Author Topic: Good ASM using Mesons/railguns/gauss  (Read 3679 times)

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Offline Drgong (OP)

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Good ASM using Mesons/railguns/gauss
« on: August 26, 2017, 08:22:09 PM »
I had a hard time mastering the arcane dark arts of getting good ASM defense without using missiles.   

How do you experts do it?  8)
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Offline TheBawkHawk

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Re: Good ASM using Mesons/railguns/gauss
« Reply #1 on: August 26, 2017, 09:58:17 PM »
I definitely wouldn't call myself an expert, but here's how I tend to do it. I build most of my larger ships as jack-of-all-trades kind of ships, and run by the logic that every ship should be able to function on it's own, and not require any other ships to be effective. This means that I mount small (typically 1 HS to keep costs and weight down) missile detecting sensors on nearly all ships, and devote around 5-10% of the ship's tonnage to mounting gauss turrets. This means that every ship will contribute a little bit to the fleet's defense, making a medium to large sized fleet nearly impenetrable to missile attacks fairly early on in the game.
 

Offline lennson

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Re: Good ASM using Mesons/railguns/gauss
« Reply #2 on: August 27, 2017, 12:18:13 AM »
I seem to recall that in terms of cost efficiency 'rail-gun barges' (massive numbers of lowest tech rail-guns on a cheap ship with commercial engines) were the best for shooting down large numbers missiles. Note that there are lots of thing that will work well enough against anti-ship missiles but not getting over whelmed by hundreds of anti-missile missiles fire offensively is rather hard.
 

Offline Thanatos

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Re: Good ASM using Mesons/railguns/gauss
« Reply #3 on: August 27, 2017, 12:54:06 PM »
The principle is simple: If you use gauss, then you'd be using Final Defense Fire, at point blank. The trick to it is to use as many ships as possible, because they will protect each other and combine their PD capabilities. Having dedicated gunships whose entire job is to do PD, works. Bonus points if you can squeeze a Railgun in there as well, for close combat options that are better than the gauss, but if you're firing 32 or 64 gauss pellets with one ship, then it really doesn't matter.

The biggest trick to is is selecting how many fire controls you dedicate per turret. Also, which kind of turret to use. If your turret, that fires 16 pellets targets a salvo of 8 missiles, and destroys all of them, it will not fire on other salvos. The same is true if the same turret destroys 16 out of 18 missiles. The next turret will destroy the remaining 2 and call it a day.
 

Iranon

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Re: Good ASM using Mesons/railguns/gauss
« Reply #4 on: August 27, 2017, 06:02:56 PM »
I like 10cm railguns best. Base-tech on the flak barges lennson mentioned, respectable versions for fast ships.
Gauss weapons can be situationally better, but require some research investment and it's rare that I care for tonnage-efficiency over cost-efficiency on slow ships.
Either will typically be used in final defensive fire.

Dedicated area defence weapons aren't necessary. They will be less effective, often costly, and require even more costly fire controls... not attractive if your offense relies on missiles.
There's something to be said for making your offensive beam weapons dual-purpose though, with modest calibres and possibly turret mounts.
 

Offline Silvarelion

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Re: Good ASM using Mesons/railguns/gauss
« Reply #5 on: August 28, 2017, 09:45:40 PM »
I'm starting to experiment with 10cm railgun fighters. Very little research requirements, and they don't seem to be too far off turrets on effectiveness, cost and weight.
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Offline 83athom

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Re: Good ASM using Mesons/railguns/gauss
« Reply #6 on: August 29, 2017, 11:30:08 AM »
Layered defenses. I use Railguns for longer range thinning of the missile swarms, CIWS/Gauss for the close in final firing, and the some shields to absorb any that manage to get through. Note that you do not need a massive amounts of shields, just a few to absorb a few hits and keep your ship from taking shock damage too soon.
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Offline Jovus

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Re: Good ASM using Mesons/railguns/gauss
« Reply #7 on: August 29, 2017, 01:18:42 PM »
I'm in the gauss cannon camp.

All these other things you're possibly putting on are extra HS, which could be more efficiently dedicated to more gauss cannons, which will on average give you more missiles destroyed per HS than these other options, assuming equivalent research.

Of course, if you've left gauss in the dust on research because you thematically want something else, that's fine, but it's not an argument from optimization.

This maybe goes out the window if the enemy is using armored missiles; in that case mesons may be optimal for a narrow band of missile armor. I haven't run those numbers yet, because that model is complicated and I'm busy.

Edit: I should add that, while gauss are the optimal point defense weapons, that doesn't mean you should never use others or anything silly like that. It makes perfect sense to, e.g., build meson/railgun fighters and use them as multi-role, where one of those roles is PD, but they're also capable of neutralizing enemy FACs/light craft or doing bomber escort, etc. But just strictly for point defense, gauss guns are best per HS/research.
« Last Edit: August 29, 2017, 01:21:13 PM by Jovus »
 

Offline Michael Sandy

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Re: Good ASM using Mesons/railguns/gauss
« Reply #8 on: October 05, 2017, 03:57:22 AM »
My theory is to use turreted gauss fighters initially, just so you have SOMETHING that can deal with really fast missiles.  Basically, you use PD fighters instead of escort destroyers.

That and scout religiously.  Fleet theory is bring enough gauss fighters to get enemy to shoot themselves dry, kill their beam ships with relatively short ranged and fast missiles, then sweep up their now empty missile ships with beam fighters.
 

Offline Borealis4x

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Re: Good ASM using Mesons/railguns/gauss
« Reply #9 on: January 05, 2018, 01:44:57 AM »
So anti-missile missiles are a waste of space? I was going to rely on AMMs and gauss turrets.

Also, I'm interested in lasers fulfilling the role of close-in PD late game as a roleplying thing, how are they in the game?
« Last Edit: January 05, 2018, 01:59:33 AM by BasileusMaximos »
 

Offline vorpal+5

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Re: Good ASM using Mesons/railguns/gauss
« Reply #10 on: January 05, 2018, 03:56:54 AM »
AMM can fire much farther than the others PDs. So you can 'thin the horde' with them (and only use them if you believe your close-in PDs won't do enough). In particular, you can reduce the missiles waves so that each wave can be handled by the right amount of fire control and PDs (with some good margin of errors).

also AMM launchers can be used offensively, you can put a surprising amount of punch (relatively speaking...) in a size 1 missile. So they can also be used either to soften a hard target, or to finish a crippled opponent. Or to 'test the water' and see exactly what is the PD of the enemy fleet, by probing them with cheap size 1 ASM.

So many possibilities in Aurora. So much waiting time between 2 time segments  ;D
 

Offline Michael Sandy

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Re: Good ASM using Mesons/railguns/gauss
« Reply #11 on: January 05, 2018, 04:04:29 AM »
For dealing with long ranged ASM, especially ASM fired in volleys that have significant space between them like from box launchers, AMM have a number of advantages.

When dealing with fast firing AMM spam, when trying to close on a base that has huge supplies of AMM, having enough beam point defense to deal with it is essential.