2 stage missiles

[spartacus (OP)]

I have recently discovered the joy of 2 stage anti ship missiles.      For those with more experience than I, not much experience for me, does anyone still use single stage missiles?

With Ion engine technology I was looking at about 55 mil range with about a speed of 25k for a 4 damage warhead, (1msp) total missile size 4msp

Going to 2 stage I made a size 1 msp first stage 60 mil range, only 6. 1k speed, but then a size 3 msp attack missile 6 mil additional range with 31. 2k speed.     the same warhead and and ECM module.   

Granted the engagement window is longer with the relatively low speed approach stage, but separating at 6 mil should I think put it outside most enemies engagement ranges at this tech level and the second stage of the second missile should be much harder to kill and strike it's target more often then a single stage variant as well as adding 11 mil range to the engagement envelope.   

Any thoughts anyone?

[Jorgen_CAB]

What if the opponent had a fighter scout and screen... they could easily intercept those missiles at very low velocity as fighter interceptors could be even faster at Ion technology. What if the opponent have a bigger and faster missile with roughly the same range?   The one who strike first might be the one who win.

Granted that NPR don't use fighter screen tactics but that is how I approach every situation and as I often play multiple factions I do have to deal with more effective defences that can evolve and adapt.

There is nothing inherently wrong with multi stage missiles but they have some serious flaws and there's always a trade off no matter what you choose to do. I don't think there is a specific right thing to do.

[Ulzgoroth]

For sufficiently short-ranged missiles the mass penalty of having two separate engines won't be worthwhile

Other than that, a couple more speculative concerns because I haven't actually fought a battle in forever:

-Using a slow cruise stage means an increased risk of alien missiles hitting your missile ships before your missiles hit them. If they knock out the launching ship while the missiles are in flight, they won't work because there's no fire control. (Unless the missiles have their own active sensors.)
-Using an extremely slow missile like this risks the target simply flying away from it. The enemy fleet might do more than 6kkm/s!

-If the enemy had fighters or antimissile pickets forward of the main fleet, potentially not making themselves too easy to detect, they could clobber your missile salvos before terminal-stage separation while they're sitting ducks. No idea whether the AI would ever do that.


Overall being able to toss excess mass spent on range, so you can make the most of your maneuvering tonnage and use the most bleeding-edge boosted engine for terminal speed, seems like a good deal though.

[Pedroig]

-Using a slow cruise stage means an increased risk of alien missiles hitting your missile ships before your missiles hit them. If they knock out the launching ship while the missiles are in flight, they won't work because there's no fire control. (Unless the missiles have their own active sensors.)
-Using an extremely slow missile like this risks the target simply flying away from it. The enemy fleet might do more than 6kkm/s!

-If the enemy had fighters or antimissile pickets forward of the main fleet, potentially not making themselves too easy to detect, they could clobber your missile salvos before terminal-stage separation while they're sitting ducks. No idea whether the AI would ever do that.

Both of these have the same answer, depends on what "slow" means and what the separation distance is compared to the defenders abilities.  The first is the easiest to counteract since it is quite easy to have separation range longer than AMM range.  The second is a tad trickier, but in general can be cancelled/countered by having fighter escort the 1st stage to separation range, maybe even throwing out some AMM's out there to add to Salvo density, even if they won't hit full range...

[Jorgen_CAB]

-Using a slow cruise stage means an increased risk of alien missiles hitting your missile ships before your missiles hit them. If they knock out the launching ship while the missiles are in flight, they won't work because there's no fire control. (Unless the missiles have their own active sensors.)
-Using an extremely slow missile like this risks the target simply flying away from it. The enemy fleet might do more than 6kkm/s!

-If the enemy had fighters or antimissile pickets forward of the main fleet, potentially not making themselves too easy to detect, they could clobber your missile salvos before terminal-stage separation while they're sitting ducks. No idea whether the AI would ever do that.

Both of these have the same answer, depends on what "slow" means and what the separation distance is compared to the defenders abilities.  The first is the easiest to counteract since it is quite easy to have separation range longer than AMM range.  The second is a tad trickier, but in general can be cancelled/countered by having fighter escort the 1st stage to separation range, maybe even throwing out some AMM's out there to add to Salvo density, even if they won't hit full range...

If you use fighters then why not just use them as the platform to launch instead?!?

Every tactic has a counter tactic not matter what you do.

If two sides are equally strong it is usually the one with Intel advantage that will win as they can stack the deck better than the other side. The tactic chosen is the one that is most likely to penetrate the enemy defences.

[Ulzgoroth]

-Using a slow cruise stage means an increased risk of alien missiles hitting your missile ships before your missiles hit them. If they knock out the launching ship while the missiles are in flight, they won't work because there's no fire control. (Unless the missiles have their own active sensors.)
-Using an extremely slow missile like this risks the target simply flying away from it. The enemy fleet might do more than 6kkm/s!

-If the enemy had fighters or antimissile pickets forward of the main fleet, potentially not making themselves too easy to detect, they could clobber your missile salvos before terminal-stage separation while they're sitting ducks. No idea whether the AI would ever do that.

