This thread is based on a post in the Suggestions thread by Brian. It could have far-reaching implications so I decided to create a new topic.
How about improved magazines. Each level gives an extra 50 spaces of missles and requires the matching improvement in cargo handling technology. Make the reasearch cost be double the cost of the cargo handling and it is not something that will be reasearched execpt by races using missles a lot. Only give 10 spaces for small magazines as there is not as much room to work with to get the better efficiencies.
You may have opened a can of worms
I am sure I looked at this in the past because I remember checking out the size of modern launchers vs modern missiles but unfortunately that is one of the posts we lost after the problem with the hosting site.
One option is to make magazines match the size of missiles, which means reducing the capacity of existing magazines to 30, or perhaps creating a 10 HS magazine with a capacity of 100. Obviously this would have a massive impact on the capability of missile ships. The Oceanian Tribal class DDG shown below would require 60 HS of magazine capacity instead of 9 HS, or more realistically would have to reduce the number of launchers to probably three instead of six and have 1/3rd the magazine space, which would make the ship 1 HS smaller. That would make missile ships very weak unless missiles were made much more effective, such as being faster, harder to hit, having larger warheads or a combination of those. However, that would then also make launch rails and smaller, slow-firing missile launchers much more effective. Fighters and FACs would have a considerably greater punch. All of that would make Aurora a very different game in terms of missile combat. Not necessarily worse but very different. Rather than a Honor Harrington type situation it would be far more like modern naval combat, or perhaps even the modern Battlestar Galactica, where a single missile hit could be devastating. Given probable future warhead yields that might not be unrealistic.
Tribal class Destroyer 5850 tons 627 Crew 760 BP TCS 117 TH 360 EM 420
3076 km/s Armour 1 Shields 14-300 Sensors 10/0/0/0 Damage Control 0-0 PPV 24
Magazine 600 Replacement Parts 5
Nuclear Pulse Engine E7 (9) Power 40 Efficiency 0.70 Signature 40 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 70,000 Litres Range 73.8 billion km (277 days at full power)
Beta R300/10.5 Shields (9) Total Fuel Cost 95 Litres per day
Mk I Guided Missile Launch System (6) Missile Size 4 Rate of Fire 40
M900 Missile Fire Control (1) Range: 900k km
RGM-1 Katana (114) Speed: 10,000 km/s Endurance: 75 secs Range: 750k km Warhead: 3 Size: 4
RGM-2 Halberd (36) Speed: 14,000 km/s Endurance: 53 secs Range: 742k km Warhead: 2 Size: 4
SPS-32/16 Active Sensor (1) GPS 320 Range 3.2m km Resolution 16
ST-2 Thermal Sensor (1) Sensitivity 10 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 10m km
Option Two is to make missiles much smaller. Perhaps 1 point of missile size = 1/100th a HS. That works out well for magazine space, with a 3HS magazine equal to 300 points of magazine space. 200 points then looks very reasonable for a basic magazine with some later tech upping that toward the 300 limit. It also gives missile mass as 1 ton for a size 2 missile and 5 tons for a size 10 missile, which again looks reasonable. However, that gives two new problems. Firstly a missile launcher is now 100x larger than the missile, the smallest slow-reload launcher would be 25x and even a launch rail is 15x larger. I seem to recall from my earlier look at this that the 100x larger launcher is not necessarily unrealistic given modern equivalents but the launch rail would likely be smaller, which itself makes missile ships more effective.
A halfway house possibility here is to make one point of missile size = 1/50th HS, or one ton per point. Magazines would be 5 HS instead of 3HS, (making them equivalent to 250 points of missiles) and retaining their 200 point storage. This makes launchers 50x times larger, slow-reload 12x larger and Launch rails 7x larger. Still high but on the edge of believable. This is probably a reasonable compromise between playability and realism, especially if I dropped launch rails to 10% or 5x missile size.
Which brings me to the second problem for reduced missile size. Sensors currently detect missiles at the point of missile size = 1/10th HS level. If that is reduced to 1/50th or 1/100th, missiles go from difficult to detect to almost impossible. Given the active current sensor model, sensors would have to be huge to be able to acquire missiles at a range where they could be engaged before striking their target.
There are a few ways around this that I can think of. One is to allow ships to shoot at thermal contacts, instead of just active. I could easily give missiles a much higher thermal strength than their cross-section due to the high power of missile drives. Another alternative is to give active sensors an ability to zero in on thermal contacts at a greater range than they would detect a new contact. Finally a special type of active sensor designed to pick out small contacts that wouldn't work on large contacts above a certain size.
A third option is to pretend Brian didn't post
or at least to accept the inconsistency but internal consistency is a major design driver for me with Aurora.
I am very open to other options and suggestions in this area.
Steve