X-Ray Laser Warheads

[Shinanygnz (OP)]

Steve, seeing as you're on adding new stuff again, how about resurrecting the bomb pumped laser missile warhead we discussed in the past?

The posts look to be long gone, but it was along the old Traveller 2300 methodology where the warhead has a strength and number of laser rods, i.e. instead of a 6 point "bang" warhead you might have 1x6 (one 6pt shot), 2x3 (two 3pt shots), 3x2 or 6x1 option in there.  We then talked about additional research items of accuracy and stand-off range.

Stephen

[Erik L]

Aren't laser warheads already in? They were in a previous version I know.

[Shinanygnz (OP)]

Just been and advanced the tech for a race and you're right.  Once you get Soft X-ray Laser developed, you can then do a Soft X-ray Laser Warhead.  A tick box on the missile design screen is enabled and a design then shows you a number of laser shots equal to the warhead strength.  However, some questions remain.  What's the range, damage and accuracy of these shots?  Ship or missile or either/both controlled (sensor-wise)?

[SteveAlt]

Just been and advanced the tech for a race and you're right.  Once you get Soft X-ray Laser developed, you can then do a Soft X-ray Laser Warhead.  A tick box on the missile design screen is enabled and a design then shows you a number of laser shots equal to the warhead strength.  However, some questions remain.  What's the range, damage and accuracy of these shots?  Ship or missile or either/both controlled (sensor-wise)?

This was something I added as an experiment but then got distracted and never really tested it, then forgot about it and never posted it about it

I need to take a look at the code and see exactly how it works.

Steve

[Narmio]

I know this is a serious necro, but since there's only a few posts in it and I can't find much in the way of discussion of these since.  .  . 

I just discovered that the techs for X-Ray Warheads are still in-game, were they ever expanded on? Do they work? Did Steve ever do those experiments with them that were mentioned in this thread from more than two years ago?  

I'm assuming, although haven't tested this, that a laser warhead gives you the equivalent of a 10cm point-blank laser hit for each point of warhead you put in the missile.    It doesn't seem like you can make the laser any bigger, it instead adds more warheads.   

But what's the damage template and total damage of those warheads?  Given that with a comparable level of warhead technology a warhead of size 1 can be hitting the third level of armour (once you get past the Warhead 8 tech, at least, which is kinda comparable in cost to X-ray laser tech), will a laser warhead actually penetrate deeper than this?  I know a damage 10 laser at point blank seems to get through 5-6 levels of armour, but these laser warheads don't seem to be that big. 

Why are there individual smallish laser warheads anyway? Wouldn't one warhead you could increase in size work better, as presumably the only reason to use laser warheads over normal ones is extra penetration?

[Brian Neumann]

From the original idea, the real reason to use the laser warheads was not to increase the penetration of the armor, but for a standoff weapon.  Currently most people set their final defensive fire mode for 10,000km.  The laser warheads are presumably going of beyond this range.  To get that final defensive fire from your beam weapons you would need to set it farther out, which also reduces the chance of hitting the incomming missiles.  CIWS had not been invented at this point, but would probably not get any chance to engage at all as they fire when the missile reaches 1,000km from the ship.

Brian

[voknaar]

So its essentially a Anti-CIWS specialized missile?

[Teiwaz]

Interesting.  Has anyone tried using these as the payload for an AMM?

[Charlie Beeler]

So its essentially a Anti-CIWS specialized missile?

Not CIWS specificly.  They are a means to counter beam point defense final fire.

[Charlie Beeler]

Interesting.  Has anyone tried using these as the payload for an AMM?

Why?  As a submunition for a multi-warhead anti-ship system they make sense.  But as a counter missile they are poor choice.

[Brian Neumann]

There is a difference between ciws and the other beam point defense (bpd)  Ciws only fires at the 1,000km range and only to protect the mounting ship.  The other bpd can be set to protect all ships, only the mounting ship, and to fire at any designated range.  If they are set for more than 10,000km however most of them start to see a very rapid drop-off in accuracy.  I have seen plenty of bpd fire control with a 50% accuracy at 30-40,000km so just increasing the range for final defensive fire to 20,000km means that you are dropping the base chance to hit from around 90% to 66-75% then modify that by the relative tracking speed.  You could easily end up with an effective intercept range of half what it would be closser in.  If you don't set it out that far however the laser warhead is going to go off without your bpd even trying to stop it.  I am sure you see the trade-off's required here.

Brian

[Teiwaz]

Why?  As a submunition for a multi-warhead anti-ship system they make sense.   But as a counter missile they are poor choice.

Multiple shots from each AMM vs.  incoming missiles, primarily.  And something interesting may fall out of the way beams target high velocity objects rather than the way missiles do.

[Shadow]

Yes, that would technically work against a single salvo (per missile), due to the very short range of the resulting lasers.

In theory. I don't think laser heads work in Aurora at the moment. Steve said he kind of forgot about them.

[Narmio]

It would be nice if they were reworked some day. Maybe make the bomb-pumped laser warheads a missile type on their own (like buoys, drones, etc) so that you can make them a sub-munition and thus set their separation (aka firing) range.  Then you could also customise their size and power. Their range would be based on what level of the tech you have (soft x-ray, x-ray, etc), significantly reduced from what you can achieve with a ship-borne laser, it wouldn't make much sense if these things could hit further than the PD lasers built to intercept them...

There are a few questions, though.  If they are to use the laser damage template, should they also use (miniaturised) beam-weapon fire controls? Would those need to be built into the laser submunition? How would damage be worked out? Presumably the laser damage derives from the space allocated and your warhead damage-per-msp tech, as the nuke is the power source.  But not the same as devoting the space to a normal warhead, or with the laser damage template they'd obsolete normal missiles entirely.

Ideally you'd get a situation where you could detonate your laser submunitions out in the 20-100kkm range to avoid enemy beam PD, for the tradeoff of reduced damage (because of the falloff on lasers).  Or you could detonate a big laser submunition right up in your enemy's face, at 10kkm, to try to pierce through heavy armour. You'd penetrate more layers that way, but you'd do less total damage than using a conventional missile. It would be tactically interesting.  Although having to create different missile designs for different separation ranges would hamper how easily you could recalibrate to match an enemy's PD.

[Charlie Beeler]

Multiple shots from each AMM vs.  incoming missiles, primarily.  And something interesting may fall out of the way beams target high velocity objects rather than the way missiles do.

As the game stands you'll get a net negative effect.  You're better off with advanced AMM's that have a range of 2-3m km (minimum), launchers that have 5 second cycles, and active sensor tech (search and fire control) to support those ranges.  Beams just can't match missiles for tohit chances against high speed targets. If I recall correctly, laserheads have a reduced tohit vs an equivalent standard warhead missile.

The real killer is economics.  Laserheads are significantly more expensive than an equal space of AMM's.


The niche that laserheads are intended to fill, from my point of view, is standoff anti-shipping.  Even then they don't really justify their higher cost.  I'll qualify that with this, I have not tried using laserheads since v4.91.  To my knowledge Steve has not changed the supporting code since then, so I have no evidence to change my opinion.