Effectiveness of COL?

[chris0101]

How effective in your games is COL? I have found that they do too little damage to justify their cost. After looking at the amount of damage done by the COL on a ship, I find that COL really doesn't do that much damage.

Right now, I mainly use the implosion mine col - which one do you use?

[zanzibar196]

COL is much more effective if you use leap mines...

Sent from my LS670 using Tapatalk

[ZedF]

Leap and implosion mines are both good in COL, though used differently. Leap does less maximum damage but is more reliable and less dangerous to the user.

[chris0101]

Leap and implosion mines are both good in COL, though used differently. Leap does less maximum damage but is more reliable and less dangerous to the user.

True that - there have been a few friendly fire incidences with COL, especially because I like to pair my ships up with pulsed graviton beams.

How effective is the enemy PD versus leap mine COL?

[ZedF]

Unless they have phaser PD, not very. Even with phaser PD the mines come in so fast it's possible to overwhelm them, especially if the enemy formation is not sufficiently tight.

[chris0101]

Unless they have phaser PD, not very. Even with phaser PD the mines come in so fast it's possible to overwhelm them, especially if the enemy formation is not sufficiently tight.

With leap mines, it seems that even with Phaser PD, and against Liir DN, it can be possible to overwhelm them and get maybe half through. Implosion mines don't seem to work as well vs Liir as they can just phaser PD them at a distance with minimal damage. The Morrigi DN COL section in particular is lethal. Pair it with pulsed graviton beams to try to strip some of the enemy turrets and often they are toast.

Gonna test out drones vs leap mines. Not sure if COL drones are any different (less health; need to be more often refuelled I see). Just to throw the enemy off, I often use different weaponry. Right now my ships are energy weapon heavy, but my heavy drones uses medium AP drivers. Perhaps the answer is a mixture of ordnance and drones?

Edit:
I've also been debating the best command section. Right now, I've been using the Morrigi assault section with antimatter torpedoes to try to scramble the enemy PD; forcing them to engage both the COL and the torpedoes. It seems to work better than using the AI Command section.

[nDervish]

The Morrigi DN COL section in particular is lethal.

Is there some trick to using dread COLs successfully? I've only tried them once or twice (I think I was playing Liir at the time, but may have been Human), but it seemed that, on auto-fire, they either used only the center (straight ahead) launcher, not the side ones, and they getting them to fire with all three on manual was even less reliable, so I've been sticking with only cruiser COLs since then.

[Achronus]

I don't know about other races. But, found that AI command is best on the Col Dreadnaughts because the ship will 'rocker' back and forth to fire all guns. I have not had that experience with any other command section. Also, if you have the EW command section don't close range!. You can see them and shoot them well before they can shoot you! Artillery FTW!

[MZ0125]

ship with COL Cracker + Implosion Mine, my name for that design is "Supernova", =D

[Unkn0wnx]

I use COL drones sometimes. They never run out of drones.

[Goomich]

Edit:
I've also been debating the best command section. Right now, I've been using the Morrigi assault section with antimatter torpedoes to try to scramble the enemy PD; forcing them to engage both the COL and the torpedoes. It seems to work better than using the AI Command section.

If enemy have something than you can use your PDs on, then Interceptors can distract their PD.