How to Starsector: Missiles Tier List 

Corrections/Additions: +Atropos have more HP than harpoons so they end up being much better at longer range and against faster ships +The Cyclone Reaper shoots in a burst of 2 shots which makes it ideal for overcharging shields so the second missile makes contact with the armor +Hammers are good for blitzing enemies down with high damage spam, and I didn't touch on that in the video

When I started playing Starsector I was missile doubter, but after acquiring a deeper understanding of the game I evolved in to missile enjoyer. They are just so fun and satisfying to use... Unless it's dragon fire. Poor things are so over balanced they are largely unusable despite how insanely cool they are supposed to be.

Small Annihilators are good to pair with Reapers on ships with a lot of small missile mounts, because it helps the later to get past enemy PD, prime example would be an Aurora with all small Annihilators and Typhoon Reapers. I'ld put them slighly above for that. For medium I also think you are a bit underselling them, they are amazing on low tech capitals because they synergize well with all kinetic firepower they can output, and with proper captain and module builds they last long enough. Other than that I generally agree with this tierlist. Some notes: Gazer works differently compared to Sabot not only because it is a beam, but also because it works like a small graviton beam i.e. it increases damage dealt to target shield, which benefits ships with a lot of gun/laser firepower. I do trust AI Cyclone Reapers on Champion, meme builds aside. Salamander is also a good PD distraction tool for your more powerful limited missiles, and they often cause enemy ships to turn after it to cover their engines.

I'm loving these Starsector videos of yours. Please keep them coming.

Missiles are imo the most confusing part of the game, and I can never decide what type to use. I always just go with dragonfire or reapers lmao This helps

When flying anything smaller than a cruiser, I respect an incoming salamander almost as much as an incoming reaper

I truly believe there has been an injustice made to Jackhammers on this list, the AI uses them pretty well and I do love to see them mounted on Manticores, Wouldn't use them late game much though, they are C tier at a minimum, and frigates with SRM's go on the A tier for me they dish out so much pressure on smaller ships, again keeping the AI very much in mind

Truly one of the tier lists of all time. Cyclone Reaper in C-Tier is egregious. They're S-Tier imo. They succeed where the normal reapers fail. That is actually doing damage to armor. With the AI being somewhat competent at keeping its shield up to do tank HE damage, single reaper shots often lead to an overload. Since the Cyclone Reaper fires two at once, you easily get the overload and the armor damage/kill. They're especially good on ships like the XIV Legion that have two front facing mounts. They basically delete anything in front of them even in the hands of the AI that can actually use reapers rather well imo. Also Atropos>Harpoon is a hill I'd die on. Harpoons are often too slow to catch faster ships and they often need a ship to be overloaded to hit properly. Atropos are a lot more reliable and can hit faster ships which imo makes them better overall. The medium Harpoon mount can be cool though. I'd also move the Annihilator pods up a tier each. They're good pressure weapons when used in mulitple mounts. The Enforcer, Dominator and Onslaught are pretty good for this where you can just keep firing them, forcing the AI to keep its shield up. Imo the AI's tendency to just use them is a strong suit. They also tear through armor and hull when they do connect to it. Gazer and Gorgons are also pretty great. They're great anti-frigate weapons due their guidance. B-Tier overall seems fine, but they're my favorite weapons to use on frigates. Gorgons remove frigates very quickly though they run out of ammo and a Gazer allows a frigate to basically tip the flux war in its favor versus another frigate.

I am a four year in gamer of starsector both no and with lots of mods. I should suggest you do energy weapons (vanilla) if not go cursed modded missiles. Some are balanced, some are trash, some are... *SEMIBREVE*

4:24 - Grumpy put out a video using vigilances and dragonfires. I think they deserve a little more than D tier considering how high you can scale their damage.

Very nice guide!

I fought a Persean League deserter bounty flying a missile- and bomber-heavy midline fleet with a TON of Gorgons and Hydras...and I was flying an Afflictor with a Conquest as an anchor and Omens as escorts. I was completely destroyed, over and over again. In my last couple attempts I made a beeline for one of the Champions with the Hydras, but the Conquest with its puny 90 degree shield was almost dead by the time I was able to help it with the other. I had looked down on all of the DEMs up until that point, but at least in this case it was a perfect counter to my fleet, which normally punches well above its weight. That's kind how Starsector goes. Everybody can make arguments about moving things up and down because even "bad" weapons can be good in some situations. I've been trying out Atropos on Eagles with S-modded Missile Autoloader and the AI seems to do pretty well with them...or at least it doesn't waste them like it loves to do with Reapers and Sabots. I'll have to try Breaches as well! I agree with all the single shot ones in the bottom tier, too. I'm a hoarder but those I sell immediately. I can't think of a reason I'd ever use them unless there's a mod or a future release that lets us equip fighters or something.

