Do Warheads work?

[Blakpik]

I know this may sound kinda dumb. But... They don't seem to work in any practical capacity. I go and activate, and arm warheads on a ram, and fly directly into a ship. Only some of the warheads detonate. The remainder, for some reason, refuse to explode, even after ramming yet again. It's almost as if the first explosion made every other warhead stop working. The damage on the other ship was negligible at best and I really can't see how these are useful as missiles in any way. Or useful at all. Am I doing something wrong or are warheads just useless?

 

[Brokengauge]

I know this may sound kinda dumb. But... They don't seem to work in any practical capacity. I go and activate, and arm warheads on a ram, and fly directly into a ship. Only some of the warheads detonate. The remainder, for some reason, refuse to explode, even after ramming yet again. It's almost as if the first explosion made every other warhead stop working. The damage on the other ship was negligible at best and I really can't see how these are useful as missiles in any way. Or useful at all. Am I doing something wrong or are warheads just useless?

Right now they are practically useless except for those most dedicated to being trolls.

Hopefully this will change.

 

[AtraUnam]

Warheads are great if you want to invest massive effort into a weapon that will kill at most 3 blocks while also being incredibly slow, innacurate and of limited ammunition.

 

[Blakpik]

Warheads are great if you want to invest massive effort into a weapon that will kill at most 3 blocks while also being incredibly slow, innacurate and of limited ammunition.

Brilliant. I'll go and begin designing military ships to use this advanced weapon system immediately. It has been my dream to fill space with over 9,000 rockets just to break a single fighter. It sounds like an extremely worthwhile use of resources.

Okay, but seriously thanks to you (and Brokengauge too) for clarifying that they're pretty much useless.

 

[AtraUnam]

Brilliant. I'll go and begin designing military ships to use this advanced weapon system immediately. It has been my dream to fill space with over 9,000 rockets just to break a single fighter. It sounds like an extremely worthwhile use of resources.

Okay, but seriously thanks to you (and Brokengauge too) for clarifying that they're pretty much useless.

You joke but it takes around 250 warhead torps to destroy a 2k mass fighter.

 

[StormWing0]

You joke but it takes around 250 warhead torps to destroy a 2k mass fighter.

Default settings? Last I checked warheads still don't chain react or group build on eachother's strength yet.

 

[Calhoun]

They can however pop the enemy's aux very easily if they're an unskinned system brick.

 

[StormWing0]

They can however pop the enemy's aux very easily if they're an unskinned system brick.

Those moments are fun. Gets even more fun with moving minefields and some poor sap flies an unsaved titan through the area. Oh god the swear words that come from that.

 

[kiddan]

The only time I'd use warheads mid-battle would be for boarding, as you can blow a hole in a door while ignoring shields. Otherwise, I'd recommend weakening shields instead of bypassing them. A swarm of Ion Missiles is generally harder to hit than a warhead.

 

[MacThule]

Warheads... heh

Warheads are totally useless except for commando boarding ops, and since so many PvP ships now sport armor much thicker than 5 blocks and sometimes very effective anti-boarding weapons... boarding is a pretty radical tactic and so hard to pull off that, by comparison, taking down 100M shields so you can just blast your way in is turnkey.

They are little more than a novelty firecracker in the big picture.

 

[Zekester81]

In short, they work, but why bother at this point. There is a serious need to have them fixed, and more ways to make them useful. I would like to see a way to attach them to a core, where the core doesn't show up in with any nav beacon and thrust is unable to be used while set to mine mode. Possibly a new setting in the Bobby AI, Mine Mode, and the ability to chain react/fire whole group on contact.

 

[AtraUnam]

Default settings? Last I checked warheads still don't chain react or group build on eachother's strength yet.

As in 250 independant guided torps with 1 warhead each.

 

[sayerulz]

I almost wonder if we might be better of just straight up removing warheads. I don't feel like anyone has been able to come up with a good solution that doesn't make them either:

A- insanely OP

B- totally useless (current mechanics)

C- useless in real combat but the ultimate trolling device.

