Aurora 4x
VB6 Aurora => VB6 Mechanics => Topic started by: Haji on January 14, 2017, 10:55:02 AM
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I'm once again back to my favorite Aurora campaign which I have been playing on and off for three years now I think. It is also the very first campaign where I reached anti-matter level of technology. However being a very bad strategist I have been simply upgrading my missiles without really thinking about this. Big mistake. Recently I finally decided to take a closer look at my cruisers to see how their offensive missile armament compares to their defenses and to my shock I discovered my anti-missiles had 75% interception chances against my own shipkillers.
My first reaction was that the missiles were too slow. I did after all accept somewhat lower speed to cram larger warheads and sensors. But after running some calculations it turned out that even if my shipkillers dedicated 60% of their mass to maximum power engines (6.0 multiplayer) my anti-missiles would still have 50% interception chances. That's too high. It mean in terms of space it is much easier to defend than to deal damage with any shipkiller above size 2. And of course a shipkiller has to deal with point blank defenses, evasion and armor.
The simple truth is interception chances on this technological level are too high. Worse there don't seem to be any ways to counter this. ECM is effectively useless as it can be countered by ECCM and armor takes too much space. It seems to me that either agility should be significantly nerfed or some new (or simply modified) way for missiles to avoid defensive fire on higher technological levels should be added.
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Missile armour needs to take into account tech level. Adding a few levels of armour would be a possible solution if it meant needing ether more missile hits or larger anti missiles at that tech level.
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Making it easier to armor missiles isn't an ideal solution, because by that point you have 1 MSP anti-fighter munitions that are almost as accurate as the anti-missile missiles, with 4 point warheads.
A partial solution is to recognize that just because a weapon system dominates four or so tech levels, that doesn't mean it is required to dominate all tech levels. Part of Aurora is adapting to the changing effectiveness of weapons.
You might try making long ranged cheap heavily armored missiles, whose purpose is to draw out and soak AMMs before you get in range for the higher performance missiles. Or go to box launchers and try to saturate the enemy defenses.
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I'm using box launchers already. In fact I use primarily gunboats for offense, which can have up to thirty six launchers. Unfortunately the sensors have become so long ranged, there is time for some twenty five anti-missile salvos while the shipkillers cross the engagement range. You can't saturate such defenses; you effectively have to run them out of ammunition.
As for using heavily armored munitions as decoys I'll think about it, but the problem is I'm roleplaying a campaign while playing multiple sides, so it would be very easy to simply ignore such decoys, which is why I'm concentrating so hard on actually getting missiles through.
As for domination of weapon systems, I know a lot of people hate how powerful missiles are compared to energy weapons (if that's what you meant) but the problem is that energy weapons have a clear winner and a clear loser. The one with longer ranges and greater speed wins. No ifs, no butts, no clever tactics. Heck, there probably won't be any loses in such a scenario. Unless the very mechanics of energy weapons are changed in some way, to get a relatively balanced campaign, where you can use quantity to offset quality, you need to base said campaign on missiles.
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Frankly, I really fail to see the problem.
As said before, missiles are ridiculously good early on in the game. For a long time in fact. Also, the AI simply can't deal with missiles, let alone box launchers. If you use box launchers against the AI, you might as well play without any sort of enemies because it's just a "I win" button. I don't use reduced size/box launchers at all in fact, specifically because the AI is completely hapless before them.
I understand it is different if you play multiple factions, but I still fail to see the problems. There are reliable countemeasures to missiles. So what? In war, even in recent and modern wars, it came down to who has the most powerful military. I see no problem in there being effective counters to missiles. In fact, even in modern war, there ARE effective counters to missiles. AMM batteries ARE a reality for great military powers nowadays. It's just that usually, because of geopolitical considerations, any war in the last 30 years was between a huge nation and piddling dictators, so you saw none of these used.
So what happens when 2 nations of similar powers and similar technology level battle it out? The larger, more numerous side wins, it become a war of attrition. And so it's perfectly reasonable that you have to shoot until the enemy runs out of AMM. There are effective counters to missiles now, I can't see how there COULD NOT be even more effective counters in the future. If you want to win against a similar opponent, bring more ships.
