Missile Movement

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

I am debating changing the order of missile movement. Currently missiles move in descending order of speed. This has two main implications (based on the assumption that AMMs are faster than ASM):

• AMM have a chance to intercept ASM before they move
• AMM attacking ships will generally be attacked by beam point defence first because they will arrive before any ASM attacking on the same increment.

This means you might get an extra launch against incoming ASM before they strike, but it also means your point defence is likely to engage harder-to-hit, low-damage missiles before slower missiles with larger warheads.

I could simply change missiles to slowest move first (similar to worse reactions first for ships) and the reverse of the above will be true. The issue might be AMMs launching against targets they could not hit due to move order. Therefore, I think the best option might be that AMM with a missile target move first, followed by all other missiles in descending order of size. The latter being to simulate that point defence will likely attack larger inbound targets first.

[Droll]

I actually like the current order because it allows 2nd Stage missiles to use "decoy" missiles in a bid to attack beam PD heavy ships.

It's actually why a part of me wants to see 0.5 MSP missiles just so I can fit double the decoys in a 2nd stage. It sounds like implementing your change will effectively destroy this type of missile.

Edit: Currently large missiles already have trouble doing anything since you removed missile armor so decoying them is the only way I know of that can make them useable.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Larger missiles are intended to use ECM/ECCM. Missile 'armour' didn't work with the other mechanics and was too powerful on missiles.

Consider that with Ceramic Composite Armour, a single armour box on a ship is 5 tons. One missile size point is 2.5 tons. Therefore, adding one point of armour to a missile should require 2 MSP with that armour technology.

Also, it is unlikely that point defence crews would shoot at smaller missiles first just to make life easier for an attacker. The mechanics have to pass the common sense test. Once I get around to really tackling EW, perhaps you could have decoy missiles with some form of 'blip enhancer'.

[King-Salomon]

don't know anything about coding - but would it be possible to add a random element to it?

to simulate the "chaos" of a battlesituation instead of this will hapen - than this...

so maybe it might happen in this order.. but next phase it might happen in the other order?

sorry for making things more complicated as they have to 

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

don't know anything about coding - but would it be possible to add a random element to it?

to simulate the "chaos" of a battlesituation instead of this will hapen - than this...

so maybe it might happen in this order.. but next phase it might happen in the other order?

sorry for making things more complicated as they have to 

Making missiles move in a random order is easy to do. Even so, it would still make sense for PD crews to target the largest inbound missiles if they only get one shot.

[nuclearslurpee]

I do support the idea of missiles moving in descending order of size, rather than speed - with an exception for AMMs, probably.

Ideally it would be nice if we don't need a target-based exception for AMMs, since eliminating exceptions in the mechanics seems to be a design goal of C# Aurora. A possible solution would be to have all missiles move before exploding, i.e. allowing AMMs to function in a final fire manner.

So an alternative idea would be to have all missiles move in descending order of size, as suggested to improve beam PD functioning, but not have missiles explode until all missiles have moved. Then detonate missiles in inverse order of time-since-launch, so the "youngest" missiles hit a target and detonate first. This means that in a case where ASMs arrive at a ship in the same game tick that AMMs are launched from that ship/fleet, the AMMs will have a chance to hit the ASMs before they impact their target.

It's worth noting that one rather specific yet common situation where this would be significant is against Precursor missiles as it is not uncommon to encounter these while the player is still rather out-teched. For a player using AMMs it is possible that Precursor ASMs actually outrun player AMMs leading to situations where the AMMs "miss" by having the ASMs fly past them during an increment and then are unable to catch up while flying backwards - which makes sense, given the increment mechanic, but constitutes an additional to-hit penalty on top of the existing hit% calculation. Being able to use AMMs as a pseudo-PD weapon would give the player some recourse in this scenario - besides the good ol-fashioned approach of working out time-on-target solutions in a spreadsheet.

[Migi]

I think making missiles with missile targets move first makes sense.

Just to clarify, would this apply to all missiles or only to missiles the code thinks are AMMs (ie size 1 only)?
Because if you run out of AMMs you might want to use your ASMs in an AMM role (against other ASMs) and would no longer benefit.

I'm not sure that a random element would be a good thing, for one thing it would make it harder to debug.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

I do support the idea of missiles moving in descending order of size, rather than speed - with an exception for AMMs, probably.

Ideally it would be nice if we don't need a target-based exception for AMMs, since eliminating exceptions in the mechanics seems to be a design goal of C# Aurora. A possible solution would be to have all missiles move before exploding, i.e. allowing AMMs to function in a final fire manner.

So an alternative idea would be to have all missiles move in descending order of size, as suggested to improve beam PD functioning, but not have missiles explode until all missiles have moved. Then detonate missiles in inverse order of time-since-launch, so the "youngest" missiles hit a target and detonate first. This means that in a case where ASMs arrive at a ship in the same game tick that AMMs are launched from that ship/fleet, the AMMs will have a chance to hit the ASMs before they impact their target.

It's worth noting that one rather specific yet common situation where this would be significant is against Precursor missiles as it is not uncommon to encounter these while the player is still rather out-teched. For a player using AMMs it is possible that Precursor ASMs actually outrun player AMMs leading to situations where the AMMs "miss" by having the ASMs fly past them during an increment and then are unable to catch up while flying backwards - which makes sense, given the increment mechanic, but constitutes an additional to-hit penalty on top of the existing hit% calculation. Being able to use AMMs as a pseudo-PD weapon would give the player some recourse in this scenario - besides the good ol-fashioned approach of working out time-on-target solutions in a spreadsheet.

