What counters the floating missile boats?

[SpaceGoat]

If you load up a 1v1 and see the opponent is playing a floating missile boat build, what would be the best kind of build to counter it? Other than just building one myself and throwing the mirror match at them, is there anything they are weak to?

[Rylus]

If your problem is them flying, make them use up ther energy, if they are midair all the time they dont have much room in their energy meter to dodge, so long range lasers and or Missiles might work.
But i can tell you something better: Copy the the exact same thing you're struggling against and play it yourself, now just look what works well against you. Chances are good thats your solution.

[XXX_SniperSlayer42069_XXX]

Originally posted by 魔装機神 Psybuster:

Are you talking about the battleships that start showing up in Chapter 3? Just fly up and destroy the bridge if so.

pvp

[ПΛПО Dragoon]

Originally posted by 魔装機神 Psybuster:

Are you talking about the battleships that start showing up in Chapter 3? Just fly up and destroy the bridge if so.

Read the description and not just the title.

[Yuki Terumi]

The only counter to a missile boat that's played well is another missile boat.

[Donoghu]

One really simple counter against any missiles is the use of a shield.

In case you didn't knew, shields has 2 uses: Semi-passive and Active.

The semi-passive is when you just hold the shield up.
It will absorb a % of any incoming damage from the front, top and sides from approx. 180 degrees. (It doesn't stop anything in the back and you got to remember that the 180 degrees is based on your mech's body and not the camera/view so it turns around a bit as you move/boost around.)

The Active part is the short moment after you deploy the shield. It's called "IG" for "Initial Guard" in the stats. During that short moment, depending on the shield, you get a boost to your front defense going from high up to almost-perfect defense.

In short, every time you deploy the shield, it charges its heat meter (you can see the amount in the "Dply. Heat Buildup" stat of the shield). Once deployed, its heat meter doesn't raise even if it block anything.

So, each shield has different kind of deployment values and blocking capacity either in their semi-passive or active states.

But what's shared between shield is that it will "block" explosive damages just as much as kinetic and energy damages even if the damage, technically, "surrounds" your mech. This makes the shield highly efficient against blast area missiles.

Against missiles, it will depends on what kind of missiles launcher we're talking about. If it's a short salvo, then you can go with something like the VP-61PS which has a IG duration of 0.6s. The VP-61PS is also good if you're having an hard time timing your shield deployment as it has relatively good (58% damages / 40% Impact) reduction during its semi-passive phase. It also has a low Heat buildup on deployment, hence you can use its IG a lot more (before overheating) than other shields so that 0.6s can be turned into approx. 5x0.6s (so ~3s IG) and still not reach its overheat state (the 6th will overheat the shield). So even if you spam the shield a bit, as long as you let it cool down now and then (between missiles salvos), it's a good shield against missiles.

If you're really good at timing your shield deployment, the SI-29: SU-TT/C can be a good choice. It has long IG duration (1.6s) and even better damage mitigation (additional 4% reduction) than the VP-61PS during its IG phase, but you can only deploy it once without overheating it. (So, for the worse case scenarios, you can deploy it twice and block ~3.2s worth of damage by 82% and 76% of the impact)

There's a few CONs to the use of a shield though which needs to be understood:
- The obvious one is that it take 1 back slot and can only be equipped on the side that has either a gun or melee so if you want a melee + Shield, you got to sacrifice a lot of offensive.
- Using your left weapon while the shield is deployed will retract the shield and redeploying it will cost its deployment heat amount.
- Deploying the shield during an Assault boost instantly stop the AB. (And using the AB while the shield is deployed retracts the shield like with the left weapon.)
- Your mech actual "hit box" will grow quite a bit bigger and anything "eaten" by the shield adds onto your Impact/Damages build-up. While, without a shield deployed, you might be able to evade a missile or a shot by a fraction of a meter, if your shield is deployed, it might "absorb" the hit even if, otherwise, it would have missed you.

In previous ACs, the shields were deployed like weapons (unless they were extensions) and could be used in any states with some heavy shields, sometimes, having a minor impact on boost/AB speed. In AC6, shields are more of an ability that comes at the cost of some offensive capacities, hence their presence feels "lesser" of a threat, but if there's one thing I have learned, it's that you should never underestimate a properly deployed shield when it drop your (or the opponent) damage and impact output to ~20% while you're still ditching out 25%-50% of your offensive capacity with either swappable right weapon or 1 right weapon + 1 right back weapon shooting back.

=EDIT=
Also, the fact that, even if it cancel the shield, you can still use your left weapon instantly can be a really great "in your face" moment against an opponent that just "wasted" his offensive onto your shield and is now on cooldown.

[Codester]

Missiles are almost *entirely* dependant upon them locking onto you with their Targeting computer...

You mean to tell me, all the guys commenting on here, don't just....jam their Fcs..

When I face a full missile boat, I know it's a GG for me and that they won't be able to touch me aside from maybe a stray manual luck shot. It's just an easy match up when they can not lock onto you the entire fight. If you're super high mobility there isn't a chance in hell they can get away from you ruining their Fcs, then you just pick them apart like they are a sitting duck.

You either become missile dodging god, or you just Break their entire play style with 1 equip.

[burn1none]

Missles are mid-long range so I’d say just stay on top of them and keep trying to get behind so they can never get a good lock on

[Tsar Platinum]

Assault Boost kicking works really well. Most of them don't bother dodging either, so Songbirds can hit most of the time goo.

In general, the Laser Lance will hit. That thing is so good when you combo it with Pile Bunker. Nearly one shots every AC in the game with this method.

[MS-14A Gelgoog]

Originally posted by SpaceGoat:

If you load up a 1v1 and see the opponent is playing a floating missile boat build, what would be the best kind of build to counter it? Other than just building one myself and throwing the mirror match at them, is there anything they are weak to?

Rifles and staying underneath it

[Igneous]

Shotguns
Shield
*Melee
Faster missles or *trackers ( the small robots that chase and shoot)

Reverse joints > missile boats

*anything that forces them to dodge and use EN so they can’t stay airborne, once they can’t escape it’s free game*

[Donoghu]

Originally posted by Codester:

Missiles are almost *entirely* dependant upon them locking onto you with their Targeting computer...

You mean to tell me, all the guys commenting on here, don't just....jam their Fcs..

When I face a full missile boat, I know it's a GG for me and that they won't be able to touch me aside from maybe a stray manual luck shot. It's just an easy match up when they can not lock onto you the entire fight. If you're super high mobility there isn't a chance in hell they can get away from you ruining their Fcs, then you just pick them apart like they are a sitting duck.

You either become missile dodging god, or you just Break their entire play style with 1 equip.

That's because over 90% of the player base in PVP has yet to learn to use the active scan ability which basically allow you to almost instant-lock on anything that is within the range of your active scan as long as your active scan duration is long enough.

Anything scanned by the active scan can be instantly shot at with homing missiles without even waiting for the lock on. It's like this: Use active scan, wait for the active scan to reach a target, as soon as the target is highlighted by the active scan and has the "scan" ring appearing around them, press the trigger/key/button to shoot your missiles. Those missiles will be homing right onto that target right away.

Just to give you an idea, not many people noticed the particularity of the head part VP-44S.
- It has a scan range of 520m.
- It has a scan duration of 7.2s.
It basically allows you to instant lock onto a target before it even enter the possibility of being locked-on at 500m.

With guns, that long range scan/aim isn't as much useful because the arm's accuracy makes a huge difference, but with homing missiles, it's like: You're shot at as soon as you're within 500m.

The only thing that Active Scan cannot do instantly is multi-locks, but that's not much of an issue in 1v1.