5A - Missile Defence

Description Summary

Missile Defence Software is a system that allows ships to automatically react to missile attacks. It locks on to the incoming missile and launches a Mosquito Missile of its own, to destroy it and thereby serve as countermeasure. The software can be bought at a number of equipment docks and corporation headquarters and, once installed, is permanently operational as long as there are Mosquito Missiles in the cargo hold.

Detailed Info

There are numerous ways to protect yourself against missiles, including the Missile Defence Software.

There are a number of hotkeys available for easily targeting incoming missiles, so you can shoot them down.  As well as the Fire counter missile hotkey, which will fire a Mosquito Missile at the closest incoming missile (NOTE: you dont need to target the missile or even have Mosquitos loaded for it to work).

You can also set your turrets to Missile Defence or Missiles Only.  Missile Defence will also protect your ship by shooting at other enemies, but will prioritise missiles, Missiles Only will only target missiles and ignore any other ships attacking you.

If you have a Missile Frigate (M7M) then they can also use its missile bays to act as missile defence platforms for your whole fleet.

Then finally, we have the Missile Defence software that can be installed on any of your ships.

Note that MDS is /not/ necessary for <playership> /manual/ use (though its manual function may require an explicit keybind in <settings>); neither do manual or automatic anti-missile measures require Mosquito missiles to be  explicitly selected in <playership> loadout: they simply have to be in the ship's cargo. MDS simply automates the counter-missile launch for both <playership> & any NPC ship

Also note that to conserve your missiles, the MDS will not attempt to destroy all missiles, it determines which missiles to take down based on their destructive power and your current level of shields.  If you shields can easily absorb the damage, a Mosquito is not wasted to take it down.  Therefore some missiles will hit your ship, but they shouldn't do much damage to you