Regarding your complain about energy weapons having a clear winner and loser... Yes it's exactly as you say. If you are faster and have longer range, you have won. As it should be. As it has always been in real life. If you do not have a longer range of the enemy, then you have to be faster so you can close in or else you die. This has been the basis of war since the first spears and bows. What is so strange about it?
You say there is no clever tactics in that. I will contest your point. Clever tactics is NOT having a weapon that for some reason the enemy cannot counter or intercept. That is called technological superiority, not clever tactics.
Clever tactics is attacking where the enemy can't defend. Clever tactics is forcing the enemy to split hiss forces. Clever tactics is blockading planets or systems, or taking out supply lines. Or luring the enemy in a trap. That is clever tactics and clever strategy. Having a better weapon system than the enemy is NOT tactics.
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With tracking bonuses and crew grade bonuses, the actual effective hit rate is likely beyond 100% - and with high tech res 1 sensors, you have a long time to shoot missiles at incoming waves... making it very difficult to overwhelm launch rates. The only way to penetrate a late game antimissile curtain is MUCH deeper magazines, or such force superiority that no detail of design mattered much anyway.
It's another factor forcing the meta-game towards the smallest plausible missiles, unfortunately.
I've long felt the game breaks down at TL5 or so anyway. TL1-2-3 and to some extent 4, you are not just researching infinite techs but techs that make a qualitative difference in your gameplay. at 5, capabilities increases enormously because of synergistic and multiplicative bonuses - but you're just running repeating techs, with the plausible exception of refining cloaking technology.
Regarding your complain about energy weapons having a clear winner and loser... Yes it's exactly as you say. If you are faster and have longer range, you have won. As it should be. As it has always been in real life. If you do not have a longer range of the enemy, then you have to be faster so you can close in or else you die. This has been the basis of war since the first spears and bows. What is so strange about it?
Infinite kiting is an artifact of game design, not some truth from on high - IRL it's difficult to both retreat and attack for a multitude of reasons. In Starfire - the genesis of Aurora - there were built in obstacles for such strategies. For example, ships couldn't fire directly behind them, limiting their ability to just speed away and fire; and ships that found themselves outranged could overboost their drives, albeit at the cost of damaging themselves. Infinite kiting in Aurora is a consequence of fixed tactical variables (speed, initiative, etc.) and perfect maneuverability, and the way fire controls work.
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So really, the issue isn't missiles and missile defenses, it is that long ranged missiles can no longer compensate for slower ship or fleet speeds. Missiles can still outperform beams at point blank missile range, the range at which missiles can not be intercepted.
Long ranged missiles still have a lot of uses, of course, just not against a properly designed warfleet. Killing commercial ships, survey ships, infrastructure ships like fuel harvesters and terraformers and gate construction ships. Putting a world under siege, destroying unescorted ships that try to get to and from it, that is a job for missiles. Forcing a defender to escort all commercial ships and therefore possibly get defeated in detail? That is something that long ranged missiles can help with. And unlike fighters, you don't have the same issue of risking your own forces getting sucked out of position or defeated in detail themselves.
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There's 2 variables nobody has mentioned in this thread yet, multi stage missiles and laser warheads, both of which if used properly can overcome both late game missile weaknesses mentioned.
Against the very high AMM interception rate if your large shipkillers are specifically crafted against what the enemy is using you can make him waste the majority of AMM's against the first stage, before the kill stage erupts at shorter range. Of course you need to know what speed and range the enemy missiles are, making proper scouting and forward fleet deployment very important. You'll need to risk ships in enemy held areas to gather that information before designing proper missiles.
And then as beam defense gets more effective you have the option of using laser warheads, allowing slower ships to use beam missiles to catch up with faster ships in a limited beam slogging match. If you have a range advantage then it's even better, but still it's safer to overwhelm a few select beam ships using beam missiles then it is to force an assault using similarly equipped ships. The attritional effect of taking out even a few enemy ships may win you time to get your slower ships into range.
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Actually, a fleet with superiority in speed and beam weapon range still might not be able to win. If the other side has superiority in shields, the side with speed and range might not be able to be the refresh rate of the shields at the rate they can engage with impugnity.
A lot depends on how big the economies are at that point. Shields can be dominant when you have a few really big capital ships, such that you can rotate out the shield damaged ships to regenerate, but not so many that concentrations of fire punch out individual ships in single exchanges of fire.
