Missile Play

[Lychee]

I have almost never been shot at with a missile. I only have 100 hours in the base-game, but I love dogfighting, I fight xenon, I kill split, I kill paranids, and recently mess with the Argon as the Terrans. However in all that time I have never been shot at by a missile. Furthermore there is a distinct lack of missile variety, and that really just ties into using missiles as hardpoints that have to compete with other weaponry. A lack of real bomber classes also makes them less viable on ships for full missile builds, because they don't have that much space.

With the loss of missile frigates and bombers I feel like a major part of space play is just not being tapped into here. I just never have felt threatened flying around in an S size ship. Dogfights are just very straightforward without missiles. to kill L and XL ships you need dozens and dozens of S size ships fitted with nothing but missile tubes and it takes way more effort than makes them viable.

I used to love having to make evasive maneuvers and be careful in dogfights in X3AP, I would even pick corvettes with rear facing turrets. I don't get why that was removed.
Has anyone else experienced missile play? I.E. being shot at and dealing with missiles from your enemies?

[Alan Phipps]

There are a few hostile NPC fighters (mainly M size ships) that have missile frontal weapons and frequently NPC capitals (that you might take a liking to owning) can have missile turrets as fighter defence.

A part of the problem is that it is not always evident what type of missile is being fired at you, nor how effective your own countermeasures and/or turret missile defence may be against them. In my experience, you see the launcher lock warning light, hear the incoming missile alert from Betty, you may or may not use countermeasures, and then either you never see anything of the missile(s) again or you see missiles/swarms sweeping close past your cockpit and back into your blind arc, and/or you suddenly get damage or even killed (if in a lightly protected ship).

It isn't really like X3 where you could have a lot of fun in evading and picking off incoming heavier missiles using main guns or turrets, or using anti-missile missile systems.

[GCU Grey Area]

Yes, was often on the receiving end of missiles during my last game - playing as ZYA Split, with ARG & ANT as my main enemies. If I ended up with a blown engine it was often a Cerberus loaded with swarm missiles that did it. Happened a few times. Learnt the hard way that the shielding protecting a Rattlesnake's engines is absolutely rubbish (even with a near max Pavise mod installed there) if there's a bomber in the vicinity.

As for my own missile use, had some fun in that Split game with a heavy torp launcher on my Cobra (essentially used it as a 1000m/s divebomber) & in my current Terran game with a bunch of Kalis fighters (15 of them, armed with heavy swarm launcher + Meson) assigned to my personal Syn to assist with capital kills. Not essential, but they do speed up the process & give enemy capitals something else to shoot at.

[Lychee]

A part of the problem is that it is not always evident what type of missile is being fired at you, nor how effective your own countermeasures and/or turret missile defense may be against them. In my experience, you see the launcher lock warning light, hear the incoming missile alert from Betty, you may or may not use countermeasures, and then either you never see anything of the missile(s) again or you see missiles/swarms sweeping close past your cockpit and back into your blind arc, and/or you suddenly get damage or even killed (if in a lightly protected ship).

If, instead of using betty you use a short-sweet to-the-point alert sound effect, specifically for use with missiles, you can use that as a notification to check what kind of missile it is with the missile icon. Then color coat it or give tiny symbols for quantity. E.G. one little radar symbol is a single missile, 3 radar icons in a triangle formation means lots of single missiles. blue helix means swarms. a fat red arrow that is pulsing could be a torpedo, 2 means a couple, 3 means lots.

[Lychee]

Yes, was often on the receiving end of missiles during my last game - playing as ZYA Split, with ARG & ANT as my main enemies. If I ended up with a blown engine it was often a Cerberus loaded with swarm missiles that did it. Happened a few times. Learnt the hard way that the shielding protecting a Rattlesnake's engines is absolutely rubbish (even with a near max Pavise mod installed there) if there's a bomber in the vicinity.

As for my own missile use, had some fun in that Split game with a heavy torp launcher on my Cobra (essentially used it as a 1000m/s divebomber) & in my current Terran game with a bunch of Kalis fighters (15 of them, armed with heavy swarm launcher + Meson) assigned to my personal Syn to assist with capital kills. Not essential, but they do speed up the process & give enemy capitals something else to shoot at.

