Aurora 4x
C# Aurora => C# Mechanics => Topic started by: Ulzgoroth on December 01, 2023, 12:09:18 AM
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I think the way the possibilities for AMMs have changed may be a big driver in new missile regimes. So I want to break down those options.
The Traditional
Single warhead, no fancy features. Can take advantage of fractional warheads to eke out a little more performance than before, but likely to lose a lot of accuracy from not having agility. I expect these to be obsolete except maybe at low tech levels. But they will have the best raw stats in a way since they aren't spending on anything else.
Flak
Multiple warhead, otherwise traditional. My guess is this will be the standard against which more exotic options are measured. With multiple warheads it's conceivable to use more than 1 MSP on these, but probably not useful unless you're concerned with extending their range through fuel efficiency.
Smart
Shelling out for Active Terminal Guidance. At high tech levels, this likely benefits even 1 MSP AMMs and almost certainly benefits any larger ones. Check how the fraction of engine size it eats up compares to the accuracy multiplier.
(ECCM I'm not sure about. Antimissile ECCM is radically different from anti-ship ECCM: it's worthless unless the ECCM is superior to the missile's ECM tech, while for ships it's the other way around. There are definitely scenarios where it would pay off but I suspect they're rare.)
Excessively Smart
Put retargeting on an AMM. At a full half MSP, this is an enormous sacrifice of space, especially if you're trying for a 1 MSP weapon. On the other hand, if you can outrun the target even a little bit (and intercept more than about a minute from impact), you get one hit for one shot, and have no need for any of the other enhancements. Unlike ASMs, a retargeting AMM doesn't risk repeated passes through point defense fire! These missiles are the ones I want to dig into, because they're probably not always the answer but they do do a lot to constrain the viable ASM space. A simple offensive cruise missile is at risk of a disastrous 1:1 exchange rate.
One way to survive excessively smart AMMs is decoys. Note, the math here is surprisingly harsh to the decoys - A missile with N decoys has an expected hits to kill of N/2+1 (assuming no ECCM). That means you're using a full MSP of decoys per excessively smart AMM!
The other counter is to be too fast for them. A 1 MSP AMM with retargeting is going to lose a lot of performance. A larger AMM does better there but bleeds against decoys. OTOH outracing an AMM is tricky for a long-range offensive missile, since they need to carry fuel or limit engine boost to achieve standoff range. This might be a big advantage for staged missiles. (And short-range torpedoes.)
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I suspect you are right. It has made designing AMMs at the tech levels I usually play at interesting, to say the least. I do wonder if there is a reason for small active sensors on missiles anymore if you are using ATG. Doesn't seem like it.
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I suspect you are right. It has made designing AMMs at the tech levels I usually play at interesting, to say the least. I do wonder if there is a reason for small active sensors on missiles anymore if you are using ATG. Doesn't seem like it.
Does ATG actually include any of the functionality of on-board sensors? I had been reading the sensor part as flavor text for a simple accuracy modifier.
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I suspect you are right. It has made designing AMMs at the tech levels I usually play at interesting, to say the least. I do wonder if there is a reason for small active sensors on missiles anymore if you are using ATG. Doesn't seem like it.
Does ATG actually include any of the functionality of on-board sensors? I had been reading the sensor part as flavor text for a simple accuracy modifier.
ATG functions only as a boost to accuracy. It has no detection capability.
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I was playing around with this yesterday a bit. I'm at pretty low tech levels right now but a few thoughts I had..
I think it's very possible and maybe even good to consider a 1.5-2MSP AMM now. Previously there was no point, but retargeting with ATG.. You can make very effective AMMs. For the low tech I'm at now I will probably do a slightly larger missile and just plan to have a few less. Might end up being more resource-efficient too. Gonna be *fun* to test out!
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I was playing around with this yesterday a bit. I'm at pretty low tech levels right now but a few thoughts I had..
I think it's very possible and maybe even good to consider a 1.5-2MSP AMM now. Previously there was no point, but retargeting with ATG.. You can make very effective AMMs. For the low tech I'm at now I will probably do a slightly larger missile and just plan to have a few less. Might end up being more resource-efficient too. Gonna be *fun* to test out!
My theory has been that there's no reason to stack retarget capability with other upgrades (except conceivably ECCM) on an AMM. Once you've got retarget, you don't need an especially good hit chance - just enough speed to keep retrying the attack until it sticks, even if only at 11% or so.
