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[Zym]

I very often find myself using Hurricanes over other missiles and I'd like to bring attention to its strength. Below are all the ships that have access to large missile mounts, what I typically put on them and why.

Disclaimer:
Hurricane needs ECCM to truly shine. It benefits more from it than any other missile because of how the second stage cluster becomes both tighter and faster.
EMR = Expanded Missile Racks.

One large missile and almost no other missiles:
- Apogee (1 small)
- Prometheus Mk.II

For this group, I typically consider either Locust or Hurricane, often leaning towards Locust because the ships have other things going for it or not enough OP to properly fit ECCM + EMR + Hurricane. Squall is almost never worth it because of how easy it is to make it miss (seemingly fixed in the next update) and because it lacks overall ammo.

One large missile and an assortment of other missiles:
- Gryphon (2 medium + 3 small)
- Odyssey (3 medium)

For this group I almost always go Hurricane because the medium and small missiles subsidize the addition of ECCM and EMR, which naturally makes Hurricane the standout choice.

Two large missiles and any amount of other missiles:
- Atlas Mk.II
- Legion XIV
- Conquest

For this group the choice is even more clear. When your investment into ECCM + EMR gets double the payout, Hurricane is the choice.

Two large missiles and any amount of other missiles + a super powerful system that promotes heavy bomber use:
- Astral

For the Astral, I typically build them with fighters in mind and missiles second or not at all. This leaves little OP for missile hullmods, so Locust or nothing is typically the pick.

Why do I pick Hurricane in so many of these scenarios?
1. It comes with a very high amount of damage per slot for how good its tracking is, at 500 * 11 * 10 = 55000 total HE damage. Compare this to Squall's 250 * 100 = 25000 kinetic damage or the Hammer Barrage's 1500 * 20 = 30000 HE. The Cyclone Reaper has 4000 * 20 = 80000 HE, but it needs to sacrifice almost all its other stats to get that. The lower damage per missile would be a problem due to enemy armor, but skills like Target Analysis and Missile Specialization remove this problem almost entirely.
2. Its second stage missile cluster is one of, if not the hardest missile barrage to shoot down in the game. You almost always get some missiles through enemy PD.
3. Because the AI is looking for vulnerable ships, many ships in your fleet simultaneously fire their Hurricanes at the same vulnerable target, leading to a profoundly powerful alpha-strike potential. The AI is just extremely good at using it and the huge range lets your ships help eachother out in a way most other missiles cannot match.
4. When put in player hands, combined with ECCM and manually fired, it can reach upwards of 6000 range if aimed at ships far in the distance. This is the case because the first stage flies far, then the second stage cluster flies even farther.

Below are some videos to demonstrate my claims:
Hurricane range showcase.
Hurricane vs heavy PD.
Standard Hurricane use by the AI against an Eagle. (Note how it fires the Hurricanes at will, while the harpoons only come out by the time the Eagle is dead...)

In conclusion, I find that the Hurricane is a bit too strong in too many areas compared to its brethren. I would suggest reductions in one or more areas to let the others compete. The areas that stand out the most to me are ammo count and second stage missile HP.

[Wyvern]

ECCM and EMR are a significant extra expense. I can see going for it with a one-sided Conquest build - but even there I'd generally prefer to leave the missiles off and focus on boosting its ability to actually sustain combat.

(The Odyssey gets ECCM built-in, so sure, use a Hurricane if you're fielding an Odyssey... but why would you field an Odyssey? There are better ships. Similarly, the Gryphon isn't really worth using either.)

Legion XIV is, in my opinion, better with hammers - they're got a much higher DPS, and are also much cheaper, allowing you to install better fighters, guns, or defenses. A Legion XIV with hammers can take down most of a battlestation before it runs out of ammunition; other options last longer, but don't have anywhere near the same burst potential.

[Thaago]

Yup, Hurricanes are the best large missile for killing things. They are truly devastating - with skills a single barrage of two (from a conquest or legion XIV) can destroy a dominator from full health.

...

(The Odyssey gets ECCM built-in, so sure, use a Hurricane if you're fielding an Odyssey... but why would you field an Odyssey? There are better ships. Similarly, the Gryphon isn't really worth using either.)

...

