Missile Design -again!-

[jseah (OP)]

To continue from the Active Sensor Design thread which turned into a missile design thread:

It seems that our research priorities are totally different once again.  I see agility 64 and warhead 6 when you still have Ion Engines, which is um, high for me.  At first, I couldn't work out how you managed to fit in such powerful warheads into the missiles (seriously, I looked at warhead 12 and went wtf; I haven't actually designed any missile with a warhead bigger than 6)

Well, let's just say, my usual balance of technologies has me get agility 64 at around magneto-plasma or internal confinement drives and warhead 6 one engine generation later.  So that has affected my missile design (I find large warheads very hard to fit in).  I had always tended to build fast missiles with 1 damage per MSP and I haven't had the chance to try out MIRV missile designs in the new version. 


Still, I have tried to intercept a size 4 MIRV before in v5.X.  The problem of putting a picket is that the picket gets shot at first and the bus outruns fighters (I dunno about your designs, but getting a missile speed out of anything lower than internal confinement seems pretty impossible).  There is also that the fighters can't see the missiles unless its getting to fusion drive tech levels so that your ships can see them, but then that's why the separation range increases as tech increases. 
But perhaps our relative technology priorities have made our tactics differ again. 
Also, I have worked with fighters... one time.  And beam fighters were a considerable disappointment as well as AMM ones. 
--- Additionally, I normally put warhead 1 on my MIRV "heads", but you have 6 WH per MSP so perhaps you can afford 2


EDIT, RE missile ships vs beam ship cost:
Perhaps again, this is tech levels.  If you look at the old thread about the battle of kagoshima and two stage missiles, my dual-role laser frigates are 6000 tons equipped with two more levels of armour and 15cm 5s reload twin laser turrets, with 4x range 4x TS firecontrols.  So perhaps my laser tech was higher than my missile tech. 

[Jorgen_CAB]

In regards to shooting down the picket this is usually not as easy if they are small enough. It obviously tends to come down to what type of sensor platforms used (we should not turn this one into a sensor discussion now should we? ). But even a 250-500 ton early warning craft can detect missiles with its resolution 1 sensor as they pass by.
If you have them follow your task group at a threat vector of the enemy task group they should pick them up. Once a MIRV is detected (easy to see since they are much slower than other missiles) you can send your fighter after them or have your picket engage them. A picket could basically be anything from 1000-5000 tons depending sensor configurations. I usually start my picket squadrons at about 3000-4000 tons before I know anything about the enemy. Nothing is clear cut. I'm just saying that MIRV has a clear weakness that is not so hard to counter with the right means. I'm not saying it has to be easy either. There is always roads to take to make sure that the MIRV reaches its target. Being able to fire beyond enemy active range is one option since they don't know where the missile comes from.

Fighters in the current version can become ridiculously fast now since you can put multiple engines on them. An ION engine fighter can quite easily get up to 10000km/s in speed and still carry a light gauss cannon to shoot down missiles with. Let's just assume that a fighter can get a speed about half (2/3 is more reasonable though) that of your missiles if you tack on enough engines and still have some room for weapons. They will have an awful range, that's for sure. But better range than missiles in most cases anyway. A MIRV missile will have lousy speed, perhaps about half that of the fastest fighters. That is before they deploy their munition of course.
In the current game one race has a 500 ton interceptor with two 25mm (25% size) Gauss cannons and two levels of armour and a speed of 7500km/s with Nuclear Pulse technology. Granted they have pretty high armour technology.

Note: The reason for the relatively high missile techs are because the race who use them has been in war for a very long time and both sides have concentrated on technology that is easy to integrate once researched. So this has mainly meant weapons and armour technologies. Most of their ships use Nuclear Pulse engines while most of their smaller ships (fighters, gun boats and missile boats) use Ion Engines.
So there is a reason why the tech is researched the way it is.

I have not actually used MIRVs in 6.x yet... I don't know what to do about the slow approach if and when the enemy decide to counter it, which they obviously will try to do.

In my current campaign I also have this idea of a race with a radical new approach to warfare who is not going to use mobile ships other that small platforms 3000 tons and below. Their "ships" is only going to be huge slow moving battle-stations... at least 100.000 tons each. It's going to be fun and see how missile technology advance to counter this menace. You will not have any real ships to fire at. Either stationary (more or less) objects or really fast attack crafts.

This will also reflect the dangers of standardizing your missiles and think that they are suitable to combat everything. Sure you can fire your missiles at anything, but at what cost?

