Why LRM?

from Sins Forums

I'm a new player and do not understand why people prefer LRMs. Although the LRM does more damage than a Cobalt, I prefer the cobalt due to its rate of fire, hull, and shield.

This spawns two more questions:

1) By labelling ships' offensive points as average damage, does "average damage" means the damage inflicted over the same period of time? Or the average damage per volley of shots/round?

2) Do missiles damage the hull, bypassing shields entirely?

 

25,659 views 12 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
Range. Plain and simply, your LRM's can attack from a standing distance that is further than your other ships. Since ships on AI mode have a tendency to attack the closest ship that is of the right armor type for their weapons, your weak-hulled/shielded LRM's are generally left alone for a while and pound the enemy into the ground.

To see this, next time take a look at the garrison defenders on a Desert or Terran world that you're expanding to. The LRM's sit out a bit further and blast away while their other ships soak up your damage.

Note - range was nerfed quite a bit in 1.04, but still has a benefit.

1) Don't know, but the wiki says "DPS" for Advent capships.

2) Only a percentage of Vasari missiles can, and you need to research it to increase that percentage. TEC and Advent do not.
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
On question 1: here's the game's reference information on the Advent battleship:

Weapon
Weapon
WeaponType "Projectile"
damageEnums
AttackType "CAPITALSHIP"
DamageAffectType "AFFECTS_SHIELDS_AND_HULL"
DamageApplyType "BACKLOADED"
DamageType "ENERGY"
WeaponClassType "WAVE"
DamagePerBank:FRONT 66.000000
DamagePerBank:BACK 0.000000
DamagePerBank:LEFT 0.000000
DamagePerBank:RIGHT 0.000000
Range 5000.000000
PreBuffCooldownTime 5.500000
End of quote


66 damage every 5 1/2 seconds works out to 12 damage per second.

In the game infopanel for that ship, it says "Average plasma damage - 11" without any buffs and for a level 1 capship right out of the construction bay, so it's damage per second, rounded down a bit possibly because it takes a short time for the weapon to actually fire.

-- Retro
The Political Machine 2024
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
Ah, thanks for the info guys. So it is definitely damage per second that is listed. About the LRM, wouldn't it be targeted first due to its (relatively) high damage and weak HP when you're playing a human opponent? During my fights with the AI, I evaluate target priorities for all encounters.
Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
Just one guy. I posted twice. :)

By the way, range isn't the *only* reason. There are various weapon and armor classes in the game, and LRM weapons (antimedium) are different from Cobalts (antiheavy) and do more damage against different types of craft. If you're taking on a Cobalt frigatespammer, LRM's will clean up FAST because they get a bonus to their damage, but Cobalts firing on LRM's actually get a penalty.

I'm not an MP player, and so I'll leave one of those to comment on how this works in MP strategy.

-- Retro
Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
Oh, sorry :p I wasn't reading the usernames. I don't recall seeing any of those weapon and armour classes described in-game. They just give a generic good against and bad against :(
Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top
They're not. I'm guessing that the manual doesn't go too deep into them because then it would be harder for IronClad to adjust ship weapontypes and armortypes when balancing.

If you want to get into the "guts" of Sins, download the 1.04 reference files available on this site's download page, then use Wordpad to open up the entity files. IronClad did a really good job of using recognizable variable names and so they're fairly easy to sort through and read.

-- Retro
Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top
I don't see the reference files on the downloads page, just products for the pc desktop. Got a link for them?
Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top
They're hard to spot. Scroll down on the page. The arrows below point to the hyperlink.

Looking for the most up to date data files for use with the Forge tools?

-->>> Reference Data for v1.04 <<<--
End of quote


-- Retro
Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top
retroboy I reaalise there are multiple wikis , what wiki do you reccomend?
Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top
I find this one has answered my questions, although that doesn't mean it's better than the others, it's just the first one I found.

http://www.soasewiki.com/index.php/Main_Page

-- Retro
Reply #11 from Sins Forums Top
It's because LRMs are the best generic combat unit around. They are surpassed in combat prowess only by heavy cruisers, which are FAR down the tech tree. Carriers aren't really great for the front lines, or for countering LRMs. They also get countered HARD by flak. Flak frigates can counter LRMs, but they get countered HARD by anything else. So the progression of all purpose combat units goes this way:

Light Frigate
Long Range Frigate
...
...
...
...
Heavy Cruiser

That's not saying that all the support units are junk. It's just in pure combat LRFs are difficult to counter for a very long time. That makes them an excellent unit to spam.

It's not as though you only have to worry about basic frigates though. There are capital ships to worry about. LRFs are your best option to kill capital ships efficiently for a long time.
Reply #12 from Sins Forums Top
I have tested out some LRMs. Their ability to destroy frigates is respectable compared to Cobalts. I have also observed that the Garda Flak Frigate, even when shot at by about 3 Cobalts and 2 LRMs takes a relatively long time to finish off. Their auto-cannon deals 19 average damage un-upgraded as well. They have about 950 hull with around 450 shield points... Sounds like a very robust ship as it shoots down strikecrafts and other frigates alike down quite quickly.