Missile-ssistance?

[themousemaster (OP)]

So I wanted to go . . .  aggressively interdict a very hostile NPR, so I went to their homeworld.

I'll save the long story of my "probing" attempts, but they have several hundred ships above their planet, and lord knows what is actually planetside.

They are launching missile volleys topping 3000 missiles of sizes between 1 and 6.   Constantly.   the *slowest* missile in the bunch is 89k-kms.

I built a 2million ton ship that is nothing but engines, fuel, 500 CIWS guns, and 350 layers of armor just to try and do. . .  I don't even know what.   Run them out of ordinance I guess?  For a combat fleet that's trailing behind said ship by about 200mkm.

I haven't been keeping exact count, due to the volleys having different speeds and launch timers, but I extrapolate that in the 3-ish hours I've had him chilling just in-range of their planet, he's taken over 3 million missile impacts.   His armor is still at 94%, but that's not the point.

The point is that this is getting rather tedious clicking "advance time 5 seconds" over and over.



I'm looking for suggestions in what I can do to expedite this process.   Can I look into the NPR's ship-and-planet ordinance stocks somehow?  (If it turns out they are just about expended, I'll just click a few more times).   If not, is there an efficient way to deal with constant missile spam in the 4-figures in a way that doesn't involve me building a fleet of 500 anti-missile laser ships with tech high enough to reliably down missiles traveling in the 6-figures?

(note:  from the intel I have, there's very few enemy ships present that are even possible to be something other than a missile-weapon.   So I'm not worried about having to deal with beam/kinetic opponents, I just need to neutralize their missile armaments)

[Agraelgrimm]

So I wanted to go . . .  aggressively interdict a very hostile NPR, so I went to their homeworld.

I'll save the long story of my "probing" attempts, but they have several hundred ships above their planet, and lord knows what is actually planetside.

They are launching missile volleys topping 3000 missiles of sizes between 1 and 6.   Constantly.   the *slowest* missile in the bunch is 89k-kms.

I built a 2million ton ship that is nothing but engines, fuel, 500 CIWS guns, and 350 layers of armor just to try and do. . .  I don't even know what.   Run them out of ordinance I guess?  For a combat fleet that's trailing behind said ship by about 200mkm.

I haven't been keeping exact count, due to the volleys having different speeds and launch timers, but I extrapolate that in the 3-ish hours I've had him chilling just in-range of their planet, he's taken over 3 million missile impacts.   His armor is still at 94%, but that's not the point.

The point is that this is getting rather tedious clicking "advance time 5 seconds" over and over.



I'm looking for suggestions in what I can do to expedite this process.   Can I look into the NPR's ship-and-planet ordinance stocks somehow?  (If it turns out they are just about expended, I'll just click a few more times).   If not, is there an efficient way to deal with constant missile spam in the 4-figures in a way that doesn't involve me building a fleet of 500 anti-missile laser ships with tech high enough to reliably down missiles traveling in the 6-figures?

(note:  from the intel I have, there's very few enemy ships present that are even possible to be something other than a missile-weapon.   So I'm not worried about having to deal with beam/kinetic opponents, I just need to neutralize their missile armaments)

Im sorry man, but at this point, i think what you need is a bigger fleet. I would try and spawn facs or small corvettes with nothing but point defence systems and honestly, just close the gap and blast them with beam weapons. Is either that or lose by attrition. I dont know if NPR behaves this way, but it is possible that hey will just keep making more ordinance until you lose, so... Yea. Pull the big one, go back with a bigger fleet and close the gap. You could also go full fighter squadrons, move the big one to tank and see if the fighters are nimble enough to get to the kill. If you dont have the tech to evade or intercept those missiles in a decent manner, then you either pull back or i have no more ideas on how to help you.
Lets hope the veterans have better ideas.

[Stormtrooper]

That's the problem I often see in this game. It's very easy to go for a massive overkill that'd completely remove any challenge and thus fun, but at the same time there are cases like this when the enemy is so ridiculously OP that your overkill suddenly turns into "underkill", making you build even more powerful stuff that'll worsen the balance for other battles to come.

