I really, really want to like missiles, but I can’t. By range, they are not as good as plasma. By weight, they are as heavy as heavy plasma. This means something very important, if you use them, you have slow pieces of crap that plasma kills that are not as strong as plasma. If you make them fast, you have NO protection because every slot will be used in engine placements.
Counter argument. When you get into short range, they are very good.
Nope, pull the other one, it has bells on it.
It tracks at .9 and reloads at 2100 for the fast missiles. Considering how easy it is to set up anti missile frigates, who is going to field the slow ones? And if you miss, well, it has to run out of gas before it can be used again. Then add to this, the heavy plasma launcher has a lower minimum range! Add to that, if you don’t use a ton of them, none of them ever hit because their counter is so cheap and effective.
To Sum:
It sucks at long because the reload and refire rate is a lie. 2100 is probably closer to 20000. It sucks at at mid because the reload is closer to 10000 if you manage to hit and not miss. It sucks at short because plasma boats can come below you minimum and do things to you that your mom warned you to avoid. Then they suck because unlike every other weapon, they can be countered. If they are shot down, your laughing because you get the real reload rate. On the other hand, if they are EMPed, they circle and circle their full fuel allotment. If you miss, well tough. Suck it up.
I realize they were given a speed boost, it is not enough. They are probably the worst weapon in the game by cost, weight and usefulness.
I have spent the day playing with them. Even with target painters, I was getting a ton of missiles circling their targets. That they require less crew and energy, means if you are lucky, means that instead of two level three power modules, you are down to a 3 level and a 2 or 1 level power core. In most ships I run, I only have one crew module. So, I go from a 3 to a 2 or zero gravity one. The difference in available speed, is on the ones I built with engines small. For the ones without engines, it made no difference. This is the capital ship build. The frigates were still not worth it.
If you are building a long range spam fleet you’ll be better off with plasma. missiles work fine as support though.
Missiles CAN miss painted targets. I think the painter just adds +1 to their tracking speed or something.
Try using fast missiles if you want to bombard from long range. The speed will let the launchers reset quickly.
You should also mix in some ECM Shock missiles. I like to use them on my frigates. The supporting fire from your missile ships will let the ECM missiles get through and the shock will shut down antimissile defenses letting all your missiles through.
if you are looking for a frigate design try picking a chassis with lots of weapons slots. put on an engine I and as many torpedo launchers will fit without putting on a power generator. you’ll end up with a dirt cheap support ship. Horribly vulnerable to fighters and return fire but good firepower and expendable.
Missiles can also act as ‘cover’. Stick a few ECM shock or shield disruptor missiles amongst the rest, and the mass of missiles can let the ‘special’ ones get through.
Also, they are the only weapon that forces your opponent to install countermeasures which take up space. Every Point Defense slot on an enemy ship is another weapons slot that can’t fire directly at you.
I tried that too. I spent a few hours yesterday just playing around with different missile builds. The idea was that, every other class weapon can have a fairly good dedicated fleet. Fleets where that is pretty much the only weapon used, if it isn’t the only weapon used.
I will admit, just due to aesthetics, I stuck with Empire. Still, I ran the gambit. Not all possible configurations… that would take a Long time. However, went from tons of engines to no engines, and in between. Armor in varying levels. All of one type of missile in various combinations. Various sheilds. Missile painter and no missile painter. I spent a long time trying things out. The most effective I found was a heavy armor, heavy shields, dedicated fast missile ship. It does well in most cases, but the best I could get in Survival was around 40K with it, and in the various challenges against dedicated fleets, it generally failed. It did pretty good against mixed fleets though.
In regards to the second point, I disagree. The fleets that really ripped my various dedicated fleets apart often did not seem to have PD. They were either heavy plasma that tore them apart at long range, dedicated plasma that got below my minimum, or lasers like ones that got in and tore me a new one at various distances. I went up against a dedicated laser challenge that used PD frigates, and was destroyed as well. I actually put the fleet that did the best after all my testing as a challenge to see how it will fare.
BTW: it is called ‘missile test’ and it uses the same name as above. if people would give it a try and let me know their thoughts, I would appreciate it. Also, maybe post your own dedicated missile fleets, it could give some solid feedback on missile functionality. Right now, as much as I believe what I am saying, it is unsupported opinion.
I started out with missile cruisers that aren’t really effective when compared to plasma cruisers.
