X-Ray Laser Warheads

[Paul (OP)]

I noticed these in the tech tree under energy weapons for the different x-ray lasers. I did a search, but all I could find was an old post from 2008 with nothing but questions and no answers. How exactly do they work?

Do they get close and then fire the lasers once, or is it some kind of thing where they fire every X seconds after getting in range? Or do they hit the target and fire the lasers on impact as some kind of armor piercing thing? Are they better than standard warheads? Situational?

I'm playing a game with missiles and meson weaponry for point defense, and have no laser tech. I'm just wondering if it would be worthwhile to branch out into lasers up to the X-ray series in order to get these, or if I would be better off just improving my regular warhead technology.

[Father Tim]

They are single-use, bomb-pumped x-ray (or higher) laser warheads for missiles.  Upon detonation they project multiple laser beams in a 360 degree sphere, and thus may strike multiple targets, some of them multiple times.  Since lasers have a narrow, deep damage templates and standard missile warheads a triangular one, they are somewhat better at penetrating the target's armour though far worse at anti-missile fire and useless* in atmosphere.

*Lasers deal 0 damage if the atmospheric pressure is 1.0atm or greater.  Half damage in 0.5atm, one-third damage in 0.333atm, etc., always rounding down to whole points of damage.

[Paul (OP)]

Thanks for the info I knew about the lasers in atmosphere bit (one reason why I developed mesons for point defense usage, so I could use them on PDCs in addition to anti-missile missiles).

The laser warheads sound pretty effective against groups of ships. Do they go off when they hit the target, or at a range from the target? Also, would they hit other missiles (as in, hitting others in the same volley or one right behind it)? Just wondering if they would be effective in mass missile volleys, or if the first to hit would kill off the others before they had a chance to do their thing.

I think I might have to take a detour on my research to pick them up and give them a go. They sound perfect for fighting groups of small ships.

[mrwigggles]

They are single-use, bomb-pumped x-ray (or higher) laser warheads for missiles.  Upon detonation they project multiple laser beams in a 360 degree sphere, and thus may strike multiple targets, some of them multiple times.  Since lasers have a narrow, deep damage templates and standard missile warheads a triangular one, they are somewhat better at penetrating the target's armour though far worse at anti-missile fire and useless* in atmosphere.

*Lasers deal 0 damage if the atmospheric pressure is 1.0atm or greater.  Half damage in 0.5atm, one-third damage in 0.333atm, etc., always rounding down to whole points of damage.

Is there a link for the drop off for other weapons types?

[Father Tim]

Is there a link for the drop off for other weapons types?

All beam weapons other than Mesons have the same reduction in atmosphere.  Other weapon types are unaffected.

[ShadoCat]

Is there a link for the drop off for other weapons types?

All beam weapons other than Mesons have the same reduction in atmosphere.  Other weapon types are unaffected.

In this case, rail and gauss guns are included in "beam weapons".

Unless things have changed, all weapons except mesons and missiles face the damage reduction.

[MoonDragon]

Could someone please explain the mechanics of making an x-ray warhead missile? As in, what do the numbers mean?

Also, can someone explain the mechanics of using such a missile, please? Would an x-ray missile be an optimal solution to the Swarm problem?

[Yonder]

So would a single X-Ray Warhead missile, used in an anti-missile capacity, hit every missile in the incoming salvo it was launched at?

That would be... awesome.

[Vanigo]

So, if nobody minds me bumping this a bit, how do they work, exactly? How much damage does each hit do, and what are the odds of hitting? What do the different frequency techs do? Can it actually hit ships in sufficiently nearby fleets, or just multiple ships that are on top of each other?

[Steve Walmsley]

This is something I added many versions ago and I don't think I have ever used them. I don't actually remember how they work . I need to take a look at the whole area of alternative warheads and I will revisit laser warheeads when I do.

Steve

[NihilRex]

Sorry for necroing this thread - but Steve suggested he might look at this.

Does anyone know if they even work?

[MarcAFK]

I'm pretty sure they work, each head does 2 damage and they go through beam defences like a knife through butter or something, I'll see if I can find a relevant post.
Edit: here's what I found on a different forum from Feburary.

There was s discussion on the Aurora forums recently about laser warheads, they do work now, basically the total warhead value is divided by the number of laser heads, it sends out one laser shot of that value per laser head. They will only hit one target, but I believe for missile salvos each shot can hit and destroy a different missile within the same salvo. The most important use of laser missiles is that they aren't stopped by final defensive fire or CIWS, you have to manually target or use long range area defence.

http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,7670.0.html

From that thread:

.... it takes the total (reduced by the laser warhead) warhead value of your design, divide that by the number of laser warheads in it (one per warhead MSP), doing one explosion of that size for each laser warhead in the design. So, if you have Extreme X-Ray Laser Warhead, the top tech for laser warheads (near gamma and up lacks the tech, at least for the time being or so it seems), you'd get one explosion per warhead MSP, each of strength 10 (assuming round numbers for warhead MSP, it can be different, specially at small missiles if you are not doing so), each the standard form for a missile.

For fleets at least, those multiple explosions only hit the targeted ship, and don't seem to spread through the whole fleet: If it were otherwise, it could be an interesting anti-fighter instrument. I've yet to test it against missile salvos, but if it does work, it could have a rather situational use against large salvos. Otherwise, I'd say it's only useful if you are focusing nearly totally on energy weapons but want a decent warhead anyway.

But anyway, more to come soon after some extra testing.

Edit1: Against Missile Salvos: Effective, it destroys as many missiles as there are laser warheads (or at least it does so if the missile in question completely sucks, with ridiculously low speed, no armor and the like).

Edit2: And confirmation on fighters: It doesn't work. Even if it destroys a ship entirely, it does not move to the next ship in the task group.

So, yeah, from what I've seen it's only real use for now it's to re-purpose large missile launchers into anti-missile duty and some occasional use in boarding.

Laser warheads fire from outside minimum point defence range. You can only engage them with either area defence or AMMs.

Edit: For shame, That thread is only buried on page 2, how far down was this one buried? :p
Edit again: A somewhat interesting fact:  This thread is from January 2010. So is the Aurora thread on bay12forums, which now has over 16,000 posts; 21% as many posts as the aurora forum itself contains :p

[Erik L]

Edit again: A somewhat interesting fact:  This thread is from January 2010. So is the Aurora thread on bay12forums, which now has over 16,000 posts; 21% as many posts as the aurora forum itself contains :p

There are only 5158 members here, of which I guesstimate maybe 5%-10% post on a regular basis. So 250-500 people making 73000 posts, in 9 or 10 years.

[MarcAFK]

Looking at the statistics theres around 10-15,000 posts a year here, while that thread needed over 4 years to collect that many.
It's kind of silly dogpiling onto a topic with 1,600 pages, but occasionally someone new sees the thread and gets interested, they'll get a nice little FAQ and be pointed over here where all the wonderful fiction is.