So when it comes down to it, warhead size and which does more damage is sort of a moot point when the missile doesn't hit anything.
True... but this, in some ways, is another point in favour of the HS missiles. With IRs, I have a pretty big wastage ratio, because I fire when I have lock, not when I can count on a hit. FFs are different, they hit most of the time - but they pick the target they want to go after, which often is different to the one you actually wanted to kill. Meanwhile, with a HS missile, because I know that it's fairly easy to spoof, I tend to be careful and fire only when I'm pretty sure it will hit.
This means that, for me, HS missiles generally guarantee the highest hit ratio. That's not actually thanks to any inherent superiority of the HS missile - quite the opposite, it's actually because it's inferior
. Still, I'm sure I'm not the only one who gets careless thanks to the convenience of fire-and-forget missiles.
Bravo on that by the way. WC 2 was one of the few games where the heat seeker prooved at all useful.
I disagree. If you think about it, you'll find that actually, the only games where HS missiles weren't useful was WC3-4 and Privateer. In WC1, they sure were useful, because you had so few missiles, and they were pretty powerful. WC2 - same. WCP and SO - same story again. Armada - same again (though missiles were generally hard to use there).
Now, think about the causes for their uselessness in those other games. In Priv, the game balance was simply fudged in this regard, because they wanted to give you a progression from cheapest/worst to most expensive/best missiles - so the HS ended up cheaper, but more spoofable
and weaker than in other games.
What about WC3 and WC4? Why were HS missiles useless there? Uh... well, because nobody ever used them
. Having the freedom to load out your ship any way you wanted, everyone always went for the easy-to-use IR or Leech missiles. Based on most people's experience with WC3/4, you could actually claim that not only were HS missiles useless, but so were FFs and Darts - only IR and Leech missiles were of any use at all.
...And Leech missiles, of course, were the most useful of all - what other missile out there is there that can delay the appearance of the next wave of fighters until you've had time to take out all those annoying turret mines?
(too bad you then had to kill that defenceless leeched ship in order to allow the show to go on)