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I was playing around with this yesterday a bit. I'm at pretty low tech levels right now but a few thoughts I had..
I think it's very possible and maybe even good to consider a 1.5-2MSP AMM now. Previously there was no point, but retargeting with ATG.. You can make very effective AMMs. For the low tech I'm at now I will probably do a slightly larger missile and just plan to have a few less. Might end up being more resource-efficient too. Gonna be *fun* to test out!
My theory has been that there's no reason to stack retarget capability with other upgrades (except conceivably ECCM) on an AMM. Once you've got retarget, you don't need an especially good hit chance - just enough speed to keep retrying the attack until it sticks, even if only at 11% or so.
--- Well, at 10% CtH you're looking at like 30~50 seconds TTK... It's very possible that low-accuracy AMMs won't hit the enemy ASM before the ASM finds it's mark.
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I was playing around with this yesterday a bit. I'm at pretty low tech levels right now but a few thoughts I had..
I think it's very possible and maybe even good to consider a 1.5-2MSP AMM now. Previously there was no point, but retargeting with ATG.. You can make very effective AMMs. For the low tech I'm at now I will probably do a slightly larger missile and just plan to have a few less. Might end up being more resource-efficient too. Gonna be *fun* to test out!
My theory has been that there's no reason to stack retarget capability with other upgrades (except conceivably ECCM) on an AMM. Once you've got retarget, you don't need an especially good hit chance - just enough speed to keep retrying the attack until it sticks, even if only at 11% or so.
--- Well, at 10% CtH you're looking at like 30~50 seconds TTK... It's very possible that low-accuracy AMMs won't hit the enemy ASM before the ASM finds it's mark.
That's something you do need to consider, but I don't think the numbers work out in favor of solving it with ATG.
The cheap argument I just thought of: ATG pays 0.25 MSP for at most 1.9x chance to hit. A second AMM warhead very probably weighs less for similar effect. With later tech you could dependably get two extra warheads in.
More mathy analysis of specifically using ATG with RT: the best case for adding even more overhead is clearly the larges AMM imaginable. For me at least I'd put that at 2 MSP, though there might be room to argue that for some scenarios! But once you take out the space for ATG and RT, that only leaves 1.25 (assuming negligible required warhead space). That means (A) that trading ATG for propulsion is worth >20% increase in speed and thus hit chance, so you need a decent ATG tech to bother. Also, it means the lowest accuracy for the non-ATG missile for you to be able to add ATG withotu breaking it is 12%, not 10%.
Overall that does seem like it might be justified sometimes for well-developed ATG tech, at least if you disregard the multi-head option.
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I think the trick with ATG-AMMs is that you need to have the first intercept be far enough out that the AMMs get several interception chances. There are several ways to accomplish this, but one I am thinking of is using fighters, FACs, or other smaller ships to screen in front of the main fleet and launch AMMs as the enemy ASM wave(s) passes. Otherwise though, the tactics are not that different from what we already have to do when fighting against box launchers.
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That's something you do need to consider, but I don't think the numbers work out in favor of solving it with ATG.
The cheap argument I just thought of: ATG pays 0.25 MSP for at most 1.9x chance to hit. A second AMM warhead very probably weighs less for similar effect. With later tech you could dependably get two extra warheads in.
More mathy analysis of specifically using ATG with RT: the best case for adding even more overhead is clearly the larges AMM imaginable. For me at least I'd put that at 2 MSP, though there might be room to argue that for some scenarios! But once you take out the space for ATG and RT, that only leaves 1.25 (assuming negligible required warhead space). That means (A) that trading ATG for propulsion is worth >20% increase in speed and thus hit chance, so you need a decent ATG tech to bother. Also, it means the lowest accuracy for the non-ATG missile for you to be able to add ATG withotu breaking it is 12%, not 10%.
Overall that does seem like it might be justified sometimes for well-developed ATG tech, at least if you disregard the multi-head option.
--- The thing is, accuracy is tied to speed. ATG is accuracy NOT tied to speed. And that is honestly kind of a huge deal here. Because you no longer need to be as fast to hit it, only fast enough to chase it down. So for larger AMMs, you may well want ATG with RT.