This is really weird to me... Odyssey's are quite good with the current large energy weapons. The AI sometimes gets into trouble with them, but often times they just go around murdering things. I know lots of people disagree with me on this, but I also consider Gryphons to be one of the strongest cruisers at only 20 DP.

[intrinsic_parity]

Odyssey is possibly the best player ship in vanilla IMO. Double plasma cannons are just brutally effective when paired with cruiser level mobility and it can mount a hefty volley of sabots to crack tough shields. I prefer locusts on odyssey though because they offer more versatility against smaller ships and are great for finishing where the plasma cannons already have armor cracking and dps covered.

[sector_terror]

Love for the Oddessey here. I've heard nothing but people say it's trash compared for the other capitals.

But I do agree, the ability to overwhelm point defenses the way it does with the raw damage, tracking, and speed, is a bit much. Still, I'm not sure it's nearly as strong as say, the IR pulse laser is pathetic. In turns of balancing I think there are bigger things to go after.

[Amoebka]

I don't really think Hurricane is OP. The other large missiles are just garbage and don't do the jobs they are supposed to do. The only other good missile is Locust, and as you said yourself, it's very competitive with Hurricane and gets used often. So it's not like Hurricane is the one and only choice.

[Megas]

Hurricane, with ECCM or skills, is okay for anti-big ship or long-range harassment.  Out-of-the-box unboosted, it is horrible.  (Payload spreads too wide and too many fragments miss.)  For general-purpose use, it stinks against small nimble targets.  Plus, AI treats them like Locusts and fires them at the earliest opportunity, even against inappropriate targets.

Locusts are unfair against small ships, even unskilled.  I fire dual Locusts from Conquest, and enemy frigate usually goes from full to zero very quickly.  Even capitals take significant damage if the whole burst hits hull.

Hammers and Cyclone stink because of lack of hulls that can aim and use them effectively.  The only ship that is good with them is Legion14, and those are special non-renewable assets.  (Gryphon is too fragile, AI drives them to frontline to die.)  Hopefully, Champion in the next release will fix that.

Squalls are bad.  Lack of ammo and too easy to dodge.

For me, Locusts is usually the only good choice, although Hurricane is usable if necessary.  I use Hurricane mostly when I have no Locusts but have Hurricane, or on Gauss Conquest (because guns outrange Locusts there).  I do use Hammer Barrage on Legion14, but I almost never use that ship because they are not replaceable.

Love for the Oddessey here. I've heard nothing but people say it's trash compared for the other capitals.

It is trash because, with an energy hard flux loadout, AI burns into the middle of a mob and dies.  (AI does a bit better with mostly beams-and-missiles loadout, but I do not want to use that loadout for a flagship.)  As a flagship, player can do serious damage with Odyssey.

When I use Odyssey, I use two plasma, two fighters, maybe few burst PD, and everything else into vents, caps, and hullmods.  More than half the mounts, including the large synergy, are empty, but it can sustain double plasma for quite a while and outgun just about anything in a duel.

[Amoebka]

To elaborate on my previous post a bit:

1) Hurricane is a great premium warship-vs-warship weapon. It requires hullmods and skills to be good. You can't just stick it on everything, you need to build the entire ship around it. Therefore, not OP.

2) Locust is a dedicated anti-fighter anti-phase weapon and it's great. It also works as a general cheap slot-filler simply because the other options are bad.

3) Hammers are a good budget warship-vs-warship option that ends up being underused mostly because almost nothing has forward-facing large missile mounts. It's going to be a no-brainer on the new cruiser.

4) Reapers are worse hammers that exist solely for memes. Nothing wrong with having a cool-but-inefficient option, I guess?

5) Squalls are a dedicated anti-capital weapon. They are genuinely great for that, the problem is AI wasting all ammo on phase frigates before the enemy capital even shows up.

[intrinsic_parity]

4) Reapers are worse hammers that exist solely for memes. Nothing wrong with having a cool-but-inefficient option, I guess?

I would argue the exact opposite...
Reapers do 4k damage while hammers do 1.5k. A cyclone reaper launcher contains 4k*20 = 80k potential damage while a hammer barrage contains 20*1.5k = 30k potential damage... Reapers have waaaay higher potential damage output, and a much larger burst of damage for finishing. The downside of reapers is that have a lower rate of fire and are more risky since you lose all damage if one is shot down. Reapers are high risk high reward, while hammers are more likely to hit but deal a lot less damage.

