- I use them as finishers or weapons of opportunity to destroy ships with crippled engines or to finish off bigger ships that have been mortally wounded, but aren't yet dead. A niche role to be sure.
I also tend to favor them for "Probe Bombs", which I typically make in two flavors. The first is a Thermal Probe, an EM Probe and an Active Probe bundled into a "Transit Stage" which places them. Those probes themselves use minimal fuel and engines to achieve a good on station time. The second is a bunch of Active Probes with all different kinds of Resolutions. I tend to affectionately refer to this kind as "Fireworks", because they're big, loud flashy and
mostly harmless.
- I also use them for Geological Probes... for obvious reasons. Big missile = Fast, long range, good station keeping with a potent Probe... although buoys work better. Another use I put them to are my SLAPT, or Space. Launched. Anti-Planetary. Torpedo. These bad boys use radiation boosted warheads to turn the planets of xeno-scum into cosmic nightlights for the glory of the Emperor. In other words, they're my long range nukes. They're weird in that they don't really need a big warhead, as the Enhanced Radiation tech is cheap and scales well with improved warhead techs. This results in them only really needing a tiny warhead, so with a nice, big missile... anywhere form 6-24... hell even bigger if you really want, you get a fast, high ECM / ECCM missile with great range.
- I do sometimes use them for large-scale ASMs in the capital ship killer role, but these tend to use very high ECM / ECCM, big highly-boosted engines, huge warheads and are VERY expensive to shoot. The idea is to fire a few off in an engagement at the big boys and hope that one connects by virtue of speed and ECM / ECCM. They're not my first recommendation, but if the enemy fields large ships, they can be very helpful in terms of their Alpha Damage. The caveat here is that if the enemy is ALSO fielding powerful shields, then these are much less useful. Their primary usefulness comes from having a massive warhead that can kill or massively wound a potent enemy combatant very early on, potentially saving you casualties versus salvos of smaller missiles that might not kill ort cripple it outright.
- Finally in the vein of a finisher / weapon of opportunity, against enemies with potent shielding, those big missile can still be of use. If you've stripped away such an enemy's shields, they're very likely to be open to attack due to low armor, poor PD, lack of ECM / ECCM or an unfortunate combination of the three. AMMs and other smaller types of missiles tend to do quite well against foes with powerful shields, although powerful beam brawlers do better in some cases. Either way, those shields will regenerate if you give them the chance, so once you've stripped them off you fire some big, fast, high agility torpedoes with some nice fat, juicy warheads in them... no ECM / ECCM to reduce the cost mind you. These torps allow you to do some good internal damage via shock damage and potentially knock out, cripple or at least degrade the enemy's shield generators. Hopefully.
- One final use for the middling sized bigguns, like say, size 10 to 12~ish, is as what I call "Sprint Missiles" and what I call "Pursuit Missiles" Sprint Missiles are missiles with a very, very fast stage, the "Sprint" stage, which helps them get through AMMs, Fighter Screens and potentially even Area PD. These stages aren't maneuverable, that is to say they have no MSP invested into agility. The only goal of that stage is to close as much distance as possible as quickly as possible. To make Sprint Missiles with enough range to get through beam-type Area PD however, you'd need a big missile, say Size 24, 32 or even bigger.
- Pursuit Missiles on the other hand are a bit different both in construction and use. They also have a bit more variance to them overall. My Pursuit Missiles come in two flavors, generally speaking. The first is what I tend to dub a "Breakshot" missile, it's basically two other ASMs, purpose built or not, that are strapped together with a staging set to release the sub-munition just before the end of the first ASMs range. These type of Pursuit Missile typically require either purpose built designs or a specialized M-FCS setup to get any real use out of them, as the whole point is that you fire the first ASM
at the target with the intent of hitting it with bot, but if the target is trying to back away that second stage
pursues it. Hence, Pursuit Missiles.
- The second flavor of Pursuit Missile is the "Backshot" missile. It's fired at a waypoint
behind the enemy fleet, whereby it upon arrival it releases Active Sensor equipped missiles to seek out and destroy enemy targets. The Size 10-12 ones typically only have one missile, but bigger ones could in theory hold more. Vulnerable to AMMs mind you, but good against targets that either have none or have exhausted theirs, as the Beam PD would need to catch the missile's first stage before it passed through the envelope. Meaning such a stage doesn't need to be accurate and can instead be focused on speed and range at the expense of anything else sans payload. "Backshot" missiles are best fired from EM / TH 'stealth' ships, using large M-FCS to ensure target lock. They are the type I use the least, as they are much less consistent than the "Breakshot" variety.