Both of these have the same answer, depends on what "slow" means and what the separation distance is compared to the defenders abilities.  The first is the easiest to counteract since it is quite easy to have separation range longer than AMM range.  The second is a tad trickier, but in general can be cancelled/countered by having fighter escort the 1st stage to separation range, maybe even throwing out some AMM's out there to add to Salvo density, even if they won't hit full range...

Er, the first had nothing to do with AMMs at all? None of my bullet points suggested that the separation would be on the wrong side of the target's AMM range. That could happen, but it's a kind of basic case of user error rather than a conceptual problem mostly.

(Mostly because it's possible you'll be surprised by the enemy's AMM capability and end up with stockpiles of 2-stage missiles that match up badly.)

[spartacus (OP)]

For sufficiently short-ranged missiles the mass penalty of having two separate engines won't be worthwhile

Other than that, a couple more speculative concerns because I haven't actually fought a battle in forever:

-Using a slow cruise stage means an increased risk of alien missiles hitting your missile ships before your missiles hit them.  If they knock out the launching ship while the missiles are in flight, they won't work because there's no fire control.  (Unless the missiles have their own active sensors. )
-Using an extremely slow missile like this risks the target simply flying away from it.  The enemy fleet might do more than 6kkm/s!

-If the enemy had fighters or antimissile pickets forward of the main fleet, potentially not making themselves too easy to detect, they could clobber your missile salvos before terminal-stage separation while they're sitting ducks.  No idea whether the AI would ever do that.


Overall being able to toss excess mass spent on range, so you can make the most of your maneuvering tonnage and use the most bleeding-edge boosted engine for terminal speed, seems like a good deal though.

Good points, I haven't really used fighters very often so they really didn't occur to me, although you could do the same thing with an advanced escort screen of PD ships.   I also considered the approach speed of the taxi stage and at that tech level I've never seen opponents that exceeded 5k for ship speed, I have to concede that there are probably a lot of things that happen that I haven't seen.   I also tried to ensure that the terminal envelope was beyond reasonable AMM range for the tech level.

The bottom line is that you're right everything is a trade off, but I do like the extra range and especially that they are less likely to get swatted when they reach the terminal attack phase.

[spartacus (OP)]

-Using a slow cruise stage means an increased risk of alien missiles hitting your missile ships before your missiles hit them.  If they knock out the launching ship while the missiles are in flight, they won't work because there's no fire control.  (Unless the missiles have their own active sensors. )
-Using an extremely slow missile like this risks the target simply flying away from it.  The enemy fleet might do more than 6kkm/s!

-If the enemy had fighters or antimissile pickets forward of the main fleet, potentially not making themselves too easy to detect, they could clobber your missile salvos before terminal-stage separation while they're sitting ducks.  No idea whether the AI would ever do that.

Both of these have the same answer, depends on what "slow" means and what the separation distance is compared to the defenders abilities.   The first is the easiest to counteract since it is quite easy to have separation range longer than AMM range.   The second is a tad trickier, but in general can be cancelled/countered by having fighter escort the 1st stage to separation range, maybe even throwing out some AMM's out there to add to Salvo density, even if they won't hit full range. . .

The risk of losing the FCM platform before missile impact is indeed a real one, hopefully my PD envelope could hold his salvo and preserve the the launch platforms.  This was all designed considering my admittedly limited experience of what I have observed from the NPRs at this tech stage.  Hopefully this would be aided by being able to launch outside his range and then hold the range open for a while.

One of my ideas behind this design, I have no idea if the AI would actually take this into account, was that seeing such a laughably slow missile salvo inbound the enemy would continue to close on my fleet seeing it as easy kills.

[Jorgen_CAB]

-Using a slow cruise stage means an increased risk of alien missiles hitting your missile ships before your missiles hit them.  If they knock out the launching ship while the missiles are in flight, they won't work because there's no fire control.  (Unless the missiles have their own active sensors. )
-Using an extremely slow missile like this risks the target simply flying away from it.  The enemy fleet might do more than 6kkm/s!

-If the enemy had fighters or antimissile pickets forward of the main fleet, potentially not making themselves too easy to detect, they could clobber your missile salvos before terminal-stage separation while they're sitting ducks.  No idea whether the AI would ever do that.

Both of these have the same answer, depends on what "slow" means and what the separation distance is compared to the defenders abilities.   The first is the easiest to counteract since it is quite easy to have separation range longer than AMM range.   The second is a tad trickier, but in general can be cancelled/countered by having fighter escort the 1st stage to separation range, maybe even throwing out some AMM's out there to add to Salvo density, even if they won't hit full range. . .

The risk of losing the FCM platform before missile impact is indeed a real one, hopefully my PD envelope could hold his salvo and preserve the the launch platforms.  This was all designed considering my admittedly limited experience of what I have observed from the NPRs at this tech stage.  Hopefully this would be aided by being able to launch outside his range and then hold the range open for a while.

One of my ideas behind this design, I have no idea if the AI would actually take this into account, was that seeing such a laughably slow missile salvo inbound the enemy would continue to close on my fleet seeing it as easy kills.

The most likely thing that would happen if someone know that your missiles was so slow they would simply turn and run away effectively making your missile into only useful at VERY short ranges.

Now... the NPR are not smart enough to do this either... but they might do it by mistake if their FC have a good range. NPR missiles also tend to have pretty good ranges too.