While not as important as your primary weapons, missiles can play a large roll in your success (provided that they are available on the given mission). Using missiles effectively certainly takes some practice, but the rewards are worth any time spent mastering this skill.
The first concept to be aware of is that missiles can be used in two different modes: single and dual-fire. In the former mode your missiles will alternately fire from the left and right launchers, while the latter mode will fire from both launchers at the same time (but taking longer to reload). Dual-fire is effective when you don't have time to aim precisely, or when facing a particularly strong enemy force. Single-fire is much harder to master, but you can often use far fewer missiles to accomplish your goals since you are rarely wasting any ammunition (unless you are so bad in single-fire that you miss everything). The missile mode can be changed on the fly (see Controlling Your Ship), so it's easy to adapt to any situation as it comes up.
Many pilots initially neglect their missiles either because they are wary of the fact that they have a finite number, or simply because they forget about this armament. It should be stressed that it is much better to use your missiles and run out than to go down flaming with a full complement still in the launchers.
The above image depicts dual missiles just launched from the ship. Note that the missiles are actually launched from the very sides of your ship (and travel outwards slightly before gaining forward momentum), forcing you to take this bias into account for close to mid-ranged targets. This is especially important in single-fire mode because you must also consider which side your missile is going to launch from (can be seen on the HUD).
To do any damage, a missile must actually make contact with an enemy. The missile will eventually abort if it does not, causing no damage. If the warhead does detonate though, it will explode violently doing damage to all enemies within a certain radius (damage decreases with distance). This is known as "splash" damage. It is certainly a neat trick of engineering that your missiles will not damage your ship even if you are within the radius of the blast, but take advantage of this fact!
Because of the versatility of these weapons, there are a ton of neat tricks that you can pull off. To get started, check out the Tips and Tricks page. Be inventive; you can probably come up with some of your own cool strategies.
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Copyright © 2004 by Andrew Lauritzen and Chris Iacobucci.