Are Firestorm Torpedoes enough to take out capital ships?

[someonenoone11]

I'm using a Cerberus because its an M7 with hangars, and can be equipped with cluster flak arrays all around.

As many of you know, the Cerberus can not take on another M7, so my question is, is it possible to take out another M7, and possibly, M2s with Firestorm Torpedoes?

[RicoOcho]

If you launch enough of them yes...but they are slow and can easily be shot down

[someonenoone11]

So should I launch as many as possible from far away? Or should I get close and launch them so they won't get shot down? Should I launch them after all the fighters are destroyed? How many does it take to successfully bring down an M7, including the possibilities of them being shot down?

[blackfire83]

If you launch them at long range when the enemy ship is approaching you, you might sneak some through.

[Alan Phipps]

Don't get too close or you will take serious damage yourself from missiles that are hit in flight by outgoing or return laser fire, nor even get so close as to get damage from impacts on the target. They have a big blast radius of 1 km or so.

[David Howland]

As said Firestorms are great!
For the second 15months of my first 18 months of this game my personal ship was a Dragon. In this ship I regularly stocked it with 5 types of missiles, the heaviest was 25 Firestorms. I had frequently to rescue my three capital ship patrols from certain destruction by Xenon capitals in my Dragon. The missile I used was the Firestorm, it always did the job but it did have to be deployed with hit and run tactics. They were also useful for taking out pirate stations.

[GCU Grey Area]

I prefer Tornado missiles for anti-capital work.

They have a few downsides, main one being that in a vanilla game the player has to build a factory since the NPCs don't make them. They're also dumbfire, but since capital ships are not exactly tiny that's much less of an issue than the other dumbfires.

On a positive note they're exceptionally fast for the yield (roughly double Firestorm's speed) & have multiple warheads so are much harder for the enemy to shoot down. They only do 40% of the damage of Firestorm, however the cooldown between launches balances that (Tornado has 2 second cooldown; Firestorm is 5 seconds). They also have a much smaller blast radius than Firestorm so are much less hazardous to use in close proximity to a target which is shooting back.

[Vyrebird]

I haven't used Firestorms, but with Hammer Heavy Torpedoes and Wraith Missiles, I find medium- to long-range tends to work best. At short range, missiles seem too likely to be shot down 'accidentally' by the enemy's fire directed at you. The longer the range, the less careful you need to be with your aim (since the big, slow missiles usually don't have stellar turning radii, so they need a lot of room to adjust if you fire in some random direction), but the more things that could go wrong in the meantime (hit something else enroute, other ships take pot shots at the missiles, target ship maneuver out of range or somewhere the missile can't adjust course to in time, etc).

'How many' extra missiles is going to depend heavily on the target ship, its weapon loadout, and the direction the missiles approach from, as well as sheer luck. I suspect you'll mostly need to get a feel for it via experimentation, along with either many reloads or many wasted missiles.

When I was learning wraiths, I think out of my first load of 50, I managed to hit with the equivalent of about 4 (they're swarm missiles, so ~30 warheads out of 400). Nowadays I tend to average closer to around 3 out of 5. With Hammer Heavy Torpedos, I could easily waste dozens per fight at first. Nowadays I usually lose around 0-6 per target. It just takes practice. (and from what I gather, I'm still relatively unskilled at missile usage; I suspect those that actually know what they're doing get much better results than I)

[Coffee-Man]

Shoot one Firestorm at your enemy...lock it up as your target. Wait. Fire a Firestormtorpedo at your first fired firestormtorpedo. Wait. Repeat.

The first Torpedo will be shot down by the enemy. The second, third... had the first torpedo locked as their target, they loose their target but stay on their route. Most capitalships will be hit by them. They will not get shot down, as they don't have the enemy ship set as target.

This worked at least with TC Version 2.1, I don't know if egosoft changed anything about it since then.

[someonenoone11]

Shoot one Firestorm at your enemy...lock it up as your target. Wait. Fire a Firestormtorpedo at your first fired firestormtorpedo. Wait. Repeat.

The first Torpedo will be shot down by the enemy. The second, third... had the first torpedo locked as their target, they loose their target but stay on their route. Most capitalships will be hit by them. They will not get shot down, as they don't have the enemy ship set as target.

This worked at least with TC Version 2.1, I don't know if egosoft changed anything about it since then.