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Regarding your complain about energy weapons having a clear winner and loser... Yes it's exactly as you say. If you are faster and have longer range, you have won. As it should be. As it has always been in real life. If you do not have a longer range of the enemy, then you have to be faster so you can close in or else you die. This has been the basis of war since the first spears and bows. What is so strange about it?
In war, even in recent and modern wars, it came down to who has the most powerful military. I see no problem in there being effective counters to missiles.
I've modified the order of your posting as I will answer those two points in that order.
You are completely right that the side with superior guns wins and should win. But Aurora takes it to a ridiculous degree. In a real war having few superior weapons (like German Tigers II during WWII) will not win you the war. In Aurora, in case of energy armaments a single superior gun will. If you have a corvette equipped with a single laser and speed and range superior to the enemy, that corvette will win. Even if the enemy has a battlefleet massing ten thousand times as much as the corvette, it will not matter. The corvette will still win. That's not realism. That's a bad game design.
As to the point about superior military, I either didn't make my point well enough, or you simply missed it. With anti-missile having interception chances above 50% it becomes cheaper (in terms of both ship space and industrial cost) to defend than to attack. If a typical missile is size 3, for example, the attacker would have to have 50% larger fleet just to run the defender out of the ammunition. But of course this doesn't take into account point blank defenses and armor. In total the attacker has to have two or three times as large fleet as the defender to do any damage. What happens if one fleet is only 40% larger than the other? It should win right? But with the numbers I have given, both sides will run out of ammunition and then the side with superior beam range and speed will win. That means the smaller fleet will be able to achieve victory (assuming slightly superior technology) and lose no ships in the process! Again, that's not a realism, that's a bad game design.
I've long felt the game breaks down at TL5 or so anyway.
I still have a lot of things to do in my campaign, especially since it's the one I'm posting here, so I hope to find some way around it.
There's 2 variables nobody has mentioned in this thread yet, multi stage missiles and laser warheads,
I've never used laser warheads, but from what I experimented with yesterday in my campaign it seems like multi-warhead missiles will be the answer to my problem. Possibly.
Actually, a fleet with superiority in speed and beam weapon range still might not be able to win. If the other side has superiority in shields, the side with speed and range might not be able to be the refresh rate of the shields at the rate they can engage with impugnity.
A lot depends on how big the economies are at that point. Shields can be dominant when you have a few really big capital ships, such that you can rotate out the shield damaged ships to regenerate, but not so many that concentrations of fire punch out individual ships in single exchanges of fire.
Shields don't regenerate that fast. Even in a single ship versus single ship situation it's very difficult to have shields powerful enough to shrug off energy weapons. And as it happens the economies in my game are rather large. A thousand gunboats and several hundred larger warships probably can get through the shields easily enough, even if they use only small fraction of their space for energy weapons and even if only one of the seven or eight fleets is used.
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Regarding beam combat what has been mentioned before as a solution to infinite kitting in other games is to have speed penalty to moving in the opposite direction to that which the ship is firing. There ofcourse is no such penalty in Aurora but since you are playing both sides of a battle to can enforce a 'house rule' that when firing backwards a ship/fleet can't move at its full speed (possibly 50-75% of maximum). This would make it so that beam combat would only as one sided as you described if there is a massive technology difference.
As to anti-missiles becoming too good, the goal is to create anti-ship missiles that are uneconomical to shoot down with anti-missiles. Since armor doesn't currently scale with technology this basically means that anti-ship missiles have to be made smaller. So as already mentioned, and it sounds like you are already trying this, multi-stage missiles are important to be able to use the full range of high tech sensors/fire-controls while having size 1-2 final approach missiles. One way to look at it is that as tech increases if you keep the total damage of the missiles unchanged their size will naturally get smaller.
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Shields don't regenerate that fast. Even in a single ship versus single ship situation it's very difficult to have shields powerful enough to shrug off energy weapons.
You missed part of my comment. At point blank, yes, energy weapons will blast through shields. But if the fast side has a 200,000 km ranged weapon, and the other side has a 160,000 ranged weapon, he may not be able to pound through the shields at 180,000 km. So yes, the faster side can choose the range, but if they focused on range and the slower side has faster recharging shorter ranged weapons, the faster side will only be able to plink at the shields at the range where they have the advantage.
