Author Topic: Trying for PD missile ship  (Read 4598 times)

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Offline obsidian_green

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Re: Trying for PD missile ship
« Reply #15 on: June 25, 2017, 01:26:21 PM »
I am now working on better sensors to match the MCR distance with range of Sonora II.

My only AMMs that have seen action have a range of 2.5m km, but I'm not even getting active target locks on the AMMs the enemy is (currently) firing at me until ~150,000km despite a res-1 active I thought should spot small missiles at greater range ... so better sensors sounds very wise to me right now, lol.

Are you using the Missile Designer on the web? That Sonora Close AMM seems too slow to have a size-1 warhead and a range of only 1.2m km, but there are a handful of techs that increase the efficiency of missiles by bringing down the MSP you need to reach performance targets. Maybe you need better tech to get better bang for your MSP in WH strength, fuel efficiency, or agility.

Zooming will corrupt the .mdb? I'd be grateful for tips on how I might avoid or minimize that risk ... I have to zoom some and it would be a relief to know what will or won't cause me problems.
 

Offline Detros (OP)

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Re: Trying for PD missile ship
« Reply #16 on: June 25, 2017, 02:08:23 PM »
My only AMMs that have seen action have a range of 2.5m km, but I'm not even getting active target locks on the AMMs the enemy is (currently) firing at me until ~150,000km despite a res-1 active I thought should spot small missiles at greater range ... so better sensors sounds very wise to me right now, lol.
Note resolution 1 active sensors can have few millions km range but small missiles are even smaller. There is "MCR" range of few 100k for missiles of size 6 or smaller. That's for seeing them via active sensors. For the problem of getting weapon lock from your missile fire controls note those missiles can be equipped with modules of electronic warfare that lower the range of your MFCs by few 10s of %.

Are you using the Missile Designer on the web? That Sonora Close AMM seems too slow to have a size-1 warhead and a range of only 1.2m km, but there are a handful of techs that increase the efficiency of missiles by bringing down the MSP you need to reach performance targets. Maybe you need better tech to get better bang for your MSP in WH strength, fuel efficiency, or agility.
I am not using any external tools, only checking wiki and forums from time to time. I am aware of techs that raise the stats of missiles and I don't think I am too low on most of them. I am mostly missing engine boost tech. Size 1, warhead 1 and range of ~1-2m km are intentional values, the rest of missile is filled with agility because there can't be missiles under size 1. I am not adding any sensors until I actually meet some enemy with missiles and I can see what sensor range I would need.

Zooming will corrupt the .mdb? I'd be grateful for tips on how I might avoid or minimize that risk ... I have to zoom some and it would be a relief to know what will or won't cause me problems.
I posted it in the main bug thread.
 

Offline Detros (OP)

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Re: Trying for PD missile ship
« Reply #17 on: June 25, 2017, 02:28:57 PM »
I have now checked that Missile Designer and found out my Sonora II design with 0.5 MSP size engine is the 4-5th best one can get with my current tech for targets at 20k km/s. My score is 40.6, the best one with slightly smaller engine and thus slower but with bit more space for agility has score 41.3.
Sonora II is the 4-5th best design against targets at 25k km/s and 30k km/s, too, being only 0.5, respective 0.4 percentage points after the ideal one (the order of other designs is different for different speeds).

That's close enough. I am satisfied.

For those interested how I got to my design: first I have designed max power engine of 0.1 MSP size. Warhead was easy. Fuel was just small amount to get to the demanded range. Agility was the rest to fill the size 1 missile. Then keep adding these 0.1 engines and lowering agility by 0.1 till you found the best amount. Design one engine of the summed size instead of those (here, 5) little engines and two more 0.05 size next to it (here, 0.45, 0.5, 0.55). Try these three engines, matching agility accordingly to stay at size 1, and pick the best one.

 

Offline obsidian_green

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Re: Trying for PD missile ship
« Reply #18 on: June 25, 2017, 02:31:06 PM »
Thanks for the bug link, will take a look.

And just on the off chance because you probably know this already, are you entering "1" into the warhead MSP? The "value" is the actual WH strength ... scratch that, if you were doing that the WH size wouldn't be 1 in the specs you posted. It's just the boost you're missing; x3 or bust!
 

Offline Detros (OP)

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Re: Trying for PD missile ship
« Reply #19 on: June 25, 2017, 02:37:43 PM »
Thanks for the bug link, will take a look.

