To missile or not to missile

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    Hey,

    I'm building a ship and I need some help on deciding what weapons system to place on it. It will have a mass around 100,000 and has regen of 1.2m. I am configuring it to be fairly mobile in battle with an emphasis on turning rather than acceleration.
    I am trying to figure out what primary, secondary weapon and effect would work best to suit its role.
     
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    Well, just finished a small destroyer with 2 missile tubes as a main caliber and found out that it's not enough. Tried to arrange an AI battle between it and a tiny corvette (with only 2 single-barrel PD turrets, one dorsal one ventral, even without full 360 degree coverage) and you think what? No single missile hit that corvette... Fortunately that DD was meant for anti-fighter role, and fighters don't usually have PD. So if you want missiles ensure that either you are fighting something without PD OR you have A LOT of missiles...

    Although I'm rather new to Starmade (don't look at my 3yrs citizenship achievement since most of the time I didn't play) and maybe just dunno how to use missiles correctly.
     
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    Well, just finished a small destroyer with 2 missile tubes as a main caliber and found out that it's not enough. Tried to arrange an AI battle between it and a tiny corvette (with only 2 single-barrel PD turrets, one dorsal one ventral, even without full 360 degree coverage) and you think what? No single missile hit that corvette... Fortunately that DD was meant for anti-fighter role, and fighters don't usually have PD. So if you want missiles ensure that either you are fighting something without PD OR you have A LOT of missiles...

    Although I'm rather new to Starmade (don't look at my 3yrs citizenship achievement since most of the time I didn't play) and maybe just dunno how to use missiles correctly.
    Interesting I'll keep that in mind. I was also thinking about the idea of beams and if that is worth it
     
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    Missiles are all around one of the best weapons to put on a ship, but since your ship is so big, I recommend that you do a large missle-beam-punch salvo, cuz then they are both fast, and relatively high damage.
     
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    You'll need many, many missiles to score significant numbers of hits in a short time - PDTs are very effective on some servers. I'd have to suggest 20-20-20 blocks of Missile-Beam-Explosive, but then I'd say never use anything BUT Missile-Beam. They're also called fast missiles, because they are faster than usual and much longer-ranged. Missile-Pulse is the other one, and it should ALWAYS be used with Explosive effect, because it produces so much damage. It is slow-firing (45 second reload at 100%, I think), packs a massive punch, and travels very slowly over a short range. They can be used, but probably mostly as a short-ranged weapon; otherwise PDTs have too long to shoot them down.
    Cannon-Cannon-Punch (or Overdrive or Pierce or Ion or EMP, depending on what you want) is a good solid choice for any warship, a reliable and rapid damage output combined with serious DPM mean it is just an excellent all-rounder weapon. However it will have trouble, given its lowered DPS, with large slabs of advanced armor.
    Cannon-Beam is a sniper cannon, long-ranged and hits harder.
    Cannon-Damage Pulse is sort of a joke, it's like an antitank rifle almost, very slow-firing but hits pretty hard too.
    Cannon-Missile is a shotgun and you should never ever use it for anything except maybe PDTs, unless you're the maniac who has a brawler ship that flies in and scatters heck around the other guy's ship from point-blank.
    Other than that, beams have issues that mean they're currently buggy against blocks, but are hitscanning, so they're perfect for anti-shield work (no delay between firing and impacting, means no need to lead targets, guaranteed hits if you have more than ~2 FPS lol). I don't know how much their bugs against armor have been fixed but given current penetration mechanics a beam will give more damage than a cannon round as it goes through blocks as it deals X dmg per tick rather than a logarithmic or something funny like that decreasing function that drops damage like a siv as it goes through blocks.
    Missiles are solid for wrecking ships, especially lightly armored ships. Try to trap your missiles so their "bubble damage" effect hits as many blocks around the impact point as possible, so you don't waste it with dmg going into space.
    Cannons are just all-round good weapons, especially C-C.
    Beams are great for anti-shield work, and if they're fixed will work for blocks too.
    Damage Pulse is a joke and you shouldn't use it for anything other than maybe torpedo drones or some such like that .... unless you want a fighter PD system that simply evaporates anything coming near your ship... lol.

    And there's my opinion, take note that this is not the only opinion, not necessarily the best opinion, certainly not the only way of doing things, and may be very wrong. Also, if you read this far, good for you. Why are you bothering? Are you seriously going on? Oh cmon, this is pointless and you know it. I'm adding no more content down here, so stop reading here already. Oh, alright, you joker, keep reading - it won't get you anything. I'm serious, here, there's nothing else down here for you.
     