Interesting idea. That is trickier to code however. Currently, the damage does happen after everything moves, but all the interceptions and hits are handled sequentially. A Damage Record is created for each impact and a Resolve Damage phase follows movement. I would have to 'undo' hits due to subsequent interceptions before damage resolution (and record which salvo caused the damage), which is a little messy. Or rewrite missile movement.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

I think making missiles with missile targets move first makes sense.

Just to clarify, would this apply to all missiles or only to missiles the code thinks are AMMs (ie size 1 only)?
Because if you run out of AMMs you might want to use your ASMs in an AMM role (against other ASMs) and would no longer benefit.

I'm not sure that a random element would be a good thing, for one thing it would make it harder to debug.

'AMM' in this context would be a salvo targeting another salvo, regardless of size.

[Zincat]

Absolutely, PD ships should target largest missiles first.

There is absolutely no possible logical reason why a beam PD weapon would attack smaller missiles first. And at the tech level involved, it would also make no sense to introduce randomness. The largest missile is surely easily recognizable. If it is not, then there is electronic warfare involved. ECM, ECCM or anything else that could be added later on.

But barring that, largest missiles have to be targeted first. In fact, I really want this because I have been in a few situations and the AMM reached first, thus some ASM hit my ships.
Now, about the mechanical in-game means for that to happen, I'd say that what you are thinking could work.

Missiles with a missile target move first
Then all other missiles, from largest to smallest.
Seems pretty easy to understand to me, and functional as well.

[Droll]

Larger missiles are intended to use ECM/ECCM. Missile 'armour' didn't work with the other mechanics and was too powerful on missiles.

Consider that with Ceramic Composite Armour, a single armour box on a ship is 5 tons. One missile size point is 2.5 tons. Therefore, adding one point of armour to a missile should require 2 MSP with that armour technology.

Also, it is unlikely that point defence crews would shoot at smaller missiles first just to make life easier for an attacker. The mechanics have to pass the common sense test. Once I get around to really tackling EW, perhaps you could have decoy missiles with some form of 'blip enhancer'.

Honestly if you make it so that decoy missiles have a much more explicit implementation instead of implicit implementation I don't really care which order missiles move in. I just believe that making decoy missiles is an interesting design aspect which I hope will survive.

[Iceranger]

Larger missiles are intended to use ECM/ECCM. Missile 'armour' didn't work with the other mechanics and was too powerful on missiles.

Consider that with Ceramic Composite Armour, a single armour box on a ship is 5 tons. One missile size point is 2.5 tons. Therefore, adding one point of armour to a missile should require 2 MSP with that armour technology.

Also, it is unlikely that point defence crews would shoot at smaller missiles first just to make life easier for an attacker. The mechanics have to pass the common sense test. Once I get around to really tackling EW, perhaps you could have decoy missiles with some form of 'blip enhancer'.

I totally agree that shooting smaller missiles first doesn't make sense. However, I would like to point out the current lack of efficiency of large missiles are not balanced by their ability to mount better ECM/ECCM.

The main reason for smaller missile to dominate is simply that it is much easier to saturate the (beam) PD with smaller missiles. You can launch 6x S1 missiles with roughly the same space needed to launch a single S6 missile (which may not be consider a 'large' missile by some players). On the defender side, they only need 1/6 PD guns to defend against S6 missile salvos compared to defending against S1 salvos launched from a similar sized ship. This number gets much worse with larger ASMs. That's why we constantly see players do well against certain race's ASMs but get completely murdered by their AMM platforms. With proper design and under a realistic settings (similar tech levels), it is very likely that one can design S1 missiles with better efficiency (in terms of cost per actual damage) than any larger missiles.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Bear in mind that if a target has ECM, the missile can only overcome that with onboard ECCM. The fire control can't help in C#. So against ECM-protected targets and especially at higher TL, smaller missiles have a disadvantage to hit.

[Droll]

Bear in mind that if a target has ECM, the missile can only overcome that with onboard ECCM. The fire control can't help in C#. So against ECM-protected targets and especially at higher TL, smaller missiles have a disadvantage to hit.

This has never come into play for me. I am always able to have small missiles with both ECM and ECCM mounted that can both do consistent damage while also breaching PD. My missile sizes tend to be between 4-10 on my capital ships.

This is especially because of how mandatory ECM/ECCM is currently. ECM 10 grants almost complete immunity from any and all NPR weapons fire in all contexts (STO, PD, AS). The only reason why I lose fighters is because they mount the fighter size ECM 5s.

It should be noted that for this reason I always rush research of ECM systems.

[Pury]

I think that it would be interesting to allow NPR to target missiles primarily based on their knowledge about them and secondarily based on their size and speed.   That would make it harder to use their limitations as an AI for players advantage.   Simple calculation of missile type (and maybe number of them) in a salvo, where All aviable information's: DMG, agility, speed, ECM would be used to calculate which salvo is the deadliest.   If missile design is unknown, then it is treated as the known missile of the closest size (With maximum difference implemented to prevent some wrong assumption's).   If non missile designs present are known, then AI will target them based on Size and (then) Speed. 
Edit:
Although this would require to separate movement and dmg phase, as proposed above