[X3:TC]Should I be able to take out an M2 with one M3?

[MF-Car]

Hello everybody, first post here.

Got X3:TC few days back, and can't stop playing, been lurking around the forum here (in my working hours) reading what you all got to say. Great game, great forum, nice ppl.

The thing is, I took down a Pirate M2 Brigantine with my Nova Raider yesteday and I'm unable to be really happy about it cuz it seems it has to be a glitch or a bug. I'm here to get youre thoughts on the matter.

btw I don't know if anybody has anything to do with acronym FAQ but pls include in it DiD and RE (took me a while to figure those)

Ohh and the game is vanila with 2.5 patch.

The whole story (short one at the end of the post):

I was in Third Redemption wtih my "Wing" of M3's. (1 Falcon, 2 Nova's with no shields and My Nova Raider). Half way trough the sector Pirate M2 jumped in with 6 M3 beastclaws (half prototype) and M4/M5.

I docked my "wing" into the shipyard and was left alone to cruise around the M2. It was doing 50m/s (as was the entire escort) so it was fairly easy to keep them at a distance. Military wise, there was nothing bigger than an Paranid M8 in that sector and the M2 was killing paranid M6's and M8's like there were flys.

I tought that i could make use of them for destroying sector transit and leaving goods floating. It was fun until the M2 destroyed a near by station in under a minute. Thats when i got worried, my wing was in a shipyard. "Luckly" the pirates were following me so i could get them away from the shipyard.

Didnt know what to do, so i started picking up missiles left around. With them i managed to get the distracted fighters down somewhat. The rest of fighters died out from Paranid military or by there own M2.

At some point a Paranid military M7 jumped in. I thought i could use it for distraction but it died almost instantly (didn't even dent the shields on an M2). This was the first time I saw a 'capital' ship battle.

About 300 destroyed ships and three hours later (or five beers later) I decided to take a stand, cuz this was getting me noware. I reloaded a couple of times trying my 'Geronimo!!! FTW" tactic. Then I decide to try out the missiles I picked up cuz i never really used them in game.

I forced the M2 to follow me between two asteroids (figured he couldn't turn much there). 5 Hammerheads, 2 guided warheads, 1 banshee and 1 tornado fired in that order, 5 to 7 sec in between.

Hammerheads got his shields down and took about 1/5 of the hull (makes a nice boom btw), warheads and a banshee took another 1/5 of the hull but the tornado smashed the hull all the way down. (still can't figure out how; Tornado is a lot of missiles in one shot as far as i can tell, is each one 50K damage?)

Boom goes the M2.....Paranid .... thanks you for....killing....youre reward is 10.000 Cr (I can retire now... )

My idiotic victory dance was cut extremly short cuz two sec after the "10.000 Cr" first salvo of the newly arrived pirate M7 Carrack was hitting me left and right. Must have flown in while i was concentrated on the M2, didn't even see him. Guess i'll have to do it all over again (M7 is 100m/s so it will be much harder to avoid and pick up missiles)

Anyways if you read it all, thank you, had to tell somebody and explaining the differance between and M2 and an M3 to my woman is not an option

Short strory:

As I said im not too happy about killing an M2 cuz it seems there's a bug in it someware. I shot it with a lot of missiles and in the end it was destroyed.

Questions

As the missiles flew he just kept going straight forward. Why didn't it turn to shoot them down? There was some space left between the asteroids. Better yet as far as i can tell he can fire strait trough the nose of the ship, so why didn't he take down the missiles? Is it a known bug? Any thoughts?

I comfort myself thinking the pilot has/had narcolepsy and just fell asleep for a moment

[Gazz]

Should I be able to take out an M2 with one M3?

In a perfect world? No.
In X3, you can. You don't need missiles, either.

As the missiles flew he just kept going straight forward. Why didn't it turn to shoot them down? There was some space left between the asteroids. Better yet as far as i can tell he can fire strait trough the nose of the ship, so why didn't he take down the missiles? Is it a known bug?

Vanilla missile defense... works as designed.
So that's not a bug.

[Gavrushka]

MF-car this is the point where you realise that you need to set your own rules... Anyone of us can down an M2 in an m3 without breaking a sweat by employing certain tactics - So people set there own rules of engagement - and one of mine is I don't use missiles.

Where you see areas of the game you don't like, set a rule for yourself until you do.

And nice first post BTW!

[MF-Car]

Vanilla missile defense... works as designed.
So that's not a bug.

Thanks for the link m8, will read up...

