How many missiles?

[Grumpy Old Gamer]

I just finished automating T5 PSB production, but it will be a few days before I have all 24 of them built. I have automated missile production, and currently have about 3000 basic missiles, and about 6000 imbued/armor piercing missiles in storage. Will that be enough and how many missile launchers will I need?

The plan is to build 24 T5 PSB's and fully charge them before placing the OET. My base is already running about 14k threat, but it's reduced to about 3k with reducers, lots and lots of reducers.

[epgeek]

Make sure you have a few hundred eyes and crystal lenses to turn into chromed lenses, and you'll probably want a hundred each of the massive and perfect (blue) eyes for lower-tier lenses (for power balancing, etc). Blue eyes are a rare drop from slimes, so it's possible to acquire more eyes when the overminds are gone.

That said, you probably have more missiles than you'll need - the OET will charge in only a couple minutes from batteries. You'll still want some laser defenses - heavies are harder to target since missiles minimize overkill, and some fast wasps usually spawn in each attack that missiles will not target at all. I charged the OET the "hard" way, and managed with (lots of) lasers, and basic missiles fired from 9 launchers - three luanchers fit around one hopper pretty nicely. You're on your own from there :)

[Grumpy Old Gamer]

Base game only, no frozen factory yet, so no lenses above massive. I had also considered charging it with imbued coal, since 500ish PTG's are a lot cheaper than 24 T5 Batteries. It would take 83 minutes to charge, so not sure if missiles would hold out.

[epgeek]

I do believe imbued coal is the common Rush mode method. Regardless, it's pretty awesome to see someone use some method other than turbines in a regular playthrough. :)

I had 30 turbines the first charge, upgraded to 40 for the rest. So about 120 minutes and 90 minutes to charge. The luanchers were firing bout 50 missiles per minute, so 4500 basic missiles for the later charges. Imbued have 6x the damage, so I think you'll be fine.

[Jonathan]

Threats caps at 20,000.
I defended with 70 mk3 turrets, 8 basic missile launchers, 2 plasma missile launchers.
I built no "stocks".
I had 4 basic missile production line and 2 plasma missile production line to fee a those launchers.
It was FAR enough to survive constant 20,000 threat-level-attacks.

Anything surviving the missiles would get uterly destroyed by the turrets.


---edit---
The 70 turrets were overkill. But by then, they are so cheap and easilly manageable that.... "Meh, why not !?"

[Grumpy Old Gamer]

I believe I currently have ~40 MK3's and 20 MK2 turrets (for wasps) all fed by coal at the moment, although I shoudl switch them all to solar and save the coal for the OET.

I built the PTG setup, but am continuing to build the T5 batteries just in case. the hoppers for the PTG's are filling up slowly, so i guess it comes down to which is finished first. I also increased storage for imbued missiles to 8500. I think today ill work on building the OET itself, and the missile launcher array, get those missiles out of mass storage.

[CajunInABox]

I used 160 PTGs and 12 turbines to charge my OET...and another 24 to power my 110 Mk3 turrets. I had way too many lenses from my first attempt, which got the OET to 99.8% charge before I lost :(

So, are missiles really worth it? I always seem to be struggling to keep enough resources flowing to them, and I was only running basics because it was going to take so much more power to make imbued.

[Grumpy Old Gamer]

Well, I'm building a hybrid of both T5 batteries and PTG's filling in the gaps to charge the OET. So far I have 3 of the T5's and nearly a 4th built. So perhaps a week. making enough imbued coal is taking some time. and I spend a lot of time hunting new ore deposits for gold nickel and titatnium. I'm running about 270 threat reducers (all solar) reducing htreat by 13k+ and still gettting attacked. I need to build more PSB production and start streamlining bottlenecks.

[vektuz]

I don't like to stockpile things, I prefer to have a gradient of in/out. In other words, I like to make sure that at any given moment, I'm producing more of whatever than I am using up.

with this, I found that 9 launchers, powered by 6 imbuers, and 2 regular missile makers (plus a few stacks of 9 mk3 lasers in the corners) can handle max threat (20k) forever. If you have a fully stacked bot, you can probably do without the regular missiles.

6 imbuers will take about that same amount of turbines to run. Plus maybe one more. The full setup takes 5 missile assemblers to keep up but if you think about it, all of that really isn't much for defending your base forever against max threat... Assuming you can keep up with the fuel canisters. I just built 6 of them with mk4 batteries between them and solars atop. Turns out thats just enough to keep up. It doesn't keep your launchers 100% stocked at all times - once in a while a boss makes it through, like... one boss, which is why the lasers are there...

