Something is amiss with my missile system

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    I'm currently building a large ship and have outfitted it with a large missile system. I've slaved damage beams to the missile system and explosive effect, too. Everything is balanced for a 100% yield from the slaved modules. The details box informs me that the damage rates above 10 million HP, yet testing doesn't yield favorable results.

    I've fired the missile system at planets, but it doesn't do anything. I've also tested it against pirates and even the vanilla Isanth ships can take two or three hits before being destroyed. For a weapon system that can deliver this amount of damage, I was expecting instant kills on small vessels.

    Did I choose the wrong combination of weapons and slaved systems?
     
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    Does it show all of those effects are linked in the weapons panel? Also I'm not sure how good the explosive is on missles. I usually don't put anything on them but ion or overdrive.
     
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    Now that I think about it with the new explosion system you waste a lot of dps with missles. Because the explosion will radiate out and be lost to space. So try to shoot into the ship or in a corner or hole. Still though 10 million damage should decimate an Isanth instantly.
     
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    StormWing0

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    That's a side-effect of a lot of the damage just going out into space. Very annoying but if all else fails just fire more missiles. XD
     
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    Does it show all of those effects are linked in the weapons panel? Also I'm not sure how good the explosive is on missles. I usually don't put anything on them but ion or overdrive.
    Maybe it does have to do with the explosive effect bleeding off, I can replace with overdrive and see how that affects it. Still, I did shoot missiles into a pirate station after boring a hole in it with cannons, still not the result I expected.

    mind uploading a copy of it so we can do some testing
    I can do that later today when I get back to my computer. Mind you it would be the entire ship.
     
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    Maybe it does have to do with the explosive effect bleeding off, I can replace with overdrive and see how that affects it. Still, I did shoot missiles into a pirate station after boring a hole in it with cannons, still not the result I expected.
    Hmm I might have to do some more testing with missles as I haven't fully explored the new explosive system.
     
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    Maybe it does have to do with the explosive effect bleeding off, I can replace with overdrive and see how that affects it. Still, I did shoot missiles into a pirate station after boring a hole in it with cannons, still not the result I expected.



    I can do that later today when I get back to my computer. Mind you it would be the entire ship.
    that will do
    as long as it has the missle system in question
     
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    I found that making a bunch of small missiles it will do better damage. Try breaking the system up into pieces.
     

    Groovrider

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    Key things that I have found:

    Until you deplete the armor hp, you're pissing in the wind.

    After that you must prepare the ground on which you strike or you will defeated by geometry.

    Set up your missile to fire in line and in patterns; you can vary the damage to dig a hole followed up by a nice big boom.
     

    StormWing0

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    In my case I'm thinking of lining up several different versions of the same Primary + Secondary Combo with a different effect on each. This means that a train of missiles will crash into the target one after the other hitting with something different causing several damage types at once rather than just one.

    Like Groovrider said a pattern of shots can deal different amounts of total damage based on how it is setup. Some patterns are more dangerous than others.
     
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    I've uploaded the .sment file on the content page. It's listed under the title of Shogun Class Dreadnaught.
     
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    Having different tertiary effects on the missiles is a personal choice, not really germaine in my opinion to the question of salvo size and timing. I do agree big time however with varying the salvo such that the missile strikes are staggered.

    I have just such a missile system defending my station, a station that regularly get visited by pirates, including at least once by a large fleet of much larger, enhanced, non-standard pirates. Going to examine the wrecks of the pirates afterwards was instructional. Each pirate had one or two tunnels that had been bored into it by successive detonations, clearly by missiles following one another and striking inside the hole made by the ones prior.

    This effect is much easier to achieve on a station where one can be somewhat cavalier about letting the station run out of power. The trick is to have turrets on the station that are capable of firing 'more' missiles in a single salvo than the station has 'both' in power storage 'and' can generate in 45 seconds. What happens of course is that the station fires off as many as it's power stores can fire, then piece meal fires off the remaining missiles as it gets the power to do so. Of course the missile launchers are generating power as well. I set it up with ten such launchers, each having in excess of 100 missiles (15 missile/15 beam/5 ion) and generating a couple hundred thousand power each on their own. (Yes, these were not small turrets.) Each turret would keep up a steady stream of around two per second till everything was dead.

    With ships it is a bit more difficult. You cannot afford to have more missiles than your power can handle, else you really will find yourself in a ship with zero power for anything else. The trick then is to vary the missile/beam ratio with a full lineup of missiles (EG: 20 missiles in a turret from 39 missile/1 beam to 20 missile/20 beam, plus a good many tiny missiles of similar ratios for point defense bait). Your first salvo will of course fire everything, but because they will have different speeds due to the different ratios of missile/beam, they will arrive staggered. This will have the downside of making them easier to kill with point defense. The trick there is to also have several tiny missiles with the same sized ratio of missile/beam whose main job is to soak fire so the bigger shots have a higher chance of piercing the active defenses. Once you've fired the main salvo, after fifteen seconds, you start tapping the fire button every second or so to fire off those faster cycling weapons that are ready to fire again. On a ship, especially if you are using turrets, be absolutely certain to have sufficient power storage to be able to fire everything in one shot without running out of power.

    This approach is easiest when built into turrets so you don't have to worry about hitting the fire button. I should also mention that all combat experience I have had with this sort of thing is prior to the new HP/armor system. The effectiveness of this approach may well have changed.
     
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    I redesigned my missile systems. Originally they were large blocks of the primary, slave and effect modules, essentially firing 1 missile. I broke these down and arranged them into clusters, resulting in 56 individual missiles per shot. Doing so shot the power consumption through the roof.

    On the port side, I used missile with damage beam slave and overdrive effect. On the starboard side, it's missile with pulse damage slave and overdrive effect. Total damage was around 7.5 million HP on port and 15.3 million HP on starboard.

    I tested the systems on standard pirate Isanth and the ships were completely obliterated. Only the ship core remained. That was not at full power, either, as I haven't placed enough power capacitors to fully cover the energy requirements.