If your fleet focuses too exclusively on range and speed, it will have less space for defenses, and will generally have lower dps in close.
And also, fleets that focus exclusively on fleets that can win deep space battles of maintaining range do not have the same "I win button" for warp point assaults. Or for taking out an armed and shielded battlestation which could have epic amounts of shields.
Yes, the fleet with the higher tech wins, but that doesn't necessarily mean it is a cheap victory. Missiles get used up, time gets spent surveying against opposition, and the defender may be able to counter a lot of stuff if they have defense in depth. But a lot of first contact situations are when you stumble into the NPR's home system, which reduces that defense in depth issue.
And yes, if you design your fleets to be able to counter the missiles of a fleet say, twice their size, and have a beam range/defense strategy to deal with the rest, you will win. The trick is calculating both of those factors in advance, isn't it?
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I would argue that it isn't the TECH which is changing the tech equation as much as the afore-mentioned scale of the economics of your campaign. If you have thousands of gunboats, with resources involved more than the entire starting minerals of a typical homeworld, yes, maybe the game is indeed broken at that scale.
If you have a TL 3 race which controls high availability mega deposits, stuff is going to be broken long before you get to agility issues. A TL 6 start isn't going to be broken by high agility missiles because you can't afford million build cost fleets right off the bat.
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Regarding beam combat what has been mentioned before as a solution to infinite kitting in other games is to have speed penalty to moving in the opposite direction to that which the ship is firing. There ofcourse is no such penalty in Aurora but since you are playing both sides of a battle to can enforce a 'house rule' that when firing backwards a ship/fleet can't move at its full speed (possibly 50-75% of maximum). This would make it so that beam combat would only as one sided as you described if there is a massive technology difference.
That is actually a very interesting idea, thank you. Unfortunately while I may use it in my future campaigns, this one has been going on so long that the kiting precedent has been firmly established. In addition while I play a total of three nations, there are also NPRs present, and they would not obey this rule.
You missed part of my comment.
You are right, I did miss it. By the same token however in most cases my fights involve at least a dozen warships on each side, and if they all focus their fire, no shield can keep up with the regeneration.
Yes, the fleet with the higher tech wins, but that doesn't necessarily mean it is a cheap victory.
It really is. In my current campaign I had a situation when technologically superior force comprised exclusively beam armed frigates and a couple of cruisers for support. Against them ware four carrier groups with 30% superiority in tonnage and of course numerous missiles. The first force had interceptors which had very high hit chances in that situation, they had higher speed and they had ECM. They didn't even had superior beam range. They won, big time. They lost a couple of ships and destroyed a total of forty six. In terms of tonnage I think they destroyed about then times as much as they lost, and they were only a generation ahead in most technologies. For me that's a cheap victory.
I would argue that it isn't the TECH which is changing the tech equation as much as the afore-mentioned scale of the economics of your campaign.
The scale doesn't matter. The problem is that with interception chances as high as those in the late game, if you have a bunch of antimissiles that cost X and take Y space and the enemy is using size 3 shipkillers, you can defend against missiles which cost 2.5X and take 3Y space. That equation is not depended on scale, it's depended solely on interception chances.
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Wait, "In my current campaign I had a situation when technologically superior force comprised exclusively beam armed frigates and a couple of cruisers for support. Against them ware four carrier groups with 30% superiority in tonnage and of course numerous missiles."???
A generation ahead in most technologies? That results in lopsided fights at almost all tech levels. Why should high tech be any different? It sounds like you were not only higher tech, but you had fully developed and refit your fleet to the higher standard.
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Another idea regarding handling high tech anti-missiles is to use many low quality (low engine multiplier) anti-ship missiles that cost relatively little to produce. However, to do this you would need a considerable number of colliers to haul the cheap to produce but bulky missiles. The point is that against cheap anti-ship missiles the super effective anti-missiles will get probably 100% hit change but will be hugely inefficient in the sense that one size 1 anti-missile with a high engine multiplier and agility should end up costing more to produce than a size 4-6 missile with a low engine multiplier, some armor and a small warhead. It would then become an attrition battle.
