MIRV Missile Attack?

[genius23]

missileboats are great for multiplayer, u dont even need PP to own with mirvs, simple arm fast eccm nukes will do great, since my customraces also revolve around unitele, i would sell marine barracks and build battleshiphulls filled with 2shot missiles until the commandpoints are used up, send in ur fleet of missileships together with an empty frigate, on 1st turn fire 1st salvo and turn around, on 2nd turn, fire the 2nd and move away from the enemy and retreat with all missileships, the empty frigate stays behind until the missiles hit (or miss), best targets are planets and starbase, that cannot retreat, since u probably lack dauntless guidance, if ur firepower is insufficient to take out both, starbase and missilebase, just destroy one and come back for the other a few turns later. if u do make it to the mirvs upgrade the battleships but include a deck of cheap nonmirved nukes to soak up any antimissilefire before the mirvs. when all enemies are destroyed or have fled ur retreated battleships will rejoin the empty frigate to mindcontroll the colony or bombard it to oblivion.
if the other guy digs in and creatively researches emg mercs to take orion, u will have difficulties destroying a heavy armor, reinforced hull, tritanium, ecm starbase, then dont try, blockade the system and use ur superior production to build lots telepathic spies, I once had such a researcher surrender to me after my spies sabotaged his starbase. a nice combo for this strategy is also feudal, telepathic, omniscient, stealth, large, rich, artifact, lowG HW, they can have a cruiserhull hovering over your newest colony very early, but they will fall behind if they dont succeed in mindcontrolling an alien homeworld within a few turns.

[vmxa1]

That method works fine in non MP games as well. Missile boats and Tele are bad news for AI, if you go conquering ASAP. Mind control is fun and no need to build transports, no need for GC bonus. Once you get warp dis add one to a ship and those ships can not retreat. Bust them and retreat if you can not kill all of them and the planetary defences that trip. Usually they fail to retreat anyway. They try, but I move as close as I can and fire 1st salvo. They seem to return fire the first round. I fire 2nd and last salvo and retreat all but one which runs. They some time try to retreat here, but often get killed anyway. At the pre-mirv stage they do not have enough beam offense to kill a ship in 2 or 3 rounds. They do not yet have the Warp so I get to leave. I may or may not lose my dither ship, it varies.

[Spaced Cowboy]

I see, this is what I get for not reading all of the threads here. This was my favorite Se4 strategy. Build missle boats and stay out of range of the beamers. I never thought to build 2 shot MB and warp all but one out.

I sure hope the M003 guys are looking at these threads.

[vmxa1]

I should have stated that you retreat the dither ship once all salvos have hit.
I would make as many slots with missiles as I can. At the start hey will all be nukes with no improvements.
When you get Mercs, change a few slots of nukes to mirved and replacea few of the last slots with mercs.
This allows the nukes to take any anti missile defence and the mercs to do the damage. Mirv the mercs when you can and add fast to nukes. Add in Fast Racks so you can fire both salvos in one shot to get out sooner as they are starting to get some decent beam damage. Actually nukes can be improved to last for a long time, but better missiles are best for the real hitting. Nukes mirved make great shields for your better missiles, but they should be first ones fired.
Missile boats can be used with any race.

[The Mad Monk]

Sounds like what I do -- clusters of small 'fire 'n forget' ships are good for any fleet. Do you put all the launchers into a single battery, or split them up? I usually split them up, so I can scale the damage or target several vessels at once.

[moomin]

Very Early MIRV Missile Frigate:

Battle Pods
1 Fast Missile
2 MIRV Fast Missile

This is usually the ship I take out the second race with. The first war does not have MIRV yet. Note that ECCM isn't really neccessary at this stage of the game.

Anyone knows why the 1 Missile is first, btw? Yes, there is a good reason

[Zealot]

Uhhh I want to know why!!! I usually put it in second place!

[Zealot]

Originally posted by Forrest Gimp
Earth calling Zealot....finish your soup and give a time to duel....

Hey wise guy why didn't you send me a private message?
I completely missed this until today!

[vmxa1]

I use as many slots as I can, that is I go
nuke
nuke
until I run out out of space or slots.
I do not put eecm on missiles as by the time I have that and they are small enough to hold them, I switch to beamers.
To me the the first slots are for CHAFF, that is why they need FST when you get it. I will not make many firigates, in fact if I am Tele, I do not make any if I can get away with it. I will go for Cruisers so they can Mind control.
nuke fst (maybe mirv
"
nuke fst mirv heavy arm or merc mirv fst
" use all but the last two slots
Pulson
"
Make as many in each slots of two shots as you can fit.
This is roughly how I make them. I am not saying this is the best way, but it does the job. If you are using Crusiers or BB you can move up on the first round and fire. This gives them less time to counter the missiles and you will not get bust by them at this stage. By the time they can pose a threat, I switch to beam ships. I just used this on Huge, impossible 8 players last night as Uni Tol. Without Creative, if you do not get some steals, it may force you to wait longer to switch to beams. That happened to me as I had only Laser for beams until I researched Plasma Cannons. They sucked too as the anntenuation made them do so little damage. Once I got Disrupters, I when to Titans and dropped missiles. The lack of some of the enhancements for beams made it weak until I could go Titan and then steal some improvements. NO race had relations with me at any time (not repulsive).

[moomin]

Originally posted by Zealot
Uhhh I want to know why!!! I usually put it in second place!

Ok. I might as well let you in on the secret... when you fire the entire missle-volley, and the comp targets it, any hit will "take" from the top down. So the puny missile is the one to go first, and the mighty MIRV has a better chance to reach the target!

[Spaced Cowboy]

I've always noticed that my chances of hitting a missle with point defenses are very slim.

[vmxa1]

Me too, I often ignore them. I will put in marine killing guns to stop boarding if I have them. Missible ships (with or with out Fast Racks) do not stick around long enough to use either PD or marine blasters.

[Spaced Cowboy]

So then when I'm making a gun boat, what do I put in it to shake off enemy missles?

[Garth Vader]

I always put battle scanner on my beam ships. In the early game I just use PD lasers, autofire and continous. They are great at shooting down nuke missiles but get worse as the missile tech increases.

In later designs I use a few continous neutron blasters as missile shooters/marine killers.

Once you get higher tech than that it's real easy to shoot them down.

[Spaced Cowboy]

Yeah, I almost never get BS cuz it conflict with something else that I cannot remember. I think that it is tach comm that gives you the +1 command point. I could prolly live without it, but takes a while to get the +2 one.

Anyway by the time nukes are not being used, they are squashed against the shields anyway.

What about pd phasors? They seemed to do somewhat of a better job the last time that I played.