Oh my god you sir are a genius. I'll try that =O

[BarneyMcGrew]

Just fire a typhoon tunnel with the firestorms, I usually find that 2 typhoons then 2 firestorms then 2 typhoons, and repeat until a suitable amount of ordnance is in the air for your target. Wait for the boom.

[StarSword]

I've sometimes found Firestorm volleys useful as "bunker busters" for attacking stations, speeding up a capital ship take-down, or thinning fighter clouds.

But the last one works both ways. Once I blew up a Pirate Base as a punitive measure for attacking one of my stations. I had my Panther and complement of Chimeras, and I had a Boreas. My fighters were doing strafing runs when the AI-piloted Boreas launched a torpedo. It hit and at least five of my Chimeras died simultaneously.

Overall, they're effective weapons in a pinch, but due to the amount of cargo space they take up, their slow reload time and flight speed, and their ridiculous blast radius, they're often more trouble than they're worth.

[deca.death]

I'm using a Cerberus because its an M7 with hangars, and can be equipped with cluster flak arrays all around.

As many of you know, the Cerberus can not take on another M7, so my question is, is it possible to take out another M7, and possibly, M2s with Firestorm Torpedoes?

I prefer FAA to CFA, I found their faster bullet speed useful and CFA area effect not particularly.

Cerebrus can mount pair of IBLs on lateral turrets, if you have access to IBLs it will give you at least some anti capital punch. Firestorms are OK but you will probably need at least small 2 fab half loop complex to fire them at will. Shoot them from distance, you need several to bring down M7. Good thing is the huge blast radius, so whole group will be hit.

There are other M7 ships you could acquire that supersede cerebrus in every aspect (and still can carry fighters), you know that?

[blackfire83]

If you want a cheaper alternative to the Typhoon tunnel method mentioned above, you could spam Wasps at the target after you shot your Firestorms. They are cheap and spammable and should keep the target's anti-missile defenses busy.

[Eisenkalle]

If you want a cheaper alternative to the Typhoon tunnel method mentioned above, you could spam Wasps at the target after you shot your Firestorms. They are cheap and spammable and should keep the target's anti-missile defenses busy.

I use the same method, but I shot hornet missiles, instead of firestorms.

[Skillzfire]

blarghh, bad experience with firestorms, but they are good jst try not to launch them when its a hectic battle.

i managed to hit one of my elites when it was flying in front of me why do i have such bad luck

[someonenoone11]

I'm using a Cerberus because its an M7 with hangars, and can be equipped with cluster flak arrays all around.

As many of you know, the Cerberus can not take on another M7, so my question is, is it possible to take out another M7, and possibly, M2s with Firestorm Torpedoes?

I prefer FAA to CFA, I found their faster bullet speed useful and CFA area effect not particularly.

Cerebrus can mount pair of IBLs on lateral turrets, if you have access to IBLs it will give you at least some anti capital punch. Firestorms are OK but you will probably need at least small 2 fab half loop complex to fire them at will. Shoot them from distance, you need several to bring down M7. Good thing is the huge blast radius, so whole group will be hit.

There are other M7 ships you could acquire that supersede cerebrus in every aspect (and still can carry fighters), you know that?

I'm racist XD. I hate every race that is not human, and FAA is a paranid weapon, where as CFA is an argon weapon. I was deciding on whether to be terran or argon, and decided argon is more fun because I get to blow up the "new threat". If you played Starcraft I consider the Terran to be the UED.

Having said that, the only M7 the argons have is the Cerberus, and the OTAS Astraeus Hauler is not available in a vanilla game so... I got to make Cerberus work somehow

[deca.death]

I'm racist XD. I hate every race that is not human, and FAA is a paranid weapon..

So where is problem in exterminating someone with their own weapon? I like RPG and use it to spice up the experience, not follow it blindly - but if you played the game too many times and want to make yourself difficult (and you are sick of standard ships and weapons) then it's a better idea.

[Triaxx2]

FAA is Teladi. And frankly the Argon CFA is just as effective.

As for the Firestorm, I tend to use it mostly for busting Kha'ak Clusters. Some people complain, but should something bust the cluster before the missile hits, it will still boom in the middle nine times out of ten.

[Coffee-Man]

The CFA is inferior the FAA in every aspect. Mostly due to the fact that the shrapnells are not doing any real damage. It can be fixed in the TBullets.txt, but that would set the game to "modified".