 

[Dr. Whammy]

Actually, plenty of good ideas were given. People just get too hung up on the shield bypass thing and that's where the discussion stays indefinitely until a flame war starts. Then another thread pops up like this one and starts the process over again.

Many of us want the ability to make a strategic deterrent weapon such as a tomahawk, mine or torpedo. We have no interest in trolling people's bases while they're offline and instead, seek to develop a fair and balanced weapon. Progress on this topic is being held back by the unimaginative, the dishonest and a bunch of PVP fanatics.

That's unfortunate; as warheads have the potential to add some more creativity and realism to combat.

 

[Malacodor]

Warheads are just one of many features that were put into the game because it seemed to be a good idea, but without a proper concept about how they fit into the rest of the game. And now they don't dare to remove them because it could upset somebody.

 

[alterintel]

 

[Dr. Whammy]

I always smile when I see this...

While your examples are truly awe inspiring, we are left with a few unavoidable limitations that cause making a "special delivery" more trouble than it's worth for players who need the weapon to be compact as well as those who aren't as well versed in logic and rails.

1) Guided torpedoes have to be at least 50 meters long due to an area trigger 40+ meters in front of the weapon; otherwise, the AI won't get close enough for the logic to deploy the warheads.

2) Guided torpedoes cannot precision target like a manually fired weapon. Also, your test ships appear to be stationary. My guess is that it would be very difficult to target a door or some other weak point on a moving target. This limits you to just whacking it with torpedoes until you run out. Which begs the question? Why not use missiles instead?

3) Advanced armor or even thick standard armor tends to stop most warhead explosions cold unless you're relying on the old speed/clip exploit.

With all this having been said, I want to see more work like this and I want the game mechanic to be tweaked in such a way that creations like this are common place, easy to use, and easy to counter to prevent griefing. These things CAN be made both fair and practical but it will be hard to do so without modifying the AI and faction properties.

 

[alterintel]

I always smile when I see this...

While your examples are truly awe inspiring, we are left with a few unavoidable limitations that cause making a "special delivery" more trouble than it's worth for players who need the weapon to be compact as well as those who aren't as well versed in logic and rails.

1) Guided torpedoes have to be at least 50 meters long due to an area trigger 40+ meters in front of the weapon; otherwise, the AI won't get close enough for the logic to deploy the warheads.

2) Guided torpedoes cannot precision target like a manually fired weapon. Also, your test ships appear to be stationary. My guess is that it would be very difficult to target a door or some other weak point on a moving target. This limits you to just whacking it with torpedoes until you run out. Which begs the question? Why not use missiles instead?

3) Advanced armor or even thick standard armor tends to stop most warhead explosions cold unless you're relying on the old speed/clip exploit.

With all this having been said, I want to see more work like this and I want the game mechanic to be tweaked in such a way that creations like this are common place, easy to use, and easy to counter to prevent griefing. These things CAN be made both fair and practical but it will be hard to do so without modifying the AI and faction properties.

I'm glad you like it!

1) very true. Also an important note is that the warheads only have to be 40 meters away from the center of mass of the torpedo.
2) also very true. The ships were stationary, other wise I wouldn't have been able to get those awesome shots. It is true that the limitations make them not much better than missiles in most situations. the only reason to use these over missiles is: bypass shields, doesn't need additional power. Also currently doesn't trigger anti missile turrets.
3) Also due to a bug? these torpedoes will still bypass the first couple of blocks of armor.

I couldn't agree more, that torpedoes should be simpler to make. Maybe when we get the AI update, we'll get a torpedo option.
In the mean time, these torpedoes are available on the Community Content Dock, if anybody wants to play with them.

 

[StormWing0]

Oh those AI driven torpedoes are fun to have spawn as random pirates. Down right evil things to run into and very able to leave players cussing up a storm or two.

 

[AtraUnam]

Oh I see were back too: this weapon that literally no one uses in actual combat is clearly not underpowered despite the fact that no one uses it and even under ideal conditions its not much better than a regular missile and its also really easy to counter.