In general I usually have to worry about several categories of ships. Slower but very powerful and armoured/shielded large ships, faster more lightly armoured escorts/attack ships and finally fighter craft.

At Nuclear Pulse technology this means that a large capital cruiser at 20-30 ton would have a speed of perhaps 2000-2300km/s a Destroyer or heavy attack ship would have speeds between 2600-3200km/s while fast attack craft could have anything from 3000-6000km/s. I would no be economical to just produce one missile to counter them all. I either would have to make it too fast and agile with a too small yield to make much use against a large ship. Or to slow to hit a fast target with any reliability.
Sure I could just pack my ships full of one type of missiles and one size and have a go at it, but it would not be efficient for my economy and if I face an opponent that also has an economy to think about and resources to use and who uses them more wisely I could be in serious trouble eventually.

I must say that most of this obviously stem from the fact that I don't face the AI. The AI don't care much for economy and just build stuff based on templates. The AI don't really adapt to changes or gives a damn about the configuration of my ships or my methods of ship composition.

Anyhow...

I tend to have at least three categories of missiles (not counting AMM). Those that are suppose to target fighters and fast attack crafts, fast ships and regular capital ships.

My general missile design revolve around the speed they intend to target and do so with about 80% certainty. If my target speed is 3000 my missiles should have a speed of 24000km/s. I would also like for my missiles to have at least twice the speed of my enemy tracking speed of their beam weapons if I can. First of all I might not know what this is or it is too high. But I would like to do that if possible.

The range should be as far as possible so I can fire my missiles outside my opponents active scanning range or at least a good deal before my opponent can fire his missiles.

Armour is included on all missiles at size six and above or else they are just too easy to shoot down and too expensive given their size.

Size four and below are generally regarded as light missiles and intended for smaller ships with weaker armour and who are faster than the regular capital ship. Larger and slower missiles could obviously be used but would not be economical since they would not hit as often as a faster more agile missiles. And since the armour belt on smaller ships usually also is weaker a smaller yield is not as bad.

It is my experience that sandpapering away strongly armoured ships is a good way to tank the economy when using missiles, it would generally be a last resort or an act of desperation on my part. Therefore I like to use a mix of small, medium and large yield missiles. On a size eight capital missile I usually dedicate at least 2 MSP worth of yield or 1 MSP for a heavily armoured one. If I face an enemy that has very good missile defences then I need to mix my regular missiles with heavily armoured ones. Or perhaps even completely use heavily armoured ones to saturate their defences, especially their AMM capability.
A smaller medium sized missile such as a size four I usually put 1 MSP worth of yield and as much engines I feel is necessary to get my target speed and then the rest is fuel to gain as much range as I can.
Against smaller crafts such as a fighter I like to standardise my yield at four since that means I penetrate down one level. Many smaller craft only have one level of armour (or maybe two) so I can start damaging them on the first hit. I also like to reduce the size of the missile instead of increasing the yield with technology progression on missiles intended to destroy fighters.

When it comes to launcher philosophy I like to miniaturize heavy and capital launchers as much as possible and rely on large salvoes. I have found out that these are much more effective than many smaller salvoes on large missiles. Missile launchers at size four might also be miniaturized depending on what they should be used for I guess. Smaller launchers are either box launched on attack crafts or not miniaturized in smaller frigates. Most targets they shoot at have very little to no missile defences.

I currently have not used box launchers on larger ships. I view them as a one trip pony and a liability since big ships don't have any hangars to reload from. A 25% miniaturized launcher is as good as a box launcher most of the time and can be reloaded in the field. Though, I have toyed with the idea to put an equal number of box launchers and reduce the magazines and/or defences on my chips some. I normally only have about three full salvoes of missiles in ships storage, sometimes about three and a half to have some flexibility in missile types. This would provide me with the option of having one extra large and powerful salvo if I really need it.
In general most dedicated missile cruisers has about one size 8 missile launcher per 1000ton or slightly more and missile storage for three full reloads. The rest go to ship defences such as armour, shields and beam weapons. Some cruisers also fit AMM launchers, but I mostly fit AMM launchers on dedicated missile/escort frigates.

[Jorgen_CAB]

EDIT, RE missile ships vs beam ship cost:
Perhaps again, this is tech levels.  If you look at the old thread about the battle of kagoshima and two stage missiles, my dual-role laser frigates are 6000 tons equipped with two more levels of armour and 15cm 5s reload twin laser turrets, with 4x range 4x TS firecontrols.  So perhaps my laser tech was higher than my missile tech.  

I can understand why this particular build is expansive since most of the cost stems from the huge fire-control and relatively few cannons in relations.

