Author Topic: "Booster" stages on anti-ship missiles. Worth it?  (Read 2391 times)

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Offline Teiwaz (OP)

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"Booster" stages on anti-ship missiles. Worth it?
« on: April 09, 2011, 09:19:01 PM »
I've been considering a 2-stage missile design for an anti-ship missile - the second stage would be a fast, maneuverable missile with a large warhead, but with a short range (2 million km or so) while the first stage would be a design built purely around maximum possible range.

It seems like a good idea intuitively, but I'm finding that I'm not getting much of a return on engine efficiency - an engine which is twice as powerful burns twice the fuel, right? So all the net effect of a second stage, as far as I can tell, is that you have to carry a second engine onboard which doesn't do anything until the end. (I suppose the final stage would be more slightly effective as I'd be dumping an "empty" fuel tank to drop weight, but that doesn't seem to overcome the cost of the extra weight of an engine that's off during the first stage.)

Is there any place for this sort of design in Aurora, or are multi-stage missiles mostly only useful for "MIRV" designs for fitting to ships that only carry larger, utility launchers, or "buckshot" type designs to try to overwhelm enemy AMM defenses?
 

Offline Catty Nebulart

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Re: "Booster" stages on anti-ship missiles. Worth it?
« Reply #1 on: April 09, 2011, 11:20:50 PM »
Make the first stage slow but efficient, the second stage should be fast and have a bit of agility etc.  I use it mainly for my PDC bases which need a lot of range as they can't move, and PDC launchers offset the slow recharge of large missiles to some extend.  Although I find to be efficient and still get enough missiles to overwhelm the point defenses I do need multiple warheads on a single booster stage.

I think it would work better with a drone as the first stage but I'm still learning myself, and I am 3-4 generations behind with drone engine tech.
 

Offline Narmio

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Re: "Booster" stages on anti-ship missiles. Worth it?
« Reply #2 on: April 10, 2011, 12:57:00 AM »
I had a mess around with this, but I couldn't make two-stage designs (MIRV or booster) really worthwhile, just because fuel is such a small part of each missile.  Not carrying your empty fuel tanks with you just doesn't seem that great.  If you want to saturate enemy PD, using size 2-4 missiles with reduced size launchers instead of size 5-8 missiles with normal launchers does a better job than packing big launchers with MIRVs. 

The one advantage I can see is for versatility - you make a design with large launchers and have both MIRV and standard warheads available.
 

Offline Sheb

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Re: "Booster" stages on anti-ship missiles. Worth it?
« Reply #3 on: April 10, 2011, 03:34:37 AM »
What he said. Use drones engines, they are much more efficient, and you can do really huge range missile. You could even have a design were a small, stealthy scout using passives detect the target from close on, and the large missile ships, sitting hundred of millions of km from there launch the missiles, with second-stage missile having some kind of sensors.
 

Offline ardem

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Re: "Booster" stages on anti-ship missiles. Worth it?
« Reply #4 on: April 10, 2011, 08:17:11 PM »
I use Size 10 MIRV, with about 6 launchers, then I have size 3 MIRV's I don't really use this for the range, I use it more for saturation.

When I only have 6 launchers on a ship, this gives me the ability to saturate a target with 18 missiles not 6, which get shot down, this is the big advantage of using MIRV, also I mix in some decoy size 1 missiles so with 6 launches I have up to 30 missiles upon impact, this overwhelms the point defense systems.

I don't think boosters for a 1 to 1 system really is an advantage, but not tried to use drones. My opinion saturation is more important then range. (well to a degree)
 

Offline Brian Neumann

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Re: "Booster" stages on anti-ship missiles. Worth it?
« Reply #5 on: April 10, 2011, 08:50:19 PM »
If you want a major boost to range, then trade off the engine for fuel on the booster stage.  Then use a small missile with .01 fuel (probably 1-3 million km range)  Put the rest into the warhead, seaker, engine, ect.  It will give you a better end stage performance, but I do not think it is good enough for what you are giving up. 
In reference to the previous poster about saturation, this can be important, but also having big armored missiles can be important as well.  It does depend on what is being used for point defense.  If it is amm and gauss cannon then a big missile with a big warhead and a couple points of armour can be very hard to kill, especially if you have any ecm advantage and put it on the missile.  A good example would be a size 12 missile.  Put 1 point each into armour, ecm, and 1/2 a point for your choice of sensor.  Put 6 points into engine, 2 into fuel and 1.5 into warhead.  Using the space race scenario for 5.4 here is what you get
Code: [Select]
Missile Size: 12 MSP  (0.6 HS)     Warhead: 9    Armour: 1     Manoeuvre Rating: 10
Speed: 40000 km/s    Endurance: 21 minutes   Range: 50.0m km
EM Sensor Strength: 0.275    Detect Sig Strength 1000:  275,000 km
ECM Level: 2
Cost Per Missile: 11.775
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 400%   3k km/s 130%   5k km/s 80%   10k km/s 40%
Materials Required:    1x Corbomite   2.5x Tritanium   0.275x Uridium   7.75x Gallicite   Fuel x5000

Development Cost for Project: 1178RP
  This will be a very hard to stop missile. If their pd setup is not linked into eccm then all of the beam weapons will be at a -20% to hit, and the missile pd will have a 20% shorter range.  Also eveyr 1 point hit has only a 50% chance to actually stop the missile.  If their base chance was 30% this would be reduced to 15% effectively, or 6 shots per incomming shot.  Then when the gauss open fire the best chance would probably be 50%, if not linked to eccm then this would end up around 30 then reduced due to the armouring.  Using armour is a very good way to make big missiles survivable against higher tech oponents.  Flip the ecm to armour and now even a 10cm laser oly has a 60% success rate when it hits, and the standard amm has a 25% success rate.

Brian
 

Offline Arwyn

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Re: "Booster" stages on anti-ship missiles. Worth it?
« Reply #6 on: April 20, 2011, 03:08:37 PM »
I guess the question is what are you really trying to accomplish. If its saturation, there are some good pointers above. If its actual range extension, then yes it can be valid and successful.

I had a previous game where I was trying (desperately) to stay outside the active sensor range of an NPR whos tech was MUCH better than mine. I was keeping him from slaughtering me by having faster ships and ECM, but his weapons tech and PD tech was much better. I did have an advantage in that my sensor tech was better, and my detection ranges were about 20% or so better than the Bad Guy.

To leverage the advantage, I built two missile designs. The first one was a size 6 missile that has a fair amount of fuel, but just enough engines to get it down range faster than either his ships or mine. It was built for endurance. It ran size 6, 1pt in engines and 2pts in fuel. Had a range of about 100m k/m and speed was like 13k km or 14k km. It was packing a single size 3 missile that ran 40,000km, a 4pt warhead, and a half point of armor, with a range of 5m km. I would lob these at the bad guys from 100m out, and then the second stage would seperate at 4m km, well outside of the AMM range of the bad guys. Having the half point of armor made the missiles much more survivable.

The design worked pretty well for what it was intended to do, which was to give me a shooting solution at a range outside of the bad guys. It also fit existing launchers in the fleet, so that solved any issues around refit.

I had a larger size 8 design that was simiar, it fired a size 4 missile that either had a thermal seeker or an active warhead that ranged out to 125m km.

You wont saturate targets like you can with multi-warhead missiles, but if your looking for very long range to get outside return fire, they work well.

This also works very well if your going up against higher tech enemies. 2-stage missiles with a 2nd stage with a high speed armored missile are a good way to get in hits against higher tech PD (as long as it isnt Mesons).