Author Topic: Missile and Bouy designs  (Read 5171 times)

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Offline Thorgarth (OP)

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Missile and Bouy designs
« on: January 19, 2009, 07:49:41 AM »
I am looking for guidance with missile and bouy designs.  What designs have you found to be combat tested and practical to the Aurora universe?  

Thank you,
Thorgarth
 

Offline Kurt

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Re: Missile and Bouy designs
« Reply #1 on: January 19, 2009, 09:09:05 AM »
This is a very situational question.  A good rule of thumb for designing missiles is to first design your detection and fire control systems.  By deciding how much space you want to spend on those systems, and then designing them, you will then know what range your detection and tracking systems will have.  Then, when designing your missiles, you know what the maximum range of those systems are, so you know what range to give your missiles.  After that, you need to decide on the warhead and speed.  Obviously, the bigger the warhead the more damage it will do, but speed and manueverability are important as well, as they increase the to-hit probability.  

Everything is a trade-off, and you need to decide what kind of missile that you are designing.  Is this something that you are going to launch in high numbers to overwhelm your enemy, even if no one missile has a high to-hit percentage, or are you going for high-value missiles each of which is going to do major damage when it hits?  If you are going for the swarm approach, then small, cheap missiles are the way to go, but if you want high-value then larger, slower-firing but more accurate missiles are the way to go.  

Kurt
 

Offline Hawkeye

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Re: Missile and Bouy designs
« Reply #2 on: January 19, 2009, 10:00:32 AM »
I am currently of the opinion, that smaller is better (not combat tested, as of yet however)

With a given (low) technology, I can usually design a size 2 missile with a class 2 warhead and reasonable speed (10.000 to 13.000 km/s) and range (some 20 to 40 mio km) or a size 3 missile with a class 3 warhead (same speed and range).

In those cases, I will allways go with the smaller missile, as each missile shot down by enemy PD only lowers the throw weight of a given missile salvo by 2 pts, while with the bigger missile it is reduced by 3 pts. It also forces an enemy to haul around a whole lot of anti-missile missiles to be effective.
I usually don´t bother armoring them, as armor doesn´t help against anti-missile missiles, which I perceive as the biggest countermeasure to my missile salvos (PD guns can allways be overcome by large salvos).

Other than that, I try to keep the missiles small (say, max. size 4 for ships, max. size 8 for PDCs) so I can fire a reasonable salvo, that has a chance to penetrate enemy PD.
Ralph Hoenig, Germany
 

Offline Randy

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Re: Missile and Bouy designs
« Reply #3 on: January 21, 2009, 09:31:36 AM »
One thing to keep in mind reguarding range and endurance is that the limit of  your fire control does not necessarily mean that is the max you should design your missiles to.

If you have longer range/endurance you can then send multiple vollys into a staging area, combine into a single larger volley, and then send it after your target - even at max fire control range...
 

Offline IanD

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Re: Missile and Bouy designs
« Reply #4 on: September 24, 2009, 02:11:38 PM »
I have a question on multi-stage missiles. When you design a missile with a second stage do you have to manufacture both parts and put them together or do just manufacture the assembled unit by manufacturing the first stage?

Regards
IanD
 

Offline Brian Neumann

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Re: Missile and Bouy designs
« Reply #5 on: September 24, 2009, 06:35:06 PM »
For ships, the smaller more numerous launchers do seem to work better.  For planetary defense centers it goes the other way.  I have had several battles where pdc's with size 12 missiles were almost unstoppable.  By the time you put 1 space for ecm, 1 for armor (which does help now against missiles) and .5 for a guidence package (usually em) the missile does not pack any more of a punch than a size six does.  The difference is how hard it is to stop.  A level or two of ecm drastically reduces the ability of the final pd in hitting, the armor makes it take twice as many intercepts for the pd missiles, and the ecm also reduces the range for the pd missiles fire control, this often reduces their counter fire by one salvo it seems.  The terminal guidance means that the missile will tend to hit a target even if the guiding fire control is nocked out.  I was actually quite suprised at their survivability.  A salvo of 24 missiles survived the point defense missiles and energy weapons and got an average of 5 hits.  Compared to the fleet engagement where the same generation of missiles had over 300 missiles per salvo of size 3 and only got an average of 9 hits.  I replayed the battle (handy having saved the database only a couple of days before.) with a totally different missile design doctrine for the ships using size six missiles.  They got about the same percentage of hits with unarmored missiles, but when I switched to using armored missiles that did half the damage per hit they actually got almost twice the total damage through.

This was with me playing the defensive side as well as the offensive side throughout the battle.

Brian
 

Offline sloanjh

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Re: Missile and Bouy designs
« Reply #6 on: September 24, 2009, 07:30:10 PM »
Quote from: "IanD"
I have a question on multi-stage missiles. When you design a missile with a second stage do you have to manufacture both parts and put them together or do just manufacture the assembled unit by manufacturing the first stage?

Regards

B - All the parts come together as a pre-assembled unit.

