Greetings Citizens!

Ordnance hardpoints are the new name for itemports that have existed in-game for some time, but were previously used only for attaching missile racks to. Now, they are capable of equipping missile racks, rocket pods, and future items that may be best suited to launching from these hardpoints. As missiles and torpedoes are the primary armaments you’ll be using here, we’d like to clarify further what the differences (and similarities) are between these two ordnance items.

To start, both items share the same sizing methodology, currently ranging from 1 to 12 with a scale that could expand if deemed necessary. Each one of these sizes have metrics their own, with the size being the length of the item and a the diameter of 1/10th the size. This means a S3 missile is about 3 meters long with a diameter of 0.3m. Generally, we don’t expect to find missiles in Star Citizen larger than S4 and rarely torpedoes less than S5, but since both are entirely interchangeable on racks, the possibility for exceptions exist.

Missiles have tremendous maneuverability in flight and excellent tracking of fast moving targets, but with a limited payload spread compared to torpedoes. They will likely re-target more reliably on misses or correct from countermeasures for effectively due to advanced and efficiently placed maneuvering jets. Maneuvering performance may be negatively impacted when being used in atmosphere due to atmospheric effects.

Torpedoes pack a much larger punch than missiles, fully appropriate for their weight class, while generally slower and less agile. These are recommended for use against larger or less mobile targets such as capital ships. They are also more resilient to atmospheric effects due to their inherently lower base maneuverability.

Missile racks are attached first to ordnance hardpoints, with the missiles or torpedoes attaching to them, not unlike a gimbal mount. These missile racks have sizes similar to weapons and there are multiple missile rack options per hardpoint size with adjustments to payload.

Put simply, the size of the rack equals one missile of that hardpoint size being attached.

Some ships have individually bespoke racks (e.g. Constellation, Starfarer Gemini, Freelancer MIS) that are modeled directly into their hull. These cannot be exchanged for others. The only customization possible in these cases is the swapping of the missiles themselves.

To calculate the contents of the missile rack based off the size, let’s look at the Behring “Marsden” series.

As development continues, we intend to allow players to attach other items to these hardpoints, the first of which are Rocket Pods that fire unguided missiles, similar to the ones already found on the Mustang Delta. Rockets will be available with a variety of fuse types like timed, impact and proximity. Rockets should be perfect for ground attack missions where you want to saturate an area with explosives.

It’s the only way to be sure.

Rockets and Rocket Pods will have sizes and metrics similar to missiles and missile racks in an effort to ensure they can be swapped out without causing clipping issues. Ships that have bespoke pods that are modeled into their hull (e.g. Mustang Delta) or have internal bomb bays (e.g. Sabre) are locked to their original stock items. The only customization that can be done in these instances is swapping the missiles/rockets/torpedoes themselves.

Going forward, we hope to expand the types of items attached to these ordnance hardpoints in our efforts to provide additional gameplay opportunities. Some of our current considerations are:

As of 2.6.3 they have been removed from the game, any previously sold or described dumbfire missiles have been given an abbreviated lock time and a limited amount of self guidance on the target. This was done for two reasons: a dumbfire missile isn’t really a missile its more a rocket or a bomb, and secondly as we introduce widespread rocket pods dumbfire missiles will simply muddy the waters.