[RyuKazuha]

Fighters (especially if used as bombers as you did) are in fact the biggest threat to any capital ship, that does apply to the most games and is the main reason to have other fighters escort the capital ships.

Also, it's not THAT unusual to kill a cap, if you harass it with nuclear tipped warheads.

You basically did the right thing by accident and got rewarded with a cap kill. Their forward guns are unable to target missiles, making the ship vulnerable at this point. Also, the AI is not clever enough to make out the missiles as the bigger threat, you are the primary target, so it'll try to go for you. This is, how it works.

[MF-Car]

Thanks for the advice.

@ Gavrushka. Will do the rule thing, guess ill get lot more fun from the sandbox. Thanks...

@ RyuKazuha. Thanks fot the reply. Love the X-News-Net thing you guys are doing...

I seem to recall from little X3:R i played that there was an grid display of the sector you are in binded to letter 'g'. Dunno if i can be any clearer than that. Helped with determening what is up, down, left or right....Is there something like that in TC? I can't seem to find it....Thinks it was called "ecliptic something" but i could be wrong.

[Carlo the Curious]

There's no ecliptic projector in TC.

[Pr0wler]

I seem to recall from little X3:R i played that there was an grid display of the sector you are in binded to letter 'g'. Dunno if i can be any clearer than that. Helped with determening what is up, down, left or right....Is there something like that in TC? I can't seem to find it....Thinks it was called "ecliptic something" but i could be wrong.

If you don't mind *modified* tag you can find mod that adds Ecliptic Projector at S&M section of the forums.


There are some nice mods and scripts that balance things out and make battles much more interesting (e.g. CMOD, MARS). You should check S&M forum when you decide that vanilla is too easy for you

[Gavrushka]

IF you get disorientated In Sector you can bring up the sector map with '.' then pressing Insert will show you how far above or below the gates you are - not an ecliptic projector I know, but it kind of does the same thing.

[XanII]

Now would be a good time to bring up the old tale of the little M5 Pegasus that killed a Xenon K.

[Gazz]

...by ramming it.

[Gruber1232002]

You blasted it with 5 of the most powerful single warhead missiles in the game. If you'd fired them from an M7 would you feel better? In real life I'm sure five nuclear torpedoes from a biplane could sink an aircraft carrier. What you shoot the ordinance from is relatively unimportant but I get the feeling egosoft tried to limit this from happening too often by making hammerheads pretty rare.

I for one would never waste 5 of them on a capital ship. First of all it cost you ~$500,000 to kill that ship. And second, hammerheads are far more useful for wiping out whole wings of escorts so you can focus on stealing.

If you had killed the Brigantine with laser fire in 30 seconds from an M3 then I would wholeheartedly agree with you that something is wrong. As it stands I don't see a problem.

[Lord Dakier]

Throw in Combat Mod 3, Mars, few other additions then try your look a second time round.

[MF-Car]

If you'd fired them from an M7 would you feel better?

Hehe, I probably would

I will take a look at the mods, don't mind the modified tag, and establish some general rules, thanks for the advice and mod propositions. Thanks...

btw does AI make good use of M7M's and M8?

[Gavrushka]

btw does AI make good use of M7M's and M8?

Not in Vanilla I'm afraid.... No huge barrages raining death on all and sundry... But there is a Mod...

[MF-Car]

Hehe..

Well I don't need them to be "death raining machines" but would like to know if theres any point having them in fleets in vanila? I guess i have to play the vanila first to know what i would like to mod and well I guess there's a mod for everything

[XanII]

Dont give AI anything bigger than a stick when talking about missiles with a blast radius.

Sudden Game Over when you are in the heat of the battle or your message log filled with 'Your ship xxxx was destroyed by...' messages really breaks your spirit.

[Gazz]

It's not so bad when missiles have a blast radius. Only when that radius is 1km or more...
(or 1620m for squash mines)

[Ilmarinen]

Not only is it possible , but it's really easy i think.
Xenon K being the easiest for me

Damn when I first saw it coming I thought ''shit I'm dead''

The truth being I only had to avoid the main cannons.

And fighter drones are there for the escorts

[Killa17]

Dont give AI anything bigger than a stick when talking about missiles with a blast radius.

Sudden Game Over when you are in the heat of the battle or your message log filled with 'Your ship xxxx was destroyed by...' messages really breaks your spirit.

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Times 23...Hammerheads in AI ships is a BAD Idea. That's what I got for not checking cargo close enough and rushing fighters into action. And to think they all had a 5% chance to fire...