John
 

Offline IanD

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Re: Missile and Bouy designs
« Reply #7 on: September 25, 2009, 03:12:44 AM »
Quote from: "Brian"
For ships, the smaller more numerous launchers do seem to work better. For planetary defense centers it goes the other way. I have had several battles where pdc's with size 12 missiles were almost unstoppable. By the time you put 1 space for ecm, 1 for armor (which does help now against missiles) and .5 for a guidence package (usually em) the missile does not pack any more of a punch than a size six does. The difference is how hard it is to stop. A level or two of ecm drastically reduces the ability of the final pd in hitting, the armor makes it take twice as many intercepts for the pd missiles, and the ecm also reduces the range for the pd missiles fire control, this often reduces their counter fire by one salvo it seems. The terminal guidance means that the missile will tend to hit a target even if the guiding fire control is nocked out. I was actually quite suprised at their survivability. A salvo of 24 missiles survived the point defense missiles and energy weapons and got an average of 5 hits. Compared to the fleet engagement where the same generation of missiles had over 300 missiles per salvo of size 3 and only got an average of 9 hits. I replayed the battle (handy having saved the database only a couple of days before.) with a totally different missile design doctrine for the ships using size six missiles. They got about the same percentage of hits with unarmored missiles, but when I switched to using armored missiles that did half the damage per hit they actually got almost twice the total damage through.

I was trying to find something to outrange Precursor missiles, the thought being can I have a fast unarmoured delivery vehicle with a long range coupled to a size 3 sprint missile with a larger warhead, terminal guidance, and twice the normal velocity and 10mk range. Well I can but its size 12 :( .

Quote from: "sloanjh"
B - All the parts come together as a pre-assembled unit.

Many thanks sloanjh
IanD
 

Offline Steve Walmsley

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Re: Missile and Bouy designs
« Reply #8 on: September 26, 2009, 09:24:25 AM »
Quote from: "IanD"
I have a question on multi-stage missiles. When you design a missile with a second stage do you have to manufacture both parts and put them together or do just manufacture the assembled unit by manufacturing the first stage?
If you design a small 'warhead' missile and then design a larger missile that has three 'Warheads' as it's second state, the cost and materials for the larger missile will include the costs for the three smaller missiles. When you build the larger missile, it will come complete with the second stages.

Steve
 

Offline WHCnelson

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Re: Missile and Bouy designs
« Reply #9 on: December 10, 2009, 04:11:39 PM »
OK Guys...   How do you deploy Buoys?   Are they launched from a missile tube and then they stay in one location?  and how do you activate them?
 

Offline waresky

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Re: Missile and Bouy designs
« Reply #10 on: December 11, 2009, 03:21:13 AM »
1)Launcher Buoy: must have onboard a right class-size launcher (eg: Buoy size-24 = launcher 24)
2)Can launch (deploy) buoy use the right command: "Missile Launch at" on a "order" list (Task Group windows orders)
3)where deploy and how: reach waypoint (Mines deploy system,for example)and order same as above
4)or on a planet for "geosurvey buoy" system (if u like build this design's Buoy)
5)Activation:when Buoy r deployed if r "PASSIVE" (eg:Geosurvey sensors onboard) the buoy scan automatically when deployed
..
 

Offline Steve Walmsley

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Re: Missile and Bouy designs
« Reply #11 on: December 11, 2009, 03:46:01 AM »
Quote from: "WHCnelson"
OK Guys...   How do you deploy Buoys?   Are they launched from a missile tube and then they stay in one location?  and how do you activate them?
Assign a buoy to a missile tube and then either fire them manually using the Msl Launch button on the Ship Window or use the "Launch Missiles At" order for the Fleet. Once launched they stay in one location, although they will move with a planet or moon if they launched in orbit. "Launch Missiles At" can be used with waypoints.

EDIT: Another option is to make the buoy the second stage for a missile. That way the buoy will deploy when the missile reaches its target.

Steve
 

Offline Canaris

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Re: Missile and Bouy designs
« Reply #12 on: January 19, 2010, 01:34:50 PM »
Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
EDIT: Another option is to make the buoy the second stage for a missile. That way the buoy will deploy when the missile reaches its target.

I hope this isn't considered gravedigging, but how does one go about that?

EDIT: If it's not possible, can I use regular missiles as long-range geological survey probes? They can fit geo sensors, afterall.
"Fairytales do not tell children that monsters exist, children already know they exist. Fairytales tell children that monsters can be killed."
 

Offline Beersatron

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Re: Missile and Bouy designs
« Reply #13 on: January 19, 2010, 02:02:53 PM »
Steve mentioned in the bug thread that the drone stuff is incomplete. He had a database corruption on his development machine and lost a pile of work and during his re-working of the same material he missed some of the updates.

It looks like the Drone stuff will be in full effect for the next release, but that the next release will be 4.9, therefore a DB release and therefore game restarts ahoy-hoy!
 

Offline Canaris

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Re: Missile and Bouy designs
« Reply #14 on: January 19, 2010, 02:04:59 PM »
Quote from: "Beersatron"
Steve mentioned in the bug thread that the drone stuff is incomplete. He had a database corruption on his development machine and lost a pile of work and during his re-working of the same material he missed some of the updates.

It looks like the Drone stuff will be in full effect for the next release, but that the next release will be 4.9, therefore a DB release and therefore game restarts ahoy-hoy!

Ah, so the geo sensors checkbox does nothing for standard missiles but add useless weight?
"Fairytales do not tell children that monsters exist, children already know they exist. Fairytales tell children that monsters can be killed."