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[Void Ganymede]

Pilums by themselves occupy space. Enemy ships have to be far more careful which opens them up to artillery or divide-and-conquer assaults.

Pilums with EMP, Salamander, flare, and kinetic support start landing good hits.

[TheLaughingDead]

How do i optimize my fleet for maximum pilum saturation

Why would you want to though?

...am I the only one who finds Pilums to be nigh worthless?

I mean I love the idea of an artillery type missile to launch from beyond normal range, but the Pilum just massively underperforms in every way imo
And this is now that it's better then it was a few versions back, where I had never once seen one actually hit anything because even a disabled Onslaught could outrun them.

Pilums used to be very binary in their usefulness. I remember doing a mass pilum fleet, and the enemy AI simply had no idea how to deal with all those missiles. Their AI was so skittish you could just grind them down with little resistance. Before reaching that critical mass of pilums though, they were absolutely useless.

Now I consider them to be a budget item. Cheap, better than nothing.

[BFEL]

How do i optimize my fleet for maximum pilum saturation

Why would you want to though?

...am I the only one who finds Pilums to be nigh worthless?

I mean I love the idea of an artillery type missile to launch from beyond normal range, but the Pilum just massively underperforms in every way imo
And this is now that it's better then it was a few versions back, where I had never once seen one actually hit anything because even a disabled Onslaught could outrun them.

I agree. They are so slow in their primary boost phase, and not much better during the secondary. As much as Squalls are wasted and miss their targets, they are infinitely better, even at finishing.

If you think it's bad now, pretty sure a couple versions back they didn't HAVE a secondary boost phase. Like, I could get out and PUSH the missiles faster then those stupid thrusters.
And yeah, Squalls are great, much pew

[Kohlenstoff]

Yeah, Pillums are as bad as it gets. You may hit some of the worst pirate junk sometimes. Maybe you can do even some minor damage every now and then. But that's it. Take something else. Whatever you choose, it will do better.

[coldiceEVO]

My experiences are pretty dated.
Pilum is ship seeking smoke screen and AI jammering bouy. Any ship anywhere can launch them, and they just slowly wiggling through friendly like school of fish towards enemies. Enemy AI would keep prioritizing and reacting to these nothing burgers like slowly impending doom thus tuning down their normal aggression with say range and number advantage. I don't remember if AI core cares.
Trash ships with fast missile rack can quickly lay a bunch of them out from the back instead of direct combat.

[Nettle]

Fast Missile Rack support ships are usually better off using Salamanders, they synergize with the system much better not being limited by internal ammo count, and force more response while they last. Pilums do provide a decent screening for fighters if you really saturate the map with them though.

[Void Ganymede]

You know those scenes in Macross where pilots have to go 100% defensive in response to incoming missile swarms?

That's AI response to a sufficiently thick Pilum carpet.

[BFEL]

So basically Pilums aren't actually "artillery" they're more of a support/debuff type option. Good to know.

[Kohlenstoff]

You know those scenes in Macross where pilots have to go 100% defensive in response to incoming missile swarms?

That's AI response to a sufficiently thick Pilum carpet.

You could send actually working missiles instead. Then the AI Ships would not only react on these. The AI Ships would actually get some damage. There is a nice selection of Missile Pods, which can rain havoc long enough while putting even actual pressure on the enemy. The Pilum carped did not even do properly damage before the pods where introduced. Despite my high tendence to build in only weapons with regenerative ammo or without ammo limitations i avoid the pilums. I tried them often enough to know that these only work against pirates and mostly only if they are already hit and disabled. And even then only sometimes.

[Void Ganymede]

You could, but there's a great satisfaction to setting up Chekhov's Pilum Carpet which looks like it does nothing.

And then you realize your Condors aren't dead yet and isn't that strange?

And then the first Salamander connects with engines and you reach enlightenment.