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    Personally, assuming that your ship is around the size of a mid range frigate, you will have a slow turning rate and should compensate accordingly. I would recommend a cannon-cannon array (about 25 arranged in a checkerboard pattern) as a primary weapon to deliver a withering amount of dps. You could augment this with overdrive or punch through effects. Because of your slow turning speed, to combat smaller, more maneuverable ships, I would recommend a line of vertical fire missile-beam launchers with explosive effects. Link each launcher up to an individual computer so you can launch missiles individually so you don't waste them all at once. I would recommend vertical launch so missiles are not picked off by your target's cannon fire.

    However, turrets are just as important as the ship's weapon systems. With a ship that big, it is paramount to include enough point defense turrets to fully cover your ship. Because you will want to focus on ships of your weight class, have a decent amount of anti fighter turrets which can take the form of both cannon-cannon turrets and beam cannon turrets. It may also be advisable to have several missile-beam turrets and one to two capital ship turrets (cannon-cannon, missile-beam, cannon-beam, beam-beam).

    To summarize:

    • Cannon or beam based primary weapon
    • Vertical Launch Missile-beam secondary weapons, preferably with an explosive effect, linked to individual computers

    • Point Defense Turrets (cannon-cannon)
    • Anti Fighter Turrets (cannon-cannon, beam-cannon)
    • Light homing missile turrets (missile-beam)
    • Capital ship turrets (Anything with decent range)


    You may want to note that it is more efficient to focus on covering all angles with pd turrets rather than focusing them in one small area. In other words, eliminate point defense blind spots.
     
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    Either use a large numbers of missiles and hope enough make it through, or a large cannon-cannon-punch weapon, with maybe two-three outputs. Pair that with a beam-pulse-ion weapon to strip the shields, and you will very quickly start chewing up the insides of most ships. The only issue is that it will take some time to do the same damage a nuke would* PDT won't affect your damage output or likelihood of hitting the target, missing a couple of shots isnt a serious loss when you fire 10 rounds per second per output, and you can employ your cannons as personal PDT if you see missiles coming straight at you.

    Cannon-pulse-punch weapons with multiple outputs are also great for piercing deep inside a ship. If it's a large craft that relies on auxiliary power, that gives you a fair chance to hit one of those power batteries.

    Massive beam-beam-punch arrays are also very good at making holes.

    Of course a missile can tear a huge hemispherical chunk out of anything in one good hit. That's so satisfying when missiles intended to deal damage make it through.
    *(The DPS is supposedly balanced per block, but the nuke does it all up front and has a 2x damage multiplier to make up for the fact half its damage radiates away from the point of impact into space (unless it somehow manages to detonate where it is surrounded by blocks on all almost all sides.)).
     
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    I'm building a ship and I need some help on deciding what weapons system to place on it. It will have a mass around 100,000 and has regen of 1.2m. I am configuring it to be fairly mobile in battle with an emphasis on turning rather than acceleration. I am trying to figure out what primary, secondary weapon and effect would work best to suit its role.
    I would like to warn you that a power regeneration of 1.2 million is deficient for ANY ship short of 2K mass. There is no excuse for any ship larger than a corvette to have less than 2 million power regeneration. Moreover, for a 100K mass ship, even 2 million is woefully deficient. Your ship could wind up using substantially more than that just to move if you give it any sort of decent thrust rating. It is pretty much a given that any large ship is going to need at least some auxiliary reactors.
     

    Napther

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    Hey,

    I'm building a ship and I need some help on deciding what weapons system to place on it. It will have a mass around 100,000 and has regen of 1.2m. I am configuring it to be fairly mobile in battle with an emphasis on turning rather than acceleration.
    I am trying to figure out what primary, secondary weapon and effect would work best to suit its role.
    Are you sure you are reading it right, as 100,000 blocks is not the same as 100,000 mass.

    1.4m power on a 100k mass ship is... dreadful... Are you using LINES OF POWER in X Y Z and them not touching or have you one giant blob of power reactors?

    Missiles absolutely require a large power capacity to fire. At least 10m power to fire a 2-4 missile set of Missile-Beam-Piercing missiles effectively.
    This will add weight, among other things. On a small ship, this pwoer capacitor will be a detriment to the survivability of the ship as less space is available for shields and passive defence effects.

    Ignoring above size designations, You can only use X amount of power in Y space unless you use Overdrive effect. a 100,000 block/10k mass ship if its not packed with armour should be able to fit about 1.5 to 2m energy in it just about to power a 1.5k mass/15000 block total cannon arrray.
     

    Edymnion

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    I'd say never use anything BUT Missile-Beam.
    Yes and no.

    If you're looking at only what you personally are firing from the main ship, this is true. There's not much use in the others. However, Missile/Cannon on a turret is VERY useful, both in just flat out doing damage and in filling space with so many missiles that they overwhelm point defense, making it easier for your big boy bombs to get through.
     