The pure final defence laser PD ships is not going to be more expensive than a missile ship but an area defence ship are probably going to be quite expensive I presume depending on the number of turrets you use per fire-control.

[jseah (OP)]

Oh right, forgot that you can get really fast fighters now.  I had kept trying to design a fighter with a gauss cannon and well... one engine wasn't ever going to cut it. 

RE shooting escorts:
I'm not entirely confident about relying on small size 1 sensors to detect incoming missiles, especially MIRVs.  The problem of seeing MIRVs is that they're slower than standard ASMs and so their angle of approach isn't going to be the exact same as the attacking ships (unless they were doing a head-on approach.  I learnt to do an approx. right angle vector when using missile to attack an enemy who is approaching to obfuscate the direction of my missiles' approach). 

Additionally, a size 250ton sentry craft has... well, IMO unacceptably small active sensor range for anti-missile work.  Also, I never seem to have problems seeing sentries but again, perhaps that is my use of size 50 sensors. 

[Jorgen_CAB]

RE shooting escorts:
I'm not entirely confident about relying on small size 1 sensors to detect incoming missiles, especially MIRVs.  The problem of seeing MIRVs is that they're slower than standard ASMs and so their angle of approach isn't going to be the exact same as the attacking ships (unless they were doing a head-on approach.  I learnt to do an approx. right angle vector when using missile to attack an enemy who is approaching to obfuscate the direction of my missiles' approach). 

Additionally, a size 250ton sentry craft has... well, IMO unacceptably small active sensor range for anti-missile work.  Also, I never seem to have problems seeing sentries but again, perhaps that is my use of size 50 sensors. 

Anyway you need to be able to hit the scouts as well, not just detect them?!?

And I agree that a small 250-500ton scout is only useful if you can get them up very close. I don't know what resolution and size you keep on your destroyers. But I figure that you would use your AMM fire-controls and fire a couple of size four missiles at them or just blast them with a bunch of AMM, but at what range could you actually engage them with your AMM fire-control?

This is where missile design comes into the picture. And I still regard MIRV as something you can counter if you so choose to do so.

I prefer to have missiles, sensors and fire-controls being more purpose built than generic to save my resources. Small platforms is also cheaper and faster to modify or build completely new versions of when necessary.

Personally I don't see much point in scanning an opponent with active sensors unless I intend to fire at them or just to know about their strength and composition.

[jseah (OP)]

Anyway you need to be able to hit the scouts as well, not just detect them?!?

And I agree that a small 250-500ton scout is only useful if you can get them up very close. I don't know what resolution and size you keep on your destroyers. But I figure that you would use your AMM fire-controls and fire a couple of size four missiles at them or just blast them with a bunch of AMM, but at what range could you actually engage them with your AMM fire-control?

Good point. 
Due to the way sensors scale with resolution, my AMM fire-control is some 30mkm range or something (10mkm targeting on size 6 missiles is what I generally aim for).  At some points, I actually considered dual-roling my fire-controls but it turns out that isn't too cost efficient unless I use my 6000 ton offensive/defensive missile ships. 

Personally I don't see much point in scanning an opponent with active sensors unless I intend to fire at them or just to know about their strength and composition.

Ah, another difference.  My actives literally never turn off unless I'm being sneaky. 

You know when I said scout sensor?  I meant that.  I use my active sensors to find things...  >.>

[Jorgen_CAB]

Good point.  
Due to the way sensors scale with resolution, my AMM fire-control is some 30mkm range or something (10mkm targeting on size 6 missiles is what I generally aim for).  At some points, I actually considered dual-roling my fire-controls but it turns out that isn't too cost efficient unless I use my 6000 ton offensive/defensive missile ships.

That is a decent range, although getting a 10m km range to fire at missiles must require very advanced technology or huge fire-controls. Should be pretty expensive with such huge fire-controls for each five launchers you have.

I don't think that your ships are bad or anything like that. I just feel that you are talking from a perspective of being the most superior power in the area to begin with who has the means and resources to build luxury ships with advanced sensor systems and in enough quantities to simply overwhelm the opponent.

I'm talking from the perspective of actually going up against an opponent that is often bigger and have better technology or in best of circumstances slightly weaker. If I attack I would have to fight hard for every inch of space I would like to conquer. Every mining colony I take would need more resources than it would produce for at least 20 years or so...

As an example, in my last campaign where I tried just these different tactics against each other it simply did not work. The standardization if ships/engines and large sensors are just too resource inefficient to an enemy that quickly adapt and will outperform resource wise in a very short time given the same amount of R&D, factories and such from the start.

