Are these a pair of decent PDC?

[martinuzz (OP)]

I've designed 2 PDC bases. One for AMM purposes, the other as a long range missile base against bigger targets.
Please tell me, if these designs are decent. I think so, but I'm rather new to the game, and could use feedback.

This is my AMM base:

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Patriot MkI class Point Defence Base    3,100 tons     296 Crew     642 BP      TCS 62  TH 0  EM 0
Armour 10-18     Sensors 1/160     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 16
Magazine 166    

PDC Size 1 Missile Launcher (16)    Missile Size 1    Rate of Fire 5
PDC Missile Fire Control FC15-R1 (4)     Range 15.8m km    Resolution 1
AMM Flak MkI (64)  Speed: 24,000 km/s   End: 17.8m    Range: 25.7m km   WH: 1    Size: 1    TH: 160 / 96 / 48

Active Search PDC AM Sensor MR17-R1 (1)     GPS 160     Range 17.6m km    Resolution 1

Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s


This design is classed as a Planetary Defence Centre and can be pre-fabricated in 2 sections
It uses these missiles:

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AMM Flak MkI
Missile Size: 1 MSP  (0.05 HS)     Warhead: 1    Armour: 0     Manoeuvre Rating: 20
Speed: 24000 km/s    Endurance: 18 minutes   Range: 25.7m km
Cost Per Missile: 0.9
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 480%   3k km/s 160%   5k km/s 96%   10k km/s 48%
In the combat screen, I assigned 4 launchers per fire control. I also changed Point Defence mode for SFC to 4 anti-missiles per target missile, and set the max PD range to 1500 (because both my fire control, and my missiles are capable of acquiring that range). This results in:

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PDC Missile Fire Control FC15-R1 #1 (4v1 PD Mode 1500):   No Target Assignment
PDC Size 1 Missile Launcher #1 - AMM Flak MkI (Ready To Fire)
PDC Size 1 Missile Launcher #2 - AMM Flak MkI (Ready To Fire)
PDC Size 1 Missile Launcher #3 - AMM Flak MkI (Ready To Fire)
PDC Size 1 Missile Launcher #4 - AMM Flak MkI (Ready To Fire) X4

This is my ASM base:

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Stinger MkI class Planetary Defence Centre    4,650 tons     289 Crew     758 BP      TCS 93  TH 0  EM 0
Armour 10-24     Sensors 1/160     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 32
Magazine 364    

CIWS-160 (1x4)    Range 1000 km     TS: 16000 km/s     ROF 5       Base 50% To Hit
PDC Size 8 Missile Launcher S0.5/x5 (8)    Missile Size 8    Rate of Fire 200
PDC Missile Fire Control FC158-R100 (2)     Range 158.4m km    Resolution 100
ASM Eightball MkI (40)  Speed: 12,700 km/s   End: 218.5m    Range: 166.5m km   WH: 4    Size: 8    TH: 46 / 28 / 14

Active Search PDC Sensor MR176-R100 (1)     GPS 16000     Range 176.0m km    Resolution 100

Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s


This design is classed as a Planetary Defence Centre and can be pre-fabricated in 2 sections
It shoots these missiles:

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ASM Eightball MkI
Missile Size: 8 MSP  (0.4 HS)     Warhead: 4    Armour: 0     Manoeuvre Rating: 11
Speed: 12700 km/s    Endurance: 218 minutes   Range: 166.5m km
Cost Per Missile: 2.725
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 139.7%   3k km/s 44%   5k km/s 27.9%   10k km/s 14%

[Erik L]

Being PDCs I'd up the magazine capacity quite a bit.

[martinuzz (OP)]

Ah, okay thanks.. I thought they reloaded from the planet's stockpiles directly, and only needed some magazines to be able to do that.

About the 'four anti-missiles per target missile' option I set in the combat screen..
What exactly does that do? I already linked four missile launchers per fire control..
So I guess that option does something else still.

[Brian Neumann]

Ah, okay thanks.. I thought they reloaded from the planet's stockpiles directly, and only needed some magazines to be able to do that.

About the 'four anti-missiles per target missile' option I set in the combat screen..
What exactly does that do? I already linked four missile launchers per fire control..
So I guess that option does something else still.

The anti-missiles per target missile option sets how many counter missiles are fired at each incomming missile.  If there are 20 missiles incomming then you will have no more than 80 missiles in flight to stop them with.  As soon as the next salvo of missilies is detected then you will start firing more counter missiles.  If you have the range to get all of your counter missiles off and have them intercept the incomming then any that survive the first set of counter launches will be fired at again, and so on.  

What you want to figure out is what is your chance of hitting the incomming missiles.  If your missiles have a 50% chance to hit then you should set this to 2 per target missile.  If on the other hand the incomming are from a higher tech and you only have a 5% chance then you will want to put it at max which is 5 per incomming missile.  The other thing to remember is that if you have a good layered defense then you do not need to stop every incomming missile with your counter missiles.  Try to figure out how many missiles your point defense beam weapons can stop.  Then let about that many get through the counter missile shield.  This way you extend how long your counter missiles last, which belive me you will need as they go really fast as it is.  A good example is if you can stop 5 missiles with your lasers then of that 20 missile salvo you want to stop 15 of them with your counter missiles.  This does mean that a few missiles will get lucky and hit, but that is what your shields are for.  In the above situation I would actually go for stoping 16 missiles so if an extra gets through you are probaly still going to get it.

