Effective non-missile point defense?

[Panpiper (OP)]

I may have painted myself into a corner. I had no scientist even remotely decent at missiles. However one of my best scientists was great at beam weapons (another was great at engines so my ships can be reasonably fast). I poured all my research into lasers, thinking I could use also them on CWIS systems. Now I am at the point of needing some warships and I discover that CWIS 'only' works with gauss cannons. Can I build a laser turret and dedicate that to point defence instead? Will it be even remotely as effective as a properly built CWIS? What should I do to build the most effective laser-based point defence I can? Might I still be better off getting a single level in gauss cannons and using those anyway?

[captainwolfer]

If you are mainly using lasers, then you want 10-12cm laser turrets with tracking speed equal to your maximum (so 4x your racial fire control speed). What you do is have 4x tracking speed beam fire controls linked to those 10 or 12 cm laser turrets, and you set those fire controls to Defensive Final Fire. That way, when missiles would hit your ships, the laser turrets will fire at the missiles. Keep in mind that hit chance will basically be fire control speed / missile speed, so if the missiles are twice as fast as your fire controls can track then only half your lasers will hit

Don't use CIWS. It is rarely better, because the above will mean that every laser turret will fire on any missiles attacking ships in the entire fleet, while CIWS only fires on missiles targeting the ship they are on.


Also, Gauss is better at this than lasers, but only after you get the tech that lets Gauss fire 3 or 4 times per second.

[Barkhorn]

I thought gauss was better than laser at all tech levels, but doesn't get better than railgun until like rate of fire 5 or 6.

[Panpiper (OP)]

If I had gauss weapons at a decent level (future game maybe), would I be better building dedicated turrets for those gausses and setting them to final fire, rather than use CWIS? This way as  captainwolfer suggests, they could all combine their fire at any and all missiles?

[DeMatt]

To fire a beam weapon at a target, you need four things:

• the beam weapon,
• power reactor(s) to charge it,
• a Beam Fire Control to aim it,
• and an Active Sensor lighting the target.

Other than the Active Sensor (which can be on a different ship), all these components must be on the same ship.  Shooting at missiles is basically identical to shooting at ships, so in theory you can use any valid combination as point defense.

That said, the 80cm laser that takes 3000 seconds to recharge isn't going to knock down very many missiles.

In order to be efficient at knocking down missiles, your beam weapon system needs to account for the following factors:

• Missiles are small - you will want a resolution 1 Active Sensor in order to target them.
• Missiles are fast - you will want either a fast ship (for fixed weapons) or a fast turret to hit them.
• Missiles are fragile - you only need to do 1 point of damage to each missile, any more is wasted.
• Missiles come in swarms - you will want to fire quickly (5 second charge time) and rapidly (multiple shots per charge) if you can.

Lasers tend to have good range but poor rate of fire, and they can be mounted in turrets, which means they tend to be used as "area defense" or "secondary battery" - they don't provide the final anti-missile shots that railguns or gauss guns do.  I like 15cm lasers for this, but 12cm or 10cm lasers can do just as well.

CIWS is an all-in-one point-defense component that includes everything a ship needs for point defense.  In return, that's all that a CIWS can do - point defense for the ship it's mounted on.  Building a point-defense system out of discrete components lets you use those components for different things - the active sensor can detect more than just "missiles hitting the ship", the gauss turret can fire at enemy ships as well, etc.

[nuclearslurpee]

CIWS is an all-in-one point-defense component that includes everything a ship needs for point defense.  In return, that's all that a CIWS can do - point defense for the ship it's mounted on.  Building a point-defense system out of discrete components lets you use those components for different things - the active sensor can detect more than just "missiles hitting the ship", the gauss turret can fire at enemy ships as well, etc.

This is important to emphasize: ton for ton, CIWS is the most effective point defense you can put on a ship (except at base tech level when railguns are probably better). However, it will only defend the ship it is mounted on, making it nearly useless for any ship intended to operate in a fleet.

Meanwhile if you put CIWS e.g. on your survey ships, it probably won't save you from getting blown to bits unless you mount several turrets (or reach very high tech levels), which gets to be rather a lot of tonnage that could have been spent building more or better ships. So the value of CIWS is still questionable. Where it is most useful, then, are large, high-value targets like carriers or fleet base stations which can afford to dedicate a lot of tonnage to CIWS and are valuable enough to justify adding a weapon that won't help the rest of a fleet, if any.

[Potat999]

If you've gone down the laser path, you might also consider using some outrider ships which interpose themselves between your main fleet and the enemy missiles with lasers on fire controls set to area defense rather than final fine.  Lasers have the range that it is (sometimes) more efficient in area defense - if they can shoot at missiles aimed at something behind them, so that they can shoot over 2x the range.  It helps if the missiles are slow too, and if you are backing up to keep the missiles in range longer xD.

Note that if your outriders stray too far, they can't be supported by the final fire lasers on your main fleet, so buyer beware

[sadoeconomist]

If you've gone down the laser path, you might also consider using some outrider ships which interpose themselves between your main fleet and the enemy missiles with lasers on fire controls set to area defense rather than final fine.  Lasers have the range that it is (sometimes) more efficient in area defense - if they can shoot at missiles aimed at something behind them, so that they can shoot over 2x the range.  It helps if the missiles are slow too, and if you are backing up to keep the missiles in range longer xD.