When you are at war with an equal empire you don't have the luxury of conducting large expensive research on luxury equipment, you just need what is good enough to get them out quickly on new ships or refit some of the old ships that you have.

 
Ah, another difference.  My actives literally never turn off unless I'm being sneaky.  

You know when I said scout sensor?  I meant that.  I use my active sensors to find things...  >.>

Again, we are talking from vastly different positions. This strategy only works if you know you are superior to the enemy. Doing this against an enemy that you think or fear have equal or even greater power than you can be a bit foolish. It feels for me that you like to put all your eggs in one basket, which can become quite a gamble.

From the standpoint that I know (I'm 99% sure) that my forces is way too much for the enemy then going in hot is still a somewhat unnecessary risk, why take it?

What would you do if you were the opponent against such a fleet and you had the means to both combat it and the technology to match it, but be a little sneakier and resource efficient?

In my opinion your fleet are seriously vulnerable to two quite common strategies.

1. Carrier based heavy fighters/FAC. Fighters/FAC have a range way beyond your size 50 sensors (and can launch before your resolution 1 fire-control can lock on to them) and since you broadcast your position you can be simply smothered to death by someone with deep pockets and eventually you lose the whole fleet.

2. Since you broadcast your position you can simply be charged by a faster anti-missile and beam armed fleet of appropriate size.

If the enemy don't have the means to combat you the point is moot anyway. But I claim that any fleet composition either you or I make have a counter that is both cheaper and/or more efficient against just that type of fleet configuration.
That is why I have started to look at creating fleets that are highly adaptable and who easily can change from one tactic to another with small measure of time and resources.

If I find a new hostile race the first thing I do is to probe them with recon element, these include surveillance, scouts and smaller cruiser squadrons. This is basically to get a feel for their defences. Once I'm confident that I have the upper hand I would assemble some form of strike force and raid some poorly defended system, this would hopefully entice the enemy to send a larger defensive force to meet me. This would obviously only be a rouse to see my enemies full potential and I would be ready to withdraw if that is the best option.

In general I don't keep more combat ships than I absolutely need to have to defend myself and my colonies. This is mainly to spare my economy... I rather invest most of my resources into industry and developing technology if I can. This generally means that when I meet a hostile race I'm usually the underdog in terms of military technology but a powerhouse in production and overall research capacity. I usually keep enough defensive forces to defend against enemies that are way more advanced in tech than I am. I usually use lots of missile boats and scoot and shoot tactics and massive quantities of missiles on habitable worlds as well as point defence stations kept in ground hangars that I can deploy in space when the enemy knock on the door.

Depending on the circumstance when I meet a hostile race ships may be in various stages of completeness and readiness. But in general most of my capital warships use older engine technology while fighters, missile boats and scouts are updated much much quicker. I often find myself to skip engine techs on my capital warships altogether, most of the time to conserve resources. So when a war breaks out many ships can often have very outdated engines but state of the art missiles, defences, weapons and sensors. As long as they manage to stay outside enemy’s active sensor net they usually perform remarkably well.

Technology that I find important to excel at to have a good defence is missile tech and I also favour lasers for point defences early on. They are highly efficient against armoured missiles. But Gauss guns is a priority as well. Engine techs are of course also important and I usually like to keep lots of research into fuel efficiency and new engines, even if I don't equip my ships with new engines as fast as I research it my missiles sure like new engines.  
All in all I usually actually have at least as good missile tech as I have advanced engines if not even better missile tech at times. It is certainly not uncommon for me to have missile yields of 6 at ION tech engine as an example. But my research and construction tech are always miles ahead of my military techs.  

In my opinion the changes to missile construction in 6.0 has made the balance between larger and smaller missiles quite interesting. I could even see myself using extremely heavy missiles now such as size 12. When you have high enough engine power levels factors you could strap 5 MSP x5 power on a size 12 engine. You would get optimal range for your fuel and brutal yields and lots of armour. And this missile would actually be very cost efficient.

A missile like this at Magneto Plasma tech with x5 engine power. The missile are designed against ships with a ship speed of approximately 4500-5000km/s. Most of my firing platforms have a crew grade after fleet training is done 20-30.