Sabot round also do a surprising decent dmg to hull that has its armor stripped

Would like to see demonstrations of how each of them works on the side. For those of us, for whom names dont tell everything. In the future of course

Very informative without being boring, I love these sector guides!

-Generally small single missiles are used for Missile Autoloader Mod setups like on the Eagle. Putting them straight into D is a bit harsh. -Atropos are homing torpedos. They act as super beefy finisher harpoons, they are great you should experiment with them more. Definitely higher than C but they do suffer from that there are so many other great small missiles. -Poor Hurricane MIRV Launcher had so many nerfs that its kinda mediocre now. Its a jack of all trades for large missile but there are almost always a better option. I personally wouldn't give it any higher than A and that's also mostly because of ease of use. - Large Hammer Barrage is the goat of the ludds. That boy has more dps than the Cyclone Reaper Launcher with the trade off that it fire several missiles and has lower ammo. One of the best options on aggressive Flagships. Dirty cheap too. A tier imo. -Proximity Charge Launcher were giga meta before the recent nerf, so much so that they halved the firing rate. They are still one of the highest dps machines in terms of explosives dps while flux free. Just dont give them to your AI. -Salamanders are great until they aren't. They are Slow with average HP and try to target the engine. Great, too bad that once battles getting bigger there will be way more point defence on the field making already niche missiles useless. After early-mid game they one of the few things that truly belong in the trash.

For some reason my brain thought this was "starsector with ONLY rockets" I gotta play this again I haven't played since the update that added the new missiles.

Can you blend in the missile you are talking about? I do not know every missile in the game by name, and I do not think than everyone else does?

i'd put PCL up higher, at least b or maybe a, even s tier on something like an onslaught, legion or falcon p. they're actually pretty overpowered and overlooked they explode in an area of effect, which makes them surprisingly good at actually hitting their target. they also give you FIFTY 500 damage missiles at a respectable 250 dps; i don't know any missile that can match the amount of flux-free damage you're getting from one of them. the fire rate of 1 shot ever 2 seconds means that with expanded missile racks, a PCL can be shot continuously for 200s. with their relatively low range, the ai is actually able to use these continuously throughout a battle. a single PCL is better than two heavy maulers for DPS and armour penetration and it doesn't produce flux

Another thing, try to add more points towards players using the weapons than the AI since most of the time people just do autofit so it doesn't matter much what they equip. It's the AI that sucks, not the weapons. Even a light machine gun can be deadly on player hands.

I like the laser missiles a lot

I feel like you need to differentiate between if these missiles have eccm paired with them or not. A lot of missiles go down a tier or two otherwise because eccm is that good and makes them so much better if you have that hullmod.

Hello Mr. Hamster, i have a question. Is there lategame in Starsector? It might sound silly but its actually pretty important. Do everything you do in the game lead to something like... colonizing planets, making your own faction, going to war, destroying faction, conquering planets etc? You already mentioned you can colonize planets but before i would consider buying Starsector i would need to know if its interesting. If you only fly and do missions so you can buy more ships and supply and do more missions then its kinda dead. Game mechanics seem pretty deep but that just means there is more to learn and so far, watching your videos i feel like i would not have much fun struggling to learn "how to" and after i learned i would get bored bcs its just flying around doing same things i already know. So in short, i am more interested in what you can do, what you can achieve. Is owning a colony/planet usefull (do you just get money or can you grow it, customize it) etc.

Some cases I don't agree, but in general this list is logical and explained well. Good job! My only nitpick is that survivability of missiles against pd is not mentioned much, a hidden projectile hp stat can vary a lot. Harpoons, for example, are paper thin and will struggle to reach their target if enemy is not overloaded.

The dragon fire is a solid A tier missile. You use it to support burst weapons like the tachyon lance on midline ships which can’t sustain the flux cost. Another great use is making the executor viable. It’s not for every fleet though.

Annihilators are 50 seconds of free pressure. Toss them on your escorts and you'll have overloads in half the time you would using anything else. Autoloaders give you essentially the CR time of a phase ship's worth of continuous fire

Dragonfire are exelent at specialized misile boats that launch all they have and retreat or blow up. These are excellent alpha strikers, but wont cary entire battle, of course.