--- So, enemy ASM moving 10,000kms because multiples of 10 are not p a i n to work with. My AMM is moving 11,000kms. I have a 1% chance to hit... not great. HOWEVER! With even a 10% ATG I know have 11% chance to hit! If I get my AMM on target with 50s to spare, I'd have a theoretical 110% chance to hit. And that's with a laughably slow missile and bargain bin ATG.
--- Oh, and RT too of course.
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ATG chance to hit modifier appears to be multiplicative, not additive like you are describing.
That means your 1% chance to hit becomes 1.1%, not 11%.
Thats in line with how Steve described it in mechanics post, and what I personally expected behaviour wise.
You need a slightly larger AMM to use it well.
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That's something you do need to consider, but I don't think the numbers work out in favor of solving it with ATG.
The cheap argument I just thought of: ATG pays 0.25 MSP for at most 1.9x chance to hit. A second AMM warhead very probably weighs less for similar effect. With later tech you could dependably get two extra warheads in.
More mathy analysis of specifically using ATG with RT: the best case for adding even more overhead is clearly the larges AMM imaginable. For me at least I'd put that at 2 MSP, though there might be room to argue that for some scenarios! But once you take out the space for ATG and RT, that only leaves 1.25 (assuming negligible required warhead space). That means (A) that trading ATG for propulsion is worth >20% increase in speed and thus hit chance, so you need a decent ATG tech to bother. Also, it means the lowest accuracy for the non-ATG missile for you to be able to add ATG withotu breaking it is 12%, not 10%.
Overall that does seem like it might be justified sometimes for well-developed ATG tech, at least if you disregard the multi-head option.
--- The thing is, accuracy is tied to speed. ATG is accuracy NOT tied to speed. And that is honestly kind of a huge deal here. Because you no longer need to be as fast to hit it, only fast enough to chase it down. So for larger AMMs, you may well want ATG with RT.
--- So, enemy ASM moving 10,000kms because multiples of 10 are not p a i n to work with. My AMM is moving 11,000kms. I have a 1% chance to hit... not great. HOWEVER! With even a 10% ATG I know have 11% chance to hit! If I get my AMM on target with 50s to spare, I'd have a theoretical 110% chance to hit. And that's with a laughably slow missile and bargain bin ATG.
--- Oh, and RT too of course.
As Elouda says, it's very specifically a multiplicative to-hit boost, not an additive one, but in addition the percent chance for a missile to hit is ten times the speed ratio, not equal to the speed ratio. So your barely-outspeeding missile has 11% chance to hit already, and that goes up to 12.1% with the benefit of ATG. Considering the small missiles size, trading the 0.25 points of ATG for more propulsion would definitely give more benefit. at that tech level.
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That's something you do need to consider, but I don't think the numbers work out in favor of solving it with ATG.
The cheap argument I just thought of: ATG pays 0.25 MSP for at most 1.9x chance to hit. A second AMM warhead very probably weighs less for similar effect. With later tech you could dependably get two extra warheads in.
More mathy analysis of specifically using ATG with RT: the best case for adding even more overhead is clearly the larges AMM imaginable. For me at least I'd put that at 2 MSP, though there might be room to argue that for some scenarios! But once you take out the space for ATG and RT, that only leaves 1.25 (assuming negligible required warhead space). That means (A) that trading ATG for propulsion is worth >20% increase in speed and thus hit chance, so you need a decent ATG tech to bother. Also, it means the lowest accuracy for the non-ATG missile for you to be able to add ATG withotu breaking it is 12%, not 10%.
Overall that does seem like it might be justified sometimes for well-developed ATG tech, at least if you disregard the multi-head option.
--- The thing is, accuracy is tied to speed. ATG is accuracy NOT tied to speed. And that is honestly kind of a huge deal here. Because you no longer need to be as fast to hit it, only fast enough to chase it down. So for larger AMMs, you may well want ATG with RT.
--- So, enemy ASM moving 10,000kms because multiples of 10 are not p a i n to work with. My AMM is moving 11,000kms. I have a 1% chance to hit... not great. HOWEVER! With even a 10% ATG I know have 11% chance to hit! If I get my AMM on target with 50s to spare, I'd have a theoretical 110% chance to hit. And that's with a laughably slow missile and bargain bin ATG.
--- Oh, and RT too of course.
