Destroying Missiles

[Drachasor]

Originally posted by Straybow
I thought there was a bug that AP has no advantage on ARM because missile hit points are "pooled" and not separated into armor, structure, and systems.

Hmm, maybe so. I use that anyway because it is so powerful in the beginning against enemy ships and starbases. It is possible it doesn't help me against missles, but auto-fire, continuous, and no range dispersion is very powerful against nukes; later on it becomes less and less useful of course (as does fusion, in my experience and I eventually replace it with continuous, pd, auto-fire phasors).

I actually find myself a bit hard-pressed to deal with mid-range missles with my mid-range ship (mid-range techwise). I don't have phasors, lasers aren't that good anymore, and fusion is just ok...relative to what will come and has gone, I don't find env. pd fusion beams to be that wonderful, but it is probably the best you can do for a while. (I don't find it that wonderful because though it is very nice for the ship defending itself, it sorta bad for fellow ships trying to help out).

-Drachasor

[P-K]

to Drachasor
"Early on, against Nuclear Missles, I find that Lasers are by far the best thing to use once you have battle scanners."

I strongly disagree. Autophasor is FAR better then autolaser but last one is not "far" better then mirved nukes/mercs. Actually it is far from being "far" better. I hope someone will understand my wicked english

"You have your lasers setup with Armor Piercing, Continuous, Auto-Fire, and Point Defense (I typically tack on no Disipation too)."

Good choices!

"Continuous + Auto-Fire is a net gain of +5% to hit, but each laser now fires 3 times."

Yes it fires 3 times and each time with 1/3 of damage can be done. So u risk 3 times more then single fusion beam which is +20 better due to no af mode.

"Once you have Battle Scanners you can get all of those modifications and lasers are pretty small. They are also typically the best weapon to use early on, simply because the AI rarely has Heavy Armor (so you ignore their armor with such lasers as your main weapons as well). I've had great success early on with these weapons. Basically, early missles are a joke."

I assume that most popular is basic computer if ur not creative, so saying "Basically, early missles are a joke" can be a big joke too. Maybe u think about non arm/fast/mirv missles? But if u think of full ion powered mirv/fast/arm nuke which moves 20 sq. each turn with a defence of 100 then maybe u should rethink that saying again.

"Anything that can do auto-fire and continuous is pretty nice against missiles, though depending on how many they are fielding you might need to have a few ships help take out enemy missiles. Sometimes it is most efficient to take them out and do a little damage at a time so that you don't lose any ships."

Anything can be nice with a good computer, but with basic one autofire beams sucks badly vs fast missles. Env fusion is good due to high beam attack : 90 attack of ship plus 25 from cont mode gives 115 which allows to hit 100 defence missles very good. AF has 95 and 3 separate beams, so probability to hit and do serious damage is much worse then fusion.

PK

[Croesus]

Note: ENV does quadruple damage against missiles, and has a larger potential to kill. For example, you can use a normal mounted plasma cannon to kill missiles. each cannon can kill 4 missiles. Strange, isn't it? AFAIK, only two weapons have envelop, and that is fusion and plasma (neither of which do I research). So comparing AF-continous to ENV continus means that the ENV has a +20 more to hit, and does 33% more damage (4 hits instead of 3). However, I'd like to note that only the fusion can be PD.

Autofire is nice too. I don't know how it does calculations, but you get 3 shots that each can do full damage. Only three weapons can do autofire and continous, and that is laser, ion, and phasor.

When it comes to mid game, I am assuming that you can, or could have, research graviton beams and neutron blasters. I have found that continous normal mounted graviton beams do ok against missiles.

Here is a method I have used to kill missiles. Get a destroyer with only augmented engines. Find out which ship they targeted with their missiles. Move/rotate until the missiles get bunched up. Move the extra fast destroyer as close as possible to the group of missiles, and self destruct. This is also great against large groups of fighters. Sure its costly, but it really depends on what your race is good at. Mid game I usually have enough ships to gun down missiles with normal mounted weapons. Since I usually pick -attack, it is early game that usually has me getting hit with missiles.

edit: A note on beam weapons (for those that don't know), when adding modifications (except PD and Heavy), you only add a certain percent of the BASE cost. So the % difference between a continous and a continous NR laser is 1.5/1.25 = 1.20, or 20% more to add that NR. This means that adding continous onto a enveloping Fusion is cheaper percent wise than adding continous to plasma, because plasma has its base cost increased from enveloping.