Missiles

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darth_adversor
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Missiles

Post by darth_adversor » Fri, 9. Aug 13, 18:22

Some of you might remember that I've previously spoken out against the general use of missiles. Well, now that I've got my own fabs up and running, I've changed my tune a bit.

I was in my Hyperion towing some mines (bleh), when I got an alert from one of my CAG's. Instead of taking the time to fly back to my Panther, I went ahead and jumped in. I haven't flown my Hype in combat since I've been producing missiles, so this time I had Wasps, Typhoons, and Firestorms on-board. I'm amazed at how effective they are, especially Wasps against Xenon swarms. It truly made the difference between life and death. I also feel like it's breathed some new life into the Hype for me, and for the M6 class in general.

I'm curious, regarding Commonwealth missiles, is there anything you use aside from the 3 I mentioned above? Not including Mosquitoes.
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Post by heratik » Fri, 9. Aug 13, 18:38

Hornets are pretty nasty, they'll finish off an M6 pretty quickly and in large enough numbers they will soften up an M7.

They sell for a pretty decent price too if you have overflow and a CAG handy.

I also use silkworms against M3, they probably aren't the best, but I just happened to add a few fabs when building my missile complex.

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Post by gbjbaanb » Fri, 9. Aug 13, 19:12

I have given up on wasps since I discovered the hurricane - they have a lot further range, so you can take out those pesky flies, sorry M5s, at a distance without any worry.

silkworms for M4s, and tempests or thunderbolts for M3s, generally.

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Post by AgamemnonArgon » Fri, 9. Aug 13, 19:23

Thunderbolt is a definite
Typhoon is heavier and really useful
Hornet is an important missile

I like a choice of missiles on my starships.
Firestorms are the Station killer missiles if enough are used.

Ten to twenty of various missiles, if one is leading a Fleet, as they can share resources.
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Post by darth_adversor » Fri, 9. Aug 13, 19:48

Hmmm...I do like the range of the Hurricane. I may set up a couple of fabs. The Thunderbolt and Hornet both seem good, but I really prefer swarm missiles.
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Post by GCU Grey Area » Fri, 9. Aug 13, 20:07

Missile use for me tends to be almost entirely for 2 distinct purposes.
I tend to fly M6s predominantly & carry missiles to take care of anything which is either:
(a) a lot faster than me & would therefore be annoying to pursue, or
(b) a lot bigger than me & would take a very long time to destroy with M6 calibre guns alone.

For the first category (M5s & fast M4s) I carry Hurricanes - very fast missile carrying a proximity detonated 6k warhead with 200m burst radius. Almost as much bang as Wasp but it's all delivered as a single hit, rather than as a series of blasts (Wasp often tends to give the target's shields an opportunity to regen a bit between hits).

For the second (capitals) I carry Tornado - by far my favourite missile in the game. It's a fast, dumbfire, swarm missile with 8x 50k warheads. Equivalent to 40% of Firestorm's yield, though a similar DPS due to much faster cooldown. Main reasons I prefer Tornado as my primary anti-capital missile is the speed (roughly 2x as fast as most other high yield missiles) & also Firestorm has a huge (1km) blast radius & Tornado doesn't. I like to get up close & personal when taking on capitals & Firestorm is far too dangerous to my own ship in those circumstances - too big a chance of gunfire setting it off immediately after launch.

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Post by Baratheon79 » Fri, 9. Aug 13, 20:26

What missiles I carry tends to depend on what I'm flying, and what I intend to use them for. On my Hyperion, I generally carry mosquitoes (for missile defense, obviously), wasps, typhoons, hornets, a few firestorms, and a decent supply of wraiths if I've got any. If I'm flying my Tenjin, I carry some mosquitoes, wasps, silkworms, and a couple hammerheads. Any ship I leave under AI control still gets mosquitoes, as well as a half decent supply of other ordinance, but I don't give them hammerheads or firestorms.

For the record, I've got a complex producing a variety of different missiles, and I've been hoarding hammerheads since the start of the game. So I don't think twice when it comes to using them. I can always resupply as needed.

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Post by ajax34i » Sat, 10. Aug 13, 08:09

If the Hyperion is overtuned to 230 or more (mine is), then the big (non-dumbfire) missiles become even better, because you launch them in advance and they are slower than you, so you will be leading a cloud of missiles and you zoom by the target first (its turrets change to track you) and then your missiles hit (vs. turrets unprepared for missile defense).

I carry wasps, thunderbolts, typhoons, and wraiths. Rather than aiming and shooting missiles AT the target, I typically do a flyby pass with the missiles behind me. If it's not dead I use whatever swarms I have to reduce turret effects as I close in with flamethrowers.

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Post by NUKLEAR-SLUG » Sat, 10. Aug 13, 11:37

AgamemnonArgon wrote:Thunderbolt is a definite
.
Thunderbolt used to be the best M3 class killer for the cargo space to power ratio but since that got changed Tempest is the new king. True, Tempest doesn't hit quite as hard initially, but as it requires two of either to knock out a fully shielded M3 anyway you might as well use the one that takes up less cargo space and will happily go after other targets if the primary gets destroyed.

Essentials for general purpose use are:

Hurricane - M5 fast-movers. Extreme range and area effect to boot makes them ideal for Khaak clusters
Silkworm - M4/3 as they're take minimal cargo space and can be bought in abundance for cheap.
Tempest - M3 and up for when you want to just dump a lot of missiles into a fighter cloud and let them sort it out for themselves.
Hornet - Anything M6 and up

There's some others have situational uses but those are your key ones.