Perhaps a reasonable strategy for an economically strong but technologically lacking empire.
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You are right, I did miss it. By the same token however in most cases my fights involve at least a dozen warships on each side, and if they all focus their fire, no shield can keep up with the regeneration.
I've built ships that could easily withstand a few dozen points of damage every increment without loosing shield integrity, with a total of several hundred. If one ship is taking too much focus fire, you pull it back while moving another one farther forward to take the agro. And he wasn't talking about "standard" ship doctrines where capital ships are 40k tons or so, he was talking about doctrines where cruisers are in the 100k ton range.
It really is. In my current campaign I had a situation when technologically superior force comprised exclusively beam armed frigates and a couple of cruisers for support. Against them ware four carrier groups with 30% superiority in tonnage and of course numerous missiles. The first force had interceptors which had very high hit chances in that situation, they had higher speed and they had ECM. They didn't even had superior beam range. They won, big time. They lost a couple of ships and destroyed a total of forty six. In terms of tonnage I think they destroyed about then times as much as they lost, and they were only a generation ahead in most technologies. For me that's a cheap victory.
Lets show a real world example of why this is working as intended. Against Saddam Hussein's tank force of several hundred cold war tanks, we fielded only 100 of the new Abrams tanks. Those 100 Abrams destroyed every single enemy tank without loosing a single tank crewman.
The scale doesn't matter. The problem is that with interception chances as high as those in the late game, if you have a bunch of antimissiles that cost X and take Y space and the enemy is using size 3 shipkillers, you can defend against missiles which cost 2.5X and take 3Y space. That equation is not depended on scale, it's depended solely on interception chances.
But the point is to keep up with enemy progress in that area, you need to develop in anti-missile technology and methods to take out waves of missiles like that. Whether that be in massive box launched amm waves, oversized speed tracking turrets, or other, there are plenty of ways to deal with missiles even given a technology disadvantage.
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@ lennson - the problem with low-quality missiles is that they still need to be faster than their their targets, and if the speed difference isn't great beam PD in area defence mode will be tremendously effective.
Many "normal practices" would break down if Aurora was a symmetrical competitive multiplayer game.
Most regular missile doctrines can be rendered economically unfeasible simply by making your ships cheaper than the missiles needed to destroy them, then give them nominal PD on top of that. Base-tech railguns have a cost of 1, low-power engines are also dirt-cheap.
Against AMMs no matter how accurate, can at least use size-1 ASMs and remain slightly ahead in terms of attrition.
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A tech level in one field gives somewhere between a 20% and 30% advantage. Having a tech level advantage in speed, armor and firepower means an edge of between 70% and 120% or so. So your "outnumbered" force that had an advantage in speed, range sensors and armor was effectively significantly more powerful than the force that merely outweighed it.
There are missions where the force that has the tech advantage won't have as much of an advantage. Freighter escort, for example. Speed of the warships isn't going to save the freighters if the enemy gets in range of them. A large but technically inferior force of commerce raiders could impose difficulties, simply by being able to put hulls in more places.
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Another quicktip for defending against massively oppressively fast enemy missile fire: fighters with gauss turrets, very small engines (needn't be faster than the defended TG), and with both the 4x tracking speed multiplier and the Fighter Only tracking speed multiplier.
You will be able to actually take a dent out of missile salvos that have a significant tech advantage over you utilizing final fire.
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To counter PD, I'm rejigging my missile combat doctrine to use Size 1 antiship missiles.
This is my anti-ship missile design, designed for use by fighters and MIRV multistage missiles against difficult targets I can't or don't feel like penetrated with my bigger missiles. After learning some very harsh lessons from the school of combat, I realized I wanted a way to effectively turn my defensive AMM launchers to offensive purposes. The hit chance is tuned to be able to hit NPRs I'm currently fighting.
Missile Size: 1 MSP (0.05 HS) Warhead: 4 Armour: 0 Manoeuvre Rating: 15
Speed: 57500 km/s Engine Endurance: 8 minutes Range: 26.4m km
Cost Per Missile: 1.8089
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 862.5% 3k km/s 285% 5k km/s 172.5% 10k km/s 86.2%
Materials Required: 1x Tritanium 0.8089x Gallicite Fuel x209.25
Development Cost for Project: 181RP
This is my anti-missile missile.