[themousemaster (OP)]

Ouch.

[Black]

Unfortunate reality of NPR AMM spam. I deal with it same way as you do, build huge commercial ship with ton of CIWS. It is kind of a dirty tactics but the amount of AMMs that some NPR and even spoilers can throw at you is sometimes completely ridiculous.

[Garfunkel]

The only way to avoid this is to destroy their missile ships. But since they have AMMs that will be difficult.

So have your big ship lead the way and tank the missiles while your fleet closes to firing distance and then fires as many missiles as possible at them. Shooting missiles at your tanking ship means they won't shoot down your incoming missiles. Note that there is no guarantee that they would fixate completely on your tank, so be prepared to defend your missile ships too.

The only alternative is to run their stockpile down as the NPR will eventually run out of missiles. though if you give them time, they will build more.

So put a movie on and keep pressing that 5 sec button.

[Density]

I see you're fighting the Cardassians. Now their heavy military build up makes more sense.

[themousemaster (OP)]

So put a movie on and keep pressing that 5 sec button.

A shame there's no way to SM them out of missiles.   I think after the 10-millionth one, I should just be able to assume "ok, I've dealt with it".

I hear the Suicide Squad sequel is decent.   Guess I'll go with that.

[Droll]

I'm looking for suggestions in what I can do to expedite this process.   Can I look into the NPR's ship-and-planet ordinance stocks somehow?  (If it turns out they are just about expended, I'll just click a few more times).

What you can do is go into the DB at FCT_Population, find the population ID of the alien world in question then look at FCT_PopulationWeapon which is where all the missile stockpiles are. This table also stores missileIDs, which can then be looked up at FCT_Missiles in order to determine the type of missile being stored at that planet.

As a bonus you can also look at FCT_PopulationInstallations and look at how many ordnance factories the NPR homeworld has. In addtion to the homeworld populationID, you are look at entry that has PlanetaryInstallationID = 34, which stands for ordnance factory.

That way you can get see exactly how many missiles and missile construction capability the NPR has at their homeworld. And you can decide whether or not the game is more enjoyable if you were to magically delete their stockpile.

[themousemaster (OP)]

Well, Birds of Prey was fun.   and by fun, I mean just long enough.

After about the 17th day of 5 second increments, it appears they are about out of missiles.   They are still firing them, but in batches of 10s, not 1000s.

I edged closer with Big Bertha to try and get more info, and was opened up on by 170 STO PD installations, 70 STO anti-ship lasers, and a couple dozen ships that apparently do have railguns as a weapon. . .  but it's a dern sight better than what I had to get through to find them.   At least now it's a fight.


Yay!

[Agraelgrimm]

Well, Birds of Prey was fun.   and by fun, I mean just long enough.

After about the 17th day of 5 second increments, it appears they are about out of missiles.   They are still firing them, but in batches of 10s, not 1000s.

I edged closer with Big Bertha to try and get more info, and was opened up on by 170 STO PD installations, 70 STO anti-ship lasers, and a couple dozen ships that apparently do have railguns as a weapon. . .  but it's a dern sight better than what I had to get through to find them.   At least now it's a fight.


Yay!

Holy smeg...

[xenoscepter]

Well, Birds of Prey was fun.   and by fun, I mean just long enough.

After about the 17th day of 5 second increments, it appears they are about out of missiles.   They are still firing them, but in batches of 10s, not 1000s.

I edged closer with Big Bertha to try and get more info, and was opened up on by 170 STO PD installations, 70 STO anti-ship lasers, and a couple dozen ships that apparently do have railguns as a weapon. . .  but it's a dern sight better than what I had to get through to find them.   At least now it's a fight.


Yay!

 --- "170 STO PD installations, 70 STO anti-ship lasers, and a couple dozen ships that apparently do have railguns as a weapon...." Praise z0rg!

[Paul M]

There is only one solution to the AAM spam and that is make two warheads.  One is an anti-missiles spherical blast (likely soft X-ray) warhead and the other is a nuclear shaped charge ship killer warhead.   If this is done then AAMs are useful against other missiles only.  Give them 10% damage to a ship, fractions round down or just no damage to hull but will degrade shields or no damage to ships period.