Note that if your outriders stray too far, they can't be supported by the final fire lasers on your main fleet, so buyer beware

I haven't tested this, but in theory you could order your area defense escort outriders to move to your main fleet at full speed as soon as enemy missiles get into range, which would let them stay a bit further out from the main fleet and keep the missiles in their envelope longer so they'd have more shots at them. If they're very fast small ships, you could potentially keep enemy ASMs in range of your lasers quite a bit longer by doing that. Also, small ships would likely be untargetable by enemy MFCs at long range, so you wouldn't need to rush them back to your main fleet's FDF envelope to keep them safe. So speed and stealth can be good for area defense ships.

Whenever you've got area defense weapons, you should be trying to move in the same direction as enemy missiles to reduce your relative speed - area defense is much less efficient if you're moving toward the source of the missiles, which means it can be hard to close to beam range against a missile-armed opponent while relying on area defense. Also, if missiles start coming in from multiple directions, or if you're close enough to the enemy that your escorts need to be recalled to the main fleet to stay safe, it can cut your area defense efficiency by 50% or more, so keeping your distance is important. If you're relying on area defense to protect a main fleet then you should have either long range missiles or some kind of separate attacking force that can be split off from your main fleet so you don't have to close all the way with it.

If you've got good engine tech but bad missiles and you've gone all in on lasers, I'd suggest FACs armed with spinal mount lasers as an attacking force - that way you can keep your main fleet of carriers protected and far away while still attacking with beams.

[serger]

I have tested area defence escort with fast lasgun fighters in this role: send the wing towards enemy, catch the biggest missile salvo at decent distance and follow it firing every 5 sec. Needs accurate planning and attentive direction, but it's really very effective against opponents with relatively low-speed anti-ship missiles. Nearly useless against planetary missile-antimissile spam, though, but it was VB Aurora, and now, in current C# Aurora, small missiles are much short-legged then they was in the last VB Aurora version, so possibly this doctrine can be more potent even against strong planetary defence. Looking forward to test it with forthcoming Aurora 1.13, may gods help Steve to release it before long.

[misanthropope]

a beam fleet does well with railguns for pd.  youre already required to make your fleet fast, so the loss from hull-mounting is limited.  the critfinding potential of rails couples well with the damage profile of lasers, which gives you a bonus if you have to/ choose to knife fight.   youre already researching recharge, so the 10cm rg is only one cheap component, from a research perspective.

i am of the never-ciws tribe, but conceivably a jp-assault ship or some heavily shielded giant bullet-magnet of a capital ship might profitably mount them.

[Bremen]

Unfortunately the best non-missile PD weapons are railguns and gauss, which are both also in the missile/kinetic tree. Turreted 10 or 12cm lasers are indeed probably your best energy weapon choice; they're not quite as good purely in an anti-missile role but will have much better range than gauss or light railguns. This can work for area defense like people have been talking about, and also means they can perform well as hybrid weapons, being designed both to shoot at missiles and at other ships/fighters (and in fact that's the only reason you'd use 12cm instead of 10cm as an anti-missile weapon).

You'll probably still want some heavy laser weapons if only because 10-12cm lasers probably won't reach out to your maximum targeting range, but it does mean ships with a large number of anti-missile laser turrets will be extremely potent at short to medium energy range.

[Froggiest1982]

I am currently studying a deployable PD turret defense.

The PD is highly influenced by its effectiveness therefore to lose a sensor or a turret or a ship highly cripples our effectiveness.

Once deplyed, the turrets are independent and also constitutes independent multiple targets helping with retargeting active sensors. Eventually, if the main ship is lost, the PD capability will still remain intact.

Some "empy" commercial ships could always be attached to the main fleet and kept at a secure distance for emergency pick ups.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Rail-guns is a good choice if you don't intend to spend research into any other point defence oriented weapons. The main negative is that they require high speed ships to be good and that can also be expensive... to expensive for really effective PD in my opinion. But on a beam fleet where you concentrate on Railguns only it is a very good choice.

The other very major drawback with any weapons (such as rail-guns) that can't be mounted in a turret is high vulnerability to ECM differences. ECM can sometimes render non turreted weapons completely inert and useless.

Rail-guns also can become a sub optimal planetary point defence weapon as technology is advanced as they never track faster than the racial technology.

The main benefit with lasers is that they can be turreted and thus don't care what the speed of the ship it is mounted on. They also are much less susceptible to ECM penalties. The other advantage is that even small calibre lasers have a decent range and thus is allot more useful in beam combat too.

Even if lasers have a lower PD effect than rail-guns from a mass perspective the practical result can rapidly shift in lasers favour depending on situations and other uses so you should not dismiss their capabilities as a long term investment. For lasers I would turret all lasers at 15cm and below most of the time, 15cm lasers become really good once you can shoot every 5sec with them but even before that they work great at any ASM attacks. Turreted lasers also make any small craft beam attacks a pretty big fat no go as well.

If I already put effort into laser I would stick with that choice, if I put effort into rail-guns I would stick to that solution.

Gauss PD is best combined with the use of other Beam weapon types such as Carronades and Particle Beams. But can also be used with lasers if you feel you can afford the somewhat redundant use from Gauss versus laser from just putting the research someplace else. Gauss is also a very good option if you just use missiles and no other beam weapons at all, it will save allot of cost in missiles from defending yourself against other missiles.