M7Ms?

[greypanther]

I have just bought my first M7M ( TC ) and I have to say I am a bit disapointed.
Boarding pod use asside, I was hoping to use it for emergancy fire support. But so far I am finding it to be not best for this. Why is the order system so cumbersome for this ship? The attack all enemies is to be frank useless, and the barrage order takes too much time! Am I missing something?
When I need fire support, it needs to be fairly fast, not me farting about having to baby the M7M captain! To be honest my Shrike with 8 IBLs and 4 Gauss cannons is more effective fire support, as is my Panther and Boreas.
Beyong boarding pods, are M7Ms as useless as they seem to me at the moment?

[A5PECT]

M7M's in a combat role pretty much consist of you repeatedly ordering missile barrages on targets that are more than 20km away from the ship.

No, it isn't very fun. But given enough ammunition a single M7M can raze entire sectors.

[lordsiva1]

Can easily clear pirate and xenon sectors of ships and stations with the barrage option. Manly what i use it for.

[greypanther]

' Easy ' isnt what I wanted. Another fun way to get a result was. M7Ms are boring white elephants.

[deca.death]

Beyong boarding pods, are M7Ms as useless as they seem to me at the moment?

useless you say. ship that could slaughter 10 capitals with usual payload from 50 km's distance without getting single shot fired at is hardly useless. it's primary role is to shoot missiles. bombard from distance. that and boarding, i.e. stealing enemy capital ship in 10 minutes and handful of missiles cost. not sure what more you could possibly expect from a ship.

[greypanther]

Boarding great yes I agree. 10 caps from a distance? Useless no, boring yes.
The Aquilo doesn't even use boarding pods; so thats useless and tedious.
Also my complaint is with the ordering of the damn things. ( Except boarding. )
Perhaps it wouldn't be so bad if they got used against you too?

[deca.death]

.
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i agree that M7M are OP. i also don't use them for fighting, too easy. but i board much (and that's not a small thing). it would be nice to AI prioritize them as targets and just TRY to defend itself (M8 same issue), it would be more interesting. but if you are in situation when your fleet is engaged on the other side of galaxy (or you perhaps have none) and you get a visit from xenon task force in one of your complexes single M7M could save the day.

[Triaxx2]

Support? No. M7M's are not support ships. M7M's are tools of death and destruction. M7M's are ships to be supported.

A single M7M can unleash enough firepower to flatten an entire sector. And that's only flails. Remember that M7M's are not suited best to fighting in friendly sectors. But unleashing an M7M in a Xenon sector is a weapon which cannot be denied. Wanna know why the Gannet is unstoppable? It carries enough Flails to open up with a barrage of 200. That's enough to terminate an entire Xenon fleet. (That's a barrage of 1800 missiles, for a total of 14400 individual missiles. 72,000,000 damage. Or 64,800,000 if they shoot down 10% of them.)

[SIMON POPPLEWELL]

@greypanther - How many barrage did you order it to fire? Each barrage fires all missile tubes at once, which can take some time if you are firing Hammers. M7Ms are best used by yourself rather than the AI unfortunately. But in the hands of the player it's probably the best ship for clearing a sector. And I would never trust the AI in any boarding operations, they waste far to many pods and never fill them to maximium capacity.

[greypanther]

Triaxx2, you are missing my point. I mean what would be the point?
Simon, I wasn't saying it was useless as such, just that it has an awkward comand structure. M7M AI is poor. Also under player control its not easy to get a barrage off if the Qs are just the other side of the gate.
I am yet to do much boarding and would never trust AI on that.
I am trying to get more immersion.

[Choublanc]

The Aquilo mounts 6Gj of shielding, FLAK, and so can even be useful inside a fleet as a support ship pouring Flails at enemy fighters. Quite useful for some missions from the OFF plot.

[SIMON POPPLEWELL]

The Aquilo mounts 6Gj of shielding, FLAK, and so can even be useful inside a fleet as a support ship pouring Flails at enemy fighters. Quite useful for some missions from the OFF plot.

Cobra can mount FAAs on it's rear turret as well being my first choice of M7M.