Capital armoured size 12 missile

Code: [Select]

Missile Size: 12 MSP  (0.6 HS)     Warhead: 9    Armour: 4     Manoeuvre Rating: 10
Speed: 33300 km/s    Engine Endurance: 67 minutes   Range: 134.0m km
Cost Per Missile: 8.25
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 333%   3k km/s 110%   5k km/s 66.6%   10k km/s 33.3%
Materials Required:    3.25x Tritanium   5x Gallicite   Fuel x3750
Capital high yield size 12 missile

Code: [Select]

Missile Size: 12 MSP  (0.6 HS)     Warhead: 21    Armour: 2     Manoeuvre Rating: 10
Speed: 33300 km/s    Engine Endurance: 67 minutes   Range: 134.0m km
Cost Per Missile: 10.75
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 333%   3k km/s 110%   5k km/s 66.6%   10k km/s 33.3%
Materials Required:    5.75x Tritanium   5x Gallicite   Fuel x3750
Typical AMM at the same tech level

Code: [Select]

Missile Size: 1 MSP  (0.05 HS)     Warhead: 1    Armour: 0     Manoeuvre Rating: 24
Speed: 48000 km/s    Engine Endurance: 1 minutes   Range: 3.3m km
Cost Per Missile: 1.1316
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 1152%   3k km/s 384%   5k km/s 230.4%   10k km/s 115.2%
Materials Required:    0.25x Tritanium   0.8816x Gallicite   Fuel x32.5
It will require 14 AMM to intercept the armoured missile at a cost efficiency at around 2:1.

It will require 9 AMM to intercept the high yield missile at a cost efficiency at around 1:1.

The armoured missile still pack a pretty decent punch, but the high yield one will be very efficient once AMM defences is saturated by armoured missiles. AMM with a yield higher than one are not really feasible at this level of technology for the price you pay in speed reduction on the AMM.

You r could of course use a faster size four missile with comparative yield, but then you over engineering speed versus target speed it will be way more costly to produce in comparison with the end result. This is if industrial wealth and resources is a concern of course.

I could see dedicated torpedo boats armed with these giant size 12 missiles and deliver them at even shorter distances with even more yields.

[jseah (OP)]

My AMM firecontrols are size 9 and don't decrease in size with increasing tech levels. 
My ASM firecontrols start at size 7 and go down (missile range scales worse than firecontrols IIRC)

---------------------------------------------------------------

Those are actually very good points you make.  Although even with 30% of my population on ordnance production (and the ever-present tritanium shortage), I aim to keep wars as short as possible. 

You mention taking mining colonies and whether I profit from that.  I regard an enemy of near parity as an existential threat and don't bother with the hassle of taking and holding colonies.  I'd find a way to get my ships into position to launch against the homeworld as soon as possible (this is where doing that recon and being sneaky comes in) and the launch will aim for total destruction of my enemy from the very first wave. 

My wars don't usually involve multiple phases of re-construction and adjustment of tactics.  The first engagement decides the war most of the time. 

There was one short time I tried playing a multi-faction start on Earth.  I don't consider that a real game since after a short year of expansion, when Sol started to run out of resources, everyone on Earth died.  Like literally everyone.  I don't recall the dust or radiation levels, but suffice it to say, Earth became a wasteland you wouldn't touch with a multi-light year pole.  A pointblank missile exchange in LEO when everyone is aiming for the populations does that. 
That was the reason why I don't play multi-faction starts anymore.  Perhaps I will consider one where the two empires are in different systems. 

[Jorgen_CAB]

Those are actually very good points you make.  Although even with 30% of my population on ordnance production (and the ever-present tritanium shortage), I aim to keep wars as short as possible. 

Ouch... I don't think I have ever been even near those figures for ordnance production... no wonder you get tritanium shortages.

You mention taking mining colonies and whether I profit from that.  I regard an enemy of near parity as an existential threat and don't bother with the hassle of taking and holding colonies.  I'd find a way to get my ships into position to launch against the homeworld as soon as possible (this is where doing that recon and being sneaky comes in) and the launch will aim for total destruction of my enemy from the very first wave. 

My wars don't usually involve multiple phases of re-construction and adjustment of tactics.  The first engagement decides the war most of the time. 

I don't even know if I could ever do that in any of my games. First of all leaving my supply lines that far back is certainly dangerous for me. What if the enemy just let me pass a system knowing exactly where I am. They then fortify the jump point so I can't backtrack my fleet and I get trapped in a system where I just found a fleet that was able to withstand any of my missile attacks. I guess I'm not willing to take those kinds of risk, but then I like to be cautious and is not a great risk taker overall.

