Missile Designs

[Shininglight (OP)]

I've been reading the tactical forum section and seen that missiles are the most used, I've been trying to develop AMM's as my beam PD ships were utterly devasted by an enemy NPR, I lost my entire battle fleet against 2 ships, I have tier 3 missile tech in missile drives and warhead strength but i can't seem to build a size 1 missile fast enough to intercept enemy missiles, Any help would be lovely.  I hope this is the right section for this if it isn't my apologies.

[Steve Walmsley]

I've been reading the tactical forum section and seen that missiles are the most used, I've been trying to develop AMM's as my beam PD ships were utterly devasted by an enemy NPR, I lost my entire battle fleet against 2 ships, I have tier 3 missile tech in missile drives and warhead strength but i can't seem to build a size 1 missile fast enough to intercept enemy missiles, Any help would be lovely.  I hope this is the right section for this if it isn't my apologies.

1) Allocate just enough warhead strength for a 1 point warhead
2) Allocate just enough fuel to reach the shorter range of either your anti-missile fire control or your anti-missile active sensor
3) Allocate the remaining space to engine and see how your speed looks
4) Experiment with moving some space from engine to agility to improve your chance to hit

Steve

[Shininglight (OP)]

Thanks for the advice but it doesn't really help, Most enemies i've faced have used missiles travelling at nearly 12500 or moe km/s at size 1. . . . .  I cant even hope for that speed unless my missiles are size 3-4 any smaller and they have about a 10% hit rate and i can't carry enough for the amount of missile expenditure i'd need to actually degrade the enemy salvo's any.  I've got decent ASM's but my AMM's tend to be size 3-4 with a scary small intercept rate and my ships can't carry enough for any real use.

[Erik L]

With Warhead Str per MSP of 4, and Missile Engine Power per MSP of 3 I can build the following missiles at size 1.

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Missile Size: 1 MSP  (0.05 HS)     Warhead: 1    Armour: 0     Manoeuvre Rating: 10
Speed: 30000 km/s    Endurance: 31 minutes   Range: 56.3m km
Cost Per Missile: 0.75
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 300%   3k km/s 100%   5k km/s 60%   10k km/s 30%
Materials Required:    0.25x Tritanium   0.25x Gallicite   Fuel x625

Development Cost for Project: 75RP
Look at your Warhead MSP and Missile power MSP. If those are too low, you will have subpar missiles.

After tweaking the design a bit, I come up with this.

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Missile Size: 1 MSP  (0.05 HS)     Warhead: 1    Armour: 0     Manoeuvre Rating: 15
Speed: 24000 km/s    Endurance: 39 minutes   Range: 56.3m km
Cost Per Missile: 0.775
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 360%   3k km/s 120%   5k km/s 72%   10k km/s 36%
Materials Required:    0.25x Tritanium   0.27x Gallicite   Fuel x625

Development Cost for Project: 78RP
That is .25 MSP for warhead, .4 MSP for engine power, .25 MPS for fuel, and .1 MSP for agility.

[blue emu]

Have you read my thread?

Missile Design for Noobs, the Kiwi/Emu approximation

[Charlie Beeler]

Shininglight,

If by tier 3 you mean that your tech is Ion Missile Engine with 3 points per MSP and Levitated-Pit Implosion Warhead: Strength: 4 x MSP  then your not allocating nearly enough MSP to engines.  At 50% MSP to engine your missile should be traveling at 30,000kps and have no trouble intercepting missiles doing only 12,500kps.  With .25MSP allocated to warhead for the needed 1 damage point there is still plenty of MSP left for fuel and missile agility for an AMM that has 30 seconds of range (900,000km) and a better that 50% intercept probability if the agility tech is also "third tier" (ie 48 per msp).

