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[ltyd0619]

The recent Pilum charge has made it more useful, but I sometimes still miss the old Pilum spam. Not optimal, but it's funny.

Back to harpoon, good range and decent tracking, I found myself tend to use it on second-line ships. Comare to the other MRM Salamander, it's more reliable. Noticing how many harpoons I am using, I had to ask, is harpoon spam viable?

Currently I use torpedos or Sabots on frontline ships, and Pilum on backline ships (non-combat carriers)

[Thaago]

Yes (see my forum sig ).

Harpoons are a very good finisher for ships that are close to the action, but not in knife fight range (where torpedoes shine). Especially when backed by ECCM to speed them up and improve their tracking, Harpoons can quickly overwhelm enemies kill them. I do think that Harpoons are best when combined with weapons that raise the target flux as they aren't good vs shields: either kinetics in the guns, or sabots on front line ships.

[Kos135]

Short answer: Yes.

Long answer: Yessssss...

Kinetics + harpoons is always a good strategy. Just remember to equip your harpoon boats with Expanded Missile Racks and if possible have them captained by an officer with Missile Specialization.

[SethMK]

Harpoons and Sabots are among my favorite missiles. The AI handles them well. Other types do have their niche but I prefer guided missiles over dumb fire but that is just my personal preference. They are rather effective with ECCM and extended racks.

[SCC]

If harpoons don't work, you clearly haven't got enough of them.

[Kanjejou]

Harpoons ? Hm... im not a fan of them because they run out fast like torpedo but are often eaten by shield withotu overloading it. And the small one are very ammo limited and the medium one are barely better in that regard and we have no large size harpon launcher.

But..

They are extremely effectiv if you have a ship that have mutilple medium missiles slots, is a missile boat or if you are okay in making it retreat once it emptied its racks. Griffon covered in Harpoons can send to the scrapyard even the biggest baddest ship of the REDACTED around if he get caught with its shield turned the wrong way or close to overloading!

Since I do prefer a more "dumb" approach to combat wolf packs and knife range assault, I do prefer SRM(swarm sabot and breach) and torpedoes becaus eI feel like they are more OP and slot efficient than Harpoons, even more if the ship carrying them get picked on...

alsowith such a low ammo count if they get intercepted it hurt that much more...

[IonDragonX]

They are extremely effectiv if you have a ship that have mutilple medium missiles slots,

So Manticore is peak Harpoon efficiency, then. 2 medium missile racks with your choice of kinetic ballistic.

[itBeABruhMoment]

The ai is actually quite bad with harpoon spam, as they basically only fire them when the enemy is overloaded. Alex should probably give harpoon pods the reaper torpedo ai behavior (ie shoot at high flux enemy's to either force a overload or do massive damage).

[LinWasTaken]

Harpoons and Swarmer are among my favorite missiles. Harpoons are great for taking down big ships and Swarmers are good for bulllying ether smol ships or fleeing big ships.

[Goumindong]

Short answer: kind of

The main problem that harpoons have is that their range is too high and their refire rate too fast.

Too high!!?!?

Yes. As you start adding harpoons to your ships they’re all always in range.

So what happens is that as soon as one ship overloads your entire fleet fires all its missiles. Which does tend to make that ship extremely dead. But if it was a destroyer then… you spent a lot of OP killing it.

This works OK on something like the Gryphon, since it will have enough missiles to shoot at more than a few targets. But it doesn’t work with ships that have small launchers or don’t have EMR. Each additional Harpoon (or Pod) you add just ends up over killing the first target more.

[Null Ganymede]

Huh, that's a clear explanation of an effect that's obvious in retrospect.

Looks cool though!

I kind of like dedicated ECCM MRM boats in the "back" line, sabots or torpedos or sometimes Salamanders in the front. Avoids overkill volleys, lets combat carriers and flank escort frigates directly contribute.

[Thaago]

Imo there's no such thing as overkill past the early game when it comes to true harpoon swarms. Lots of harpoons get wasted, its true: but you also get chain kills where the mass of harpoons that are left over start hitting, overloading, and killing, the other targets near the first one that also have high flux. If a player is going harpoon spam as a strategy it is also easy to bring a good number of times your own "weight" in harpoons. They do run out (well except for Gryphons with the perfect officers, those simply don't run out of missiles), but at that point hundreds of DP of enemy is also dead so the player's ships outnumber them and can easily mop up.

The only exception is fighting truly huge enemy forces where the sheer mass of enemy hull will absorb the missile losses - 3+ enemy fleets at once with 40 capitals, that kind of enemy.

[Hatter]

Missiles have become more useful now that the capital death-stacks have been toned down and the tonnage disparity is generally much smaller.

[intrinsic_parity]

The biggest change for missiles was s-mods allowing for expanded missile racks to be much more viable, and missile specialization giving an additional boost to ammo. Having 2-3x base ammo is huge.

[Daynen]

As long as you're keenly aware of your ammo count and know when it's time to pack it up and leave, then yes, harpoon spam can be utterly destructive.