There was one short time I tried playing a multi-faction start on Earth.  I don't consider that a real game since after a short year of expansion, when Sol started to run out of resources, everyone on Earth died.  Like literally everyone.  I don't recall the dust or radiation levels, but suffice it to say, Earth became a wasteland you wouldn't touch with a multi-light year pole.  A pointblank missile exchange in LEO when everyone is aiming for the populations does that. 
That was the reason why I don't play multi-faction starts anymore.  Perhaps I will consider one where the two empires are in different systems. 

I like this play-style more and more. Especially with no AI to control enemy factions.


Any way... about missiles.

One question to you about armoured missiles. What would you find acceptable as a missile design when it comes to armour and fairness and not gaming the game.

for example this one...

Code: [Select]

Missile Size: 12 MSP  (0.6 HS)     Warhead: 3    Armour: 5     Manoeuvre Rating: 10
Speed: 33300 km/s    Engine Endurance: 67 minutes   Range: 134.0m km
Cost Per Missile: 7
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 333%   3k km/s 110%   5k km/s 66.6%   10k km/s 33.3%
Materials Required:    2x Tritanium   5x Gallicite   Fuel x3750
It would take a comparative AMM about 17 missiles to shoot down and give a economy of nearly 3:1 in production cost.

They way I see it is that the above missile can not be ignored if you have ships with little armour, but if you have larger ships with shield they will not pose much of a threat and you can practically ignore them.

The only armoured missiles I find to be unfair and "gamey" to use are the ones with no warhead at all. The same could often be said with MIRV missiles. It you take a size four and stuff it with three size one all with a yield 1 warhead they can often be ignored by larger ships because their total damage output is pretty small in total.

[jseah (OP)]

That missile seems about fine although I have no idea of the tech levels involved.  Of course, I'm still working off pre v6 rules of thumb since I haven't played much Aurora after v6 came out (it's nothing to do with the changes and everything to do with my schedules). 
That missile has ridiculously low damage output for missile space.  If you stocked that as your main ASM, you'd not even be able to kill a fleet of the same tonnage even if they were eggshells like my designs.  It doesn't even have any penetration.  I'd say drop one level of armour and put 1 MSP in warhead or raise warhead to 4 and the rest to engine. 

So I'm going to say that our different strategic approaches give these different design philosophies.  I do not customize my fleet to an enemy quite as much as you do, since I aim to win as soon as I encounter an enemy, pushing me towards logistical simplicity and fleets that are "reasonable against everything" but not being direct counters. 


Clearly though, I ought to just play Aurora more in the new version. 

[Jorgen_CAB]

The above missile is actually rather effective against a heavy AMM equiped fleet despite its size. Although I agree that it should sacrifice some fuel for warhead to make it yield 4. This missile would force you to shoot it down and very quickly deplete your AMM stock. If you ignore the missile it do enough damage to start hurting your ships soon enough.

Even if the missile is size 12 it is still ridiculously cheap to build given that size. About the same as two size four.

The strategy would be to fire them until the enemy stock of AMM runs out (or starts to diminish due to combat damage) then hit them with missiles that has a yield of 21 and much less armour. In this case it is more about economy and the above missile will actually have a slightly higher chance of breaking through the AMM defences than a faster and smaller size four missile (adjusted for size difference) and would actually do more damage on average unless you manage to overwhelm the enemy AMM completely.

The missile use the biggest possible missile engine (5 MSP) so making the engine bigger means you need to put in two smaller ones so that is not an option here. In that case you need  higher multiplier or smaller missile.

I'm using the same tech levels as before but with magneto plasma engine tech.

[Charlie Beeler]

As a counter point I don't find that large missiles are both tactically and economically sound.

Using the same tech base:
Magnet-plasma drive tech - .8 engine power per msp
Fuel consumption modifier .6
Missile engine power multiplier/fuel multiplier X5/55.9
Warhead of 6 per msp

I find a size 4 missile to much more practical.  For the same launcher hull space usage 9 missiles in 3 separate salvos can be launched in the same time frame for 1 cycle of the size 12 missile.  Said size 4 missile can use a 2.1msp engine producing 8.4 engine power for a speed of 42,000kps.  1msp warhead for 6 damage (25% of available msp for warhead is my design standard) and .9 msp for fuel providing 2,250 liters for a range of 133m/km.  The example AMM above would average 4 missiles to insure intercept.  It would take a little over 78 seconds for this ASM to cross the AMM's engagement envelope and require an active sensor res 1 of around size 25 and a missile fire control larger than size 8 to allow the AMM's first intercept at maximum range (detection/lock range would need to be around 6.3m/km). 

