Using CIWS instead of designated point defense ships

[MehMuffin (OP)]

I'm a pretty new player, and close to designing my first fleet and I was wondering if it works to give each ship a CIWS, instead of making dedicated point defense ships?

[TheDeadlyShoe]

Basically, that's only workable if your combat squadrons consist of one or two ships.  Any larger groups benefit considerably from being able to bring all point defence to bear against any threatened ship.  As a matter of doctrine, it can still work to protect more valuable ships in a group (such as jumpships) with a CIWS to maximize the point defense fire that particular ship can put out.

[MehMuffin (OP)]

Could you use a CIWS armed "cloud" of fighters/FACs around your fleet to protect them without longer range ships? If you had them close enough to eachother to stop enemy missiles from going in-between them, couldn't they form a highly effective but cheap barrier that would be hard to detect at longer ranges?

[Vanigo]

No, CIWS doesn't work that way. CIWS, unlike full-fledged weapons systems, will only target missiles that are going for the ship they are on. This means that a PD ship with CIWS and nothing else is basically useless - they'll knock down missiles that are coming for them, but they won't do a thing to protect other ships in the fleet.

[MehMuffin (OP)]

What about a "tank" type ship, huge, with heavy armor and shields, like a swarm queen and armed only with PD weapons? Would the AI target it because it was the biggest ship in a fleet, even though it couldn't attack them except at short range, or would it have to be attacking them for them to target it?

[Theokrat]

It might be the first ship the AI targets, but it wont be the only one, Ai shifts targets after a few salvos, even before the target it destroyed (and i think even before they hit at all).

[MehMuffin (OP)]

What if you gave it a hangar, with fighters that cycled in and out reloading to avoid enemy missile fire, instead of other cruiser/destroyer sized ships?

[Garfunkel]

That would work.

Blue Emu used Q-ships in his Ad Astra campaign very successfully - civilian ships with no weapons but ton of armour, that were the biggest and closest ships to the enemy, which wasted hundreds of missiles in sandblasting their armours. Eventually the enemy switched targets.

What you are suggesting would work nicely, though people usually use fighters to avoid the issue of PD altogether, because you can send your fighters so far ahead of your TG that the enemy has no way to engage you. In which case its better to devote that hull space for fighters, fuel and magazines instead of armour and PD.

[MehMuffin (OP)]

Has anyone tried using a fleet entirely made up of medium sized, fast PD ships that would destroy enemy missile fire while closing to beam range?

[xeryon]

I'm sure people have tried.  The problem with beam weapons in particular is they have an extremely short range so you have to be nearly point blank to have it work.  Particle beams and railguns seem to be a bit longer ranged and might work slightly better.   

Even then there is still two issues to deal with:  one is that as you close the range to the enemy ships before they exhaust their magazines the flight time of the missiles gets shorter and shorter which gives you less and less time to have whatever PD method you choose be able to shoot down the enemy missiles.  By the time you get into range the flight time might be less than 5 seconds and you might not even have an opportunity to fire PD at all.

the next issue is the beam weapons themselves, optimal solution is to have PD and offensive weapons be on independent fire control and reactors.  this would make for some large and expensive ships unless you sacrifice and use some shared systems, but the problem there is you would need to turn off PD while at point blank range to enemies in order to enable your offensive weapons.

[MehMuffin (OP)]

What if you waited for them to exhaust their supplies of ASMs before closing in, so the ships only had to deal with remaining AMMs before targeting the enemy ships? I was thinking more of ships that would destroy all of the enemy missiles before closing and shredding their ships with PD, instead of closing while being fired on.

[Brian Neumann]

Has anyone tried using a fleet entirely made up of medium sized, fast PD ships that would destroy enemy missile fire while closing to beam range?

Yes.  It is very difficult to do as your point defense needs to be good enough to handle the entire missile salvo.  For most opponents you will not be able to use the area fire mode on the beam weapons as the missiles move to fast for you to reload and get three shots off.  This is about the minimum number of shots from area mode that equals the final defensive fire mode.  Mostly due to when in the sequence they fire.  area mode fires on your normal turn at whatever the range, while final defensive fire is whenever the missile hits the specified range (usually 10,000km).  You will probably need to absorb your enemies entire magazines before you get a chance to shoot back.  This is because of the range of the missiles.  Most ships do not have enough magazines capacity to keep shooting for two + hours (missile range 60m+ km and closing speed of 10k km (assuming both sides are trying to close)).  If you can survive the missile barrages then it only takes a couple of energy armed ships to destroy a pure missile fleet.

If you really want to do this my recomendation would be to use 15cm lasers or mesons and get your rate of fire up to every 5 seconds (capaciter 6)  Push your beam fire control speed as high as you can as well as the turret tracking speed.  You need to be able to shoot down lots of fast missiles.  I would aim for getting 1/2 of your shots to hit against a 50k km/second missile speed.  The 15cm weapons are a good compromise between range/damage output vs number of weapons mounted.  Make sure your ships have good shields/armor as well as they will get hit and you want the damage to not penetrate usually.

