Those DARN missiles

[Mayhem93]

Last night and today I tried wiping my a$$ off with a Xenon I on my Titan (accompanied by a Skiron and an Astraeus) but I just can't kill him cuz of those DARNED Firestorm torpedoes !!

He fires 20 missile throughout the fight (i can manage to kill him but my hull's strength is under 20% after I destroy him).

I try and kill those missiles with mosquito missiles but no use, some of them manage to escape because they are too many and when 1 firestorm blows up my mosquito does too, the missile that's supposed to kill another firestorm, so I have to continuously spam the missile button.

The I had only 11 GJ of shields and it's in Xenon 101.

[Roguey]

Why not become a missile launcher yourself? get a M7M and return x100 times more missiles, nothing can stand in the way

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I agree missiles seem to dominate the fighting in X3AP. You can build a complex to produce enough missiles for a M7M.

{Image to thumbnail - Terre}

[delray]

Yes, Xenon I has a proper missile turret in its rear, and that makes it that much harder to fight him even with Mosquitos. Titan isn't on the top end of M2 rankings, Aestreus is a glorified FLAK ship, Skiron is even worse, a slow target easy to kill with one torp.

My advice, get proper missile ships to accompany you. A couple M8s with Tomahawks, or better a properly stockpiled M7M with a cargo bay of Hammers can sink anything, even the mighty I. A swarm of quick distracting Drones won't hurt either. All the above can/should be produced by your factories, and can be sold at great profit when not used to barrage.

The bright side of this is that one day you will have an I of your own, and you will pack it with Firestorms, allowing you do to others exactly what's done to you now.

[Triaxx2]

MARS also works quite well if you're not a vanilla lover. Goblins are excellent for anti-missile.

Wasps are better for taking out missiles than Mosquitoes. More warheads so less chance of a kill on one taking out others, and a greater chance of actually knocking down the missiles.

Or you can fire missiles of your own as you close range to lower the targets shields, and make your job take less time. Tempests are retargetters so won't waste themselves if you knock out the target before they get there, Typhoons are swarm missiles and can do a lot of damage from a rather long range. Tornadoes are dumbfire, but swarm and pack quite a punch. And of course you can counter attack with firestorms of your own. Or Hammerheads.

That said, I'm not much up on AP so these are only suggestions.

[ezra-r]

a good way to kill missiles is to set turrets for missile defence and try to escape, while the missiles tail you they tend to align behind you in almost the almost the same line which make them easily destroyable.

Firestorms and the like are not precisely fast so you have time to do so if you are patient, the enemy will ran out of missiles sooner or later I guess

[Gazz]

Firestorms and the like are not precisely fast so you have time to do so if you are patient, the enemy will ran out of missiles sooner or later I guess :P

The trick is not running out of hull points before that happens.

And it warms my heart that people have finally found a challenge in X3 again. =P

[delray]

I'd still prefer they boosted shields rather than hulls... Let's say 10x. And then let AI try to walk away from a fight just like player does, jump out, escape.

[Gazz]

That would have resulted in a lot of stalemates and the AI simply walking away from a fight instead of letting you kill the ship.
A game without risk and where nothing can be achieved isn't very interesting. Besides, AI ships are cheap for the engine! =P

The point of the Xenon I was to create a new tactical challenge. Not just slowing you down a little by increasing it's hull points by a factor of 5 or something like that. That would just have delayed the inevitable. Booooring.

[delray]

If they wanted us to play actual epic ship battles in the warzone, they'd:

- Remove credit cost from the HQ and cut HQ production time.
- Allow producing ships with guns, shields and ammo already outfitted.
- Coded the game to remember wing setup so you can order HQ to replace fallen ships.
- Allowed automatic slow repair of ships inside Carriers or gave us repair drone factory for the job.
- Boosted shields and hulls to increase the length of engagement and thus reducing random factors from it, increasing the value of proper strategy and setup.
- Added extra space and gave HQ ability to install software.
- Allowed to "enlist" ships in the warzone so your main Terran rep or Argon rep isn't affected by what they destroy. You could fight a war for either side blowing ships up, capping them like a madman and conquering sectors like this was Space Rangers2, and noone would bother your UTs meanwhile, so you could retain the peace of mind about your empire.

Imagine you create a wing of 10x Tenjins, 3 of them get shot down, 4 get wounded. They return to the carrier, you order HQ to replace ships in wing (with all their stuff mounted on production). You still need to provide resources for repair, and for replacements' production, but it all happens with just one command, not 5000.

Then we can play carrier madness to the fullest.

Instead they boosted hulls 5x, ruining Boron guns, and added half a dozen of great ships... Well, it's always fun to play some more X3, but if I was designing AP for space battle fun, I'd do it in a much different way.

