- Edited
Hello everyone! I am very pleased to announce the start of a library consisting of a collection of soon to be released guides for everyone. This is a group effort, made up of the top players in the game, each writing down their knowledge of a ship type. With that being said, Book 1 of the soon to be library will be about missile barges. Pyraeus, a tournament champion explains the general timeline of missile barges as well as how to form a module. A major shout out to all the other authors who helped with this, notably Equalizer, 0neye, Enoshade, Nord, Saris, Polar Bear, Cosmopyr, and ZigZag.
A General Timeline for Missiles:
• Between version 12.0, when the original High Explosive (HE) missiles were first added, and version 13.7, the most common design archetype to carry missiles was not the barge, but the kiter.
• The Dark Age of Missiles: Version 13.7 saw HE missile damage halved and the addition of a fire rate cap on launchers, severely weakening missile ships in the meta. This changed in version 14.5, which introduced new missile types and increased the HE missile factory production rate from 2 to 5, allowing one factory to supply two and a half launchers instead of just one.
• Despite version 14.5 seeing the revival of missiles, the kiter did not immediately return, as it had encountered a deadly natural predator in the new railgun weapon system, which had been added in version 14.1. Its place in the meta was thusly taken by the much sturdier barge design.
• Nowadays, the names “missile barge” or “missile ship” are used to refer to ships that use HE missiles, not nukes, EMP missiles, or mines, as their primary armament.
Missile Rationale
Missile ships, and barges in particular, have rarely been at the top of the meta. One of the biggest reasons for this is that missiles launchers, and the factories that supply them, are some of the largest and most expensive weapon systems in the game. This means that missile ships are always going to be bulky and are bringing less firepower for their cost than they would be with most other weapon systems.
However, despite these weaknesses, missile ships have three key advantages:
1. They are very long-ranged, only outdone by railguns.
2. Their missiles are guided, making it easier to hit smaller targets from farther away.
3. Their launchers have a full 360 degree targeting arc, allowing every surface of the ship, even the rear, to be weaponized.
Because of these strengths, missile ships have always existed in the background in some capacity. Even top-of-the-meta ships have always had to consider point defense, flank/rear armoring, and flak batteries to counter the potential threat of a meta-defying missile-kiters.
Missile Modules
As with any weapon module, it is prudent to place ammo production directly adjacent to ammo consumption, to minimize the travel time for crew and speed up reloading. This can be awkward with missile modules due to the shapes and sizes of the HE factory and launchers, but it is workable.
The main choice is if you want to use two or three launchers for each factory. One HE factory can sustain three launchers for ~20 seconds before its own storage is depleted, resulting in a loss of launcher efficiency (meaning that one of the launchers will have half the uptime of the other two launchers). On the other hand, one factory can sustain two launchers with full uptime indefinitely, at the cost of some factory efficiency (meaning that only 80% of the factory’s output will ever be used). Since launchers and HE factories both cost 15,000 credits, it is up to you to decide if you want to lose 7,500 credits of launcher or 3,000 credits of factory. Factors that can help you decide can be:
• The shape of your ship. It can be difficult to fit three-launcher modules into your design.
• How much you want to spend on crew. You need a minimum of 4 crew quarters per three-launcher module, and 3 crew quarters per two-launcher module.
• How much power you have available. Factories consume 0.625 power per second to make 5 parts per second, but only consume 0.5 power per second to make 4 parts per second.
Following from the last point, one factory doesn’t consume all of the power produced by one small reactor. A missile module can include two or three factories, or even more if you decide to use a medium reactor instead. A medium reactor, if solely dedicated to powering factories, could handle 8 to 10 factories, but this requires efficient routing of crew using conveyors. Using a large reactor for the same purpose is inadvisable, because it produces far more power than could be feasibly consumed by HE factories alone, failing to offset the danger of a large reactor explosion.
Missile Barge Design
The Old Missile Kiter
As mentioned above in the timeline section, the most common missile-toter used to be the fast, lightweight kiter. Like modern ultralight cannon wall designs, these ships were meant to be as minimal and efficient as possible, with little to no defenses besides their long range and their very high thrust-to-weight ratios. This usually meant sacrificing any form of aesthetics in the process. The traditional HE missile kiter is now mostly extinct, but the design has seen a descendant arise in the nuke bomber, which is built similarly but is flown very differently due to the difference in weapon system. Any missile kiters that still exist almost always make use of boost thrusters to augment their kiting ability. Example ship by Coffee (1) and Lafiel (2)
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The Modern Barge
Most modern barges are built diagonally, with thruster modules in the rear and an extremely thick armor block in the front. This design is meant to take advantage of missile 360 degree targeting arcs while protecting the fragile launchers from frontal fire. Many barges also include flak batteries just behind the frontal armor as additional protection. However, many barges also lack significant internal armor or shields, making the ship very fragile once the frontal armor is gone, or if the ship is flanked and trapped. This outcome can be painfully common, since barges are very slow and easily outmaneuvered by more meta designs like ultralights and orbiters. Missiles barges are meant to be 1v1 ships that win through attrition. This weakness was alleviated somewhat in version 14.10, which removed missile collision with structure. This made it possible to use structure to suspend blocks of armor next to the hull of the barge, better protecting the ship’s flanks, but one should still be always wary of flanking. Example ships by Pyraeus (1), Nord (2), and Saris (3).
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The Battery-Powered Barge
There is a setting in Cosmoteer multiplayer lobbies that allows ships to start with full ammo and power, to get the action started more quickly. This used to affect power storages just like any other part, but this was changed in version 14.8 so that power storages would always start empty. This was partly due to the menace of the battery-powered barges. With the revival of missiles in version 14.5, builders took advantage of the full-power start by replacing the reactors in their modules with power storages. A reactor-less build, along with reduced armor, gave enough spare credits to add several extra missile modules, allowing some of these barges to win matches with overwhelming firepower before their factories depleted their power storages. Naturally, this type of barge design can overlap with other barge types as well. This was the highest that missile barges have ever been in the meta. Example ships by Polar Bear (1), Equalizer (2), and Cosmopyr (3).
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Unusual Barge Designs
The most important thing to remember when playing Cosmoteer is that it is a game of creativity. Barges can take a variety of forms and can include additional weapon systems. Example ships by:
Pyraeus (1, 2),
Mr. Zig Zag (3),
Enoshade (4),
0neye (5),
and Sputnik (6).
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