Here is the part that most people appear to miss.  The higher cyclic rate of the smaller launcher means that subsequent salvos actually have a higher probability of saturating the AMM defenses.  This is achieved by having the salvo separation being closer than the defenders ability to get maximum coverage. 

The individual salvo is actually more expensive with the sz4 vs sz12.  But the buy back is on the time side of things.  It will take much less time to overwhelm the defender if it's going to happen at all.  This of course does require full size launchers.

[Jorgen_CAB]

That missile composition you use are pretty identical to my standard size 4 missile that I use. Though, we use it very differently you and I...

Here is the prime reason why I do not use small missiles for anti-ship purposes.

1. Smaller yield per missile means that I basically have to sandpaper away thick armour on large ships and it is a very inefficient use of resources.
2. Less fuel efficiency and thus general less range overall on missiles or more fuel needed per MSP in a missile.
3. None armoured missiles are weak (and expensive) against AMM but especially weak at beam PD.
3. Much worse industrial economic efficiency.

I do not in the slightest contest that it is easier to overwhelm AMM defensive fire with fast firing launching missiles. This is easily proven exactly as you state so there is nothing anyone can deny this.

If you use large missiles you either need insane amount of research into reload rate research or you go with miniaturization of the launches. Miniaturization is the more obvious and easy path. When you fire a volley of large missile you generally fire them in huge volleys to penetrate both AMM and beam PD of the enemy ships. Large volleys are the most cost efficient way to break both of these defences the way I see it.

The main reason why I dropped the use of small high frequency volleys was the "small volume volley killer gauss cannon". Small missiles can't use armour to very good effect without compromising speed/range or yield to be effective and thus gauss canons will eat them for breakfast. On the other hand Gauss cannon struggle hard against armoured missiles, even modestly armoured size 6-8 missiles.

Here is the economy I'm talking about...

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Atago class Escort Frigate    3,250 tons     81 Crew     521.8 BP      TCS 65  TH 258  EM 0
3969 km/s     Armour 3-19     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 30.92
Maint Life 2.04 Years     MSP 151    AFR 56%    IFR 0.8%    1YR 49    5YR 728    Max Repair 128.8 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months    Spare Berths 2    

NPE-700-260-115  Magneto-plasma Stardrive (1)    Power 257.6    Fuel Use 73.18%    Signature 257.6    Exp 11%
Fuel Capacity 250,000 Litres    Range 18.9 billion km   (55 days at full power)

GCPD-16000-20-12  Phalanx 50mm Quad PD Turret (2x12)    Range 20,000km     TS: 16000 km/s     Power 0-0     RM 2    ROF 5        1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
GCFC-16000-64  Gauss Cannon PDFC (1)    Max Range: 64,000 km   TS: 16000 km/s     84 69 53 37 22 6 0 0 0 0

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Takao class Missile Frigate    3,250 tons     102 Crew     534.3 BP      TCS 65  TH 258  EM 0
3969 km/s     Armour 3-19     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 2     PPV 20
Maint Life 2.95 Years     MSP 154    AFR 56%    IFR 0.8%    1YR 26    5YR 395    Max Repair 128.8 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months    Spare Berths 2    
Magazine 185    

NPE-700-260-115  Magneto-plasma Stardrive (1)    Power 257.6    Fuel Use 73.18%    Signature 257.6    Exp 11%
Fuel Capacity 250,000 Litres    Range 18.9 billion km   (55 days at full power)

TLS-04-30  Torpedo Launching System (5)    Missile Size 4    Rate of Fire 30
TLFC-153-100-80  Torpedo Fire Control (1)     Range 153.6m km    Resolution 100
AST-134-06-42  Vagabond Mk2 class Medium Torpedo (46)  Speed: 42,000 km/s   End: 53m    Range: 133.6m km   WH: 6    Size: 4    TH: 140/84/42

Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s
These are two equally large ships to prove the point of the bad economy of the small salvo versus a fleet with decent beam PD. The above Takao class Missile Frigate has the ability to launch nine salvoes each of five missiles of size four missiles. The Atago class Escort Frigate has two rapidly firing turrets of Gauss cannons.
If the Takao fires all the nine salvoes against the Atago frigate she will statistically inflict zero damage at a very hefty price because the Atago can destroy about 6 missiles (I assume a crew grade of 20-25 and a 20% turret tracking bonus) at final defence each 5 second cycle, all to the prize of zero resources and wealth (except maintenance of the ship of course). You always have to accept some leaker missiles though or more precisely about 5 missiles when you fired nine salvoes in average.

Then you have the price of the ships and missiles. Both ships use comparatively expensive techs research wise to make things as fair as possible.

