Are guided missile worthwhile

[Szynszyl]

Hello,
I never use missiles in X4 Foundation, and i want to know that its good to start using them? If yes, pls tell me what missile are good against what ships, i think to mount missile on my battleships

[Szynszyl]

Anyonne?

[Alan Phipps]

Please don't bump threads here, especially within the same day. People will eventually answer but only when they know and wish to reply.

[Imperial Good]

Back in early versions of X4 they were the end game destroyer combat. However since turret ranges were buffed and missile turret ranges either not buffed or nerfed slightly they generally do not see much use on player destroyers. NPC missile destroyers and fighters show the weakness of missiles in that a ship like the Erlking
in player hands physically cannot be hit by their missiles due to it flying faster than all the missiles that pose risk to it. On the other hand some players swear by missile/torpedo S and M sized ships when in high attention. Dumbfire missiles also are pretty good as far as damage per turret so have some value in sieging stations. However restocking large fleets can be an issue, especially if using expensive missile types.

[magitsu]

For player smalls/mediums yes (and for destroyers/battleships cruise missiles in VRO mod), but overall a bit mediocre and a bit of a hassle.
Missile defense turret setting is very unreliable. Flares are quite reliable.
There's a big divide with IS/OOS performance, with torpedoes doing no damage in OOS being the most major issue.

So torpedo only for IS and only smalls, but can work for the ai pilots as a carrier fighter/bomber armament.

Try out the missiles for different tasks like fighter killing, turret killing , and search here/on reddit (or google) with their name + x4. Some work quite well and there's often a cheaper one for the same task that might be as easy to use/reliable.

[Duncaroos]

This video has a good summary of all missiles and their uses:

https://youtu.be/bO7MQKANvEk

I don't really use missiles really that much....I rather kill my prey close and personally

[LameFox]

Missiles aren't bad, but supplying them is more irritation than it's worth IMO. There are a few ships where they can be kinda useful still, for instance an Asgard can hold a lot of missiles and use them in its few M turrets for fighter defence. The low number of turrets regulates missile waste somewhat. That frees up the L turrets to shoot bigger things so you don't need beams, as long as you refill it now and then.

They're also pretty good on defence platforms I find, although they don't really make use of their potential range at all (nor on ships).

[blackphoenixx]

Missiles aren't bad, but supplying them is more irritation than it's worth IMO. There are a few ships where they can be kinda useful still, for instance an Asgard can hold a lot of missiles and use them in its few M turrets for fighter defence. The low number of turrets regulates missile waste somewhat. That frees up the L turrets to shoot bigger things so you don't need beams, as long as you refill it now and then.

Missile supply can be handled by assigning some M or S traders to "fill shortage" for the relevant wares. They'll deliver straight to your supply ships too so once you've got it set up it's pretty hands off.

They're also pretty good on defence platforms I find, although they don't really make use of their potential range at all (nor on ships).

The reason for that is that most guided missiles have relatively short lock-on ranges (4,5-5,5km). The only exceptions are heavy heatseekers (7km). EMP (20km) and Interceptor missiles (29.5km).
Heavy dumbfire missiles already start firing at 9-10km so they're usually better on capitals and defense platforms for anti-capital turrets.
Guided missiles are a good option on S bombers though since the lock-on range is higher than most anti-fighter weapons and their damage is the same no matter what ship fires them.

Source: Missile Weapons (X4 Wiki) which is accurate afaict.

[LameFox]

Yeah that lock range has always really annoyed me about them. So much of their potential is wasted. I know they're not going to really hit out to the max range they can technically fly but the lock isn't even close to that IIRC. Dumbfires I haven't really bothered with since it seems as though I may as well use plasma at that point.

As far as supply goes my main issue is the distances involved and the frequency of resupply needed. I don't want to flood the universe with missile depots, so my fleets always run out and need to head back. The ships themselves carry so few relative to how many they need (fighting Xenon for instance) and the carriers and resupply ships can only resupply them a few times. It just becomes so much more hassle than using energy weapons, and those can really do anything I need them to.

[Szynszyl]

And what about L missiles against stations, its good idea?

[KextV8]

IMO, no. Missiles are a waste of time. Not only are they a money sink and a resupply issue, but they are just ineffective. Missiles with good payload are too slow to hit anything. Missiles that have any speed, don't have enough payload to do damage. X4 missiles are embarrassingly bad at delivering payload to target compared to today's missiles in real life. I honestly don't know why they are even in the game in this state.