Maybe because I am in a fighter or something, I'm not getting shot as much? I am low priority or something I guess.

[GCU Grey Area]

Maybe because I am in a fighter or something, I'm not getting shot as much? I am low priority or something I guess.

Could be. There are certainly other circumstances where the ship you're in makes difference to NPC missile use. For example, missile turrets on NPC stations only fire on me if I'm flying a capital ship & ignore me if I'm in a fighter (one of the reasons I prefer an S fighter for disarm station missions).

[jlehtone]

Maybe because I am in a fighter or something, I'm not getting shot as much? I am low priority or something I guess.

Could be. Majority tends to be against L/XL ships, although I've been barraged while circling a boarding target in Dragon Raider. The "M cops" do happily bombard those SCA Destroyers too. In essence, I can be the only one that does not use them in such encounter.

I do have one bomber wing (Chimeras, hv. torps) but they stay in Carrier's mess deck 99.9999% of the time. I also did couple "Kill Xenon Turrets" missions personally with missiles as the "air was thick" around them.

[KextV8]

My experience with missiles is I get a missile warning, then it doesn't hit me because missiles are dog slow and can't hit anything faster than a Freighter unless you drive right into it(and the ones that actually CAN hit stuff do about 0 damage).

Not worth the credits/weapon slot to bother with the logistical hassle of using them.

[Tamina]

Split have their own rockets, maybe worth to check them out. IDK. Missiles lacked descriptions for most of the encys lifetime and I am not sure if this has ever changed.

[NightmareNight91]

Ive never been killed by a missle in the meager 800 hours of play, they are not a threat like in x3

[Maebius]

While we're on the missile subject....
Setting turrets to "Missile Defense", has it ever worked for anyone?
I don't think I've ever seen a turret fire at a missile.

[jlehtone]

Setting turrets to "Missile Defense", has it ever worked for anyone?
I don't think I've ever seen a turret fire at a missile.

Can't tell.

I've seen SCA Phoenix shoot down missiles. An M cop fired some 40+ at it and it did both survive and kill the cop eventually. It did fire at missiles. It did kill some too. Say one of pair, typically. However, it being SCA, it had NPC turret routines. Can't tell whether they act like "Missile Defense".

[Maebius]

Can't tell...

Well, as far as personal ships go, a ship flown by me (of any size) has never-ever fired at an incoming missile, no matter what turrets I had.

[Midnitewolf]

Honestly I can't recall being shot at by missile much if at all in Vanilla or VRO modded. Star Wars Interworlds however is an entirely different story.

I think the biggest issue is as someone already pointed out, you just don't really notice it happening especially if your the pilot or on a ride along. With pilots you do get the warning but you really don't have a clue when or if the missile hits whether you use countermeasures or not and if your in a ride along you don't even get the warning. Even when in external camera you often don't notice missiles because your eyes tend to be drawn to the big bolts of energy and laser beams flying between ships rather than those very faint, almost invisible missile tracks slowly chasing the enemy around.

The best way to fix this is pretty obvious and that is to make missiles obvious though that would come at the cost of frames which is why they probably haven't done it already. I mean huge engine flares and long contrails making the missile obvious enough to see over the other background noise would likely mean a hit to the fps.

[Alan Phipps]

I have had turrets on my M ship shoot at missiles launched by M tracking turrets on a capital that I was boarding from the M ship. The missiles did try to get me but I was parked so close under the capital that the missiles just hit nearby capital superstructure instead (I did get a bit of minor splash damage, I think). Although my turrets fired (they were on missile defence because I didn't want them constantly firing at the capital itself), the turrets also had the capital superstructure in the way and so probably hit nothing else.

One reason that turrets on missile defence may often not even try to fire at incoming fast/agile missiles is that I recall a dev saying that turrets are coded not to even attempt to aim and fire if the AI calculates that they have no real chance of tracking and hitting the intended target. (A bit like why plasma turrets may not fire at fast/agile fighters/drones.)

[GCU Grey Area]

Just in case anyone's still sceptical about NPC's using missiles:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/r3rrvqeyq83ok ... 1.jpg?dl=0