[Grumpy Old Gamer]

For my imbuer (just one) I use a T4 battery with a MK2 Organic solar array, plus it powers the armor piercing missile fitter and the HEF reactor, so basically the entire last stage of missile production. I am also running two lines of basic missile production, so I have extras of those stockpiled. I stockpile because I hate running out and want a significant buffer for charging the OET. Better to stockpile and know I have enough than run out of some ingot or another at 99.9%. I am up to about 50 MK3 lasers, fitting 8 on top of each T5 battery, since it will stay almost fully charged with 8, which will give me 192 total once those are finished.

[MoronWMachinegun]

On my third charge, running 5 basic missile assembly lines. I use turntables to feed some of them to 4 imbuers, and have 1 armor penetrating warhead assembler I hand-dump stingers from whenever I pass by my FALCORs. I use these to supply 3 missile towers, but after watching it I could have done it with just 1. Each tower has 11x missile launchers. I probably have close to 80 Mk3s right around my CPH as last line. I feed each quarter of 2xmk4 battery+20Mk3 Turrets with 1 organic solar mk2 (stupidly placed the mk4 on top instead of next to each other) and 2x jet turbines. I also placed a Mk4 near each Hivemind with ~6 Mk3s to soften them up on their way in.

Occasionally a very fast wasp will get in and hit the CPH once or twice, but otherwise, perfectly safe.

When I first started, I did stockpile about 1.5k missiles, but the turrets use them remarkably fast (Maybe multiple turrets are targeting the same enemy and wasting DPS?) Once it reached steady state I could go AFK for hours and be fine.

I did notice the fuel cannister maker and/or refinery weren't keeping up 100%, so I would occasionally steal extra fuel cannisters from my jet turbine setup. But it wasn't necessary, just made me feel more comfortable. I had one refinery double stacked (empty canisters would back up) and one triple stacked (no empty backup).

[Grumpy Old Gamer]

Just this morning I tore down my missile tower and put up a missile grid. 54 missile turrets total, 6 dedicated to basics right by the tower. The whoel grid is at +64 and there are 9 total locations, 6 turrets at each location. The outer ones are spaced 64 blocks from each other, so basically like -

#----#----#
- -
# # #
- -
#----#----#

with the center being basic only and the outer ones being armored and imbued. Each location has storage for 400 missiles and each turret shares a 100 hopper with one other turret.

8.5k imbued missiles 800+ armor piercing, and about 3k basics.

The thiery is that the outer ring will target the mobs first since they are 64 closer tothem when they spawn or comein range, the basics will clean up heavies or weak bosses.

[vektuz]

Missiles are programmed not to "overkill" and they claim enemies before firing basically. So they won't overlap or waste.

Due to the rate of spawn of bosses only takes 8 missile launchers (assuming you're putting them in a circle, only 5 or so will actually be facing the attacking direction).... but even just 5 launchers firing every 15 seconds, ... 5 of them can fire 20 imbued missiles a minute, which is enough to destroy about 10 bosses per minute, which seems to be enough to outrun the spawning speed.

If you're not using imbued you probably need a ton of resources and bio and copper and gold and launchers and whatnot.

[epgeek]

Missiles have a range of some 96 minimum to 512 max. For comparison, the overminds spawn some 320 blocks from the CPH.

[Grumpy Old Gamer]

DjArcas states Missiles have minimum range of 72. In practice it seems more like 64. I currently have 3 Imbuers running full power, so One missile every 20 seconds, with a buffer of 9k+ imbued, and 3k basics.

Lithium ingots feeding directly into 2 spiderbot chargers, fully upgraded spiderbot.

7 T5 batteries with 8 MK3's and organic solar panels on each one plus another 30-40 MK3's powered by imbued coal taking care of anything that gets through the missile shield.

So far without even using missiles, the spiderbot and turrets can handle 10k threat without difficulty. So its just a waiting game to finish the T5's OET and strike controllers. I think defences are pretty well set and I could probably charge the OET now if I chose to.

Unfortunately my titanium mine ran out just now, and I wont have time to find set up another one before bed, copper-> macerator will get some progress done overnight, but Ill have to jump on that issue first thing tomorrow.