[GCU Grey Area]

I use missiles in the following circumstances:

Generally have at least 1 torpedo launcher on any M ship I'll be flying personally. For such use highly recommend installing a Cowboy mod & re-rolling until you get a decent positive modifier to reload rate. For best results would also recommend launching torps while boosting. The torp inherits the speed of the ship at the moment of launch & a torp moving at several km/s is virtually impossible for a capital ship to evade or distract with flares (can sometimes also eliminate M class targets with this approach if it's flying directly towards me). Just make sure to aim carefully - while a torp is technically a guided missile, it's guidance is virtually useless at that sort of speed & should be treated as dumbfire.

I'll often also have one M vessel (usually a corvette) equipped almost entirely with torp launchers. This ship has a very specific function. It's role is surgical strikes on the admin module of defence platforms in order to flip control of contested sectors to my preferred NPC faction, while incurring minimum rep loss with the previous owners. I'll park 12km away with the admin module between my ship & the HUD marker for the station. Then I fire an appropriate number of volleys (30-35 torps in total depending on the target faction) to eliminate the admin module without inflicting collateral damage on other station modules. The slow speed of torps is advantageous in this situation since I can fire all the torps at range & be flying away before the first volley hits the target.

My other main use for missiles is on S bombers aboard my carriers, which generally amount to around 1/3 of each carrier's fighter complement (remaining fighters are fast interceptors armed entirely with guns). The S bombers have the attack role & assist the fleet's destroyers with elimination of capital ships. Favourite missile for this job is the Heavy Starburst. Does a reasonable amount of damage & has a decent burst radius - can sometimes eliminate multiple surface elements at once. I don't use torps for this task because of the high resource cost for each missile. The resupply logistics for Heavy Starburst are MUCH easier to manage. To increase the amount of missile parts my carriers can carry I fill their internal M ship storage with freighters full of parts & do a ware transfer when the carrier's stocks are running low. These M freighters effectively add 100k or more storage capacity, significantly lengthening the amount of time my carriers can remain active before needing resupply.

[Raptor34]

I find Light Smart ones pretty good for fighter defense. For the few seconds before they empty the bays killing a small number of ships. The turrets are just too dumb to ration them properly.
But here's a tip, use the new salvage type build option for defense stations and add a couple solar panels, missiles are built exclusively using EC. The small Terran panels can fit in quite nicely.

[Alan Phipps]

@ Raptor34: That tip's a great piece of 'thinking outside the box'.

[Sparky Sparkycorp]

Yeah that lock range has always really annoyed me about them. So much of their potential is wasted. I know they're not going to really hit out to the max range they can technically fly but the lock isn't even close to that IIRC.

I'm not convinced [yet] that this is a bad thing for guided missiles.

Their max range is a function of their max flight time, and they're intended for attacking moving targets. If their lock range was close to max range, we'd be seeing lots of missiles running out of fuel, and wasted, before they can catch a target.

Still, I should also say that I have typically avoided missiles since I don't want to deal with resupply issues. So it's fair to say the above opinion is mostly theoretical rather than being based on extensive in-game experiance.

[LameFox]

Yeah that lock range has always really annoyed me about them. So much of their potential is wasted. I know they're not going to really hit out to the max range they can technically fly but the lock isn't even close to that IIRC.

I'm not convinced [yet] that this is a bad thing for guided missiles.

Their max range is a function of their max flight time, and they're intended for attacking moving targets. If their lock range was close to max range, we'd be seeing lots of missiles running out of fuel, and wasted, before they can catch a target.

Still, I should also say that I have typically avoided missiles since I don't want to deal with resupply issues. So it's fair to say the above opinion is mostly theoretical rather than being based on extensive in-game experiance.

Firing closer to max range would make it easier to outrun them, but I don't think the AI ever intentionally does that. They might incidentally enter travel drive, but then it's very unlikely to hit anyway—in a sense all ships can inherently outrun most missiles if they have time to spool up travel drive. Also a lot of missiles are wasted anyway currently because the turrets just spam them out with no regard to necessity and their retargeting after a kill doesn't seem to save many, so I think I'd be willing to endure a bit more waste if they'd at least hit out far enough to make them worth taking over plasma.

[Raptor34]

Yeah that lock range has always really annoyed me about them. So much of their potential is wasted. I know they're not going to really hit out to the max range they can technically fly but the lock isn't even close to that IIRC.

