TK514 wrote...
It doesn't matter what the payload does once it arrives at the target. Missiles do not move at relativistic speeds. Coalition Dreadnoughts engage at tens of thousands of kilometers, and, by your own statements, Reapers can engage even more distantly. It could take minutes to hours for a missile to arrive in the target area, when other ordiance arrives in seconds. What this means should be obvious: The target vessel or vessels may not even be in the engagement area when the missiles arrive.
And that's before you take into account the countermeasures, which you yourself have agreed are an issue. The Codex entry on Javelins does a pretty nice job of summing that point up:
"As missile weapons, Javelins are subject to highly accurate defensive
GARDIAN fire. They must be launched in large numbers and at short range
to have any chance of hitting their target at all."
That's just discussing Coalition GARDIAN systems. The Codex states Reapers have their own version, and your own statements claim that Reaper systems are better than Coalition systems.
So.
One last time.
Every peice of information available to us in game on the subject states or shows that missiles are an inferior weapons system in Mass Effect starship combat, useful only in great numbers at short range.
Just as an aside, you seem to assume I'm specifically nitpicking on Thanix missiles because I need something to hate. I'm not. I just find the idea that missiles are the inferior weapons system in ME3 interesting because it is directly counter to current real world military technology. Frankly, there's already so many more important things to dislike about ME3 that Thanix missiles don't even show up on my list. I probably would have just called them Javelin missiles, which had already been established as an advanced experimental missile, but I guess they felt like they needed to show something with the Thanix name being used. Heck, maybe they just forgot what Thanix was. It happens. Individuals on a game's development team could easily be less conversant with minutia than a franchise's fans.
While dreadnoughts have powerful mass accelerators that are capable of punching through kinetic barriers they are so few in numbers compared to fighters and frigates and are only mobilized in full fleet operators. Essentially when it comes down to the fleet, fighters and flotillas of frigates led by cruisers is the backbone of a fleet in the Mass Effect universe. According to the codex ships that have had their kinetic barriers weakened or destroyed by disruptor torpedoes are vulnerable to wolf packs of frigates, making missiles a vital role.
Missiles and torpedoes are perfect for testing and weakening the defenses of enemy ships.
As for GARDIAN lasers, according the codex GARDIAN lasers is a short range defense weapon that is 100% accurate at the start of a battle. GARDIAN build up heat that reduces damage, range, and accuracy and must be "cool-downed" by transferring the heat to sinks or radiators. As the battle continues GARDIAN lasers lose their overall effectiveness making the ships more vulnerable to missiles and fighters.
Mass accelerators also should be at risk of losing overall effectiveness has heat builds up.
All the heat build up from weapons such as the GARDIAN lasers and mass accelerators also causes (once again according to the codex) a titanic amount of heat that must be "cooled" otherwise the crew could be cooked alive. Enough heat is already built up alone from the ship's engines, electronics, and crew.
Considering all of this I would not underestimate the value of missiles compared to mass accelerators.
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