The Takao has a total resource and wealth cost of (including one total load of missiles) of 700 and each reload of missiles cost you 164 additional resources and wealth. The Atago has a cost of 522. After about three loads of missiles you can afford to build a second escort frigate for the same price.

The point I'm trying to make is that small missiles in low volume high frequency is very ineffective against a fleet with a balanced approach of beam versus AMM and especially against CIWS and Gauss turreted ships. Even laser beam ships will destroy enough missiles to easily survive and is also a good dual weapons in beam combat, gauss is less useful in beam combat but not entirely useless. Similar ships that instead is armed with 10cm laser turrets will on average shoot down about 4 missiles and will have a cost comparable with the gauss armed ship but will be better at shooting down armoured missiles.

If you want to penetrate decent beam PD you need more missiles in each salvo and you in particular need armour because that reduce the chance to bring the missile down faster than the increase in size weighs it down.

We could make a comparison from above. A size 12 missile with yield 9 and armour 4 would have about a 60% chance to hit above frigate while a fast size 4 missile as used above has about 17% chance to get through. This gives you a total chance of 43% chance for 3 missiles to get though. But you also need to consider that a size 12 missile has a 50% more yield, better fuel economy, and is about 25% cheaper to build then three size 4 missiles.

The same principles are more or less also true against AMM. AMM struggle very hard to be economically viable against heavy missiles with armour until your yield tech are high enough to put more than one point of warhead into the AMM, but even then it will not be very economical in the long run.

Make no mistake when I say that I'm not arguing that the tactic can't be used. As long as you have a bigger industry and better tech than you opponent I'm sure it will work. But when you are hard pressed for production and both wealth and resources start running out and your opponent have used theirs more efficiently and stocked many more missiles than you it is going to hurt.
I’m not going to answer to late tech missiles and how they look and interact with combat and industrial efficiency. I have not looked too closely on that, mainly because I don’t ever seem to reach the later stages of the game in my campaigns.

I will give my hat off to Steve that has managed to give this game this huge complexity and still managed to balance the benefit of combat efficiency versus economic efficiency so elegant. How every weapons system can be easily countered by something and that it all depends on so many factors. A really well balanced fleet will be very cost efficient in an economic sense but a fleet that is tipped in one direction can achieve great efficiency against the right opponent but be utterly crap against something else.
The problem with trying to be a bit good at everything can also be that you end up being good at nothing... but the increasing cost in research as it is means that a somewhat balanced approach is quite manageable in this game and I really like that.
In general I find the best strategy to be that you are pretty good at something and then about average in many other things. If you try to be exceptional at something you end up paying a very big price for focusing too much. But if you have a strong empire and your rivals are weaker than you, you might afford it, but don't let it get to your head...  

At least this is all my opinions. There might be some big flaw in my logic that I don’t know or fully understand.

[jseah (OP)]

He's talking about using multiple smaller missiles because reload time and launcher size scale with missile size, meaning that for half the size of a missile, you have 4 times the DPS.  It also soaks more AMMs per second. 

Try the escort frigate against one of my ship designs.  33% reduced size launchers, size 4 bus with a size 3 speedy missile in front (3 warhead, rest to speed).  I find energy weapon pd to be useless against that setup.  Or alternatively, MIRV with size 1s with 1 warhead. 


On the subject of sandpapering, I normally find that I overkill regardless.  Or then again, I have too many ordnance factories anyway.  >.>

[Jorgen_CAB]

That was my point. I even said that is why I go for bigger salvos... since they penetrate beam PD better. Although over a period of time you can usually afford about two to three beam ships for every missile ship. And once you also figure in collier ships and replacement of spent and/or old missiles you can afford even more.

In general you can afford one 2000 ton beam ship for every 100 missile salvo of size four.

And yes, beam PD will struggle against MIRV exactly the same as AMM will. But as discussed above MIRV also have great weaknesses. Further more, shields can also be used to great effect of mitigating the effects of MIRV missiles if you have bigger ships. A 300 power strong shield can in principle allow a leak frequency of 100 size four 33% miniaturized launchers per salvo.

I would actually interpret your success with that you have overwhelming force to begin with. So you waste allot of resource without much reason...
You said it well in another post. If you faced a mirror fleet you could not break it and the resources consumed in such an engagement would be huge. In my opinion I think you could afford to replace a good deal of your AMM launchers into beam defence. In general you could easily add twice the tonnage of beam weapons (if not more). This would greatly increase the resource efficiency against your old mirror fleet.