question on missles design

[Mikeck (OP)]

I am a little confused on certain aspect of actual missle design. Particularly, the "agility" setting.  It seems the higher I make it, the lower my "chance to hit" goes?  Is this the chance of the missle to hit the target?

Same with speed....seems the higher I make anything, the lower my chance to hit.  what am I missing here?
What should I incorprate for a good anti-missle missle?

[Beersatron]

Agility is meant to increase chance to hit and so is speed. I generally cram as much speed in as possible and not worry about the agility too much.

[Steve Walmsley]

I am a little confused on certain aspect of actual missle design. Particularly, the "agility" setting.  It seems the higher I make it, the lower my "chance to hit" goes?  Is this the chance of the missle to hit the target?

Same with speed....seems the higher I make anything, the lower my chance to hit.  what am I missing here?
What should I incorprate for a good anti-missle missle?

The more agility you add to the missile, the higher its Manoeuvre Rating (MR) and the better the modifier to hit . A missile with no agility will have an MR of 10. However, if you have not researched missile agility you may find it is too low to be any use and adding Engine Power may be better in terms of increasing the to hit chance. You will need to balance between the two. Faster missiles should always have a higher to hit chance, assuming you have researched missile drives, but sometimes adding agility instead will increase the to hit chance by a larger amount than for the same MSP of engine power.

Check the grid in the centre top of the missile design window. What values do you have for:
Missile Engine Power per MSP
Missile Agility per MSP

Steve

[Hawkeye]

Ok, I´ll give it a try

I usually don´t bother with AMMs while I only have nuclear thermal engines, as their hit probability is abysimal
With Nuclear Pulse Engine tech and Levitated Pit Implosion Warhead they become somewhat viable, but only once your reach ion engine tech,  they start to realy look good. Also keep in mind, that at the lower tech leverl, you need to allocate a large percentage of mass to warhead, so you get 1 point of damage, which will also keep your AMMs from performing good (all IMO, of course)

One of my typical AMM (mass 1, generaly), using ion engine tech and levitated pit implosion warhead would have a warhead of 1 (0.25 mass), a speed of 20.000+ km/s (0.53 mass) a range of some 5 mkm (0.02 mass). The remaining 0.2 mass will be put into agility.
Play around with raising/lowering speed and agility to get the best to-hit-probatility

[Mikeck (OP)]

Thanks!

I had no idea that you had to research the warhead....

Do the numbers you mentioned need to add up to something?  you mentioned using the remaining .25 mass for agility...remaiming from what number?  Is it a zero sum system?  I guess my question is, besides cost, why wouldnt I want to pump my agility up to 100 or something? does this make the missle too heave?

Also, why is the base nuclear engine bad?  i am assuming because speed is to low?


God I'm a noob

[Steve Walmsley]

Thanks!

I had no idea that you had to research the warhead....

Do the numbers you mentioned need to add up to something?  you mentioned using the remaining .25 mass for agility...remaiming from what number?  Is it a zero sum system?  I guess my question is, besides cost, why wouldnt I want to pump my agility up to 100 or something? does this make the missle too heave?

Also, why is the base nuclear engine bad?  i am assuming because speed is to low?

The size of each missile is the total of all the MSP (missile size points) that you allocate to the each part of the design. So if you alloocate 2 to warhead, 1.5 to engine and 1.5 to fuel, the missile would be size 5 and you would need a size 5 launcher (or larger) to fire it. If you wanted to keep a missile at size 5 and you added 0.5 to agility, you would have to remove that 0.5 from somewhere else so it still added up to 5. Anti-missiles are usually size 1 so you need however much MSP you need to get a size 1 warhead (0.25 for example if you have strength 4 warheads), plus 0.01 for fuel as AMMs are short-ranged and the rest to engines, with the option of some to agility instead of engines

God I'm a noob

Don't beat yourself up. This is a really hard game to learn and I am always impressed when someone really gets into it. Keep asking questions as everyone on here is very helpful and it is the best way to learn.

Steve

[Hawkeye]

AMMs need speed an manouverability (agility) to hit anything. The low perfomance nuclear thermal engine needs a loooooot of mass to make your missile fast, so is not realy good for AMMs

AMMs are generally mass 1 (you want your AMM missile launchers to fire as often as possible, and with size-1 launchers you get the fastest reload rate. Also, you´ll need an awful lot of AMMs to defend your fleets, so magazin space (there will never be enough!) is vital. The smaller your AMM, the more you can cram into your mags.

The design process goes something like this:

You design your missile (AMM or ASM)
Then you design a matching launcher (ground or spacebound). Lager missiles need larger launchers with  a lower rate of fire and need more magazin space
Then you design a missile targeting system with at least (preferably larger) the range of your missile. The smaller targets can be tracked and the longer the range, the larger the system gets
Then you need an active sensor of preferably larger range, so you can light up the target. As with the targeting system, the longer the range and the smaller the target that can be seen, the larger the sensor gets.

So, while yes, you could design a size-8 AMM, but it would be highly inefficient. For one, if an enemy uses size-4 ASMs with the same tech as you, he will launch 2 salvos in the time, your AMM launchers can shoot only once, giving his every second salvo a free trip to your ships.

I also suggest to have a look into the "Bureau of Ship Design" section on the main page to see some designs


Edit: Damn Steve, would you please stop beating me to an answer!  

Just kidding

[Mikeck (OP)]

Thanks a lot for taking the time guys. I've posted the responses in a thread in the "wargamer.com" forum as well...hope you don't mind.

Shame I built a nice little frigate and sent it out with worthless missles...just like real life I guess.

[sloanjh]

Thanks a lot for taking the time guys. I've posted the responses in a thread in the "wargamer.com" forum as well...hope you don't mind.

Shame I built a nice little frigate and sent it out with worthless missles...just like real life I guess.

LOL.

Piling on to some of the responses upthread (and the "why is the base nuclear engine bad" question), one thing you'll find in Aurora is that efficiency ratios are a huge factor in success.  Engines have a fixed mass; as engine tech goes up, the power goes up.  Since speed is power/mass, this means that the top speed you can get (on a ship that's all engines) is controlled by the engine tech.  If you want to keep speed the same, you can directly replace the mass saved by using more efficient engines with payload.  The base engines are poor because the have the worst power/weight ratio, and so they make missiles that are really slow.  Since the chance to hit is proportional to the speed ratio of the missile to its target, this power to rate translates directly into missile effectiveness (even without taking the "I can run away faster than you can chase me" effect ).

The same thing goes in the economy.  Two of the most important things you can research are construction and mining efficiencies.  This is because economic growth is exponential (1000 factories can produce 10x new factories as 100 factories), and the exponent is controlled by these efficiencies.

So the message I'm trying to send is that low-tech in Aurora is like low-tech in RL - everything you do is difficult because efficiencies and productivity are low; it's difficult to generate a surplus to do whatever it is that you want to do ....

John

[mrwigggles]

I would suggest reading the TNT fiction by Steve, it really does give a breath to the design difficulties of low tech as well as offering a narrative tutorial, that on top of that is highly fun to read.