I've tried them out in a variety of situations. Lighter craft seem to easily outmaneuver/outrun them while larger craft seem to trivially remove them via point defense. Overall I can count on one finger the number of times I've had missiles connect with any appreciable results. Are they just really weak or is there some trick to using them effectively?
Ship Builds & Load Outs missles seem useless?
- Thread starter Lanz
- Start date
Before nerf
After
Joking aside xD I find that seekers are the best to use over dumb-fire at the cost of damage.I use 2 small missiles racks on my conda for the speedier crafts that can get away easily, such as vipers or eagles they do little to no damage on bigger craft only maybe for very VERY light sub-systems damage. it's also worth noting they do nothing to shields so always make sure that your target has no shields before firing.
After
Joking aside xD I find that seekers are the best to use over dumb-fire at the cost of damage.I use 2 small missiles racks on my conda for the speedier crafts that can get away easily, such as vipers or eagles they do little to no damage on bigger craft only maybe for very VERY light sub-systems damage. it's also worth noting they do nothing to shields so always make sure that your target has no shields before firing.
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X-Terminator
Banned
Many things in ED are Useless if used on the wrong ship but there are also many Useless items anyways. At least C3 Beam lasers are hard to come by and make it use alternatives. I like the Pulse Lasers though. I think the more skill you have you can go for the fixed types and not gambled which give more kick.
Missiles for the most part won't turn the tide in a fight. I can see something like the anaconda or FDS sporting two or three, but not really anything else.
Deleted member 38366
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Well, missiles by themselves can't do much, sadly. I was a missile fan too, but desisted in using them pretty much just after I fired them off for the first time.
To better explain:
I had recently jumped into the game, and did some missions to earn a bunch of credits. I bought an eagle (Gotta love the design), and had in mind to do some sort of "Fighter Jet" loadout. I went for two C1 gimballed beam laser and then I wanted to fit a missile rack on top. I had in mind something like "The beam lasers will burn the shields down quickly, and the missiles will take down the hull pretty fast". After I tried them, though, I had the same problems you had with them. So I simply swapped them to a multi-cannon.
All in all, they are pretty useless and never used on player's ships. The only missile that can do some damage is the Torpedo Pylon, but Frontier made that thing so pricy and unfit for battle. You get one shot and only one shot that costs you 15k C. Each time to reload, and I don't even know if chaff or point defences or even electronic countermeasures can make it lose lock. We should be in the age of super advanced technology, but how these missiles are designed seem to remind me more of the early days.
Don't get me wrong, Frontier did develop a good missile. The Pylon is a good missile, and it should be how the basic missile should be in year 3300. I like the fact that missiles don't do damage to shields, so it prevents people from just spamming them over and over, but I think that if we have super fancy tech stuff, we should have good missiles to use too. Unless the Pylon has its ammo capacity increased the only good missile will be just as obsolete as the others. We then would have fairly usable missiles, Cluster bombs and even fancier stuff like Emp missiles that disrupt modules causing the ship to malfunction or shut down so we could capture targets, a non lethal way to deal with things, or can be used to get tactical advantages on the foe or even fancier stuff, but maybe the developers don't want. Maybe they fear they'd be overpowered (When C3 lasers/Plasma accelerators annihilate stuff easily if used correctly), or maybe they made them obsolete to show how new war tech is better at destroying stuff. Who knows.
To better explain:
I had recently jumped into the game, and did some missions to earn a bunch of credits. I bought an eagle (Gotta love the design), and had in mind to do some sort of "Fighter Jet" loadout. I went for two C1 gimballed beam laser and then I wanted to fit a missile rack on top. I had in mind something like "The beam lasers will burn the shields down quickly, and the missiles will take down the hull pretty fast". After I tried them, though, I had the same problems you had with them. So I simply swapped them to a multi-cannon.
All in all, they are pretty useless and never used on player's ships. The only missile that can do some damage is the Torpedo Pylon, but Frontier made that thing so pricy and unfit for battle. You get one shot and only one shot that costs you 15k C. Each time to reload, and I don't even know if chaff or point defences or even electronic countermeasures can make it lose lock. We should be in the age of super advanced technology, but how these missiles are designed seem to remind me more of the early days.
Don't get me wrong, Frontier did develop a good missile. The Pylon is a good missile, and it should be how the basic missile should be in year 3300. I like the fact that missiles don't do damage to shields, so it prevents people from just spamming them over and over, but I think that if we have super fancy tech stuff, we should have good missiles to use too. Unless the Pylon has its ammo capacity increased the only good missile will be just as obsolete as the others. We then would have fairly usable missiles, Cluster bombs and even fancier stuff like Emp missiles that disrupt modules causing the ship to malfunction or shut down so we could capture targets, a non lethal way to deal with things, or can be used to get tactical advantages on the foe or even fancier stuff, but maybe the developers don't want. Maybe they fear they'd be overpowered (When C3 lasers/Plasma accelerators annihilate stuff easily if used correctly), or maybe they made them obsolete to show how new war tech is better at destroying stuff. Who knows.