Great job! Salamander could be A tier since you can use elite Target Analysis to make 1 missile shutdown engines but you missed the Omega missiles. Antimatter SRM Launcher B tier (A if you have the flux). Resonator MRM Launcher S tier (replacing Squall in damage) Rift Torpedo Launcher B tier. All with elite Missile Spec to reduce cooldown.

You forgot to mention how Salamanders become useless in large fights, due to the large amount of PD weapons covering each other. In a duel they're great versus front shielded ships but realistically you'll never want to gamble having a fair 1v1 versus a vulnerable ship in late game when you could just equip a missile dealing pure old simple damage. And I'm a puzzled by the B ranking of the medium one especially, since you mentioned medium missiles have serious competition. I'd rather have a Dragonfire in there, which is saying a lot.

Reapers, Hammers, Proximity Mines, and Locusts are best used in player hands due to being more situational than others. Proximity mines are great HE weapon alternatives for high tech ships, and can screen fighters due to its blast radius and durability. Locusts are versatile given they can pressure damaged ships that lost armor, or saturate point defenses and fighter screens for Reapers and Hammers. Hurricane, Harpoon, and Atropos are reliable ship sinkers for most ships. But not to be used against ships built for heavy point defense or high top speed that can outmaneuver them; Gorgon, Hydra, and Dragonfire are most effective on nimble targets and staying just barely out of point defense range; bane of more aggressive frigate flanking builds. Gazer missiles are great to have for low tech ships in need of a Graviton bean, as kinetic weapons can leverage the weakened shield efficiency. Pilum and Catapult are better used as cooperative saturation. When paired with fighters, it influences the behavior of most officer personalities to approach with caution. Reckless type would also try to avoid closing in for the kill if there are enough in the field. Breach missiles are a notable case. They are most effective against high armor ships and counters officers with polarized armor as the secondary charge ignores armor calculations for damage res

Dragonfire D tier? have you played the game?

YAY

B tier for annihilators? Did you ever tried using them in mass low tech fleets? such as Eradicator Dominator Manticore and Enforcer spam? 1 on 1 they are dogshit, but in fleets they suppress and armor damage too good for their OP and 0 flux. Edit: officer skill that doubles missile ammo is required tho

Ugh, i just knew you'd overvalue MIRV's for their cool factor - just like Squall, anything that has mobility (whether through abilities or high innate speed) can dodge it easily and thus completely negate them. Even battlecruisers have enough speed to dodge MIRV strikes, not to mention Radiant just jumping out of the way. They're not useless, for attacking a station they are great. But hardly top tier for overall use. Swarmer SRM aswell, is not as good as you make it out to be in practice. It's no "smol Locust" since it fires 4x100 HE damage with a 5.6 second delay, that's not enough to kill even a single unshielded fighter. What makes the Locust great is that a single Locust launcher can chew up 3 fighter wings in a single launch before the fighters even reach you and then the remaining missiles have enough fuel to catch nearby targets too. Even a Broadsword - the heavy fighter type this should be countering the most with its low targeting range and low missile lifetime can sometimes eat two full volleys of Swarmers and need just a tad bit more to finish it off. A single fighter. It helps to strip armor off of tough fighters so your frag damage pd can do full damage and thats about it. Atropos i quite agree with you in principle - while they're working okay, its their high OP cost coupled with low ammo count that holds them back. But they are guided torpedoes. Their specialty of reliably hitting heavily armored ships isn't just good to counter Retribution, Legion or Onslaught when they do their burn drives. These suckers can even chase down some frigates. That said, adding some Dagger or Trident bombers to your fleet is a better choice for Atropos delivery than building a missile boat.

Attempt 2, sorry for spam: I'm absolutely garbage at the strategic battle mode in Star Sector despite being a decent Total War player. Maybe I focus too much on piloting. Can you make a video on advice for strategic battles? I feel like it's the bottleneck for me to get to higher level play now.

You don't quite understand the concept of single missiles. Single missiles for SMALL slots means using "Missile Autoloader", not "Expanded Missile Racks" Ideal ships for this build have the minimum number of SMALL missile slots for their size: Omen, Tempest, Apogee, Eagle, Falcon, Grendel, GRYPHON, Paragon. (Destroyers are not very suitable, they have at least 2 small missile slots and a small number of reloads for their size class). With the Missile Autoloader, you don't want to have a combat skill for missiles, you don't need it, unless of course you fly a Griffon or entrust it to your lieutenant. So auto-assigning all missiles with the minimum ammo to Tier D shows that you are still a beginner.

cool video…. don’t care still slapping harpoons on every slot i can

You should make a playthrough, id watch that! (づ ◕‿◕ )づ

U forgot endgame reaper from redacted redacted hypershunt thing