Missiles, tests, notes, comments,

[Control]

Hi guys! I've been experimenting with ways to take down capital ships, with the smallest ships possible!
In this, I've learned a bit about missiles and how they apply their damage, as well as various setups that have worked for me. I thought I'd share some of what I've experimented with, and get some input. Thanks!

[Missile + Damage Pulse Module]​

HUGE damage. I LOVE the damage on these, I call it the "Bomb" for a reason. It's meant to be one of the highest alpha weapons you can make, but it has several limitations to offset that damage -

Limitation - The Missile is slow​

It does home but does not move quickly to it's destination. This limits the weapon to usage against slower moving targets. Since our targets are larger than we are, this is acceptable. The secondary effect of it's slow speed however is a weakness to Anti-Missile Deference Turrets. (See Swarm Missiles below)

Limitation - Explosive Damage Versus Armor and Hull VS Shield​

A missile deals area damage based on exposed blocks. To a flat plane, it will only deal 50% of it's potential damage. Shields cover a ships blocks, and all damage dealt to those blocks is first dealt to the shield. If a missile hits a flat plane of shielded blocks, it will deal it's damage to those shields.

Boom! Shields down! One missile will do it preeeeetty dang quick.. Even if it just so much as touches the edge of ONE block on your target (should the target have less shield than you deal in damage). So far so good right? So, lets say we have a buddy keeping their shield down with light suppression cannon fire... Your big bomb reloads and you fire another at the unshielded target... What happens now?
The missile hits the flat plane of blocks, and incinerates exactly it's explosion radius of blocks. This, might not be very big compared to some of the larger ships out there
Suddenly your boom boom cannon, doesn't feel much stronger than a light rapid fire missile..
This is a result of how missiles deal their damage. You are only hurting the blocks the explosion touches.. This means if your opponent has thick hulls.. then the damage of your missiles suddenly doesn't matter so long as it's greater than the hp of any given block in the explosion radius. Damage equal to the health of the given blocks destroyed will be applied to the armor HP pool, and the fight goes on as you chip away with your long reload.

Because of that, this setup really only works against high shield cap targets. However since most capitals are exactly that... well...

[Missile + Missile = Swarm Missiles]​

If timed correctly, and used in a nice ratio against the defenses you are up against, these are fantastic at confusing the AI systems shots. Using a volley of swarm missiles you can sneak the bomb from Missile + Damage Pulse right in through the cloud, and the AI will not know the difference between the two.
An interesting dynamic of armor HP, is how each block's HP contributes to a pool, and as long as that pool is greater than 50%, then 50% of the damage any given block takes goes to the pool... Any damage source to any block, will deal damage to the pool, until the pool is at less than 50%... So.. those dumb little 60 damage swarm missiles you were using to funk with the AI? Now, every block in their 4 block radius, is taking 60 damage, 30 of which is going to the armor HP pool.. This may seem like a tiny amount, but given the number of them that hit (10 possible per group), and the number of groups you can place.. suddenly you can have a nice armor shredding swarm who's use is two sided. They may not be good at actually destroying armor blocks, but they will decrease the total armor HP. Did I mention they also apply their damage to the shield?

[Missile + Cannon]​

These are fun. Blam Blam Blam. For their size, if placed in equal ratios to other given weapons, they deal fair damage. I mean, yes, you have to aim them.. That means you'll want to be a lot closer.. Which kind of sucks. Unless your target is very very big. Since we're aiming for capitals, we're in luck. These deal good damage to shields, and are able to keep the regen down since they fire very quickly. Once you're through that, they do suffer mildly from the same syndrome as most missiles, getting through armor is hard.. Though Rapid Fire missiles are a tad better at focusing one spot and plowing through it, allowing you to deliver a payload right into the soft meaty structural blocks. I don't really need to get as detailed on these because there's not as much going on with them.. They do what they say, they do it rather well.. In any weight class, I feel these are a great weapon for fighting a ship one size class above you (no more or less)

[Missile + Beam]​

We all know what this is, how it works, and why it's strong. Everything I did in my research in the above was in a push to find alternatives to this method. We know what it's weak against (Anti-Missile Turrets), and we know that beyond that narrow weakness these are simply devastating... They target system blocks now, which is ridiculous.. They do suffer from the same problems punching through armor as the others, and a long cooldown mean they're not so hot against ships that turn around a lot, and they can't keep regen on a shield down very well.. But they can deal enough damage to drop the shield at least, and once some of the armor is down, these will rip structural blocks apart.
I do feel these are best for long-range fights, as the beam secondary usually implies. You can also get away with using ONLY a beam computer with no beam modules when this is your secondary, which is reeeeeally nifty, and that is why I ALWAYS keep a beam computer on any missile ship I have, simply the availability of this effect makes it very powerful. Use it at long range, then switch to an alternative if you're under 1km. Against bigger ships with lots of anti-turret however, these become less and less useful.

[Effects]
​

Using an Overdrive Tertiary setup, I can swap it between the two.. Meaning, when I am using the bomb, I set up that computer to be using the overdrive modules, once the shield is down, I swap it so that the heat-seeking swarm missiles are using the overdrive computer instead. This keeps my ships mass a bit lower while allowing me extra damage where necessary.

