Pack-Hound Missile Rack

Pack-Hound Missile Rack

A seeking missile launcher that fires multiple specialised micro missiles that swarm and attack the target from all directions. As such they're particular [sic] hard to defend against despite each missile being significantly weaker than a standard missile.

— In-Game Description

The Pack-Hound Missile Rack is a Seeker Missile Rack variant that fires a salvo of four homing micro missiles. This weapon is a merit reward in Powerplay.

Usage

A Pack-Hound Missile

The Pack-Hound Missile Rack attempts to address the shortcomings of a conventional Seeker Missile Rack. The latter relies on a single, high-yield homing missile to strike a target, and these missiles can be destroyed by a Point Defence Turret or evaded by faster ships. The Pack-Hound, on the other hand, exchanges firepower for numbers in an attempt to overwhelm a target's defences. Each Pack-Hound salvo consists of four lower-strength homing missiles that follow erratic flight paths before closing the distance and converging on the target. Although a Point Defence Turret has a reasonable rate of success against a single, slow missile on a linear path, that rate falls significantly when dealing with four evasive missiles. Additionally, even though one Pack-Hound missile is weaker than a seeker missile, a full salvo inflicts greater damage.

The main drawback of the Pack-Hound Missile Rack, apart from the ineffectiveness against shields that all missile-based weapons suffer from, is its arming distance of 500 meters. If a salvo strikes a target within that range, it will deal significantly less damage. This means that a Pack-Hound user has to keep some distance from their target to maximise the weapon's effectiveness, which can make tracking and shooting at small, nimble targets more difficult. Additionally, unlike the Seeker Missile Rack, the Pack-Hound Missile Rack is only available as a Class 2 module.

An additional downside to the Pack Hound is a smaller splash radius on each individual missile. Standard Seeker Missiles have a very large explosion, capable of damaging multiple modules in a single hit, in some cases even damaging or destroying a target ship's entire bank of weapons. Pack Hounds, with a smaller radius, will tend to deal most of their damage to a single target module, accordingly requiring greater tactical skill to decide what module is the most important.

Specifications

Class	2
Rating	B
Mass (T)	4.00
Integrity	51
Power Draw	1.20
Weapon Mode	Fixed
Damage Type	Explosive
Damage	7.5
Armour Piercing	60
ROF	2.0/s
DPS	60.0/s
Thermal Load	3.6
Ammo Clip Size	12
Ammo Maximum	120
Value (Cr)	768,600

Engineering

This weapon can be modified by Engineers to enhance its abilities.

Modifications

The following modifications can be applied to this module:

• High Capacity
• Lightweight
• Rapid fire
• Sturdy

Experimental Effects

The following Experimental Effects can be applied to this module:

• Drag Munitions
• Emissive Munitions
• Flow Control
• Multi-Servos
• Overload Munitions
• Oversized
• Stripped Down
• Thermal Cascade

Purchase Locations

System	Station	Discount
Lembava	Goldstein Port	15% discount
Akkadia	Calvin Lawrence	15% discount
Mitnahas	Burgess Hub	15% discount
Azaladshu	Junlong Terminal
Andceeth	Denver Station
Deriv-Dar	Duckworth City
HIP 14619	Mobius Orbital
Sokaram	Porco Gateway

Notes

• These missiles do explosive damage too, so when fighting with non-wing friendlies it is recommend to keep an eye on friendly position to avoid friendly fire.
• Sometimes the missiles will cluster together which can cause the detonation of one missile to destroy other missiles, causing little to no damage to the hull. Firing from a longer distance may help to prevent this issue, since the missiles will have more time to travel and avoid each other.
• Pack-Hound Missile Racks have fairly high heat generation compared to regular Missile Racks. Emptying two launchers at once can easily cause a ship's heat to reach 100%.

Videos

Pack Hound Guided Missile Launcher Review

Elite Dangerous A Federal Gunship with a GPU-melting amount of Packhounds