Nice! I have had my fun with the torpedoes myself! If you ever want to see these really utilized well and getting kills with regularity I would watch Codes Captain Fly he has a lot of experience with them!
I used to fly with Code and it was fun times torpedoing big ships!
I used to fly with Code and it was fun times torpedoing big ships!
Depends heavily on the experience of the attacker at deploying them and the defender at evading them.
At this point, I'd wager I'm better at dodging them than most and my large ships are still built with the understanding that I may need to hold off a couple of hostile CMDRs while I repair a destroyed shield generator.
They are not reliable against more agile ships, even in the hands of an expert, but as Webgear demonstrates, there's usually someone around who will zig when they should have zagged.
I took the loadout above to the CG a few days ago and didn't have much success while alone.
Four main engagements come to mind:
1 - My CMDR vs. a Cutter, FDL, 2x Mamba wing of four (DUMB/FDEV/NMD mix). Tried to torpedo the cutter, but a combination of my own evasion to avoid focus and the TLB hits I didn't avoid kept me from lining up many shots at optimal range. I was forced to dump the torpedoes too early and they were relatively easily evaded. I quickly withdrew after launching three salvos (one of four, two of two) to nil effect.
2. Faster Mamba from the wing above interdicts me immediately after my return to SC. Good pilot and my remaining weapons (small penetrator rails and a huge corrosive MC) were insufficient. After about 12-14 minutes of exchanging fire, I was nearly out of ammo, significantly more damaged than my opponent, and withdrew.
3. Pulled by a CODE wing of three FDLs and one Phantom. They are super plasma heavy, but it mostly appears to be low-velocity efficient stuff that I can dodge, so I single out the sloppiest looking pilot (one of the FDLs) and try to torpedo him. I land two of four torpdoes I fire and go evasive again as he tries to run out the second volley of torps while the rest of his wing moves to cover him. After a few moments they all leave...presumably they found a better target, or realized a 621m/s torpedo mamba probably doesn't have much cargo to pirate.
4. Pulled by a lone Krait Phantom with quad LR rails. Good pilot. Embarrassingly, I mange to shoot myself with one of my salvos of torpedoes (I misjudged their duration and ignored the incoming torpedo warning when they acquired me as a target while I was fighting the phantom) and my opponent evades the rest, even when I thought I had them lined up pretty well. Still, not terribly surprising since it was obvious what I was doing, this pilot was no novice, and his ship was only slightly slower than my own. I additionally misjudge latency and drop my shields to initiate the collapsed recharge early and take a few rail volleys at a reported range of ~6.5km...if my opponent had been targeting my heavily damaged shield gen (I knocked half of it's integrity off by shooting myself, and most of the rest by melting myself) instead of my FSD (which survived) he may actually have gotten a kill. I felt it prudent to low-wake shortly after my shields came back.
Some tentative conclusions from the above and other experiments:
- The railguns give me enough firepower outside of torpedoes to handle individual pilots of significantly inferior ability, but leaves my loadout too unfocused to really do it's job as a torpedo delivery system. Which leads to the next point...
- For this setup to be viable without considerable wing support, I'll need an emissive weapon. I'm spending too much time acquiring/losing locks and targets. My D rated sensors are not helping, which makes emissive even more important (it's lighter than better sensors).
- Sacrificing a small amount of shield strength for a heatsink launcher would be prudent. With limited time on target while heavily outnumbered, I am often forced to dump all torpedoes in rapid succession. I was overheating every fight and when I had to loose them all at once, I saw 500%+ heat and took enough module damage to start inducing serious malfunctions in my more fragile modules.
- This sort of thing would be much more viable in a wing, than alone against a wing.
Should work better than going it alone.
Four main engagements come to mind:
1 - My CMDR vs. a Cutter, FDL, 2x Mamba wing of four (DUMB/FDEV/NMD mix). Tried to torpedo the cutter, but a combination of my own evasion to avoid focus and the TLB hits I didn't avoid kept me from lining up many shots at optimal range. I was forced to dump the torpedoes too early and they were relatively easily evaded. I quickly withdrew after launching three salvos (one of four, two of two) to nil effect.
2. Faster Mamba from the wing above interdicts me immediately after my return to SC. Good pilot and my remaining weapons (small penetrator rails and a huge corrosive MC) were insufficient. After about 12-14 minutes of exchanging fire, I was nearly out of ammo, significantly more damaged than my opponent, and withdrew.
3. Pulled by a CODE wing of three FDLs and one Phantom. They are super plasma heavy, but it mostly appears to be low-velocity efficient stuff that I can dodge, so I single out the sloppiest looking pilot (one of the FDLs) and try to torpedo him. I land two of four torpdoes I fire and go evasive again as he tries to run out the second volley of torps while the rest of his wing moves to cover him. After a few moments they all leave...presumably they found a better target, or realized a 621m/s torpedo mamba probably doesn't have much cargo to pirate.
4. Pulled by a lone Krait Phantom with quad LR rails. Good pilot. Embarrassingly, I mange to shoot myself with one of my salvos of torpedoes (I misjudged their duration and ignored the incoming torpedo warning when they acquired me as a target while I was fighting the phantom) and my opponent evades the rest, even when I thought I had them lined up pretty well. Still, not terribly surprising since it was obvious what I was doing, this pilot was no novice, and his ship was only slightly slower than my own. I additionally misjudge latency and drop my shields to initiate the collapsed recharge early and take a few rail volleys at a reported range of ~6.5km...if my opponent had been targeting my heavily damaged shield gen (I knocked half of it's integrity off by shooting myself, and most of the rest by melting myself) instead of my FSD (which survived) he may actually have gotten a kill. I felt it prudent to low-wake shortly after my shields came back.
Some tentative conclusions from the above and other experiments:
- The railguns give me enough firepower outside of torpedoes to handle individual pilots of significantly inferior ability, but leaves my loadout too unfocused to really do it's job as a torpedo delivery system. Which leads to the next point...
- For this setup to be viable without considerable wing support, I'll need an emissive weapon. I'm spending too much time acquiring/losing locks and targets. My D rated sensors are not helping, which makes emissive even more important (it's lighter than better sensors).
- Sacrificing a small amount of shield strength for a heatsink launcher would be prudent. With limited time on target while heavily outnumbered, I am often forced to dump all torpedoes in rapid succession. I was overheating every fight and when I had to loose them all at once, I saw 500%+ heat and took enough module damage to start inducing serious malfunctions in my more fragile modules.
- This sort of thing would be much more viable in a wing, than alone against a wing.
Should work better than going it alone.
Does my emissive assist my wingmates? We could probably have some fun with this in Shinrarta. Its 40 jumps for my vette to get out to the CG and that's with the FSD booster.
Emissive increases the sensor signature of the affected target, so anyone hit by it is lit up for all.