Missile Swarm

Release a group of homing missiles to attack invaders.

Consistent burst damage Aura. Easy to pick up, hard to master. Generally reliable. Useful even for intermediate players who have moved on from a defensive playstyle. High level optimization is possible.

Level	1	2	3	4	5	Ultimate
Max Number of Missiles	38	40	42	44	46	46
Max Damage	114	120	126	132	138	138
Max Radius	300	337	375	412	450	450

• Ultimate: Allows the missiles to re-target another target if the original turret or invader (that each individual missile decided at the moment MS was launched) is dead. Bear in mind it will not re-target another target that MS did not lock onto at the time MS was launched.
• Score: 9.09 / 10
• Useful Levels: 1-5, Ult not very important
• Priority Level: 2 / 8
• Illustration:

Comments

• Editor: The missile's circling pattern is programmed, and I don't want it either.
• ☀🐕: An extremely potent Aura. Although a slight problem would be that some missiles go around targets like sparrows or the front row turrets of condors and rocs instead of hitting them straight away, which delays the deployment time of the next batch of missiles. A potential solution would be that if the number of remaining missiles flying around is below a certain threshold, the next round of missiles is allowed to be deployed. Upon MS activation, the remaining flying missiles from last MS are instantly voided. A change like this doesn’t go against the intended mechanics of MS, instead making it more user-friendly. Because it significantly reduces the chance of failed barreling since it’s okay if a few missiles miss their targets.
• Hank: When will you be able to be stable and stop circling, and I will have no regrets in my life.

Usage

Missile Swarm is one of the most straightforward offensive Auras to use in the game. It has the Fire and Forget principle, where after you launch it, you simply trust it to do its job and you continue doing whatever you need to. There generally isn't much of a point for you to care about what MS does after you fire it. This is because the job is on you to make sure MS targets whatever you need to target before you actually fire it. This means that it is important that you try to as upfield as possible so that you cover as many targets as possible. After a while, with experience from using MS, you'll roughly know how many targets are sufficient for different sizes of Aura so that you don't waste missiles. This is the part that is hard to master, and can make all the difference in speedrunning.

The ult isn't terribly important for MS, as misguided missiles that attempt to hit a target that has already been destroyed actually have a chance of simply trailing off to hit another invader, especially larger invaders. The ult helps MS when there are crowds of many invaders. When there are larger invaders in front, the ult doesn't really help.

The only other strategy for MS is to generally be on one side of the field when you fire it, then after firing it, quickly strafe to the other side. This has 2 advantages. Firstly, it allows you to dodge the initial oncoming fire since tracking turrets will all fire to that side. The other advantage is MS tends to be like an epidemic; it's damage tends to spread out from the epicenter, and slowly gets weaker as the radius spreads. This means that staying on that side means your main weapon will compete for damage with MS. With ult, this is less significant as the missiles can redirect themselves, but the more implication is that due to the high burst damage of MS, this can mean straight fire weapons can have nothing left to hit since MS is a burst damage which kills whatever is on the side you fire MS on extremely fast. This second advantage is what i call Divide and Conquer, where MS takes care of one side of invaders while your main weapon takes care of the other side.

The very high burst damage of MS means that it is very effective against front crowds of invaders. However, since it spreads from its source of release, this means more often than not, it is difficult to reach the crowd of invaders upfield. This can be overcomed by some MS ships that can reach upfield safely, especially with TP, making this not such a huge issue. Even with large invaders in front, the heavy damage caused by MS is able to eliminate these large invaders quite quickly so that you can quickly disperse of the invaders behind as well.

Another problem of MS is its slight RNG factor. Despite being bursty, it can sometimes be difficult to launch consecutive MS strikes, especially when the crowd in front dies out very fast and you must quickly get rid of the particles you collected. This is because you may only fire the next MS after the last missile has hit its intended target, accounting for re-targeting. (Missiles that are lost due to all targets locked on at fire time already destroyed do not count) This means that you are sometimes at the mercy of the targeting system which may not correctly assign the missiles to their targets, causing a lot of re-targeting. This time delay is usually quite minimal as missiles travel quite fast.

As the next MS burst can only be fired after a while, this can become a huge issue in very dense waves. As all the small invaders in front get wiped out so quickly while the rest of the missiles struggle to reach the other targets, you would have eaten up too many particles and overfilled your Aura, wasting particles. Despite the high raw damage being dished out quickly, it is still not quick enough in such dense waves. The fact that it deals raw damage instead of AoE damage, and taking into account the travel time of all the missiles, MS can be slow in clearing out all these dense waves, making it difficult to use in such waves. However, accompanied with a strong defensive Zen such as TP, MS can still see some usage in the highest rank Marshal. For most purposes however, in Commander rank and below, MS still possess sufficient power to plow through invaders fast enough before the field gets horribly messy, since dense waves in lower ranks don't pump tons of bullets onto the field at once. In heavy waves particularly, which can be very problematic for most players, MS has the firepower to plow through these large invaders quickly enough before the second round of spinners go off again with too much other interference.