I'm not convinced [yet] that this is a bad thing for guided missiles.

Their max range is a function of their max flight time, and they're intended for attacking moving targets. If their lock range was close to max range, we'd be seeing lots of missiles running out of fuel, and wasted, before they can catch a target.

Still, I should also say that I have typically avoided missiles since I don't want to deal with resupply issues. So it's fair to say the above opinion is mostly theoretical rather than being based on extensive in-game experiance.

Firing closer to max range would make it easier to outrun them, but I don't think the AI ever intentionally does that. They might incidentally enter travel drive, but then it's very unlikely to hit anyway—in a sense all ships can inherently outrun most missiles if they have time to spool up travel drive. Also a lot of missiles are wasted anyway currently because the turrets just spam them out with no regard to necessity and their retargeting after a kill doesn't seem to save many, so I think I'd be willing to endure a bit more waste if they'd at least hit out far enough to make them worth taking over plasma.

Imo the problem is that there are rarely threats where missile spam, which is like the only thing missile turrets know how to do, are needed.
Actually, that might be a way to deal with VIG, take in 2-3 light smart loaded destroyers, then pull them back after they empty their tubes in 60 seconds.

[X-Tie]

Imo the problem is that there are rarely threats where missile spam, which is like the only thing missile turrets know how to do, are needed.
Actually, that might be a way to deal with VIG, take in 2-3 light smart loaded destroyers, then pull them back after they empty their tubes in 60 seconds.

I disagree. For trading or mining ships, due to the low number of turrets they struggle fighting off attackers. But missiles are great against attacking fighters and Corvettes if you have the right type of missiles (learnt the hard way that heavy missile variants are way too slow to hit anything smaller than a capital ship). And you need to be IS of course.

For the VIG use case, their fighters have heavy torpedoes so it may be better to use some fast M gunboats for that? I've seen them melt L and XL ships multiple times with their torps.

[Raptor34]

Imo the problem is that there are rarely threats where missile spam, which is like the only thing missile turrets know how to do, are needed.
Actually, that might be a way to deal with VIG, take in 2-3 light smart loaded destroyers, then pull them back after they empty their tubes in 60 seconds.

I disagree. For trading or mining ships, due to the low number of turrets they struggle fighting off attackers. But missiles are great against attacking fighters and Corvettes if you have the right type of missiles (learnt the hard way that heavy missile variants are way too slow to hit anything smaller than a capital ship). And you need to be IS of course.

For the VIG use case, their fighters have heavy torpedoes so it may be better to use some fast M gunboats for that? I've seen them melt L and XL ships multiple times with their torps.

Missiles on the bulk of your civilian fleet? It's either a small fleet, you're running mods or you somehow setup a convenient auto-resupply system. Because from my experience missile turrets don't know the meaning of restraint.
Come to think of it, perhaps Ego should add some new missile resupply module that you can actually place on all your stations rather than the big and expensive maint bays. It'll be nice if the traders/miners coming back in just automatically replenish their missile supply, and forward defense stations can now replenish a missile fleet without needing a maint module which severely messes up the logistical overlay.
Though now that I've mentioned it, I just remembered that missile turrets are L/XL only.

[X-Tie]

Missiles on the bulk of your civilian fleet? It's either a small fleet, you're running mods or you somehow setup a convenient auto-resupply system. Because from my experience missile turrets don't know the meaning of restraint.
Come to think of it, perhaps Ego should add some new missile resupply module that you can actually place on all your stations rather than the big and expensive maint bays. It'll be nice if the traders/miners coming back in just automatically replenish their missile supply, and forward defense stations can now replenish a missile fleet without needing a maint module which severely messes up the logistical overlay.
Though now that I've mentioned it, I just remembered that missile turrets are L/XL only.

Yeah I'm talking about L traders and miners. They only rarely get attacked but when they do by a squad of Xenon ships, they don't tend to do well without escorts if they don't have missile turrets and I teleport in. So they very rarely need to resupply. Would be nice to have light missile turrets on M-ships as if those get attacked by Khaak or Xenon, it's a 30% chance to lose them usually (I.e.: either they manage to escape, or they die).

Also, would make sense for all docks to have basic resupply potential... Never understood this decision of only being able to rearm at maintenance docks, that's like saying whenever you need to refuel your car you need to visit the dealership or an authorized garage