Notable Beginner Weapons Discussion

[Retroactive]

While the XM900 is a nice missile, you'll find after Sanctuary or so that it's the only missile, and there aren't that many of them. You can do a lot better with the Makayev launcher for damage/time damage/mass and ammo availability since it sells in huge lots at Makayev dealers.

The NAMI is only king when you're looting ammo for it in large quantites from pirates and marauders. After the marauders run out getting ammo for it is harder. Ammo you have to conserve means a weapon you aren't using.

My problem with the Makayev is it has low damage per ton of ammunition. A 35kg Black Strelka does 1d12 thermo with WMD3; a 100kg XM900 does a massive 6d24 thermo with WMD7 and has tracking and a significantly longer range. The rare Red Strelkas are better than Black Strelkas, at 30 kg and 3d12 thermo with WMD5, but damage-per-ton-wise the Lucifer is still king, will rarely miss its target, and can track targets that the Makayev cannot hit firing in a straight line.

This low damage-per-ton makes the Makayev less attractive on the cargo-constrained Wolven, which is really the best ship to use it on in the first place.

The availability of Lucifers does suffer after Sanctuary, but pretty soon you reach fabricators which will give you all the Lucifers you could ever want.

Finally, one additional advantage of the NAMI is that it's a lot easier to find a +30% one in stores early on, since it's a more common weapon.

[Atarlost]

Look again. The black strelka has 13-16 fragments that each do 1d12 thermo. You might be better off, though, comparing to the red strelka which doesn't fragment. It does 3d12 thermo. It weighs 30% as much as a lucifer while doing 38% as much damage, and has five times the rate of fire. That's way more damage/second and slightly more damage/ton in a missile 2 levels lower. The black strelka is only a 17% heavier, but will often do 25%-100% more damage than the red because multiple fragments can hit most targets that are worth using missiles against. Against a large flat target it can be expected to land half the fragments, or at least 6. That just 52% of the damage of the XM900 for 35% of the mass, and you can still fire five for every shot the NAMI can get off. But there are 13-16 fragments, not 13. That's 14.5 fragments. Call half that 7. That's 61% of the XM900's damage. For 35% the mass. And you can fire five times as many in a given space of time. You can go as low as 3 fragments hitting and beat the XM900 for damage/ton and as low as 2 fragments hitting and beat it for damage/second.

[Retroactive]

Look again. The black strelka has 13-16 fragments that each do 1d12 thermo. You might be better off, though, comparing to the red strelka which doesn't fragment. It does 3d12 thermo. It weighs 30% as much as a lucifer while doing 38% as much damage, and has five times the rate of fire. That's way more damage/second and slightly more damage/ton in a missile 2 levels lower. The black strelka is only a 17% heavier, but will often do 25%-100% more damage than the red because multiple fragments can hit most targets that are worth using missiles against. Against a large flat target it can be expected to land half the fragments, or at least 6. That just 52% of the damage of the XM900 for 35% of the mass, and you can still fire five for every shot the NAMI can get off. But there are 13-16 fragments, not 13. That's 14.5 fragments. Call half that 7. That's 61% of the XM900's damage. For 35% the mass. And you can fire five times as many in a given space of time. You can go as low as 3 fragments hitting and beat the XM900 for damage/ton and as low as 2 fragments hitting and beat it for damage/second.

Oops, I overlooked the frag aspect of the Black Strelkas. Nonetheless, you've hit on an essential part of why I don't care for the makayev when you say that

against a large flat target it can be expected to land half the fragments, or at least 6.

Large, flat targets in this case really only means immobile stations. Against a large ship, the damage from the fragments will be usually be spread over several different armor plates, whereas the Lucifer concentrates damage on a single segment. Even with the non-fragmenting strelkas, you will not be concentrating fire on a single armor segment because the Makayev fires two parallel streams; consequently, much of the damage that you do the enemy will not directly contribute to its destruction.

Another benefit of tracking missiles that the Makayev forgoes is that you can use them while manuevering in any direction.

Against small ships, the Makayev is severely hindered by its alternating-stream nature and its inability to track; this means that many or even most of your missiles will miss if you choose to use them against small, fast ships. Stilettos and Lucifers both work fine against small ships.

I will concede that the White and Green Strelkas are much better missiles than Longbows for basically any application, but there's really not much call to use Longbows once Stilettos are available. Also don't forget that a fragmenting Strelka is not available in quantity until late in the game whereas Starbursts are available immediately (although they do become obsolete rapidly)

[Atarlost]

Large flat targets happen on the Ranx DN and Xenophobe Worldship and Arc and on the Gaian Processor from certain angles. The Phobos actually points a concave surface at you. The smaller capital ships have only slightly curved surfaces that will absorb more than the 3 fragments needed to outperform the XM900.

