Help with designing a missile warship?

[Foolcow (OP)]

Is there a tutorial or thread anywhere that explains all the basic steps needed to create missiles and a ship to fire them?

I'm hoping for something similar to Part 10 of the tutorial which deals with designing beam armed warships.  I'm comfortable with that, but am totally lost when it comes to using missiles.

[Theokrat]

Hm, maybe you could get blue emu to post his AAR here as well, otherwise its only accessible on the Paradox forums. The first couple of posts were a very good introduction to the nessariy steps (even if I dont agree to some of the design choices he made)

[xeryon]

My first 5-6 missile craft designs were complete failures and resulted in significant losses in personnel, materials and sanity.  Without a lengthy tutorial here are the basics:

Missiles
Magazine
Launcher
Fire Control
Sensor

Missiles and magazine should be sized accordingly.  A larger launcher will be able to fire smaller missiles, it is just inefficient to do so.  Much better to size them appropriately.
Missile range, FC and Sensor range should be ranged accordingly to minimize inefficiencies.  Make sure sensor and FC are capable of resolving (seeing) the size of craft you want to fire on at a range that is acceptable.
Use the Combat screen to assign missiles to launchers, launchers to fire control, fire control to enemies (when available), and the copy and paste buttons Steve has graciously given us so you only have to configure one ship of a given type and apply the settings to your others similar ships.

Otherwise design, fail and repeat until successful.   

[Foolcow (OP)]

Thanks for that; I guess the basic list is really all I needed.  I just didn't want to design and build a whole ship only to find that I'd left out a critical component.

Is there any point in putting sensors on the missile itself?  I'm talking about the "Sensor" area on the missile design page.

[Erik L]

Thanks for that; I guess the basic list is really all I needed.  I just didn't want to design and build a whole ship only to find that I'd left out a critical component.

Is there any point in putting sensors on the missile itself?  I'm talking about the "Sensor" area on the missile design page.

Missile sensors are good if the launching ship gets knocked out. If that happens, and no sensors, the missiles just sit there and waste your credits.

[Havear]

I used to use missile ships until I developed my new ship doctrine. I suggest first building the missile itself. For low-tech towards the beginning of the game I usually use strength-4 missiles, then later upgrade to strength-9 and stay there, with .1 MSP dedicated to thermal sensors. If my launching ship gets knocked out or, much more probably, the vessel I'm launching at runs out of fire control range, the sensors will allow the missiles to continue on. Typically I then give the fire control and active sensors for the missile (if I put an active on my missile ship, which I usually don't and put instead on the jumpship) a slightly greater range, in this case ~35 mkm for a 30 mkm range missile. Once you've got all that, and assuming you have launchers and magazines designed for your missiles, just start building your ship. Magazine supply for spare missiles will vary from ship to ship, but for a mainline combatant typically I aim for 20-30 salvos total, though salvo density is often more important then duration.

[xeryon]

I mistakenly typed missiles and magazines earlier when I meant missiles and launchers should be sized together.

Early game with lower tech it is often more efficient to have several smaller ships in your task group with different roles.  I like to have a missile boat with 6-10 launchers and two FC and magazine sized for 10-15 salvos.  A dedicated active sensor ship which has a gigantic bullseye on it so it usually has a boatload of armor and at least two of them in a task group depending on the rest of the compliment.  They are usually pretty small and disposable.  Then I offload anti-missile defense to dedicated ships.  My typical introductory fleet is 6-8 ships in the 5000-7000 ton range for the missile ships and 1500-2000 for the sensor ships.

[Nathan_]

sensors on missiles can be safely skipped for your first missile ship. Design your missile first, then design the launcher and Fire Control based on that missiles stats. Magazine can be whatever you think will fit, I generally do a size 10 and size 30 one.  Sensor duty can and should be pulled by another ship, especially if you want to do anti-missile work. Lastly, colliers(ships with basically all magazines) will be useful to lug around extra ammo. Try to keep the size of your first ships down, this will help.

On to combat itself, Is your active sensor on? turn it on(f6 or f8).
Is ordinance assigned to your launchers(either through f6 or f8)? assign it.
Are your launchers assigned to an FC? Assign them
At this point, if you have other similar ships in this TG click the copy assign/copy TG button to propagate this change to all subsequent ships.
Does your FC have a target? pick one(has to be in range of your missiles endurance rating, your FC's scan range, and any ECM can't degrade your FC's scan range too much, if this is the case get closer).
As before, click on Copy Target/Class in TG to propagate targeting information to all ships of this class.
Have you issued a weapons free order? through f6 for each ship, or f8 for all ships order them to open fire.
advance time(typically by 5 seconds), there should be blue lines/circles with your missile names on them headed towards the badguys.

[Theokrat]

sensors on missiles can be safely skipped for your first missile ship. Design your missile first, then design the launcher and Fire Control based on that missiles stats.