Missile Size: 1 MSP (0.05 HS) Warhead: 1 Armour: 0 Manoeuvre Rating: 42
Speed: 62500 km/s Engine Endurance: 0 minutes Range: 1.7m km
Cost Per Missile: 1.6613
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 2625% 3k km/s 840% 5k km/s 525% 10k km/s 262.5%
Materials Required: 0.25x Tritanium 1.4113x Gallicite Fuel x15.5
Development Cost for Project: 166RP
(my tech level is fairly high-10 damage per warhead point, 80 agility per agility point, T7 (magnetic fusion, post internal) propulsion.)
A back-of-the-envelope estimate says that it would take about two antimissiles to take down a single antiship missile, the same as you. The difference is that my antiship missiles are almost as cheap as my antimissile missiles.
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Fuel reserves may suffer however.
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Fuel reserves may suffer however.
Not really? To make 5000 of them, I only need a million liters of fuel.
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About beam combat... have you actually tried formations and how that will impact beam combat?
I have played several multi side campaigns and I have found that superior numbers actually can overcome speed and range if formations and maneuverings are done properly. Ships are basically set to follow a single "stack" and if you have many "stacks" and they are spread out you can actually trap and close with a faster enemy unless they decide to disengage from the fight.
The side with superior numbers need to spread out so the faster less numerous side cant use their speed and range advantage to great effect. When fighting at extreme range shields will mitigate damage effectively enough that other ships can easily maneuver around enemy formations and close to more effective firing ranges.
There are no rule that force ships to stay in ONE close group and I see no reason why anyone would fight like that during beam combat.
If I have ten ships and you have five and each operate in its own formation there is a very little chance for any of your ships to actually be able to keep distance from ALL of my ships at the same time. I will actually have very high chance to close with ALL of my ships against MOST of your ships given how the game rules work. IF I move my ships in a circular pattern around your formation.
Try it.. it requires some logistical work during battles but I house rule some restriction on maneuvering time. So ships cant do course correction or target switching more than once per minute to keep me sane.
I also find it rare that one side will have total superiority in all areas of a fight AND been able to upgrade ALL their ships to high standard at the same time. Even if beam weapons can be superior missiles are still lethal in close quarter combat too and they are pretty hard to outrage and shoot down that close. Ships always keep some close range missiles around for just such encounters.
One question... do laser head missiles actually work in the game... I was under impression these were not fully functional?
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Lazer heads have been working for the entirety of version 6. I think they may have been broken back in 5 but every time I've tested they have worked well. They're excellent as standoff weapons to get damage past something with excessive but short ranged point defence.
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Lazer heads have been working for the entirety of version 6. I think they may have been broken back in 5 but every time I've tested they have worked well. They're excellent as standoff weapons to get damage past something with excessive but short ranged point defence.
Great!!
I actually never used them.
Oh... and regarding missiles. Even if I think that armour on missiles could be implemented better... at least improved with armour technology it is a viable way to protect missiles. I also think that agility should be as important as speed for a missiles ability to evade AMM. In reality missiles use both speed and agility to evade AMM.
If enemy missiles already have a high hit chance then increasing speed is pointless... it is much better to reduce speed add armour (and agility if necessary), This will make anti-ship missiles cheaper and able to withstand AMM better even if they have 100% hit chance. If you also use a combination of fast and slow missiles it will be harder for the enemy to tailor their AMM to a certain type of anti-ship missiles.
In multi-national campaigns I find it very important to use multiple type of ammunitions, attack forms and strategies since being predictable is NOT a good strategy, simply too easy to counter.
I also find that, in most cases... it is the scouting element that determine who win an engagement. Full on engagement between fleets are only happening when the stakes are really high. That is if you role-play the political reasons why you fight and the need to preserve forces in most situation. Very few battles will be to the last ship, even in beam combat.
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To counter PD, I'm rejigging my missile combat doctrine to use Size 1 antiship missiles.
This is my anti-ship missile design, designed for use by fighters and MIRV multistage missiles against difficult targets I can't or don't feel like penetrated with my bigger missiles. After learning some very harsh lessons from the school of combat, I realized I wanted a way to effectively turn my defensive AMM launchers to offensive purposes. The hit chance is tuned to be able to hit NPRs I'm currently fighting.