PS.  Sorry about mentioning lasers.  As these are for pdc's you probably want mesons instead as they don't care how thick the atmosphere is.

Brian

[sloanjh]

Ah, okay thanks.. I thought they reloaded from the planet's stockpiles directly, and only needed some magazines to be able to do that.

At present there's no code in the game to account for the time it takes to truck the missiles from planetary stockpiles into the PDC - they just magically teleport there in no time at all.  (I think) most players role-play the delay to be long enough that reloads of magazines are not allowed during a typical engagement (which will probably last less than an hour).

John

[Andrew]

The CIWS on the PDC will not work. Only Mesons work in atmospheres. I would not use your amm's they are too slow and not very agile, part of that may be the tech but I would normally have a much shorter range and use the rest for speed and agility

[martinuzz (OP)]

AMM Flak MkII incorporates your tips. More speed, a little bit more agility.

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Missile Size: 1 MSP  (0.05 HS)     Warhead: 1    Armour: 0     Manoeuvre Rating: 21
Speed: 33500 km/s    Endurance: 8 minutes   Range: 16.5m km
Cost Per Missile: 1.083
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 703.5%   3k km/s 231%   5k km/s 140.7%   10k km/s 70.3%

[iamlenb]

AMM Flak MkII incorporates your tips. More speed, a little bit more agility.

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Missile Size: 1 MSP  (0.05 HS)     Warhead: 1    Armour: 0     Manoeuvre Rating: 21
Speed: 33500 km/s    Endurance: 8 minutes   Range: 16.5m km
Cost Per Missile: 1.083
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 703.5%   3k km/s 231%   5k km/s 140.7%   10k km/s 70.3%

I'd reduce the endurance significantly.  Maybe to 1m km range.  Dump the rest in speed/agility to optimize your to hit chance.  70.3% against 10km/s is pretty low in my book, as I've rarely seen missiles slower than 20km/s to 30km/s, which drastically reduces your hit percentages.  I'd prefer to have less range, with one or two launches, and much higher hit rate.

If you didn't know, this line:
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 703.5%   3k km/s 231%   5k km/s 140.7%   10k km/s 70.3%
gives you your hit percentages against the target speed.  Target speed can be changed with the select boxes to the right of the display and the main text will update your percentages accordingly.

If I've got anything wrong, Aurora vets, please jump in to correct me.

Regards,
Len

[martinuzz (OP)]

I designed a new base, to hold my Home Guard Division, and provide defense.

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Home Guard Base MkI class Planetary Defence Centre    74,900 tons     885 Crew     4298.1 BP      TCS 1498  TH 0  EM 0
Armour 17-158     Sensors 1/112     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 40
Hangar Deck Capacity 2000 tons     Troop Capacity: 21 Battalions    Magazine 2416    

PDC Size 1 Missile Launcher (40)    Missile Size 1    Rate of Fire 5
AMM FC14-R1 "Patriot" (10)     Range 14.1m km    Resolution 1
Patriot S1 (2400)  Speed: 41,400 km/s   End: 0.7m    Range: 1.8m km   WH: 1    Size: 1    TH: 386 / 231 / 115

Missile Sensor MR15-R1 (1)     GPS 112     Range 15.7m km    Resolution 1
Ship Detection Sensor MR110-R50 (1)     GPS 5600     Range 110.9m km    Resolution 50

Strike Group
6x Scrambler MkI Strikefighter   Speed: 8346 km/s    Size: 6.35

Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s


This design is classed as a Planetary Defence Centre and can be pre-fabricated in 30 sections

It shoots these AMM:

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Missile Size: 1 MSP  (0.05 HS)     Warhead: 1    Armour: 0     Manoeuvre Rating: 28
Speed: 41400 km/s    Endurance: 1 minutes   Range: 1.8m km
Cost Per Missile: 1.3907
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 1159.2%   3k km/s 364%   5k km/s 231.8%   10k km/s 115.9%
And holds a squadron of six of these anti-ship fighters:

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Scrambler MkI class Strikefighter    318 tons     4 Crew     67 BP      TCS 6.35  TH 53  EM 0
8346 km/s     Armour 3-4     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 3
Annual Failure Rate: 3%    IFR: 0%    Maint Capacity 33 MSP    Max Repair 14 MSP    Est Time: 11.59 Years
Magazine 20    

Fighter Engine MkI (1)    Power 52.8    Fuel Use 6000%    Signature 52.8    Armour 0    Exp 50%
Fuel Capacity 10,000 Litres    Range 0.9 billion km   (31 hours at full power)