Just a minor point, but I would advocate designing the firecontrolls and active sensors before the missile, not vice versa.

The point is that the range of the missile is practically more limited by sensor and FC considerations, rather than how much fuel you put on the missile.

Put differently: Even at early technology it is relatively easy to design a fairly long ranged missile (of course at the cost of payload and accuracy), but it really becomes prohibitive when considering how much space this would imply for sensors and fire controls.

[xeryon]

The counter argument to all of this is that no matter what you design and build it is likely to not be a successful first encounter and will end up with your ship being blown to smithereens.  On a slightly more positive note you will then be able to take the humiliating loss back to the drawing board and correct the mistakes of your design.  There is no always correct design.  The enemies you meet will vary in armament and you will need to alter your designs to meet the demands of your specific game.

i.e. I've encountered enemies that far out-ranged me, so I retooled to out range them.  The next enemy I encountered had a pile of ECM so my range was greatly reduced and I got blasted.  I corrected for that and the next enemy had missiles going 4 times faster then mine.  Even though I out-ranged them they were faster then me and closed in.  Their missiles reached me before mine reached them and I got blasted.  The missiles were so fast I had reduced chance for anti-missile defenses to be of any use.  It's very rock-paper-scissors kind of setup.

[Nathan_]

Just a minor point, but I would advocate designing the firecontrolls and active sensors before the missile, not vice versa.

The point is that the range of the missile is practically more limited by sensor and FC considerations, rather than how much fuel you put on the missile.

Put differently: Even at early technology it is relatively easy to design a fairly long ranged missile (of course at the cost of payload and accuracy), but it really becomes prohibitive when considering how much space this would imply for sensors and fire controls.

Regardless if you need a long range missile/sensor combo you get to pay for them, and having separate colliers and sensor ships takes the edge off of the larger MFC cost.

[Havear]

Just a minor point, but I would advocate designing the firecontrolls and active sensors before the missile, not vice versa.

The point is that the range of the missile is practically more limited by sensor and FC considerations, rather than how much fuel you put on the missile.

Put differently: Even at early technology it is relatively easy to design a fairly long ranged missile (of course at the cost of payload and accuracy), but it really becomes prohibitive when considering how much space this would imply for sensors and fire controls.

I design the sensors and fire control after the missile, as I've found that range is variable enough you end up with equipment either much larger then you need or too small, requiring a complete redesign and a few more months of R&D. If I design the missiles first, I can tune the equipment to use that range, plus possibly compensate for the next missile generation so I don't have to refit. Of course, as xeryon says, your first encounter is in all likelihood going to be a disaster. My first few were... less then victories. (One of them ended with the destruction of my multi-billion population homeworld as the aliens caught my fleet out of position due to a bad timeskip on my part, and the AAMs were slower then the missiles heading in.)

[Panopticon]

I tend to over-engineer my fire controls to compensate for possible ECM as standard practice, I feel it is cheaper to have slightly bigger MFCs rather than wasting space and research time on ECCM tech.

[Havear]

Agreed. It really depends as to how far into the game I am. Early-game the equipment often is only slightly longer-ranged then the missiles, but that increases as I tech until it eventually starts decreasing from better ECCM.

[Peter Rhodan]

I started with 6kT standard ships - 3 designs - AMM boat - 6 Size launchers -  3 x res 1 Missile Fire controls - my 1st design could only see missiles at 2.1mk - and 300+ missile storage (50 salvo's +)
ASM boat - 4 Size 9 launchers - 40 odd size 9 missiles ( I forget exactly for 1st couple of designs) - I have 2 designs  - long range version with initially 5 damage and short range version with 11 damage
 and 1 Missile Fire control - my original design was 115mk range at Res 100 - by comparison my current MFCs are 200mk at Res 50 and 95mk at Res 1 - third ship was sensor ship - It carried 2 Sensors - a Res 100 long range scanner with about 300mk range if I remember correctly and a short rand scanner for anti-missile defence Res 1 with about 7mk range (could see Star Swarms at about 25mk I think)
I used 5-6 ship Divisions of AMM and ASM ships and attached a Scanner ship to at least 2 divisions in each task force (in case of miscalculation in terms of enemy effectiveness - they nearly always target scanner ships first)
I did not worry about speed or armour and only had limited shields -  the aim was to use the AMM ships to stop enemy fire (Running away increases the number of salvos you can get in against incoming missiles) until they ran out of missiles then close to my range and blow them to hell with my ASM ships.
This is still my basic fleet operating strategy - and I still have six divisions of 6 of each of 6kT designs - to go with my 12kT frigates and 36kT battleships - and my new 24kT, 18kT designs just starting to build and my new GP 6kT Corvette which will eventually replace the single armament 6kT ships

Hope this helps - ps. I have explored over 400 systems and in combat against precursors or star swarm I have only lost 3 combat ships although I have had quite a few damaged.