Have they nerfed pack-hounds?

[timbero]

Just launched about 7 extended clips on an Elite NPC Anaconda and his hull went from 25% to 25%, pretty much all of them got through - And I fired them off with a slight delay in between.

They seemed.. incredibly weak and ineffective.

Got his shields down fairly quick (for missiles), but the hull was another matter.

I ran out of ammo and left him with 20% hull still remaining.

I thought missiles were supposed to shred hull and not shields, how can 7 missile launchers do so little hull damage? :S

2 were thermal damage and 5 were explosive damage.

 

[yolomcbobbinz]

I think missiles in general are weak against hulls they're good for smaller ships but not for bigger ones, they only explode on the hull but shred modules torpedoes do lots of damage and great for bigger ships but low and expensive ammo count

I'd love to play around with a packhound torpedo launcher

 

[Drelthar]

Missiles shred external modules like thrusters and weapons. They are ok against small/medium ship hulls, that dont have much explosive resist, or a bunch of hull re-inforcements.

 

[Ozram]

Missiles shred external modules like thrusters and weapons. They are ok against small/medium ship hulls, that dont have much explosive resist, or a bunch of hull re-inforcements.

I think thrusters now count as internal modules because missiles had made many ships obsolete there for a while (with only shield tanks remaining viable). You'll find you can still damage weapons etc with them, but unless you have dumbfire with superpen rounds, the thrusters stay safe.

 

[eraktor]

How far was your target? I haven't used Pack-Hounds, but at least ordinary missiles have a slight arming delay, and they won't deal much/any damage if fired from close range.

 

[Drelthar]

I think thrusters now count as internal modules because missiles had made many ships obsolete there for a while (with only shield tanks remaining viable). You'll find you can still damage weapons etc with them, but unless you have dumbfire with superpen rounds, the thrusters stay safe.

REALLY?!

That... utterly destroys them for me... I used missiles to disable thrusters when pirating, only being able to destroy weapons makes them severely less useful.

It was the one way I could use with near 100% certainty I wouldn't end up destroying my target... Now I have to try and hit a power plant with a cannon, and risk the plant exploding, nevermind the damage to the hull I'll end up doing.

Aww man, missiles just became pants for me again.

This is the worst news I've heard in ages...

 

[Galactic Midden]

How far was your target? I haven't used Pack-Hounds, but at least ordinary missiles have a slight arming delay, and they won't deal much/any damage if fired from close range.

An arming delay! I'd never considered that might be a feature with missiles. Very interesting. I never use them now, never enjoyed using them actually as they just didn't seem to do the damage I'd hoped compared to simpler weapons. Thanks for mentioning, it's got me thinking of trying to revisit using them again

 

[timbero]

How far was your target? I haven't used Pack-Hounds, but at least ordinary missiles have a slight arming delay, and they won't deal much/any damage if fired from close range.

I believe it was somewhere between 500-1500 m, but I can't say for sure. There was one point I was right up in his face launching a salvo.

 

[Ozram]

REALLY?!

That... utterly destroys them for me... I used missiles to disable thrusters when pirating, only being able to destroy weapons makes them severely less useful.

It was the one way I could use with near 100% certainty I wouldn't end up destroying my target... Now I have to try and hit a power plant with a cannon, and risk the plant exploding, nevermind the damage to the hull I'll end up doing.

Aww man, missiles just became pants for me again.

This is the worst news I've heard in ages...

It's good news for ship variety and pvp in general though. You want to hit thrusters, there are still excellent options out there, from superpen dumbfire missiles to cannons to railguns with superpen effect. Your packhounds still do substantial damage to all external modules as well as pretty good hull damage. Anymore than that and there'd be no point in anything else.
They may no longer fit your style though, so I can respect that. Adapt, friend.
I think packhounds are about fair as they are now. This is me encountering some at a CG:
[video=youtube_share;uwNfRQB4VyA]https://youtu.be/uwNfRQB4VyA[/video]
As you can see, they're far from useless.