And just on the off chance because you probably know this already, are you entering "1" into the warhead MSP? The "value" is the actual WH strength ... scratch that, if you were doing that the WH size wouldn't be 1 in the specs you posted. It's just the boost you're missing; x3 or bust!
To finally clarify: I am at 0.2 MSP / 1 WH, 64 agility / MSP and am using 1x 0.5 MSP magnetic pulse engine with 350 % power for Sonora II. The generation I Sonora, Baranda and Thuria are all at 0.25 MSP / 1 WH, 48 agility and only 300 % engines tech level, with Sonora and Baranda only having different range and Thuria being size 2 PDC AMM.
 

Offline Titanian

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Re: Trying for PD missile ship
« Reply #20 on: June 28, 2017, 09:54:01 AM »
How can using 'sub-sized' missiles improve anything other than making your missile worse and cheaper? Since the warhead has to keep it's size, you are packing less engine/agility/fuel, thus the missile should get slower/less agile/have less range.
 

Offline Detros (OP)

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Re: Trying for PD missile ship
« Reply #21 on: June 28, 2017, 12:25:53 PM »
How can using 'sub-sized' missiles improve anything other than making your missile worse and cheaper? Since the warhead has to keep it's size, you are packing less engine/agility/fuel, thus the missile should get slower/less agile/have less range.
Smaller missiles are faster.
Manoeuvre rating is higher for smaller missiles.
Chance to hit is higher for faster missiles and missiles with higher manoeuvre rating.

Compare Thuria mod with 0.697 MSP of agility:
Code: [Select]
Missile Size: 1.971 MSP  (0.09855 HS)     Warhead: 1    Armour: 0     Manoeuvre Rating: 33
Speed: 24400 km/s    Engine Endurance: 8 minutes   Range: 11.7m km
Cost Per Missile: 1.7422
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 805.2%   3k km/s 264%   5k km/s 161%   10k km/s 80.5%

with its modification that uses 0.726 MSP of agility to get to pure size 2 missile.
Code: [Select]
Missile Size: 2 MSP  (0.1 HS)     Warhead: 1    Armour: 0     Manoeuvre Rating: 33
Speed: 24000 km/s    Engine Endurance: 8 minutes   Range: 11.5m km
Cost Per Missile: 1.7793
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 792%   3k km/s 264%   5k km/s 158.4%   10k km/s 79.2%

Sonora IIs can get like +5 percentage points against 1k km/s targets if only they can be of only 0.993 size, by removing bit of agility.

I guess it may be possible to get better results with using bit bigger engine there but I am not going to design a dozen of engines with 0.01 MSP increment just to get missiles better by few percentage points. And using missile design tools to find the best design is not as rewarding as finding decent designs yourself. So I will design two or three sizes of engine, pick one of them and then tweak fuel and agility only.
 

Iranon

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Re: Trying for PD missile ship
« Reply #22 on: June 28, 2017, 01:56:04 PM »
I tend to calculate the agility tonnage I need to push MR up, then use the excess for fuel. If that results in excessive range, I consider my engine too small.
0.7 agility for a size-2 missile would be too much for me.. I prefer larger engines even if that results in very slightly lower accuracy: agility is expensive, larger engine slightly improves fuel efficiency, higher speed has soft benefits.
 

Offline Titanian

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Re: Trying for PD missile ship
« Reply #23 on: June 29, 2017, 10:52:06 AM »
Smaller missiles are faster.
Only if you keep the same engine, so that it has higher power per size/mass

And yes, missile design is super annoying with missile engines as components and no way to 'simulate' them before researching them.
 

Offline Gabethebaldandbold

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Re: Trying for PD missile ship
« Reply #24 on: March 05, 2018, 11:13:45 AM »
In my experience, engagement range is one of the most essential parts in missile point defense, anlong with AMM Speed, with some decent sensor tech, I tell you its possible to engage size 6 missiles at 8 million kilometers range using just 10 HS of active sensors, and that just pumps up the efficiency of your PD way way up. when you get maximum engine boost, if you design your missiles just right they should get speeds of 40k kilometers per sec, and with your agility tech, you should be able to get at least 30% hit chance on missiles going at 33k kilometers per second. with your reload speed, if you can research your way through this engine boost, and make sensors and fire ontrol capable of engaging at 6-7 million kilometers, if you put 20-30 launchers, you could very well engage in frequent combat, firing 1vs1 PD and not even get hit by a single missile most of the time, essentialy wasting all of their ordinance while recieving 0 damage (provided that you carry engough missiles to do that of course)
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the answer is you beam. and you better beam hard.
 

Offline Gabethebaldandbold

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Re: Trying for PD missile ship
« Reply #25 on: March 05, 2018, 02:38:05 PM »
Also higher speed means you end up getting more chances to engage the enemy missiles
To beam, or not to beam.   That is the question
the answer is you beam. and you better beam hard.