Missile and Bouy designs

[Father Tim]

You can create a missile with as many stages as you like, you just have to do it backwards.  Create a warhead, then assign it as a second stage to a 'booster', then assign that as a second stage to the next, and so on.

[MoonDragon]

You can create a missile with as many stages as you like, you just have to do it backwards.  Create a warhead, then assign it as a second stage to a 'booster', then assign that as a second stage to the next, and so on.

His problem is targeting. He was wondering if you could put two different kinds of second stage missiles on the same first stage missile. Thereby putting one sensor missile and a number of warhead missiles together into a same MIRV delivery system. I understand that this is not possible, but that's what the original question was.

Now the question that I have is: once the second stage missiles get launched, what happens to the first stage booster rocket? If I put an active sensor onto it, will the payload missiles be able to use that targeting data for their own purposes?

In other words, if my carrier missile has active sensors, and 4 second stage small payload warhead missiles. The carrier missile may use its sensor to target an enemy ship, but once the payload missiles get separated, will the carrier missile still paint the enemy ship with an active radar, enough for the payload missiles to target and impact the enemy?

[UnLimiTeD]

If that was possible, I wouldn't even have asked, however, as far as I understand it, missiles require their own sensors or the original firecontrol, otherwise, I would build a cloaked frigate with large passives and a missile guidance system, and fire long ranged missiles from very long range.

I think I'm soon going to suggest an "on damage" trigger, so you can build an armored mirv, and if it gets hit and doesn't die, it releases it's submunitions ^^.

[The Shadow]

Actually, you don't need sensors at all. The 'launch missiles at' command is, as you may have guessed, short for 'move to this place and launch a missile at whatever target you used last'. It's mostly useful for dropping mines and buoys. In order to launch a missile or drone at something that's not an enemy contact, you need to put a waypoint there; enemy contacts and waypoints are the only valid targets. If you select the planet you want to survey, then go to the waypoints tab and click 'last', it'll attach a waypoint to that planet. Once you've done that, the waypoint will show up as a possible target for any missile fire control in the system. It doesn't matter how big the fire control is - waypoints can be targeted by any fire control at any range - but you will need to have some sort of fire control on your geosurvey ship.

Thank you!  That is very enlightening.

So "launch missiles at" means something other than what I thought - it means 'go there and shoot'.  How do you specify the target, then?  If I click on the waypoint in the task force screen, I suppose there'll be a new option for targeting it or something?

A fire control of *any* size works?  Even 0.1 hull size?  But not none.  Huh.  I'm not sure how to make sense of that.

[Brian Neumann]

A fire control of *any* size works?  Even 0.1 hull size?  But not none.  Huh.  I'm not sure how to make sense of that.

You need some control of where the missile is going to start with.  If you don't have any controls then there is no way to feed anything to the missile.  When you are firing at a waypoint the fire control is just the means of passing the info along to the missile.

Brian

[The Shadow]

OK, I figured out how to fire missiles and drones.

What I still don't understand is how to fire just one of them.  My ship shot off its whole load of probes at once.  How to prevent this?

[waresky]

hi Shadow.
onboard my Minelayer's ships ive 1 only Launch tube,and am manually operated launch performed.
When at first am put many Launchers in Minelayers design was same ur problems.
Now with single tube all gone as well.
But probably my english are too poor for explain better,and some others players can do better.

Am use too "WAYPOINT" for shoot probe or sensor drone.

[sloanjh]

OK, I figured out how to fire missiles and drones.

What I still don't understand is how to fire just one of them.  My ship shot off its whole load of probes at once.  How to prevent this?

Use the "combat overview" screen (the cross-hairs button between the tie fighter and the star at the top of the F3 screen).  You'll need to only assign one launcher to the fire control, and cease fire after you've fired the first one.  And use a reasonable (e.g. 5 second) advance - don't try to do huge (e.g. 1 day or even  20 minute) advances while in combat.

John

[The Shadow]

Many thanks to all those who took the time to respond.

One final question (for now).  How do you delete or obsolete old missile designs?  They tend to get cluttered pretty fast.  Is that what the missile series are for?  I'm not quite sure how to work them.

[MoonDragon]

Many thanks to all those who took the time to respond.

One final question (for now).  How do you delete or obsolete old missile designs?  They tend to get cluttered pretty fast.  Is that what the missile series are for?  I'm not quite sure how to work them.

You can obsolete any technology from the Technology Review window (including missiles).

Series, as far as I understand them, are functionally equal missiles. Which means that if your ship is set up to use missile type C, which is in the same series as type B and type A, then when you run out of stockpiles of type C, your ship will be able to load and use type B or type A missiles, without you having to change the loadout definition for the ship.

Practically speaking you would most likely use this for upgraded version of the same missile. For example, if you have AMM missiles defined and stockpiles built, and then research better agility or engines, you can update your design to be faster and more accurate. Make the new design a part of the same series as the original AMM missile. Then, as you build new stockpiles you can replace your loadouts to the better missiles. But don't delete the old missile stockpiles. If you ever get into a big fight, and run out of the new types of missiles, you can load up from the old stocks and still have ammo to fight.

This begs a question though. Can you shoot smaller sized missiles out of larger sized launchers?

[UnLimiTeD]

http://begthequestion.info/
NO, it doesn't!

Aside, yes, it should just amount to more missiles.
Theres no advantage in bigger launchers besides the possibility for bigger missiles, though, so don't do it. Well, probably it saves cost.

[Steve Walmsley]

If that was possible, I wouldn't even have asked, however, as far as I understand it, missiles require their own sensors or the original firecontrol, otherwise, I would build a cloaked frigate with large passives and a missile guidance system, and fire long ranged missiles from very long range.

I think I'm soon going to suggest an "on damage" trigger, so you can build an armored mirv, and if it gets hit and doesn't die, it releases it's submunitions ^^.

You may not want that to happen. If the sub-munitions are still out of range then all you would achieve by releasing them is to do the job of the hostile point defence by mission killing your own missile. It would be better to let the MIRV try to get within release range.

Steve

[UnLimiTeD]

What If I build a Mirv containining nothing but dummy missiles to fool the enemies?

[Brian Neumann]

What If I build a Mirv containining nothing but dummy missiles to fool the enemies?

You can make dummy missiles to soak up the point defense.  Best design that I have seen actually had a small warhead so they did some damage.  Have them come in just in front of the missiles you want protected.  Point defense fire is prioritized by closest then largest salvo.  The idea is to shoot down the missiles that are going to hit first, and within that to target the largest salvo's so there won't be wasted shots or overkill of the salvo.  While this sounds good it means that if your decoy missiles are slightly faster they will arrive first, and eat up most of the point defense on there way in leaving the real threat to penetrate.

Hope this helps you on your design work

Brian

[UnLimiTeD]

Damn good to know, thx.
Now I just need to suggest controller missiles at some point