How do you use torpedoes?

[lee]

I'm facing 16 or 17 Aera capships (not the Vitik, the smaller one) that I should destroy to fullfill a mission. The mission description said that there would be such a capship and it would have 16 ships for protection.

All the protecting ships seem to be of the same capship type, though there were some small Aera fighters, too. But I don't think they are part of the mission, the Aeara just hate me and I hate them.

Anyway, torpedoes are about useless. For one thing, they are so sluggish that they barely hit a sun. For another thing, missiles do not seem to move at the same speed and the same vector as the ship they're fired from.

Fly sidewards and fire a torpedo: The torpedo thrusts away in straight line from your ship, but at the same time, it appears to be moving away sidewards because it doesn't inherit the moment of the ships sidewards movement. That makes it impossible to hit a moving target with them --- letting aside that they usually get shot down before they reach a target.

Chances to hit something would be better with dumpfire torpedoes ...

The capships shoot at me from a range of about 38k. Two hits, and I'm dead.

How do you fullfill such a mission? My only idea is to fly skillfully enough around the capships to make them eventually crash into each other ... But that would be very difficult and time consuming.


EDIT: The SPEC drive makes torps useless I've been chasing a capship, and each time I fired a torp, the ship just SPECed away. Then, it waited for me to catch up and fire again, and it SPECed away again.

[gazzy]

first, it is a good idea to have a cloacking device and some beam arrays
with you.

then you have to get a good aim at one of the ship's pd turrets,
uncloack, chip the turret off and cloack again, repeat till all turrets are gone.
after that, just fire a few torps at the side of the ship or in it's vector,
try to do that as close to the ship as possible(not too close or you'll blow
yourself up)

i kill capships always this way, and it works fine for me.

[lee]

Thanks, I'll try to get a cloaking device then! I've already been wishing I had one, but still didn't happen to find one.

[gazzy]

you can find them most of the times on research stations,
but there isn't always one there.

[lee]

Ja, thx, there's even a thread about buying them I'll do some shopping for it, but currently have little time left for playing ...

[ack2000]

Lee I feel your pain; been about 2 months since I actually played the game. Launching the game to test a model doesnt count.

[lee]

Maybe we should have an in-game web browser so that we can access the forum while playing

How long are the days in VS? We could suggest making them a hundred hours long and somehow arrange for having to sleep only three of them. That would give us more time for playing ...

[energyman76b]

Hi,

I usually fire a bunch of torpedos, SPEC near to the ship and shoot at the turrets, while they are busy killing the torps

And everything at full speed of course - hit and run, again and again, until it is finished

[Accu-Accelerated]

Also, if there is a group of fighters or ship flying in formation, you can cloak and fly behind them, then decloak, fire the torpedo into the center of the formation, then cloak again. If you are lucky, the whole group will be caught in the explosion!

A good place to look for cloaking devices is on Kahan-class capships, and possibly other confed capships.