As Elouda says, it's very specifically a multiplicative to-hit boost, not an additive one, but in addition the percent chance for a missile to hit is ten times the speed ratio, not equal to the speed ratio. So your barely-outspeeding missile has 11% chance to hit already, and that goes up to 12.1% with the benefit of ATG. Considering the small missiles size, trading the 0.25 points of ATG for more propulsion would definitely give more benefit. at that tech level.
In thinking more about this, I think ATG is actually the only choice for higher tier AMMs. Once you start to hit a point where missile speeds get into 6 digits and the relative differences in speed are going to keep you close to a 1 speed ratio (or 10% chance to hit), the chance of having a high hit rate on a missile, if I am understanding the formula correctly, are pretty low. Depending on what Retargeting thinks is a "low chance to hit", you may end up with your AMMs fully ignoring all of the missiles you send them against.
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In thinking more about this, I think ATG is actually the only choice for higher tier AMMs. Once you start to hit a point where missile speeds get into 6 digits and the relative differences in speed are going to keep you close to a 1 speed ratio (or 10% chance to hit), the chance of having a high hit rate on a missile, if I am understanding the formula correctly, are pretty low. Depending on what Retargeting thinks is a "low chance to hit", you may end up with your AMMs fully ignoring all of the missiles you send them against.
I don't think there's anything about high technology that would cause missile speeds to flatten out between AMM and ASM? I could imagine something about all missiles using the same highest possible engine boost and a high engine to fuel ratio so there's no room to buy much more speed, but does that really happen?
I think you're misunderstanding what retargeting means, too. It's not going to not make attack rolls. It just won't blow itself up if it fails the attack rolls.
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I don't think there's anything about high technology that would cause missile speeds to flatten out between AMM and ASM? I could imagine something about all missiles using the same highest possible engine boost and a high engine to fuel ratio so there's no room to buy much more speed, but does that really happen?
In practice, before 2.2 AMMs were nominally about twice the speed of ASMs. This was due to the fact that ASMs need much longer range than AMMs, which demands both a lower boost multiplier and a heavier fuel load, as well as the fact that AMMs of course have much lighter warheads. This translates to ~20% base accuracy against ASMs in the current mechanics, before adding ATG, RT, etc.
I think you're misunderstanding what retargeting means, too. It's not going to not make attack rolls. It just won't blow itself up if it fails the attack rolls.
This was my understanding as well. If you can set up a situation where each AMM can guarantee several attempts to intercept the target ASM, then retargeting will become the strongest option at some crossover point depending on AMM size, compared to ATG and "bare" AMMs.
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In thinking more about this, I think ATG is actually the only choice for higher tier AMMs. Once you start to hit a point where missile speeds get into 6 digits and the relative differences in speed are going to keep you close to a 1 speed ratio (or 10% chance to hit), the chance of having a high hit rate on a missile, if I am understanding the formula correctly, are pretty low. Depending on what Retargeting thinks is a "low chance to hit", you may end up with your AMMs fully ignoring all of the missiles you send them against.
I don't think there's anything about high technology that would cause missile speeds to flatten out between AMM and ASM? I could imagine something about all missiles using the same highest possible engine boost and a high engine to fuel ratio so there's no room to buy much more speed, but does that really happen?
I think you're misunderstanding what retargeting means, too. It's not going to not make attack rolls. It just won't blow itself up if it fails the attack rolls.
Other than there is a hard cap of 270,000kms for all missiles. At that point, or close to it, you do run into parity.
This is the line that leads me to think it is making a decision: "This provides ultra-short-range target assessment capability, using relative movement and damage projection to determine whether the missile will conduct a successful interception. If the on-board AI determines a low probability, the missile will not detonate and will continue past the target before attempting to re-engage."
That, to me, comes across as not making attack rolls if it believes they have a low chance of succeeding.
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This is the line that leads me to think it is making a decision: "This provides ultra-short-range target assessment capability, using relative movement and damage projection to determine whether the missile will conduct a successful interception. If the on-board AI determines a low probability, the missile will not detonate and will continue past the target before attempting to re-engage."
That, to me, comes across as not making attack rolls if it believes they have a low chance of succeeding.
I think that is just fluff. Otherwise, retargeting would be useless, because the %CTH will never change once an AMM has an ASM target. I think the fluff is meant to imply that the AMM (or other retargeting missile) determines whether or not it will hit the target, and if not it aborts the attack and sets up for another try.
