Doomsday rocket launcher

The doomsday rocket launcher is a single-use, single-shot rocket launcher that is one of the strongest weapons in the game, along with the triple rocket launcher.

Acquisition

Doomsday rocket launchers cannot be crafted, and must be either acquired through trade, as a quest reward, found in ancient shrines, or looted from Raiders, specifically from Heavy Mercenaries in Outlander and Pirate raids. In the last case, care must be taken to kill or down the raider before they can fire the weapon.

Raider Kind	Chance	Average Quality	Health
Heavy mercenary	?%	-	70-230%

Summary

The doomsday rocket launcher is a single-use consumable, unlike most weapons. Once fired once, the launcher disappears completely. It cannot be reloaded, nor can any resources be salvaged from it. When fired, the cooldown time of the weapon is still observed. It is similar to a triple rocket launcher in this respect. It's worth noting that this launcher is never automatically aimed by colonists - they have to be ordered to fire by the player.

When fired, the doomsday rocket launcher fires a rocket that produces a single explosion in a 7.8 tile radius explosion, dealing 50 bomb damage. Afterwards, 3 smaller explosions deal 10 flame damage, potentially igniting targets, and covering the ground in chemfuel puddles which also then ignite. These secondary explosions can exceed the displayed blast radius of the rocket so care must be taken when firing. There are some unconfirmed reports that the secondary explosions can also detonate behind walls.^[Confirm]

If it is damaged in item form, i.e. not held by a pawn, by Flame damage, it may explode.^{[Detail needed]} The launcher will spark and emit a hissing sound shortly before exploding some time later. The explosion deals 50 Bomb damage in a 7.8 tile radius around itself.

Analysis

The doomsday rocket launcher is a single use, but extraordinarily effective solution to human raids of all kinds. It combines significant damage, large area of effect, incendiaries, and long range. This allows it to quickly devastate, if not outright end, human raids that show up. As they are very difficult to acquire in bulk, rocket launchers are best as emergency weapons.

Doomsday rocket launchers have a range that dwarfs most other weapons; being tied with the triple rocket launcher and only surpassed by the sniper rifle. Therefore, they are perhaps the ultimate solution to dispatch of dangerous sieges and late-game tribal raids. Raiders that "prepare" can be handled with multiple mortars, or in the case of tribals, even just a sniper rifle.

Mechanoids are immune to both flame damage and to being ignited. This significantly reduces the effectiveness of Doomsdays. As centipedes (and to a lesser extent, termites) have such high health scales, doomsday rocket launchers aren't the raid-ending threat like they are against humanoids, but they still deal decent damage.

Compared to triple rocket launchers

Triple rocket launchers fire 3 rockets; each rocket deals 50 bomb damage, the same as the doomsday's main explosion, but with a smaller radius. Even one rocket is easily enough to kill humanoids. Therefore, multiple rockets (which may overlap) are more effective against bulkier mechanoid targets, like centipedes. However, the triple rocket launcher doesn't have the pure raid-ending potential that the doomsday launcher has - it is less effective in its niche than the doomsday launcher is at its niche.

There also exists opportunity cost - you may want to "save" doomsday launchers against devastating raids, but this may not always be possible. But you may only have triple or doomsday rocket launchers available, so don't be picky about either one.

Fighting against

As expected, doomsday rocket launchers in the hands of raiders are incredibly dangerous, and should be made priority targets. You can either focus firing on them, or by getting them to waste their single shot on an inconsequential or difficult to hit target.

Psychic shock lances and psychic insanity lances have a comparable range (1 tile shorter) and fire much faster (0.5s warmup vs 4.5s warmup), which will make the target a nonthreat. Psycasts can also berserk the pawn in question for the same effect.

Wealth management

Doomsday rockets are very effective form of wealth management. Items are almost always bought at a market value loss, and when actually used, the entire 1000 value is consumed. The rocket itself is a fairly strong last ditch weapon.

Doomdropping strategy

Combining a doomsday-armed pawn with a transport pod allows the player to rapidly position an effective counter to most raids anywhere on the map, even on larger map sizes. The pawn need not carry the doomsday day-to-day, and instead a shelf or stockpile an be placed next to the transport pods to allow a pawn to quickly switch from their current weapon to the doomsday before launching.

Pawns are exposed both before firing, and after firing if the launcher fails to break the raid. High quality armour is recommended, but high move speed is more useful. Go-juice is very useful, boosting speed and prevents pain downing your pawn.

If the Royalty DLC is active, there are more options to ease escape. Jump packs or locust armor make reposition faster, the Invisibility psycast renders the pawn immune to counter-fire before launching, and the Skip psycast can move a pawn.

Gallery

Doomsday Rocket Launcher being used against a large siege. Do note that a couple of pirates also have Doomsday Rocket Launchers equipped. Note that this image is old and displays 5 secondary explosions instead of 3.