@greypanther - Biggest problem with the M7M is it's crap in the hands of the ai regardless of what you plan to do with it. I've only used a M7M once with the AI in control and that went disastrously wrong. If you want to get the most out of one of these beasts then you really have to be in control of it (preferably from a safe distance). Gates can be a real problem, especially if you have a Q on the other side.

[Choublanc]

The Aquilo mounts 6Gj of shielding, FLAK, and so can even be useful inside a fleet as a support ship pouring Flails at enemy fighters. Quite useful for some missions from the OFF plot.

Cobra can mount FAAs on it's rear turret as well being my first choice of M7M.

Aquilo can obviously be only a second M7M (no pods), but is far better than the Cobra as a support ship inside a fleet because of the 6Gj of shielding.

[deca.death]

Aquilo can obviously be only a second M7M (no pods), but is far better than the Cobra as a support ship inside a fleet because of the 6Gj of shielding.

Mmm yes, and M7M really needs it's shielding. And those turrets are essential, they saved my head many times, when I was in my M7M, you know, in front lines, dodging PPC rounds.

:)

Hint, there are just two things partially important for M7M, speed and cargo. speed just to get there, not really for combat, and even basic versions have more then enough cargo space, but you know how it is with cargo space, you could never get too much of it.

[SIMON POPPLEWELL]

The Aquilo mounts 6Gj of shielding, FLAK, and so can even be useful inside a fleet as a support ship pouring Flails at enemy fighters. Quite useful for some missions from the OFF plot.

Cobra can mount FAAs on it's rear turret as well being my first choice of M7M.

Aquilo can obviously be only a second M7M (no pods), but is far better than the Cobra as a support ship inside a fleet because of the 6Gj of shielding.

Seriously do you really need to get so close to an enemy that you need the extra shielding. The whole idea of an M7M is a long range attack ship, which makes the extra shields pointless.

[pH7.0]

Mmm, Cobra / Hyp VG / Sirokos.

Kill all support (and stations if you're cranky with them) using a portion of your Cobra's hold full of explosive joy.

Start your Hyp collecting all the drops from the dead everything.

Kick off the piracy command on the Sirokos.

Shieldstrip target with Hammer/flail.

Hold shields down and occupy turrets with that 1 flail per 8 seconds or so.

Listen to your marines assault. "Deck 1 clear" shift-S. "Deck 2 clear" shift-S.......

Transfer your hyp's JD and some e-cells over to your latest "just found it" acquisition. (backfill the hyp from one of its embarked fighters).

Depending on how much fun the sector is, either jump everyone back to your chop shop sector or just transfer marines back to the Sirokos, jump the victim out, and wait for the vengeance fleet so that you can 'find' some more ships.

Mod idea - cargo contributes to the magnitude of the explosion... I have three Mammoths without shields which sit in my personal sector full to the brim with Hammers and Flail - the missile tenders for my Cobra. (I have a big plex cranking them out).

I was thinking that if someone put a Hornet into those babies, the sector should effectively be wasted.

The Hammer holder has 60000 cargo space. Hammers take up 20, that's 3000 Hammers plus the ship's systems fuel and engines to go bang.

Hammers yield 300K - that's 900 000K worth of explosion. Big bang!

[A5PECT]

XTC does this. It's very buggy at the moment.

[Triaxx2]

I'm not missing the point. You said they were useless, I pointed out that they're not.

[deca.death]

I have three Mammoths without shields which sit in my personal sector full to the brim with Hammers and Flail - the missile tenders for my Cobra. (I have a big plex cranking them out).

and i was thinking i was being excessive with my super mistral for every missile type i produce. three goddamn mamoths? truly an overkill. you could use one mamooth for both flails and hammers and you'll never be in need of them again. even my tactic of mistral s.f. per type gives you more then enough buffer zone. i just sell excess in my (not fully speedwise upgraded) kestrel, EqD buys 8 flails (x5=40 M cargo) or 4 hammers (x20=80 L cargo) thus giving me nice income.

[Triaxx2]

Then again, you can then sell those mammoths, and gain oodles of cash for them. Enough to replace them and still make a profit.