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I also think that it is flavor text - it just means that missing (that is, failing an attack roll) no longer destroys the missile and it gets another chance to attack. The rest of that change post says, "In effect, this guarantees this missile will never 'miss' and will keep attacking in subsequent increments until destroyed or it runs out of fuel."
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In another direction, I'd reiterate that ATG is somewhat in competition with multi-warhead and it will have trouble winning that competition.
At high warhead tech, ATG will cost more MSP than 2 additional AMM warheads. If your underlying hit chance is low - say 20% - even the best ATG can't compete with that. (38% with 90% ATG vs. 48.8% with 3x warheads.) (This breaks the other way if your chance to hit is high - 53% to-hit turns into >100% with 90% ATG.)
It might be possible to profitably combine them, but if you have to pick one or the other I'd strongly favor multi-warhead for AMM, especially since they also have a virtuous interaction with decoys.
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In another direction, I'd reiterate that ATG is somewhat in competition with multi-warhead and it will have trouble winning that competition.
At high warhead tech, ATG will cost more MSP than 2 additional AMM warheads. If your underlying hit chance is low - say 20% - even the best ATG can't compete with that. (38% with 90% ATG vs. 48.8% with 3x warheads.) (This breaks the other way if your chance to hit is high - 53% to-hit turns into >100% with 90% ATG.)
It might be possible to profitably combine them, but if you have to pick one or the other I'd strongly favor multi-warhead for AMM, especially since they also have a virtuous interaction with decoys.
I imagine there will be a true optimum, depending on many factors, which involves a combination of both technologies on the same AMM. Multiple warheads are also potentially critical for beating missile decoys.
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In another direction, I'd reiterate that ATG is somewhat in competition with multi-warhead and it will have trouble winning that competition.
At high warhead tech, ATG will cost more MSP than 2 additional AMM warheads. If your underlying hit chance is low - say 20% - even the best ATG can't compete with that. (38% with 90% ATG vs. 48.8% with 3x warheads.) (This breaks the other way if your chance to hit is high - 53% to-hit turns into >100% with 90% ATG.)
It might be possible to profitably combine them, but if you have to pick one or the other I'd strongly favor multi-warhead for AMM, especially since they also have a virtuous interaction with decoys.
I imagine there will be a true optimum, depending on many factors, which involves a combination of both technologies on the same AMM. Multiple warheads are also potentially critical for beating missile decoys.
There could be, but it doesn't seem necessary that there would be since it's actually a four-way allocation problem between missile propulsion, ATG, RT, and warheads. And ATG, RT, and to a lesser extent warheads are sharply discretized. I'm very confident there are conditions where propulsion and warheads but no ATG beats propulsion and warheads and ATG. I'm pretty sure there are also conditions where ATG and multiple warheads (and obligatory propulsion) are better than no ATG, but don't know how realistic those conditions are.
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I haven't had to defend against missiles yet, but I've used my AMMs to shoot at laser protected ships. I'm using MSP2 missiles with RT, large engines and two warheads. I can fire out to near 4m so the idea is to give the RT a lot of time to destroy the missiles.
We'll see how it goes, but I'm not keen on ATG as of yet. I think RT is a no brainer and multiple warheads makes a lot of sense. That really doesn't leave a lot of room for ATG unless you start pushing into over 2 MSP... I'm at about MPD engine level tech.
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I haven't had to defend against missiles yet, but I've used my AMMs to shoot at laser protected ships. I'm using MSP2 missiles with RT, large engines and two warheads. I can fire out to near 4m so the idea is to give the RT a lot of time to destroy the missiles.
We'll see how it goes, but I'm not keen on ATG as of yet. I think RT is a no brainer and multiple warheads makes a lot of sense. That really doesn't leave a lot of room for ATG unless you start pushing into over 2 MSP... I'm at about MPD engine level tech.
I continue to have big doubts about combining RT with multiple warheads, since the value of RT only appears when it misses. Each is good, but I'm dubious that they're good together.
Also unless your enemies are actually using 20+ MSP missiles, I would probably not design an AMM with enough warhead to be effective against ships.
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Yeah it was terrible vs the ships, I mean it hit a lot but yeah. haha. More of a, well I'm running out of ASMs so lets try these.