[Amoebka]

This is my main issue with you reaper-fans, you always consider the best-case scenario instead of the most common one. 

AI mostly fires torpedoes to overload shields, they don't save it for hull damage. As such, hammers would actually hit armor more often, simply because there are more of them in a volley. You also will virtually never expend all ammunition on reapers because of the slow reload. AND hammers are almost impossible to miss, while reapers will often fail to connect either of the two shots.

Hammers are also useful against small targets (at least one will often hit), while reapers are completely useless there.

[Thaago]

I know we're talking about large mounts, but I've found a lot of success with the medium reaper launcher for the AI. Like you say, the AI likes to take the shot to the shields and overload instead of eating the 4k damage. But then the other 3 ships in the area with the mount sink reapers into the overloaded ship and it explodes. I also like the medium reaper because it does well in mid scale combats without expanded missile racks as it naturally has 20k damage to a harpoon pod's 9k.

For large, the cyclone reaper has ammo for days; even in end game fights it won't run out. But its refire time is also very long, so its going to need to work with other weapon systems/ships to get the job done, while Hammers have far higher DPS but run out of ammo extremely quickly. The main problem as people have said though is ships available to mount them on: Conquest with reapers is great for the player, but they mess up the broadside AI at times; Legion XIV is pretty good with them as its got the fighters and ballistic mounts for shield and lockdown work; Gryphon is great but since the large mount is such a big piece of its offense, the low DPS is not ideal and the ammo is completely wasted (4x ammo built in); Apogee side mount reaper lol; Odyssey they are actually not bad as the ship is fairly maneuverable, but with built in ECCM hurricane is just better and doesn't need to swing over. The weapon seems fine, there's just only one or two ships that need a weapon with the profile of 'unguided, low dps, high alpha, extremely high ammo'.

[intrinsic_parity]

I generally try to avoid giving dumb fire torpedos to the AI, or low ammo missiles in general. AI will routinely waste all its missiles on low impact targets or fire them into PD. For AI use, hammers may be comparable, but the payoff is much better when reapers hit so I think it's a wash. Hammers definitely miss, especially the large mount that fires them with a significant amount of spread. Even if they all hit, they will hit different armor cells and so they won't actually penetrate very well and will do less damage. The high fire rate also means they run out of ammo very quickly.

For player use, reapers are simply better IMO because the player knows how to use them opportunistically. For AI, it's closer, regardless, there are very few ships that can even use a large dumbfire missile currently, so it doesn't matter at all which is better.

In small mounts, I'm taking reapers every day on a player ship, and I think on AI as well. It's much more likely to cause an overload which is really all you can expect from a 2 OP small missile mount. 

[SCC]

Hurricane is okay. You need ECCM to achieve best performance, though. I prefer Locusts for versatility and out of the box performance. It doesn't get better with numbers like Hurricane does, but it makes each individual ship with it stronger and more independent. If anything, other large missile picks are just underwhelming.

Torpedoes are in a weird spot where they aren't exactly bad, but there's few ships where you can use them reliably. Conquest and Apogee have awkward angles. Astral just shouldn't get this close to the frontline. Gryphon kinda can, but you can just stick a Hurricane for range or Locust for PD screening. Legion XIV and Odyssey can use torps, but they are just so rare.

[Megas]

I like Locusts because 1) they are reliable and good against everything (bigger things need armor stripped first), even if unskilled; and 2) with missile racks, they have enough ammo to last about halfway or more through an endgame fight, almost good enough to be like a heavy ballistic.  They are also cheap, 18 OP instead of MIRV's 25 OP plus obligatory ECCM.  I do not like wasting Locusts on fighters.  I prefer to use them as a finisher against ships (or simply as an easy win button against frigates and light destroyers).

The biggest problem with Reaper is, without boosts, they are too easy to shoot down.  Unskilled, I rarely land them except with Afflictor.

[SonnaBanana]

The Hurricane has a performance fitting it's size and cost. It's the Typhoon and Hammer Barrage that need to be buffed.