The final problem of MS is it is unreliable in turret popping due to the random serving nature of MS that often hits the hull of invaders instead of the turret itself. However, this is often not too much of an issue unless you have the larger invaders in front which may be a slight issue due to how much burst damage MS does. The principle is thus to kill the entire invader before it even has the chance to flood the field with bullets and lasers. This does become an issue with boss invaders such as Condors and Rocs, especially when MS is a one time use. Being unable to pop turrets means MS is nothing more than a damage tool which simply makes the fight slightly faster without being able to aid you in the rest of the fight with so many turrets still up and firing.

APEX 1: Armor Piercing

• Game Description: Reinforced warheads allow these missiles to pierce enemy armor.
• Numeric Interpretation: The missiles ignore 30% damage reduction of armors.
• Score: 4.82 / 5
• Ships with the APEX: Kibarrax (Lambda), Prime X (Epsilon), Trireme (Gamma), Von Braun (Delta)

Editor: A mere fatal injury, not worth mentioning.

This apex allows each missile of MS to deal the full 3 damage (for a total of 138 damage since there are 46 missiles, assuming all hit) to armor invaders, increasing the offensive power of MS significantly (in fact 43%, since it is increased from 70% damage to 100% damage). You no longer have to go right up to the cockpit of armor invaders and do a missile fart on them, since that is extremely difficult due to the point blank range. This apex is extremely powerful and is very viable for speedrunning, making AP ships with this apex significantly faster and able to compete against base form speedrunning ships.

APEX 2: Ion Warheads

• Game Description: Missiles equipped with Ion charges stun turrets on impact.
• Numeric Interpretation: Missiles stun the turrets within 50 range for 0.6s.
• Score: 3.82 / 5
• Ships with the APEX: EX04239 (Sigma), Geist (Phi)

Editor: Do you know? If it stays still, your missiles will keep circling!

This apex makes each missile have a 0.6s of stun on turrets it hits. The stun duration does not stack with multiple missiles hitting the same invader. Think of this apex like a mini IC Overcharge, where there is a small stun radius, about the radius of High Explosive MS. The energy usage is still the same, Aura radius increase per particle wise.

This apex is extremely powerful. Even with such a short stun duration, the equivalent of this apex is that of BEMP ult, a reset tool. Resetting turrets is extremely useful, especially when it comes to spinners and sometimes even lasers. It also delays MIRV Bloomers from pumping in more MIRVs onto the field, allowing for significantly better survivability and maneuverability. What makes it very powerful is the fact that even the smallest MS can cause a reset, and given the fire and forget nature of MS, you can head straight up to an invader with dangerous turrets, fire MS, and head back down and it would be of nearly no threat anymore for some time due to the turrets that got a reset. This process can be repeated ad infinitum, since you can simply graze some bullets to get a large enough MS Aura size to fire off yet another MS. Compare that to BEMP where it is only able to reset turrets that are in range of its Aura, furthermore, both have the same max radius.

The reasons why stun MS is so powerful doesn't stop there. BEMP is a one time launch, which means it strictly lasts for 0.6s. However, since not all missiles impact a turret at the same time, this means that the 0.6s of stun doesn't start until the last missile hits the turret. This means that the stun time of a turret is much longer and actually tangible enough for a mini SEMP launched against it.

Be careful though, as some turrets will come out of their stun much earlier than others (due to the RNG nature of MS which causes some turrets to not be hit when the last few missiles hit), which can spell trouble for turrets that fire immediately after the invader carrying them is active on field. Some turrets may not even be hit at all if you do not fire MS at the right position, which will continue to fire. This can be difficult to detect with all the screenshake, explosions and missile trails going on so be careful to respond to red stuff you see on screen which are bullets. Not to mention, you have to be careful to look out for white laser lines that did not disappear for a moment. Try to be as close to the middle of the field as you can to avoid this. The main problem would usually be dart tracking turrets, although pellet launchers and spreads may pose a problem as well.

The only potential problem with this apex is when you have a frontline Vulture and both the Vulture and back row invaders have lasers on them, which throw the lasers off sync. Also, a less known fact is that the minimum radius required to be able to fire off the Stun MS is bigger than normal MS.

APEX 3: High Explosive

• Game Description: Missiles equipped with advanced warheads deal blast damage on impact.
• Numeric Interpretation: Missiles deal 1 AOE damage within 50 range.
• Score: 2.18 / 5
• Ships with the APEX: Atlas (Delta), Corsair (Tau), Geist (Sigma), UHB (Delta)

Editor: Don't misunderstand, it just converts 1 out of 3 points of damage into area damage.

This apex makes each missile release a small blast explosion that deals some additional damage to invaders. More specifically, while a missile from a normal MS deals 3 damage, this apex means each missile does 2 damage to targeted invader, with an additional 1 damage to all invaders (excluding the originally targeted invader) within a radius of 50 (Attention, it's not 3 impact damage, otherwise each missile would effectively deal 4 damage to the hit Invader).

It is very difficult to actually judge how much of an impact this apex makes. You just have to trust that this apex allows Raven and Sparrow crowds to be cleared out a bit faster. The blast radius of the missiles is honestly very small, making it very difficult to actually reach neighboring invaders. It is a bit more useful in daily missions due to how dense and/or heavy waves feature invaders extremely close to each other, making very good use of the apex ability.