[Mayhem93]

I don't like missile frigates, they are boring I don't feel like i'm engaging into combat, only pressing some buttons and watching some rockets fly.

I managed to destroy it twice, I survived with 13% hull first time and 3% hull second time. The problem is it's hull, I got like 75% shields by the time his own shields are at 0% at which point i'm 2km .

The only thing I can do is to stop advancing when I'm in range so I don't get any closer.

I don't have much experience with Destroyer fights.

[Gazz]

My advice, get proper missile ships to accompany you. A couple M8s with Tomahawks, or better a properly stockpiled M7M with a cargo bay of Hammers can sink anything, even the mighty I.

A cheap M8 with a hold full of Mosquitos can also make a great anti-missile escort. Not quite as hardcore as a real M7M in the same role but beats mashing the launch button on a destroyer's bridge any day. =)

[The X-Plorer]

I don't like missile frigates, they are boring I don't feel like i'm engaging into combat, only pressing some buttons and watching some rockets fly.

I managed to destroy it twice, I survived with 13% hull first time and 3% hull second time. The problem is it's hull, I got like 75% shields by the time his own shields are at 0% at which point i'm 2km .

The only thing I can do is to stop advancing when I'm in range so I don't get any closer.

I don't have much experience with Destroyer fights.

Good thing im around...

The key thing here is distance.. your getting WAY too close for comfort on that Xenon I. Doesnt your Titan have PPC's anywhere on it?

If you've seen how ships duked it out in the Colonial era, (For example one of the pirates of the caribbean movies) They turn to broadside and fire at each other like crazy until one of them sinks, or in this case explodes...

Try that out but from a distance, AS SOON AS YOUR TURRETS START FIRING, turn the ship so the side is facing your target.

Dont expect your opponent to do the same though... hes going to keep on steaming towards you until hes about 3 KM away from you. Then he'll start manuevering around you and come back for another charge, just like in Fighter to fighter combat.

Also.. I learned this from fighting Qs in TC... to minimize damage from hostile fire, STRAFE AROUND, It easily throws of the opponent's aim if you do it right.

Now onto those missiles... I recommend stocking up on rapiers if you can, those suckers are fast and have a good range. As soon as you see a missile, fire off a rapier, since you're not too close to him you should be able to wipe out quite a few of those firestorms before they're half way to hitting you.

[DnBrn47]

Make sure you have turrets and missiles dedicated to taking missiles out. Just one or the other won't be enough. I laugh at the mosquito defense script... sometimes it won't release any mosquito at all, other times it will launch a salvo of 20 mosquito at 1 missile.

Best bet is to really try to figure out how many missiles your ship can actively handle, that way if you notice too many coming in you can just jump away before they hit you. You don't even have to jump sector, you can just jump back in the sector from another gate making the AI waste all those missiles on dead space.

I learned a while ago that sitting there and duking it out with other cap ships isn't the best tactic. Especially when having your capitals hull get low in this game is a disaster. Disaster in that you've now just earned yourself 4 hours of face time with your repair laser, if you're vanilla of course. I tend to just jump away screaming like a girl when my shields are about to fail, it's just not worth it to me, plus it's not like the AI is going to sit there and taunt you about running away.

[Lelouch]

The bright side of this is that one day you will have an I of your own, and you will pack it with Firestorms, allowing you do to others exactly what's done to you now.

It doesn't seem one is able to create a backfiring firestorm chain anymore. What a shame. I chuckled at the thought of someone taking their new Xenon I for a spin and suddenly self-damaging it.

In TC it's possible. Reduce speed to 0m/s, fire Firestorms as fast as possible at a station. First will hit, but the explosion radius triggers the second, which triggers the third, which ... Looks quite pretty, but also pretty dangerous for any M6 or less between you and your target.

[DnBrn47]

The bright side of this is that one day you will have an I of your own, and you will pack it with Firestorms, allowing you do to others exactly what's done to you now.

It doesn't seem one is able to create a backfiring firestorm chain anymore. What a shame. I chuckled at the thought of someone taking their new Xenon I for a spin and suddenly self-damaging it.

In TC it's possible. Reduce speed to 0m/s, fire Firestorms as fast as possible at a station. First will hit, but the explosion radius triggers the second, which triggers the third, which ... Looks quite pretty, but also pretty dangerous for any M6 or less between you and your target.

Yea, I know I stopped using Firestorms after the first one got blown up in my face.

[delray]

I learned a while ago that sitting there and duking it out with other cap ships isn't the best tactic. Especially when having your capitals hull get low in this game is a disaster. Disaster in that you've now just earned yourself 4 hours of face time with your repair laser, if you're vanilla of course. I tend to just jump away screaming like a girl when my shields are about to fail, it's just not worth it to me, plus it's not like the AI is going to sit there and taunt you about running away.