It's tough to say from the log about multiple warheads, but it appears to perform well and the RT gives it extra chances to hit. I read warheads as being useful because of decoys more than anything.
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I would say that terminal targeting guidance technology is a really bad investment of research point full stop, that technology is not very good until very high up the tech tree. It probably should start at around 50% and end at 100% or something to be an interesting technology at all. It is of dubious use for AMM missile in almost all cases and will be at lest useful for ASM missiles if it started at 50% rather than 10%. Even at 50% the increase is not really drastic for most ASM either.
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Yeah it was terrible vs the ships, I mean it hit a lot but yeah. haha. More of a, well I'm running out of ASMs so lets try these.
I mean ineffective as in incapable of doing any damage. You don't need a 1-point warhead to kill missiles anymore, so AMMs usually would be better off with a smaller one especially if going for multiple warheads. But a less than 1 point warhead cannot damage ship armor or internals.
It's tough to say from the log about multiple warheads, but it appears to perform well and the RT gives it extra chances to hit. I read warheads as being useful because of decoys more than anything.
If your underlying hit chance is high enough for you to generate multiple hits per AMM with any frequency, it's high enough that I'd almost certainly remove RT in favor of something else.
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I would say that terminal targeting guidance technology is a really bad investment of research point full stop, that technology is not very good until very high up the tech tree. It probably should start at around 50% and end at 100% or something to be an interesting technology at all. It is of dubious use for AMM missile in almost all cases and will be at lest useful for ASM missiles if it started at 50% rather than 10%. Even at 50% the increase is not really drastic for most ASM either.
--- If it was a flat increase, it would be very worthwhile indeed.
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Yeah it was terrible vs the ships, I mean it hit a lot but yeah. haha. More of a, well I'm running out of ASMs so lets try these.
I mean ineffective as in incapable of doing any damage. You don't need a 1-point warhead to kill missiles anymore, so AMMs usually would be better off with a smaller one especially if going for multiple warheads. But a less than 1 point warhead cannot damage ship armor or internals.
It's tough to say from the log about multiple warheads, but it appears to perform well and the RT gives it extra chances to hit. I read warheads as being useful because of decoys more than anything.
If your underlying hit chance is high enough for you to generate multiple hits per AMM with any frequency, it's high enough that I'd almost certainly remove RT in favor of something else.
This convo has been good.. I forgot about how fractional warheads work. I had mine at 0.5 each and that's big enough for a 100% kill on a MSP10. I have changed it to 3wh at 0.3. Also I didn't realize fractional doesn't damage ship armor, so that's good to know.
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This is an aside but I just thought of something really stupid: Would laser warhead AMMs be able to ignore missile decoys regardless of ECM/ECCM tech?
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This is an aside but I just thought of something really stupid: Would laser warhead AMMs be able to ignore missile decoys regardless of ECM/ECCM tech?
Why would they? Same logic as a non-laser one applies, the laser might shoot at the real missile or the decoy.
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This is an aside but I just thought of something really stupid: Would laser warhead AMMs be able to ignore missile decoys regardless of ECM/ECCM tech?
Why would they? Same logic as a non-laser one applies, the laser might shoot at the real missile or the decoy.
I guess I'm just searching for a justification to using laser warhead AMMs, as right now it just seems like a bad idea.
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This is an aside but I just thought of something really stupid: Would laser warhead AMMs be able to ignore missile decoys regardless of ECM/ECCM tech?
Why would they? Same logic as a non-laser one applies, the laser might shoot at the real missile or the decoy.
I guess I'm just searching for a justification to using laser warhead AMMs, as right now it just seems like a bad idea.
Yeah they definitely seem to be intended as an ASM warhead type, for penetrating point defences.
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So, the results of a practical test I just did. Note that the incoming missiles were from an NPR, and were 30,000 km/s size 9 missiles with 2 decoys each (I think). Also the incoming missiles were magneto-plasma to my ion engines, so my AMMs barely had a speed advantage. I only counted the number of missiles hit, I ignored decoy hits. My ships moved away from the incoming missiles at 6,250 km/s.
Missile fire control: 2.89 million km range vs size 10 missiles, fire 3 AMMs per incoming enemy missile.
Multiple Warhead AMM: 55 enemy missiles destroyed, 640 AMMs expended.