Good Luck
Brian

[Theokrat]

I'm sure people have tried.  The problem with beam weapons in particular is they have an extremely short range so you have to be nearly point blank to have it work.  Particle beams and railguns seem to be a bit longer ranged and might work slightly better.   

The range of beam weapons is certainly their weak point.

But neither are particle beams, or railguns longer ranged than lasers, not would it matter if they were.

A standard combat missile might have range of 50m km, while the wiki’s 20cm laser proposal has a range of 400k km, and the gaussgun has a range of 30k km. A beam armed ship has to cross 49,600,000 km under fire anway, so the extra 370,000 km wont really matter. Either you are able to sustain the enemy fire completely (thus the range to cross becomes nearly irrelevant), or not (in which case you cant make it anyway).

The only real reason for longer-ranged beam weapons is the range of the enemy’s beam weapons. If the other guy uses 10cm railguns with a range of 40k km, then you want to outrange him, as beam weapons are significantly harder to stop.

Even then there is still two issues to deal with:  one is that as you close the range to the enemy ships before they exhaust their magazines the flight time of the missiles gets shorter and shorter which gives you less and less time to have whatever PD method you choose be able to shoot down the enemy missiles.  By the time you get into range the flight time might be less than 5 seconds and you might not even have an opportunity to fire PD at all.

Realistically most beam warships use beam PD weapons, which are only really usable in “final fire” mode. The flight time of enemy missiles is not really important for final fire, and final fire will always get a shot, even if the flight time of the enemy is lower than 5s, no?

The only thing is the “tracking bonus”, which in most circumstances is not that important…

the next issue is the beam weapons themselves, optimal solution is to have PD and offensive weapons be on independent fire control and reactors.  this would make for some large and expensive ships unless you sacrifice and use some shared systems, but the problem there is you would need to turn off PD while at point blank range to enemies in order to enable your offensive weapons.

Actually that issue is much smaller for beam warships, compared to missile ships. For a missile ship you will usually have main tubes of size 3-6 and PD tubes of size 1, and corresponding firecontrolls with huge differences in resolution and range. The PD systems must be able to engage full broadsides of the enemy, while the ASMs must be able to overcome the enemies PD. So there are two requirements that must be fulfilled, making for expensive ships. (Ok, technically it might be possible to build and all-large-calibre missile ship, which simply relies on superior range or speed to destroy enemy ships before they can launch their missiles).

For beam warships the same thing does not apply that much. Given that beam ships can withstand enemy missile fire reliably anyway (else they would not have made it into range in the first place), it does not matter how long they take to kill an enemy ship, it only matters that they don’t get into range of their beams. So a single large laser would be sufficient to –slowly – pick apart an enemy. The laser can not be intercepted, so there is no minimum number of lasers that is needed to overcome enemy PDs as with missiles. So in the end the double-requirement tends to play much more in favour of beam warships. And that is not even counting that offensive lasers are also able to serve in a PD role.

A caveat: the damage per second dealt by offensive lasers can matter if the enemy packs long range beams himself, and if he carries significant shields. If the shields reload faster than you main laser deals damage, then that is a bit arkward…

[Brian Neumann]

Just a quick note on missile that hit within the first 5 seconds of flight.  Due to the timing of missile being fired during the fire phase and detection (1st thing in the fire phase) a missile is invisible for the first 5 seconds of flight.  This translates to your beam point defense will NEVER fire on a missile during those 1st 5 seconds.

Brian

[xeryon]

Thank you for the counterpoints.  All very good information. 

So it is indeed possible to get too close to a missile ship if you should somehow close before they are exhausted or if you popped out of a JP right on top of one.  I've been dealing with a race that likes to uses 58k m/s missiles and my introductory beam ships could do very little with them as the range on the beams was vastly less then the distance the missiles would travel in a 5 second span.

I understand the point about having the diverging systems on the ships.  A beam only ship would be less fragmented technology and armament wise then an equivalent function beam defense/missile offense standalone cruise would be anyway.  At least you would not need to be researching in completely different fields.  If your scientist staffing leaned toward energy all the better.

My comment about raillguns and particle beams being marginally better then lasers was just that, marginally.  Seems as though it really is a moot point.  A couple hundred thousand k's matters little as long as you are faster and your opponent is out of missiles.  This makes me think of a wonderful NPR surprise Steve could write into their AI: reserves.  As it is now they tend to exhaust their batteries to the last missile even if the last salvos are reduced in size.  Makes for easy pickings PD wise and signals when all is clear to close in.  Would be a fun shock to close in only to find out the NPR had held back a last salvo or two to use as a point blank last ditch defense if you closed to beam range.