Lol, you can always repair at shipyard, it's not like money is hard to come by in this game. I fly my M2s in packs (except Oddie :-p), I always have fighter/bomber support (Eclipse or Falcon Hauler with EBC+missiles), my missile frigates and my M8s are all stockpiled and ready to jump in and unleash hell if I start feeling overwhelmed, I bring drones and endless piles of my own missiles with high firing rate, and when one of ships gets her shields too low I just send for a rest.

It's a team exercise. And when you do it that way, you have plenty of time to jump into your fighter or corvette of choice and have some dogfighting fun while big guys slowly exchange big blows. Hell, you can get an M5 and go torpedo hunting.

[The X-Plorer]

Lol, you can always repair at shipyard...

What if you're not near a sector with a shipyard and dont have a jumprive or the sufficient fuel to get there? if you get ambushed by a large fleet on the way over to the nearest shipyard you are screwed... I barely managed to defeat a K and a J simultaneously in Heretics end, My boreas was down to 16% or so Hull. I jumped to omicron lyrae and had to limp CLEAR TO THE SHIPYARD, which took what seemed to be FOREVER.

And after FINALLY docking, I had my boreas repaired, the darn repairs cut all of the money I had by a third... i went from nearly 130M or so to 91M... You could buy a whole new ship with that money... so DnBrn47 is correct, getting the hull of your capital ship severely damaged can be a DISASTER financially...

...it's not like money is hard to come by in this game.

Oh it can be... but not in the way you would think...

I once took a mission to defend Black hole sun against Xenon attackers, I had my Boreas and was feeling confident. All of a sudden wave after wave of 2-3 capital ships came in... After I wiped out one wave the next would almost immediately come in... I kept hacking them down for what felt like Two hours (When it actually had taken one hour.). After all that killing I got 12.4M for my efforts...

Its not that it's hard to find a way to get a bunch of money... It's that its hard to get a bunch of money without breaking a sweat, skipping a heartbeat or get it in a rather short amount of time...

[martimus]

a good way to kill missiles is to set turrets for missile defence and try to escape, while the missiles tail you they tend to align behind you in almost the almost the same line which make them easily destroyable.

Firestorms and the like are not precisely fast so you have time to do so if you are patient, the enemy will ran out of missiles sooner or later I guess

When it runs out of Firestorms, the I will start spamming Hornets at you at about 3 times the rate it fired the Firestorms at you. I love the I. It is fun to board, and even more fun to fly.

[DnBrn47]

I learned a while ago that sitting there and duking it out with other cap ships isn't the best tactic. Especially when having your capitals hull get low in this game is a disaster. Disaster in that you've now just earned yourself 4 hours of face time with your repair laser, if you're vanilla of course. I tend to just jump away screaming like a girl when my shields are about to fail, it's just not worth it to me, plus it's not like the AI is going to sit there and taunt you about running away.

Lol, you can always repair at shipyard, it's not like money is hard to come by in this game. I fly my M2s in packs (except Oddie :-p), I always have fighter/bomber support (Eclipse or Falcon Hauler with EBC+missiles), my missile frigates and my M8s are all stockpiled and ready to jump in and unleash hell if I start feeling overwhelmed, I bring drones and endless piles of my own missiles with high firing rate, and when one of ships gets her shields too low I just send for a rest.

It's a team exercise. And when you do it that way, you have plenty of time to jump into your fighter or corvette of choice and have some dogfighting fun while big guys slowly exchange big blows. Hell, you can get an M5 and go torpedo hunting.

I do a lot of soloing. Most I've ever had was an 8 fighter wing compliment. I don't like managing a bunch of stuff. Only time I feel overwhelmed is when multiple enemies are spamming missiles. It's rather easy to beat the AI otherwise. Most money I've ever had at once was 200 mil. I don't buy the whole 'I made 500 mil in the first couple hours doing x' posts I keep seeing pop up. I think selling missiles manually has been my biggest money earner so far, most I've seen out of stocks yet is 5 million at a time with companies/corporations and it's pretty slow going. The point is, repairing is expensive, I just loaded up mods that increase the repair rate for the astronaut laser and then also added the repair lasers for ships. Much better now. I spend a lot on just trying out other ships and things.

[delray]

I made like 180 mil in just a few game hours in stocks in Seizewell and PTNI last time I started the game... Just by buying everything "red" and selling everything "yellow" in naturals. I was actually surprised I already have so much.

I wish we instead had dividends promoting long-term investment, but the devs disagree and just want us to gamble our way into high trade ranks and immense riches.