Retargeting AMMs: 172 enemy missiles destroyed, 640 AMMs expended.
AMM Designs:
Multi-Warhead AMM
Missile Size: 2.000 MSP (5.0000 Tons) Warhead: 1.500 (MW-3) Radiation Damage: 1.500
Speed: 34,200 km/s Fuel: 137 Flight Time: 106.6 seconds Range: 3,645,720 km
Cost Per Missile: 2.285 Development Cost: 239
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 342% 3k km/s 114% 5k km/s 68.4% 10k km/s 34.2%
Retargeting AMM
Missile Size: 2.000 MSP (5.0000 Tons) Warhead: 0.500 Radiation Damage: 0.500
Speed: 33,000 km/s Fuel: 137 Flight Time: 108.4 seconds Range: 3,577,200 km
Retarget Capable
Cost Per Missile: 2.275 Development Cost: 238
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 330% 3k km/s 110% 5k km/s 66% 10k km/s 33%
I didn't even bother with trying ECCM or terminal guidance, because neither provide nearly as much as an advantage to an AMM as retargeting or multiple warhead.
Ultimately, Retargeting is clearly the best option, because it gives the AMM way more tries.
The AMMs are first fired at a distance of 2.8 million km. It take about 45 seconds for the AMMs to intercept at a range of about 1.8 million km. It then takes the enemy missiles 70 seconds to travel to 80k km from my ships, which was where I ended the tests. Thus, each AMM has a maximum of 14 tries to intercept a missile (first AMMs travel 1.485 million km to first intercept, and wont run out of fuel before the enemy missiles hit), although the number of possible attempts decreases as the missiles get closer.
In comparison, the Multi-target AMM effectively only gets 3 attempts per missile, 1 for each warhead. Every warhead I add needs 0.225 MSP of space in the missile (0.125 of warhead, 0.1 of multi-target bus), so I can only have a total of 3 warheads before the multi-target uses up more space than the retargeting module does. Yes, I could use smaller warheads against size 9 missiles, but a difference of .0125 per warhead basically doesn't matter, and going any smaller means introducing a risk of not destroying the missile when you do hit.
In conclusion, the only case you wouldn't use retargeting AMMs is if it is absolutely impossible to match the speed of the enemy missiles.
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I think the conclusion may be overreaching - if you were fighting from a superior tech base, your higher hit chance would have been more favorable to the alternatives.
But seems like a great demonstration that the concept works!
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I think the conclusion may be overreaching - if you were fighting from a superior tech base, your higher hit chance would have been more favorable to the alternatives.
But seems like a great demonstration that the concept works!
Basically, I don't see how multiple warheads could compete with re-targeting except maybe at much higher tech levels, since any more than 4 extra warheads (5 total) would be larger than a single retargeting module. Even if the missiles had been moving twice as fast, that still would have given at least 7 attempts for the retargeting, vs 5 attempts on a multiple warhead bus. And that ignores the fact that higher tech means the missiles can be targeted from further away, due to better sensor tech.
Terminal guidance, even at 90% increased hit chance, is basically just "twice as many hits". Way worse than using 0.5 space for much more than 2 chances to hit
ECCM only matters if you can actually hit the missile. And you need to have a tech advantage over the enemy
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I think the conclusion may be overreaching - if you were fighting from a superior tech base, your higher hit chance would have been more favorable to the alternatives.
But seems like a great demonstration that the concept works!
Basically, I don't see how multiple warheads could compete with re-targeting except maybe at much higher tech levels, since any more than 4 extra warheads (5 total) would be larger than a single retargeting module. Even if the missiles had been moving twice as fast, that still would have given at least 7 attempts for the retargeting, vs 5 attempts on a multiple warhead bus. And that ignores the fact that higher tech means the missiles can be targeted from further away, due to better sensor tech.
Terminal guidance, even at 90% increased hit chance, is basically just "twice as many hits". Way worse than using 0.5 space for much more than 2 chances to hit
ECCM only matters if you can actually hit the missile. And you need to have a tech advantage over the enemy
Multiple warheads can generate more than one hit, which matters against enemies with decoys. Terminal guidance I'm more doubtful of, but it can stack with multiple warheads in a way retargeting doesn't.
ECCM, yeah, only would consider that in very contingent circumstances.