 

[Drelthar]

As you can see, they're far from useless.

Oh for sure they aren't useless, just useless for my favourite activity... and they were my favourite weapon, meaning I have to remove my favourite weapon to do my favourite activity, which means it probly wont be my favourite anymore.... so for me it's a massive dissapointment.

If I could modify them to do 0% (yes, NONE) hull damage, but full thruster module damage, I totally would.

Man this really sucks for me.

 

[Cmdr Eran Mintor]

Just used my packhounds with extended clip on npc fdl and fgs. Always target drives and they worked fine. They do decent damage vs lower rank npc hulls, not designed to kill hull but used vs modules as mentioned. I've noticed no nerf.

 

[Drelthar]

Just used my packhounds with extended clip on npc fdl and fgs. Always target drives and they worked fine. They do decent damage vs lower rank npc hulls, not designed to kill hull but used vs modules as mentioned. I've noticed no nerf.

sweet

 

[Ozram]

Oh for sure they aren't useless, just useless for my favourite activity... and they were my favourite weapon, meaning I have to remove my favourite weapon to do my favourite activity, which means it probly wont be my favourite anymore.... so for me it's a massive dissapointment.

If I could modify them to do 0% (yes, NONE) hull damage, but full thruster module damage, I totally would.

Man this really sucks for me.

Yeah, I can see how you'd be frustrated. Your strategy and loadout will have to change so for you, the packhounds are no longer viable. As I mentioned, you do have other options, they just aren't the fire and forget sort.

Edit: as the poster above has written so I guess they still could be of use.

 

[Vandaahl]

It's good news for ship variety and pvp in general though. You want to hit thrusters, there are still excellent options out there, from superpen dumbfire missiles to cannons to railguns with superpen effect. Your packhounds still do substantial damage to all external modules as well as pretty good hull damage. Anymore than that and there'd be no point in anything else.
They may no longer fit your style though, so I can respect that. Adapt, friend.
I think packhounds are about fair as they are now. This is me encountering some at a CG:
https://youtu.be/uwNfRQB4VyA
As you can see, they're far from useless.

Nice vid, +1

 

[Drelthar]

they just aren't the fire and forget sort.

Edit: as the poster above has written so I guess they still could be of use.

Im hoping they still work how they used to. But yeah, if not, the fire and forget part, wasn't entirely the thing for me, it was the low hull damage (especially when modded with extra shield damage, lowering hull damage further) combined with the fact that, with Cannons (etc) if you miss, due to the target evading, the hull get's WRECKED.

Hopefully I'm good for now... I can see the idea behind making missiles less efective vs thrusters though, for general PVP reasons.

I feel like module reinforement packages should be extra effective at protecting external module though, instead of making thrusters internal.

But what do I know?

 

[tulextreme]

Yeah its damn weak and non effective... I regret spent a whole month to get these... Damn Japanese space tech!

 

[Ozram]

Yeah its damn weak and non effective... I regret spent a whole month to get these... Damn Japanese space tech!

Store them. You never know when a patch will come and make them of use to you again. That said, they are still useful, just not an instant ship disabler.

 

[Jukelo]

I think thrusters now count as internal modules because missiles had made many ships obsolete there for a while (with only shield tanks remaining viable). You'll find you can still damage weapons etc with them, but unless you have dumbfire with superpen rounds, the thrusters stay safe.

That is fortunately not true. I use unmodded seekers to take out thrusters when needed, they still work. There is a (short) arming time though from what I've seen, that could account for some of the confusion around them.

 

[Ozram]

That is fortunately not true. I use unmodded seekers to take out thrusters when needed, they still work. There is a (short) arming time though from what I've seen, that could account for some of the confusion around them.

Interesting. Something has changed though as I almost never lose my thrusters to missiles anymore. Do you know what it could be?

 

[eraktor]

Interesting. Something has changed though as I almost never lose my thrusters to missiles anymore. Do you know what it could be?

The angle from which they hit matters a lot