I would further change how AAMs work so that speed is not longer the defining quantity since so long as they are on reciprocal bearings the speed of either missile is irrelevant to an interception and this would stop the faster missiles from jumping over interception by slower ones.   Make interception chance based on missile warhead generation and strength plus missile agility.    Get rid of this whole speed based game mechanic.   So AAMs need their speed only to cut down flight time or catch missiles when fired in deflection.

The warhead you need to soft kill a missile isn't what you would use against a ship and vice-versa.  The real trouble would be an accurate detonation timing.  If the soft kill range is 1 km then the time error the warhead can have is 1 km/target speed for a missile travelling at typical speeds (>10K km/s) that is 100 micro-seconds.  That is a damned precise timing system.  The mechanic for ASMs is more if you have your shaped charge pointed correctly...target speed counts but so does your onboard avionics.  The speed of the missile is again irrelevant to anything but getting in range to execute its attack.

[themousemaster (OP)]

I would think another solution to AMM spam is simply to limit the spam.   As I alluded to earlier, no planet is going to stockpile 8-digits worth of missiles.

Limiting the AI to some figure of planetside or fleet-wide missiles would have solved this issue nicely.

In any event, I got into the close(ish) range battle I wanted, so problem solved.   17 in-game days later, but still, better than nothing.   Now it's just time for me to mop up the several hundred STOs ;p

[Zincat]

I would think another solution to AMM spam is simply to limit the spam.   As I alluded to earlier, no planet is going to stockpile 8-digits worth of missiles.

Limiting the AI to some figure of planetside or fleet-wide missiles would have solved this issue nicely.

In any event, I got into the close(ish) range battle I wanted, so problem solved.   17 in-game days later, but still, better than nothing.   Now it's just time for me to mop up the several hundred STOs ;p

To be fair, a PLANET with a unified government in this scenario would most assuredly store 8-digits worth of missiles. This problem is connected to the old box launchers problem, and it has to do with waves.

Aurora as a game does not handle very well large missile waves, and short beam weapons range compounds the issue.
The box launchers spam (which the AI will never use) can simply trivialize any content because the AI will never be able to handle it. Using it is really no difference than just using SM and give yourself a billion tons of warships. You just win, there is no game.
The size 1 amm missile spam the ai will use is equally annoying, and there is very little that can be done against it except deploying an ungodly amount of PD. Which I normally do since I often go heavy beam wapons, but that does not mean the problem does not exist.

Simply put:
- Beam weapons are underwhelming because they shoot too unfrequently, and have a limited range which means just one shot per wave in most scenarions. We're talking of immensely future tech here, shooting once per 5 seconds interval does not make sense, it's just due to balance concerns. Even dedicated gauss PD is honestly too weak.
- At the same time, amm are too strong because you can use them against ships. It is quite... unbalanced that an AMM is actually carrying a payload capable of doing damage which is relevant against a ship.


No solution is perfect, any change to the current rules would have powerful balance effects and that's up to Steve. Then you'll have missile enthusiasts who are happy to blow up everything with invincible box launchers ships, and beam weapons enthusiasts who would want to see missiles nerfed a lot.

Personally, and that's just me, I'd make beam weapons progressively stronger at missile interception. This WOULD solve the amm spam problem, and the box launchers spam problem. It would however make missiles progressively not viable, so at high tech levels the focus would be on beam weapons. And I would like that, as I personally cannot consider missiles really being used at ultra tech levels.

Think about this for a moment. Max tech level for Aurora are:
Vacuum Energy Power Plant + Photonic Drive
Quantum Singularity Power Plant + Quantum Singularity Drive
You can work with quantum singularities and photonic drives... and you still use missiles? That's the best weapon you can have, really? That's... underwhelming, really doesn't feel like the future to me. It's just very sad.

But as said, that's my personal view and pertains more to flavor rather than anything else. Ultimately it's a balance concerns, and Steve is the one who decides where the balance stands.