You never score all your hits on a single segment against a capital ship, except possibly for those that politely point their nose at you in a chase. It doesn't matter what you're using you can't hit the same segment repeatedly. Segments are small. A typical capital ship has 24 armor segments and it's rarely clear where they start and end. Your first XM900 may hit a single segment, but odds are your second will hit a different segment. Black Strelkas spread the damage across multiple segments, but that also means it's easier to overlap your shots. If you've ever tried to kill a Gaian Processor and hit it without changing the damage display that's why. You can't even tell which way it's facing. Ranx DNs are a little better, having a clear direction and being slow, but you're still probably going to be spreading your damage across a few segments, and if you are hitting a single segment the black strelkas are doing overlapping damage at the same point.

Small ships typically have 4 facings or fewer. Spreading isn't as much of a concern. You don't use missiles on small ships though except those like the Corsair II that punch way above their weight. And it's really the only one. You might missile a Tundra as well.

Keep in mind that the Red Strelka beats the XM900 for damage/second even when two out of three miss. Black Strelkas simply don't miss when used properly. They aren't long range weapons. They're close in skirmish weapons. Use them like that and they're nearly unparalelled. Only Ares Micronukes are better in that role, and that only because area fragments hit multiple times.

[Retroactive]

What are your feelings on the MAG launcher, especially in light of the new shield-buster MAGs? Do you think there's a place for an anti-shield missile given that so few capital ships use shields that are worth writing home about?

[Atarlost]

There is absolutely no place for a shield busting missile in RC1 or RC2. I hope shields become significant again in RC3.

That said I don't like the MAG launcher. It's apallingly short ranged. People say bad things about the Ballista who have never looked at the MAG launcher.

The much maligned AK505 Ballista is missilespeed=35, lifetime=60. (42 range)

The siege mag is missilespeed=15, lifetime=40. (12 range)
The high flux mag is missilespeed=20, lifetime=40. (16 range)
The All other mags are missilespeed=30, lifetime=40. (24 range)

The Strelkas are missilespeed=60, lifetime=60. (72 range)
The dumbfire NAMI missiles have missilespeed=45, lifetime=120. (108 range)
The tracking NAMI missiles have missilespeed=40, lifetime=120. (96 range)

There are no long range or even medium range MAGs. They hardly even qualify as short range. The Moskva 21 and 33 are considered close combat weapons. They have more range than any MAG, and double the range of the high flux MAG. The morningstar, also considered a close combat weapon, has double the range of the longer ranged MAGs.

[Aeonic]

I'd imagine the only really useful MAGs are the ones with a lot of fragments, since they're pretty good for crowd control. A shield-buster with a lot of shield busting fragments might be more useful.

On a totally unrelated note, do any of those acronyms actually stand for anything?

[Atarlost]

I'd guess NAMI is New [something that begins with A] Munitions Incorporated.

EI is known to be Earth Industries.

I don't know about any others.

[Aury]

O_o
o_O
:O
O_O
>.<
I've never used the mag launcher before... and now I'm glad I hadn't...
Those are some appallingly miserable ranges.
12ls doesn't even get off the screen! D:
Shieldbusting mags are kind of... pointless... seeing as how nerfed shields are at the moment.

[Atarlost]

The ranges wouldn't be so disastrous if they didn't have such pitiful missilespeeds. Even at such short ranges they lag badly if you try to use them with other weapons.

[Aury]

The AK505 was still an inferior weapon in any event. The flenser beat it out in just about every area. Fortunatly it's fixed in RC3. It's just that the MAG launcher is worse.

[F50]

IMO, launchers should be compared to launchers, not other weapons. That said the MAG isn't as useful as the NAMI, and has similar ammunition problems late-game (where it would be totally ineffective). The nice thing about MAGs is that if you get the BM angry, you have a large supply of free MAGs that do more damage than the lootable NAMI missiles. And at close range the 800 mags can be very effective (again, Molotoks). Furthermore, the 800 mags are almost impossible to dodge completely (though the damage is much, much better if you get a full-on hit). I think I'm going to move to the Mayakev soon though, white and green strelkas are cheap and relatively effective. Red and black are quite effective.

[Retroactive]

I think the 800F mags behave identically to Starbursts (except that they're slower and have a shorter range.) Both emit 5d6 1d6+2 kinetic WMD1 projectiles. The 800Fs do have failsafe = 6, although I'm not sure what this does.

For some reason, I seem to recall MAGs being decent around 0.97 or so; I hope that they improve again soon.

[Atarlost]

IMO, launchers should be compared to launchers, not other weapons.

That's true for damage, but not for range. Damage is additive between launchers and primary weapons. Range is not.

I think the 800F mags behave identically to Starbursts (except that they're slower and have a shorter range.) Both emit 5d6 1d6+2 kinetic WMD1 projectiles. The 800Fs do have failsafe = 6, although I'm not sure what this does.

For some reason, I seem to recall MAGs being decent around 0.97 or so; I hope that they improve again soon.

The only thing decent about the MAGs are the ZG24 cluster MAGs. They have a fragmentation range that handily exceeds their weapon range. I don't think any of the other MAGs have ever been popular.

[Aeonic]

Once again I feel that MAGs would be effective as crowd control weapons. That is something most of the other launchers lack (don't know much about the heavy launcher, I never have enough ammo to make much use of it). While at the moment only the ZG24s are useful, if they added some fragmentation to the other MAG types, it would give the MAGs a nice little niche.