I have not found that Explosive Effect modules are.. not very useful for missiles. Most of the Effect systems don't even have an effect for Missiles, so it's best to use overdrive if you're going to use anything. Honestly in most cases it's better to just add more missile tube blocks, but in cases where you just can't fit them or just can't rig up a way to use more of them given your placement (like my swarms) then OverDrive is likely the best.

Ion Effect is VERY strong, but obviously only against shields...Coupled with M+DP you can create a very very powerful shield-buster missile. Ion and Overdrive both have a very nice side effect... If you place your computers in a convenient area, and access them through build mode then you can just unlink them when they're not in use, granting you their passive effects for increased shield defense or movement speed cap. I like to keep one or the other, either Ion or Overdrive depending on the type of ship im building/killing.

Conclusion​

My favorite is obviously M+DP, with M+M for backup, and a beam computer in my cockpit for good measure. I use Overdrive effect. My current ship as of now is 3k mass, and 9 million damage bomb missile, with a 500 swarm volly payload. The point for me was to try and be as small as possible, with as much damage as I can get. I know I'm far from that still, and I'm always looking to perfect my perfect tiny anti-capital ship :D
Lets show those titan captains the horrors of deep black space, with ships so small they can't spot them!

 

[Winterhome]

Overdrive totally annihilates your power efficiency, you know. Most of the time, I've found that you end up needing more space for the power capacity than you save on the weapon size itself.

Incidentally, missiles now use the new/advanced explosion system rather than the "sphere of death" thing we used to have, which means that thick armor is extremely effective against them.

Explosive effect on missiles is absolutely devastating against soft systems, but it's worthless against armor.

 

[Rohen]

A few things i did not see in your post, but i might just have overlooked them:

An additional downside of the Missile+Damage Pulse system is the high reload time between shots.

A downside of the swarm missiles (missile+missile) is their randomness. They search a random target. which might be fine playing alone, but in fleet actions the tend to go against your allies ships and their turrets also. Sometimes they might decide to go after your own turrets as well.
And in lager battles i get the feeling that to many missiles on screen do cause some lags.

Missile+Beam is basically the most efficient Missile system around. You really get here the most for your money.
The Missile does not only get lock on capability, the damage gets increased as well as the range of the missile and the missile speed goes up. And that for only a slightly larger reload time.
Which makes it an excellent long range attack weapon. And i get the feeling that if you fire these at max range, i noticed that the AI of the Missiledefence turrets does not even engage the missile.

With the introduction of the HP system the missiles seem to have lost a bit of their bite. Cannons and Beam weapons seem to be a bit mere useful now.

 

[StormWing0]

hmm I wonder if any of the other effects work for missiles now days. The wiki said pierce and punch-through didn't work for them yet I saw in another topic they now do work, anyone want to check?

 

[Control]

For ease of use.. Missile+Beam is the obvious choice.. It's just WAY too strong to overlook. I also mentioned that it only requires the beam computer, no other sub-system blocks need to be placed for it to get it's effect, which makes it even more devastating.

FoF/Swarm missiles pretty much can NOT be used near allies, or a station, they will go after whatever the most wrong, or dumbest target possible is.

Azriah hit the nail on the head, Missiles are not good against armor at allllll... Well.. Missile+Beam isn't.. that's for sure. Missile+Cannon can be pretty darn effective though, as they end up just kinda playing out like cannon bullets that can be shot down.. If your range is close enough though, and your ratio high enough, they won't get shot down and they'll plow a hole right through whatever you're firing at.

Again those Swarm/FoF missiles are great against armor HP, but not against the blocks themselves. The number of small explosions all over the enemy ship subtracts from their armor HP value, making everything a bit softer and easier to chew through.

I still advocate Missile+Damage Pulse versus shields though :D

Also, OverDrive does make the power cost MUCH higher, though I managed to counter that through power cap, rather than having enough regen to fire continuously. It doesn't work well for other weapons but with Missile+Pulse the delay is so damn long that you should have time to re-charge.

 

[AtraUnam]

Limitation - Explosive Damage Versus Armor and Hull VS Shield
A missile deals area damage based on exposed blocks. To a flat plane, it will only deal 50% of it's potential damage.

Missile damage was doubled recently to make up for this.

 

[Control]

That may be so AtraUnam, I speak not as to the actual numbers.. I simply speak about the effects I observed in testing them against various ships in combat. These tests were run after the most recent patches, so they take those adjustments into mind.

 

[EricBlank]

I wouldn't be throwing out high power cannons from your tests either: with the base punch-through effect they now drill through armor like crazy. Against a capital ship this is useful for drilling lots of holes deep into the systems blocks inside, and doing so very quickly. It's true that one little sting probably won't do much, but it makes a good choice for breaking deep internal systems while missiles chew larger individual bites out of the target. Recall that the DPS is identical either way; while a missile bites off a satisfying chunk in one go every once in a while, the cannon still causes the same amount or more of damage to systems overall. Each shot that misses isnt as devastating a loss, and AMS turrets aren't an issue.