Missile Size: 1 MSP (0.05 HS) Warhead: 4 Armour: 0 Manoeuvre Rating: 15
Speed: 57500 km/s Engine Endurance: 8 minutes Range: 26.4m km
Cost Per Missile: 1.8089
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 862.5% 3k km/s 285% 5k km/s 172.5% 10k km/s 86.2%
Materials Required: 1x Tritanium 0.8089x Gallicite Fuel x209.25
Development Cost for Project: 181RP
This is my anti-missile missile.
Missile Size: 1 MSP (0.05 HS) Warhead: 1 Armour: 0 Manoeuvre Rating: 42
Speed: 62500 km/s Engine Endurance: 0 minutes Range: 1.7m km
Cost Per Missile: 1.6613
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 2625% 3k km/s 840% 5k km/s 525% 10k km/s 262.5%
Materials Required: 0.25x Tritanium 1.4113x Gallicite Fuel x15.5
Development Cost for Project: 166RP
(my tech level is fairly high-10 damage per warhead point, 80 agility per agility point, T7 (magnetic fusion, post internal) propulsion.)
A back-of-the-envelope estimate says that it would take about two antimissiles to take down a single antiship missile, the same as you. The difference is that my antiship missiles are almost as cheap as my antimissile missiles.
In my experience during multi-national campaigns fighters releasing their payload as close as 30m km at that tech level would be suicide. 100m or more would be necessary and you would still need to deal with screening forces first.
Using similar tech levels then 60m km would be fighter to fighter missile distances. 120m km would be the distance that cloaked escort frigates could engage fighter squadrons with relative ease. Multi-Stage missiles would be blown out of the sky long before they can release their payload by cloaked escort ships and/or fighter screens.
The AI can only reasonably defend against full size missile launcher strikes using reasonably large missiles size 4-6 if you have roughly the same tech levels.
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@ Jorgen_CAB:
Encircling is a tricky job... a faster/longer-ranged force will still attempt to break out and pick enemy ships off from afar. Even if encircling works, they'll try to rush to one group, plinking away at it for as long as possible, then briefly accept close-quarters combat and break out as the rest approaches.
They may have local superiority even if the other side has more powerful weapons for close-range combat, and "speed is armour" in Aurora more than real life because it greatly affects hit chances.
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Yes... it is true... but it does work if you have the numbers advantage.
It is also rare in, my experience, that one side have such a clear advantage that numbers don't count in this instance.
If you are two or more tech levels above an enemy in all fields and ships are updated to those standards then yes it will be difficult if not impossible at times.
I have played enough battles this way to know that inferior ships can win by attrition this way, formations do work but is a pain in the but to perform. I am talking about ships basically breaking up into individual groups of one ship each. It is near impossible to keep a unified battle line this way and ships will tend to go all places. If ships stay in larger formations they can be closed by individual ships they are not chasing. If you break them up ships will soon be tangled up in what amounts to a brawl. Quite fun actually.
When sides also have different ships with different speeds and weapons such advantages are also not as clear. Even a slower enemy might have beam ship faster than some of your ships in said engagement or some ships with longer range weapons than others. Even if one side have the overall edge it might not be as clear cut.
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It can also be noted that slower ships can mitigate somewhat the speed superiority using high speed turrets, a bit. Getting over the fire control range bands might be more difficult, though.
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My solution to this problem was to go with fast size 1 missiles, staged for long range. In fact, I think my standard AMM and ASM use the same engine. (Actually, I have three or four ASMs, but the one that gets used as the final stage has the same engine as the AMM.) I also have a decoy which is just a tiny bit faster, and has armor instead of warhead. The advantage is that because of the way that the FC allocates defenses, it's going to soak up the first salvo of AMMs, and all the PD until the decoys are dead. Seed one pod of decoys in with each salvo of real missiles to double the number of individual targets, which slows down the AMM firing rate. And remember that adding FCs makes getting through PD easier if you can generate more individual targets than your opponent has FCs.
Also, laser heads have started working? I may have to fire up a game and test them. Last time I tried, they were completely useless compared to normal warheads.