If you consider the economic side of using missles, I can't see an argument for EVER using them. The lower cost ones rarely hit with enough damage to compare with your guns, and the higher cost ones are...well, to damn expensive per shot. I guess some pilots just like taking missle shots and if they don't care about the economics of it, that's their choice. I guess I'm just too much a penny pincher to justify missle use. I've never even mounted a missle on my ships. I just don't see the point in throwing 300-7000 credits at an enemy when downing them with guns isn't that difficult.

Torps are useful for base destroy missions (but you should consider the cost against the mission pay-out), but I usually avoid those missions due to the cost of using Torps. Torps are a HUGE help in several of the story missions (but you can get by without them).

Edited by - Brother Grimm on 10-03-2003 14:55:06

One problem with mines is that they are indiscriminate. Just as likely to turn neutrals or friends into enemies as destroy an enemy in a multi-side furball.

I rarely use missiles/torps anymore. Way easier to paint a guy with regular weapons fire. I do like mines though. They're pretty effective when you're going after a single guy and all of his buddies are on your ass like white on rice. Nothing helps alleviate that pain like a few mines.

Well, I wouldn't say cruise disruptors are *only* for killing players. They are useful for piracy if you need to catch a transport before it hits the jump or lane gate. They are also useful (or I should say, "satisfying", when jumped by hordes of lesser enemies later in the game. You know the type. Not bad enough to kill you, but they've each got 50 Wasps and there's like eight of them and they're not smart enough to run until you've wasted a bunch of time methodically slaughtering 6 or 7 of them. Then the last one or two sometimes finally decide maybe they want to be elsewhere and light up their cruise engines...

Speaking of cruise disruptors, I think it would have been better to make them slightly less efficient, so that fleeing could be more of an option.

I can drop counter measures (advanced) at a rate of more than one per second while making evasive manoeuvers, they still hit almost every time.

Cruise distruptors have a speed of 700, like the energy projectiles, and a range of 2500 with is more than 3 times that of the longest range gun.

In my opinion, they're designed like that to place the player in as much combat as possible by reducing the chances of fleeing. Perhaps it would have been more appropriate to place the call of flee or fight in the hands of the player, given the genre of this game.

I'm not saying fleeing should always be an option, that would probably make the game boring. It's just that right now, if the hostiles have cruise disruptors, you're only occasionally leaving the area before they're all dead, and that makes the cruise disruptor seem a bit too powerful, and the counter measures a bit to inefficient IMHO.

I'm talking about single player gameplay here btw.

I think fleeing should definitely be more of an option. Someone like a freelancer should have the opportunity to be very selective about battles - especially in cases where the odds are severely lopsided. It may get boring to always flee, but it also gets rather boring and redundant, imo, to continually be dragged into battles.

Well... fleeing IS an option most of the time, just maybe not fleeing in the direction you'd prefer or as fast as you'd like. Cruise disruptors are less effective against countermeasures in open space at long range than when you are dumped out of a gate right into the middle of a half dozen pirates and CDs are already coming in while you're still trying to fire up the cruise engines. But in the latter case, it's usually an option to turn around and leave the way you came using afterburners and dodging incoming gunfire. You're only really in trouble if you're not paying attention and wander into the middle of a group of bad guys far from trade lanes or gates.

Another bad thing about cruise disrupters: As far as I've seen, they knock you out of mouse flight.

Cruise Disrupters are reason number two why I always use heavy thrusters...I use the thruster to boost myself beyond the range of the disrupter missiles THEN engage cruise and scoot away. But you need to have a heavy thruster so you can get farther away from the enemies, or they catch up before you reach cruise speed.

Reaper: $200,000,000.
Rockets: $100,000
The look on that pilot's face when you launch a full pod of screamers up his tailpipe: priceless

I am using most time acm, and have not much problems with cd once I am away about 800m, though I need a good amount of them each time ...

and well they are imo a far better choise to load up into your eagle, than some sunslayer torps, cause they will at least stop your target from fleeing *g*

btw. the hornet cruiser disrupters do a littlebit dmg. about 150. does not really help to kill anything but well *g*

Somebody mentioned this, and it's worked really well in the trial once I got used to it, though I can't actually try it against cruise disruptors since there aren't any in the trial. Engage your afterburner until you reach maximum speed (or just about to expend your afterburner if you wish), then immediately press Z before disengaging it/running out. It'll cut your engines but keep you flying just as fast with inertia, and you'll VERY gradually lose speed. When you go to return to normal engine use or engage cruise drive, it'll drop you back to "normal" max speed, but you could use this to get away enough to engage cruise I would think. It should be noted you can't turn like this either. Well, you can, but you'll keep going in the same direction as you were when you pressed Z.

Just a note on cruise disruptors, I use mine often actually. There are times where I see enemy factions on patrol, it's fun to pluck them out of cruise with one then engage them. Also, occasionally I'll be in a firefight and one guy will bug out because of massive damage. It's mean, but I'll disrupt his retreat then finish him off. Some may not find them handy but I use them enough to find them fun.