The best approach I've found to missile design is a bit convoluted.  It starts with identifying the speed of the missile to be intercepted.  If that is not known the assume your own offensive missile speed.  Missile range needs to allow for at least 3 intercept launches based on launcher fire rate.  Much more range and you start running into issues with the active sensors required to detect incoming missiles becoming too large for practical use on a warship that is not a dedicated recon platform.  The active sensor does need to be able to detect target missiles at a range sufficient to allow a max range intercept.  The accompanying missile fire control is 1/3 the size of the detection sensor. 


Example:  Tech available:  Fuel Efficiency 2. Fuel Usage x0.8; Missile Launcher Reload Rate 3; Ion Missile Drive: 3 per MSP; Levitated-Pit Implosion Warhead: Strength: 4 x MSP; Missile Agility 48 per MSP; Active Grav Sensor Strength 16; EM Sensor Sensitivity 8.

Expected target missile is size 6 and speed is 30,000kps.

size 1 AMM with .5msp engine, .25msp warhead, .004msp fuel, and rest is agility.  This gives an AMM with speed 30,000kps, range 900,000km, 1 pt warhead, and an intercept chance against another missile traveling 30,000kps above 53.5%.  It needs a resolution 1 active sensor of 13hs to detect a size 6 missile at 1,800,000km and  resolution 1 missile fire control of 4.5hs to engage detected size 6 missiles.  This of course assumes that the target missiles are not using ECM of any level. 

[UnLimiTeD]

The spreadsheet linked in Emu's thread (A few years ago, that spreadsheet was also posted here as an Excel/OpenOffice file, I think the dl is gone) will do all the thinking for you.
What warhead size do those missiles fired at you have?
If it's just one or two, you could simple carry more armor than they carry ammo.

[Charlie Beeler]

Not all be a longshot.  Nor did my short example cover everything.  BE's spreadsheet is a starting point but nothing more.

[blue emu]

BE's spreadsheet is a starting point but nothing more.

It's not my spreadsheet... but yes, I agree.

The math is just a rough guideline. Even after determining the "ideal" combination of Engine and Agility, I usually move some of the points out of Agility and into Engine instead, because I value missile speed more than a minor to-Hit advantage in most practical cases.

Higher missile speed means that your missiles reach the enemy and either kill him or not, sooner... which allows you to conduct your damage assessment and threat estimate earlier. If you've killed him with your shot, any hostile missiles still en-route are rendered harmless (a good argument for using faster missiles), while if you've only damaged him, an early damage assessment and threat estimate allows you to decide whether to fire another full fleet salvo, a fleet half-salvo, or allow your individual ships to "fire at will".

Higher missile speed also means that you will lose fewer of them penetrating the opponent's point defense, both because faster missiles are harder to shoot down, and because a faster missile crosses through the enemy's defended zone in fewer five-second increments, allowing him fewer shots at them.

[Tor Cha]

If your Wanting a Pure AMM Make an Missile Engine with Boosted Power, You only need so much Fuel(. 001 to . 006 ) for a Anti Missile Missile.  Use that Missile Engine for Short to Medium range Antimissile Intercepts.  Also that Missile would be great for Fighters or GB
Box Launchers for a Fast Missiles

[Charlie Beeler]

Tor Cha and everyone else for that matter....

The above conversation was discussing missile design pre-v6.0 engine design changes. 

[Tor Cha]

Oh i thought it still Applied Sorry

[bean]

There's an equation to tell you how to split your missile between agility and engines.  It's P=5S/A+C/2 where P is the space allotted to propulsion, S is the size of the missile, A is agility per MSP, and C is the space allotted to (propulsion+agility).  If you have a warhead tech of 4 per MSP, then your size 1 AMM will have C of 0.75, and level 3 tech is something like 40 agility per MSP, then you'd have something like a .49 engine, .01 fuel, and .25 agility. 
Another equation, which is more useful for ASMs, tells you the best allocation between engine and fuel so long as you can vary your power modifier.  For AMMs, you'll generally be up against the max power modifier, so it doesn't help that much.  For the best speed/range (one is maximized while the other is fixed) E (engine space)= .7609*P and F (fuel space)= .2391*P.