They need to be fire-and-forget missiles so your launchers can have three or four flights in the air at once to be in any way competitive with plasma cannons.
I agree. That is a design choice on the part of Cliffski. One that I am not sure I agree with. It nerfs the missiles to uselessness, and because the fire rate listed and the real fire rate are so different, new players are going to get a bit of a shock when they choose to use them. If nothing else, missiles under fire rate should read ‘variable’. Though, even were that changed, I still wouldn’t view them as a functional weapon.
Some of my early setups used missiles to pretty decent effect, but now I’ve actually taken note of the rate of fire being thoroughly screwed by missiles missing and flying around in circles for ages. They’re an interesting weapon (courtesy of the variety of missile types) but they need a huge fuel reduction to be really practical weapons.
I am not sure if the design is ‘by choice’ but merely an implementation detail; I don’t think there are any weapons in the game that are allowed to have more than one projectile at a time. We only notice it with missiles because they have such a long flight time.
I may, however, be wrong - I am new to these forums after all
Yes, well the point was that missiles in their current iteration can be very powerful.
I actually am trying to play with each race but I saw there were no Feds so I had to give them a go. I find that all races/species are able to accommodate my survival fleet designs to varying degrees… and I am refining it as I go (much like Erlandr obviously is). At a certain point though, I’ll be pretty much optimized and it will just be a matter of playing it multiple times to get a good run.
the ludicrously long time between salvos (because there can only be one missile per turret in flight at once) means the stats on them are misleading… it’s be interesting to see how missiles fared if that was changed
I just did a fair bit of testing with missiles (cruiser multi-warhead ones, specifically) against a few of the most-difficult-rated challenges, and it didn’t go very well. The only one they beat was the Crossfire formation, and that was after a couple of tries (hint: don’t use “Keep Moving”). Plasma seemed to be pretty clearly a better choice. Note that none of these fleets had any point-defense at all, and I tried bringing target painters as well.
The longer range of missiles is of some use, mostly against slow enemy fleets that take a long time to close the gap (e.g. Crossfire). However, plasma’s substantially better rate of fire (accounting for the 1-volley limit on missiles) more than makes up for it if both sides get into shooting distance with any degree of alacrity.
I certainly wouldn’t go so far as to say that missiles are useless, but I do think they still need a little help. The speed boost was a step in the right direction. Maybe the self-destruct on target destroyed in 1.13 will bring them closer to being competitive with plasma as a fire-support option. (At least the MIRV variety, and possibly fast missiles.) Improvements to ship maneuvering to make it easier for missile boats to stay at long range would help a lot, too.
I think a problem a lot of people are having is that they are going all out missiles and judging based on that. that doesn’t work very well… you run into the same issues you have with plasma stacking (poor tracking, mediocre dps) and pile on missile issues on top of that. using a handful of missile support ships and mixing in ecm launchers and disruptor bombs is pretty great though.
however i think missiles SHOULD be powerful enough that people are forced to take PD if they want to compete against missile heavy fleets. not a crazy amount of pd, but at least some.
that would be silly. this isn’t a mmo or even a strategy game… ‘kiting’ is pretty boring from a gratuitous perspective.
I dunno, I’ve tried mixed fleets and missile-exclusive fleets, and neither seems to do well. In fact, an all-missile fleet beat that Crossfire challenge when a mixed fleet failed, thanks to getting in more shots from long range.
I’ve tried using ECM missile frigates, and they always end up wandering into range and getting destroyed in short order. Their comparatively short range is a major liability. Possibly some cleverer orders/initial placement would give better results than I usually get, I don’t know.
As to kiting, well, if we can’t do that, then missiles need help somewhere else. More effective standoff behavior just feels like a really obvious and straightforward improvement. It would really help foster the sense that your ship captains have at least a shred of common sense. :-p
It might depend on what he means here. If he means kiting a ship around the battlefield while slowly pinging it to death, then yes, that’s going to be boring. If he means his ship doesn’t fly into suicide range and tries to keep its distance to avoid being obliterated, then really, this should be a given. If missiles are meant to be a long-range weapon, it makes no sense for the ship to sit idly by as the death star closes in on it.
I completely disagree on two points. There is a lot of strategy in minute build optimizations for autonomous battles. Also watching stupid ships make poor tactical choices is also very boring from a gratuitous perspective. Being able to tell your ships to behave at least somewhat like you expect them to when you design them is NOT boring.