    Napther

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    Yes and no.

    If you're looking at only what you personally are firing from the main ship, this is true. There's not much use in the others. However, Missile/Cannon on a turret is VERY useful, both in just flat out doing damage and in filling space with so many missiles that they overwhelm point defense, making it easier for your big boy bombs to get through.
    missile-cannon is innaccurate. Never hits a moving object
    Plus a good aim will remove a "Missile Drill" with ones own cannon fire...
     

    Edymnion

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    missile-cannon is innaccurate. Never hits a moving object
    It can't hit a fighter, this is true. You put it up against a frigate, dreadnaught, titan, etc, things that can't easily dodge out of the way, and they will SLAUGHTER it.
     
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    missile-cannon is innaccurate. Never hits a moving object
    That's not what you ask them to do. Just overwhelming ennemy's PD and sometimes in the overwhelming number of missiles they'll hit.
     

    Napther

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    That's not what you ask them to do. Just overwhelming ennemy's PD and sometimes in the overwhelming number of missiles they'll hit.
    Which is EXACTLY what I use them for, not for main damage
     

    Edymnion

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    And actually, you can hit fighters with missile/cannon, you just need to mix in some support Cannon/Cannon/Stop turrets.

    Like many things in the game, the different weapon combinations have different roles, and need to be used in different combinations of other systems to be effective.

    But for the most part, yes. Missile/Cannon is a PDT counter measure and anti-capital ship weapon.
     

    AtraUnam

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    Missile/cannon being incredibly accurate has less to do with its intended role and more that dumbfire missiles don't actually aim at the target, presumably an oversight due to the majority of missiles not needing to be directly aimed.
     
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    I would like to warn you that a power regeneration of 1.2 million is deficient for ANY ship short of 2K mass. There is no excuse for any ship larger than a corvette to have less than 2 million power regeneration. Moreover, for a 100K mass ship, even 2 million is woefully deficient. Your ship could wind up using substantially more than that just to move if you give it any sort of decent thrust rating. It is pretty much a given that any large ship is going to need at least some auxiliary reactors.
    Are you sure you are reading it right, as 100,000 blocks is not the same as 100,000 mass.

    1.4m power on a 100k mass ship is... dreadful... Are you using LINES OF POWER in X Y Z and them not touching or have you one giant blob of power reactors?

    .

    I should have also mentioned I have an additional 3.3m auxillary power :)
    +33m capacity
    I think my shielding is fine with 0.142 ratio
    Tho I am worried if I am putting too much of something or not enough and I'll have to modify something later on
    [doublepost=1481581588,1481580469][/doublepost]
    Yes and no.

    If you're looking at only what you personally are firing from the main ship, this is true. There's not much use in the others. However, Missile/Cannon on a turret is VERY useful, both in just flat out doing damage and in filling space with so many missiles that they overwhelm point defense, making it easier for your big boy bombs to get through.
    Interesting, it does seem to me that main weapon systems used are missiles. I made my ship to be very maneuverable (as maneuverable as a frigate gets. right now its 8 deg/s but its not yet done so I can expect it to go down to 5 deg/s. So what I'm thinking is alot of point defense with an up close and personal weapon, tho not missiles since everyone has defense against that.

    Also do missiles have hp? and if so is it dependent on type?
     

    Napther

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    I should have also mentioned I have an additional 3.3m auxillary power :)
    +33m capacity
    I think my shielding is fine with 0.142 ratio
    Tho I am worried if I am putting too much of something or not enough and I'll have to modify something later on
    You need that 2.2m efficient power regn on a ship that size, makes you less... explosive. also Power Aux has an Efficiecy cap at about 9600 Blocks in 1 Group ONLY. Exceeding 10,000 modules is HIGHLY ILL ADVISED. Having a 20,000-size power aux "group" is a death sentence.

    For 100k mass ship you will need at least 10m shields PLUS full 60% ion hardening with around 300,000 shield recharge and even passive pierce/punch.
     
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    You need that 2.2m efficient power regn on a ship that size, makes you less... explosive. also Power Aux has an Efficiecy cap at about 9600 Blocks in 1 Group ONLY. Exceeding 10,000 modules is HIGHLY ILL ADVISED. Having a 20,000-size power aux "group" is a death sentence.

    For 100k mass ship you will need at least 10m shields PLUS full 60% ion hardening with around 300,000 shield recharge and even passive pierce/punch.
    Auxiliary cap noted, I do have them in two groups but ill divide even more.

    But really 10m shields? I mean 100k mass for m ship is an over estimate and its looking more like 70k but 10m shielding seems a bit much.

    my regen is 1.8m. but ion harding I'll take into account