Size 5 Box Launcher (4)    Missile Size 5    Hangar Reload 37.5 minutes    MF Reload 6.2 hours
ASM FC11-R100 "Stinger" (1)     Range 11.8m km    Resolution 100
Stinger S5 (4)  Speed: 25,600 km/s   End: 8m    Range: 12.2m km   WH: 9    Size: 5    TH: 239 / 143 / 71

Small Ship Sensor MR17-R80 (1)     GPS 1120     Range 17.5m km    Resolution 80

Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/sArmed with:

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Missile Size: 5 MSP  (0.25 HS)     Warhead: 9    Armour: 0     Manoeuvre Rating: 28
Speed: 25600 km/s    Endurance: 8 minutes   Range: 12.2m km
Thermal Sensor Strength: 0.0275    Detect Sig Strength 1000:  27,500 km
Cost Per Missile: 4.8608
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 716.8%   3k km/s 224%   5k km/s 143.4%   10k km/s 71.7%
I'm thinking about copying this design, and removing the PDC barracks, and build a dozen of them.
But before I do, I'd like to know if I did it (somewhat) right, this time.

[Brian Neumann]

The only thing that really jumps out at me is that the maintenance for the fighters is very high, as in to many spares.  Are you using a full hull size for this?  If you are then you need to reasearch the smaller size's and put the smallest (.1hs) on the fighter.  Fighters don't require having maintenance, but I like to put a small amount on as it gives them a very much increased lifespan on patrol or long range strikes.

The second thing that is not a big problem is that the missile range seems a little bit low.  If you are playing with version 5.2 you will find that the ships you are attacking are probably going to spot and open fire on the fighters before they can shoot at their targets.  I do like the big warhead on the missiles though so it is definitly a trade off.  You might want to see what you can get with reducing the warhead to 4 points of damage and upping the speed/fuel.  Then take some of that saved space from the spare parts for a little bigger missile fire control.

Brian

[Brian Neumann]

A different comment on design strategy for pdc's. I find that having some small pdc's to prefab and move to colony worlds helps a lot on defending them.  The computer will often send out raiding squadrons of just a few ships to attack systems with colonies in them.  If the colony has even a couple of small pdc's with point defense missiles then the amount of damage that the raiders do is very limited.  Typically I try to make them no more than 2 sections large (100 hs).  This is enough for 10 size 1 launchers and quite a magazine space.  Combine this with a similiar size pdc with a couple of hanger bays to bay fighters on and you have a credible defense for your planet.  I also like to put a couple of pdc's with mesons to act as last ditch point defense, and to shoot up any troop transports once Steve programs them into the npr behavior.  While this sounds like a lot of fire power for a colony it is a total of about 600 hull spaces of pdc's.  A couple of divisions of engineers can assemble them in a year or two.  Just have them prefab'd and waiting to send out to a colony that might need the protection.  Before that just put one of the amm bases to stop a light missile bombardment.

For more serious defences I will have a couple of really big pdc's with LOTS of armour and some really big active sensors.  These are the bases that are going to be shot at a lot as the computer can see them from very far away because of the big sensors.  Then the rest of your pdc's do not need to be as heavily armoured (10-20 points is enough for them)  Have a bunch of pdc's with point defense mesons and amm, and make them seperate from the offensive missile launchers.  This way they do not need to be easy targets untill they have a target to fire on.  Then have some hanger bay on all of the pdc's for basing fighters/boarding craft.  I recently captured a couple of npr ships that were considerably higher tech than I was by having several battalions of marines ready and did a boarding attack on the attacking ships.  It really helped my tech reasearch out to have all of this high tech to work with.

Brian

[martinuzz (OP)]

Thanks for the tips!
About getting a slightly bigger missile fire control.. You're right.. My present missile control has slightly less range than my missiles.
I'm trying to design matching sets of missiles and fire-controls though, where the missile range is about the same as the fire control range.
I name my missile series after the missile control that's going to use them.

It is of no use whatsoever, to have a fire control that has more range than the missile, right? (Except for upward compatibility with future missile designs)

[Erik L]

About your AMM.

This is all personal preference, but your MFC has a range of 14m km. Your missiles have a range of 1.6m km. Under automated control, your ships will fire AMM at salvos long before they reach effective range of the AMM. You might consider bringing the two closer in line for ranges.

[martinuzz (OP)]

Heh, you're right, I messed up there.
For now, until I design new missiles, I can set the maximum range for the fire control's autofire in the combat screen, so I can prevent it from firing missiles that cannot reach their targets?

[Erik L]

About your AMM.

This is all personal preference, but your MFC has a range of 14m km. Your missiles have a range of 1.6m km. Under automated control, your ships will fire AMM at salvos long before they reach effective range of the AMM. You might consider bringing the two closer in line for ranges.

I know. I could have edited.

There was a discussion a while back on effective point defense plans. The consensus if I recall, was a layered approach; AMM out to around 5-6m km, beam in the 50k-75k range, gauss in the 20-25k range and CIWS as last ditch. Appropriately designed, your escorts can have multiple shots at a salvo, AMM, beam, gauss. Especially since the AI seems to prioritize targets based on size.