I don't understand the missile nerf - they were problematic before the nerf because a Viper fitted with dumbfires was able to kill a Python within 10 seconds. Now the problem wasn't missiles shield damage, but the ability to spam dumbfires as fast as you could pull the trigger in quick succession. As far as I'm concerned there was never a problem with seekers.
Anyway - I've used them quite a lot on a Courier recently and found them to be highly effective for pirate kill missions as long as you stick to killing small stuff. Of course that use is highly circumstantial and doesn't render them a viable weapon System. Asp/Vulture and above and they're useless due to their low penetration and all being limited to small size.
I really hope they implement the bigger sizes at one point as originally planned:
Anyway - I've used them quite a lot on a Courier recently and found them to be highly effective for pirate kill missions as long as you stick to killing small stuff. Of course that use is highly circumstantial and doesn't render them a viable weapon System. Asp/Vulture and above and they're useless due to their low penetration and all being limited to small size.
I really hope they implement the bigger sizes at one point as originally planned:
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That is the theory, but there are problems.
- The missiles are easy to evade/outrun and are trivially removed with pretty much any anti-missile system.
- The damage isn't really anything special compared to other weapons.
- The ammo is obnoxiously-expensive for how little damage it causes.
Hmm. Seems like there are a few things holding missiles back from being effective and fun.
First off, IMHO, there's no such thing as a dumbfire 'missile.' That's a rocket. Point, shoot, boom. A 'missile' needs a radar lock so it can chase its target. If there was more distinction between the two, it would be less confusing, I think.
Second, something labeled 'explosive' shouldn't be completely ineffective against shields. Thermal weapons burn them out via intense heat distribution. Explosions generate heat through incendiaries and/or shockwaves, so I think they should either have SOME effectiveness against shields, or be able to do SOME damage to the hull with shields up just by virtue of the sheer shockwave. Something needs to happen here; missiles currently just aren't worth the investment or upkeep.
Third, we need more variety in missile launcher types. We have two right now. One seeker, one rocket. We need launchers that can lock and fire multiple missile volleys, for one thing. We also need missiles with a range of speed and agility to balance between travel time and chase duration. This gives us a way to try to overload point-defense with one, fake out nimble dodgers with another, and keep a threat hanging over the heads of runners with the third. More importantly, missile performance needs to be tied to your other systems. Missiles are meant to be long-range engagement weapons, but even our basic guns and lasers can hit things from 3 kilometers out. This means missiles need to be able to appear from the darkness, so to speak. Make that 7k sensor range mean something with missiles and those A grade sensor packs might actually mean something.
In other word, rather than just being another mediocre hull-buster that takes time to lock, missiles need to have their own space to be made viable.
First off, IMHO, there's no such thing as a dumbfire 'missile.' That's a rocket. Point, shoot, boom. A 'missile' needs a radar lock so it can chase its target. If there was more distinction between the two, it would be less confusing, I think.
Second, something labeled 'explosive' shouldn't be completely ineffective against shields. Thermal weapons burn them out via intense heat distribution. Explosions generate heat through incendiaries and/or shockwaves, so I think they should either have SOME effectiveness against shields, or be able to do SOME damage to the hull with shields up just by virtue of the sheer shockwave. Something needs to happen here; missiles currently just aren't worth the investment or upkeep.
Third, we need more variety in missile launcher types. We have two right now. One seeker, one rocket. We need launchers that can lock and fire multiple missile volleys, for one thing. We also need missiles with a range of speed and agility to balance between travel time and chase duration. This gives us a way to try to overload point-defense with one, fake out nimble dodgers with another, and keep a threat hanging over the heads of runners with the third. More importantly, missile performance needs to be tied to your other systems. Missiles are meant to be long-range engagement weapons, but even our basic guns and lasers can hit things from 3 kilometers out. This means missiles need to be able to appear from the darkness, so to speak. Make that 7k sensor range mean something with missiles and those A grade sensor packs might actually mean something.
In other word, rather than just being another mediocre hull-buster that takes time to lock, missiles need to have their own space to be made viable.
In classic Elite, missiles were a 1-hit kill weapon with unlimited range. As I recall, you could only carry 4, and higher level enemy ships had an ECM which exploded all missiles in flight (thus nullifying them). They were a crutch for beginners to get through combat against weaker pirates. If enemies fired missiles at you and you hadn't yet gotten an ECM of your own, I think you had to shoot them down with lasers, or you were doomed. They flew slightly faster than the Cobra MK III.