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Post by darth_adversor » Sat, 10. Aug 13, 23:27

NUKLEAR-SLUG wrote:Essentials for general purpose use are:

Hurricane - M5 fast-movers. Extreme range and area effect to boot makes them ideal for Khaak clusters
Silkworm - M4/3 as they're take minimal cargo space and can be bought in abundance for cheap.
Tempest - M3 and up for when you want to just dump a lot of missiles into a fighter cloud and let them sort it out for themselves.
Hornet - Anything M6 and up

There's some others have situational uses but those are your key ones.
Soooo...basically you're saying I built the wrong fabs. :) Fantastic...that was an expensive complex...
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Post by heratik » Sun, 11. Aug 13, 01:08

Don't worry, they'll sell if you set some CAGs to work...

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Post by ajax34i » Sun, 11. Aug 13, 01:25

Well, he's saying that, but I disagree with all his choices because he has no swarms in his lineup, and no Wraiths.

I prefer the swarm versions of each of his choices; single missiles may kill their intended target better, but you lose the very important ability to neutralize turrets shooting at you or at your missiles, and that's a bigger threat than a bunch of M5's or M4's.

And Wraiths, who uses the Hyperion without Wraiths?!

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Post by darth_adversor » Sun, 11. Aug 13, 03:55

Well, I did some research...

The only missile I regret not building fabs for is the Tempest. Its ability to reacquire new targets is attractive to me, so I'll have to get some of those going. Otherwise:

Hurricane - Takes up a lot of space in TC and according to the Wiki, no AoE.
Silkworm - Not bad, but not overly impressed. Seems like 2-3 Wasps would be just as good.
Hornet - The Typhoon is faster, has better range, and overall more powerful.

I do see how a single missile could be preferred sometimes over a swarm, but I don't think it's important enough to build more fabs. Plus I really don't want to be carrying so many missiles that I'm cycling through them all trying to find the one I want. 4 varieties should be enough. :)

Actually, I'm fairly unimpressed with Firestorms. I may drop those.

Edit:
ajax34i wrote:And Wraiths, who uses the Hyperion without Wraiths?!
I do. Because I no has any. :(
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Post by NUKLEAR-SLUG » Sun, 11. Aug 13, 16:56

darth_adversor wrote:Soooo...basically you're saying I built the wrong fabs. :) Fantastic...that was an expensive complex...
Not at all.

Wasps lack in punch a little compared to Hurricane which is generally a one-shot on M5 because they have a habit of flailing madly around their target and you can't guarantee a good strike on it. On the other hand that feature makes them excellent for shutting down enemy turrets as they're tied up trying, ineffectually, to hit the Wasps.

Typhoons are also a great missile, but they don't produce very quickly so you have to use them a lot more sparingly than you might otherwise want or invest a large amount in fabs to match your usage rate.

Firestorms are absolutely fine if you plan to bomb stations, dropping into a Xenon sector and blitzing the shipyard for example, but they're not a huge amount of use otherwise as they're a bit unwieldy.

I find these three to be the more specialist role ones, but it depends a lot on what you aim to be doing as well.

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Post by darth_adversor » Sun, 11. Aug 13, 18:10

I've tried using Firestorms on stations. They don't seem to have that much punch, and the cooldown is so long that after about 5, I get bored and just get in close to use my IBL's. Plus, they produce slowly, so at 20+ per station, I'd run out really quickly.

Anyway, it's all good. Thanks for the comments guys.
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Post by Triaxx2 » Sun, 11. Aug 13, 19:46

Wasps are awesome. I recommend the NS's Wasp Shotgun technique. Get in close, under 800m I believe it was, then fire. All eight warheads will stay grouped, rather than breaking up and swirling around, making it an 8k damage missile, rather than 8 1k damage missiles. Best from fast ships, like M4 Raiders. And since you're producing your own, don't fire just one. I prefer to launch two or three, which will confuse most M5's into trying to avoid several warheads at once and see them caught by several more.

And since Kestrels can fire them, you can have them simply swamp anything up to an M6 with wasps and kill them that way. The more missiles the merrier.

Typhoons are excellent missiles, and I've seen them put to great use as opening salvos against capital ships. I like to use them against M6's and TS's when I need them to die, but I'm having trouble dealing with the turrets.

Good idea with the firestorms, but you've got it backwards. Get in close, and rake the shields with IBL's then spam firestorms as you pull away. They're potent enough to tear apart the station and deal with the shield recharge, and they'll blow the station as you move on to the next one, or head to engage enemy ships. Me, I use them for dealing Kha'ak clusters. (Which annoys some people.) Since it's also a proximity detonation warhead, it will blow even if the cluster has broken up by the time it arrives, which is useful. It's also potent enough to guarantee a kill.

Tempests are excellent for heavier targets, but where one is good three is better because turrets tend to shoot down missiles. And if the first two hit, the third one goes looking for trouble. And again, the more the merrier.

Dragonflies are potent early game missiles which are not dumb fire, despite being produced by dumb fire complexes. They're easily spammable, and since they're cheap, you don't have to worry about the cost.

Silkworms are similar but stronger. On the other hand, two will kill anything up to an M3. (The Mamba raider will die, but they've got to catch it first.)

Thunderbolts are good, but Hornet's trump them. I dislike the Hurricane. It either catches them and can't kill them, or can't catch them. Two wasps beat two hurricanes every time.

Or, if you want to go Terran, you can get a handful of Rapiers(M5's), fill them with Poltergeists, and have an instant poor-man's M7M. Poltergeists are Self-Targeting, Swarm missiles. And since a swarm of M5's is harder to hit than a single capital ship... you can imagine just how much havok you can cause.
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Post by darth_adversor » Sun, 11. Aug 13, 20:40

I do like me some Poltergeists. Once I get access to Terran factories, that'll be one of the first fabs I put up.
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