
Cruiser Rockets
Cruiser Rockets
Costs 1885, Speed 0.13
Set it to max range 593, Keep Moving. Team them up with traditional Cruiser Laser builds. It’s probably a really poor build for challenges, but it tears up the AI. I keep tractor-beam frigates ahead of it and risk leaving it armourless.
I use rockets and fast missiles in equal amounts, and found either to work very well indeed.
edit: I just learned that multiple warheads do 44, not 11 damage. I calculate DPS as damage / fire interval * 1000, which gives:
CruiserMissileLauncher (15.38)
MultipleWarheadMissiles (22.56)
FastMissileLauncher (13.99)
CruiserRocketLauncher (20.00)
Don’t go by paper DPS for missiles. If that was all it took, megatons would be on top.
A launcher can’t refire until the first shot has expired. A multi warhead can’t even clear it’s minimum range circle before the launcher is reloaded, so you know you’re losing DPS in practice with that weapon.
That also means tracking misses on those slow missiles carry an absurd penalty.
I was surprised to find out how much better fast missiles were over the normal ones - they are because of the missing problem, as you say. I do have good success with rockets and fast missiles, however, until one gets close enough. Even then, they are some of the best at taking down shields.
Excuse the following rant. I know the thread is about the merits of cruiser rockets and not a manifesto for missile spam, but I want to get this out in the open:
I’ve stated before that missiles are the easiest weapons to counter.
Scramblers counter missiles.
Going against a missile wall? Form a wall of cruisers with scramblers so that multiple scramblers overlap the same area and can do their job.
Not enough to do the job because you are up against a missile spammer? Then get more scramblers or take the hits. Even against MW missiles, this holds true.
Its that simple and that is why I don’t bother with them for challenges.
The points that yurch made are valid as well…he knows what he is talking about.
Also, missiles are not viable at close range (unless there are ships that are sufficiently far away to fire at).
Energy weapons don’t have a hard counter like missiles do.
I eat boring missile spam challenges up (excuse the redundancy…missile spams are boring when thats all there is to counter) and then go looking for something original to play against to sate my appetite.
Missile spams do not offer any replay value unless there is some other interesting aspect to the deployment (which is possible but rarely seen).
was that the challange with a load of weps platforms in two groups overlaying each other …?
It was a toughie at first, tanks and mass countermeasures don’t work, the best bet was a hi speed flank with ships that specialised in close range with keep moving orders.
