2.2 AMM theorycrafting

[prophetical]

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.

[nuclearslurpee]

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.

[JacenHan]

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."

[Ulzgoroth (OP)]

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.

[nuclearslurpee]

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.

[Ulzgoroth (OP)]

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.

[Nori]

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.

[Ulzgoroth (OP)]

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.

[Nori]

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.

[Jorgen_CAB]

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.

[Ulzgoroth (OP)]

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.

[xenoscepter]

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.

[Nori]

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.

[Droll]

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?

[Elouda]

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.