I have not yet played with missiles except in the combat training tutorials, but I'm a huge fan of homing missiles in games. The Armored Core series has always done missiles so, SO right. (Okay, except for Armored Core 5 and Verdict Day.) Anyway, those games feature anti-missile systems as well, which include missile lock scramblers, decoys, small beam lasers that disable the warheads, machine guns (like the Phalanx CIWS), and small missiles solely for intercepting incoming missiles. One way to get around these defenses is to equip launchers which fire large salvos of missiles.
Some of these I think would be most welcome in Elite Dangerous.
I have not yet played with missiles except in the combat training tutorials, but I'm a huge fan of homing missiles in games. The Armored Core series has always done missiles so, SO right. (Okay, except for Armored Core 5 and Verdict Day.) Anyway, those games feature anti-missile systems as well, which include missile lock scramblers, decoys, small beam lasers that disable the warheads, machine guns (like the Phalanx CIWS), and small missiles solely for intercepting incoming missiles. One way to get around these defenses is to equip launchers which fire large salvos of missiles.
Some of these I think would be most welcome in Elite Dangerous.
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I'm a huge fan of swarms of missiles instead of nukes, and I think it would work out just fine in ED. We have point defense lasers today that can take out a nuke. A swarm of smaller warheads would end up being far more devastating I think.
I have an Imperial Eagle with KWS and frameshift interdictor, as an Interceptor out of a local faction. (Basically I rarely run it outside the one system, so I don't show on traffic reports). A Class 2 Beam on the roof, I carry two Class 1 Missile Packs underneath, set to fire heat seekers in pairs.
Of course you feel it would be good if they did more damage per shot (like anything probably) but with a total of 24 aboard .. (1) we all know they're tons of fun to use (2) they're useful for wings of small ships (Vipers, Cobras) for taking out a flanking ship quickly (3) for larger ships (anything up to Fed Drop Ship, Imperial Clipper and without Security Vessel assistance) handy for hammering down the hull / powerplant .. and (4) .. between you me and the gatepost, they're HIGHLY effective against surface skimmers, I think the quickest way to kill them.
Imperial, any Eagle, even with upgrade to shield and bulkheads, is not going to take a massive amount of punishment anyway and this means regular returns to base for rapid repairs, giving obvious chance to re-arm warheads. But with repair on the ship (from 1% hull) costing about 2.5k credits, max (!!!) even with the expense of missiles it's still profitable and (because of the David v Goliath challenge) I am NEVER selling this ship, or giving up the misslie racks. I spend a lot of time in it having a right laugh.
Of course you feel it would be good if they did more damage per shot (like anything probably) but with a total of 24 aboard .. (1) we all know they're tons of fun to use (2) they're useful for wings of small ships (Vipers, Cobras) for taking out a flanking ship quickly (3) for larger ships (anything up to Fed Drop Ship, Imperial Clipper and without Security Vessel assistance) handy for hammering down the hull / powerplant .. and (4) .. between you me and the gatepost, they're HIGHLY effective against surface skimmers, I think the quickest way to kill them.
Imperial, any Eagle, even with upgrade to shield and bulkheads, is not going to take a massive amount of punishment anyway and this means regular returns to base for rapid repairs, giving obvious chance to re-arm warheads. But with repair on the ship (from 1% hull) costing about 2.5k credits, max (!!!) even with the expense of missiles it's still profitable and (because of the David v Goliath challenge) I am NEVER selling this ship, or giving up the misslie racks. I spend a lot of time in it having a right laugh.
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In something like an eagle, wouldn't you get more mileage with dumbfires?
If they changed seekers to be more like LRM5s / 15s / 20s in Mechwarrior online I'd be so insanely happy that I own an Anaconda.
10/10 would immediately turn around and make my giant snake into the best missile boat money could buy with just enough lasers to strip shields. If they allowed us to use NARC or TAG beacons too... I'd probably go full missile boat. Actually talking about this is making me want to play that game now -.-
By creating a larger volume of missiles (with a larger chance to miss) it basically allows you to say "Ok well, if we know on average 75% hits damage should be in this area. If the player gets lucky and lands the full volley then kudos to them for engaging properly" - way more reward.
10/10 would immediately turn around and make my giant snake into the best missile boat money could buy with just enough lasers to strip shields. If they allowed us to use NARC or TAG beacons too... I'd probably go full missile boat. Actually talking about this is making me want to play that game now -.-
By creating a larger volume of missiles (with a larger chance to miss) it basically allows you to say "Ok well, if we know on average 75% hits damage should be in this area. If the player gets lucky and lands the full volley then kudos to them for engaging properly" - way more reward.
