Missiles V Mines V High Yield Cannon for CAS use

Let's discuss the pros and cons of those three sources of Area of Effect damage, and of other tools for close air support, mostly targetting the skimmer, infantry and turrets.
While other weapons could also be options, I wouldn't see them as viable due to the tiny, TINY size of the targets out there. Fragment cannons would be closest to viable out of those, could be considered as well in the discussion below.

1. Missiles : My pick for now as the air support weaponry of my CAS ship (krait MK2).
Pros :
Doesn't inherit ship's momentum, making them much easier to aim, point and click easy.
Does have what I'd call a medium explosion radius, negates the small hitbox advantage of infantry down below. (numbers would be nice to have for radius)

Cons :
Can be shot down by point defence, base lasers.
Requires ammunition, but should have easily enough for a whole operation.

2. Mines : The suggested option for bombing runs.
Pros :
Biggest explosion radius, for good bombing runs.
Can have concussive effects (shock mines).
Experimental effects might affect ground units ? (to be tested)

Cons :
Can be shot down by base defences like missiles
Inherit the ship's momentum, makes aiming harder
Simply uses gravity, no "aiming" , just dropping.
Requires ammunition

3. High Yield Cannon : Why would anyone ever use that ?
Pros :
Can be aimed relatively well.
As a cannon shell, should be ignored by the base defences.
Can penetrate first then explode. (might need testing to see if it works in bases)

Cons :
Smallest explosion radius.
Mostly for module damage, might not work as planned.

And now , for honorable mention :

Mining tools! Because we all know some of you are going to try and mine infantry, which of the various tools do you think would work best ?


Which weapons would you use as a close air support pilot to help a friend on the ground, and why ?
Are some of my assumptions wrong, if yes which ones ?
 
Frags or MCs might be useful for taking out people.
As I haven't used frags much I can't really tell for those, but after trying to shoot down some guardian sentinels with plasma accelerators, I can tell that shooting small things you can't lock onto is quite tricky with accurate single target damage weapons.
 
Many surface bases have potent antimissile defenses, which makes beam lasers or rails most efficient for knocking out turrets, skimmers, and generators.

Concussive and most special effects don't seem to work on ground units. They also seem to be immune to module damage.

Mines work pretty well against surface targets absent base PDTs...but do mines really have a larger splash radius than dumbfires?

Frags are useless against small targets...the odds of any given pellet scoring a hit outside extremely close range is minuscule.

Some examples of frags against SLFs (a bigger target than infantry or skimmers):
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHu3J_t-2hA

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZH9XpW9aags

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qegj5acCTX8


I can frag skimmers...from about 50 meters.

What about Enzyme missiles?
Or dumping dodgy Thargoid stuff?
Or 700 tons of cargo?:unsure:

I'll have to test enzyme missiles.

There is a limit (20 canisters I believe) on how much cargo can be jettisoned before they self-destruct, so dumping cargo probably isn't viable offensively, unless they change that limit.
 
There is a limit (20 canisters I believe) on how much cargo can be jettisoned before they self-destruct, so dumping cargo probably isn't viable offensively, unless they change that limit.
20 canisters at a station, 100 deepspace, no idea how around durface settlements/ports.

i personally have good experience with frags against skimmers, and cannons for shooting out generators. but how that traslates to odyssee - we'll see?
 
High Yield cannons should do nicely when the base has lots of PDT

The bad is the small explosion radius and the low damage
Still. overcharged fixed medium guns with high yield should have about the same damage as a dumbfire, but only 50 piercing instead of 60 - if that matters against ground targets and base defenses
 
I wonder if being hit by a falling a 1 tonne container of biowaste will kill a commander on foot? :unsure: I'm guessing its gravity dependent, but dumping a T9 load of that stuff over a settlement, would be the funniest and most ignominious way to die.:poop:
 
So if ground personnel do not simply go “poof” when hit with ship CAS fire I'm going to laugh hard.

Should be an interesting problem. Once you scorch some crunchies the base should go ape on you making that a hard role to continue and removing the possibility of yo extracting the ground team and really it SHOULD go ape on ANY unknown ship that trys to land for extraction. So really if you plan to exit hot it should need to be with power generator down as part of it.

Curious to see what we get.
 
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