So, here's my current strategy for designing missles.
I'll start off by explaining some things that I found confusing initially.
Rounding and TruncationIn many cases Aurora rounds fractional inputs to four digits; enter 0.00055 and the game will use 0.0006. Enter 1.9999 and it will use that; but enter 1.99999 and it will use 2.
For Warhead Strength (WS), any fraction of the Value is truncated. So, if your current technology is 4 WS per MSP, entering a WS MSP less than 0.25 will give a Value of 0. Entering a WS MSP of 0.25 up to 0.4999 will give a Value of 1.
As the text on the missile design window states: Manoeuvre Rating (MR) = 10 + (Agility / Size). What it doesn't mention is that MR will be rounded to the nearest whole number. So, for a size 1 missile, an agility Value of 0 to 0.4999 will add 0 MR and 0.5 to 1.4999 adds 1 MR. For larger missiles those theshholds are higher. For example, with a size 4 missile an agility Value of 2 to 5.9999 will add 1 MR and 6 to 9.9999 will add 2 MR.
Speed and range are both subject to rounding but the effect is much smaller.
Chance to HitIn the past I've thought that AMM are all about maximizing chance to hit. However, I've realized that while AMM will usually not be subject to missile defense, they may have to chase down missiles so speed is still important. Also, faster AMM will give more time to react to missiles that get through.
Chance to hit is subject to diminishing returns. The higher your MR is, the less to hit you get for each point of MR. In fact, if you keep adding agility, to hit will start decreasing. In other words, the graph of to hit vs MR is a parabolic curve.
If you try to get the to hit right at the top of the curve you will have sacrificed a lot of speed for those last several MR without gaining much to hit. I now aim for getting about 80% of the way up the curve, which is around 20 MR for my current tech.
OK, let's design some basic missiles.
AMM - Anti-Missile Missiles
My current WS per MSP is 5, so I start with 0.2 MSP for that, 0.8 MSP for engine and 0 MSP for everything else. This gives me Warhead:1, Speed:64000 km/s and Chance to Hit:10k km/s 64%.
Let's go for a 2.0m km range. My fuel efficiency is 0.4, which is the MSP per 1000 units. So, I put in 0.0004 fuel MSP and that gives me 1 unit of fuel with a range of 0.2m. I want 10x that, so I'll add 0.004. With 0.0044 MSP of fuel (and 0.7956 engine MSP to get back to size 1) my missile has Speed:63600 km/s, to Hit:10k 63.6% and Range:2.0m km.
I want my chance to hit a 40k km/s missile to be 25%. That means I need to get my to hit 10k up to 100%. Let's see what 20 MR will get me. To get that I need to add 9.5 agility Value which gets rounded to 10. At my tech of 64 agility per MSP that is (1/64) x 9.5 = 0.1484375, or 0.1485 MSP. (If I don't round up I end up with just under 9.5.)
Reduce engine MSP to 0.6471 to get back to size 1 and now I have Speed:51800 and Hit: 10k 103.6%. My chance to hit a 40k missile is now 25.9%.
That's good enough for an example. One last thing I can do is to reduce engine and increase fuel just a little bit at a time. This allows me to increase the range to 2.1m km without reducing speed.
Missile Size: 1 MSP (0.05 HS) Warhead: 1 Armour: 0 Manoeuvre Rating: 20
Speed: 51800 km/s Endurance: 1 minutes Range: 2.1m km
Cost Per Missile: 1.3625
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 1036% 3k km/s 340% 5k km/s 207.2% 10k km/s 103.6%
Materials Required: 0.25x Tritanium 0.8501x Gallicite Fuel x11.5
In this case I designed to a minimum chance to hit and range with as much speed as I could get. I could have designed to a minimum speed and range with maximum to hit. Another strategy is make all your missiles the same speed and design to a specific speed, a minimum range and maximum to hit. Having all your missiles be the same speed makes it easy to use them all at once to overwhelm an enemy's missile defense.
So let's look at another example.
ASM - Anti-Ship Missile
For a larger missile I use 25-33% of it's size for warhead. For a size 4, that is 1 to 1.3334 MSP. At my tech that is a WS of 5 or 6; let's do 6 which is 1.2 MSP.
As my fuel efficiency is 0.4, I'll put that in and see what I get. With 2.4 engine MSP to get up to size 4, I get a range of 45m, speed of 48000 and to hit 5k of 96%. Speed and range are good but that to hit is a bit low.
Before I deal with the to hit, I'll get the range up to a nice round 50m. Adding 0.04 will get me 100 more fuel and a range of 49.5m. 10 more fuel is 49.9m and one more over that is 50.0m. Speed is down to 47100 and to hit 5k is 94.2%.
To increase the MR of a size 4 missile to 11, I have to add 2 agility. (2/4 = 0.5 which gets rounded to 1.) So, (1/64) x 2 = 0.03125 which gets rounded to 0.0313 MSP. That gives me a to hit 5k of 102.3%, 8.1 more and only costs me 600 speed.
Now to increase MR to 12, I have to add 4 more agility for total of 6. (6/4 = 1.5 rounded to 2.) 1/64 x 6 = 0.09375 rounded to 0.0938 MSP. Speed 45200 and to hit 5k 108.5%, 6.2 more cost me 1300 speed.
Let's skip to the final design.
Missile Size: 4 MSP (0.2 HS) Warhead: 6 Armour: 0 Manoeuvre Rating: 13
Speed: 44000 km/s Endurance: 19 minutes Range: 50.2m km
Cost Per Missile: 4.5051
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 572% 3k km/s 182% 5k km/s 114.4% 10k km/s 57.2%
Materials Required: 1.5x Tritanium 2.9302x Gallicite Fuel x1115.25
That to hit with crew grade bonuses should give close to 100% chance to hit a 7500 km/s ship.
Some final thoughtsInitial designs are all about balance. For AMM: a balance of speed and chance to hit. For ASM: a balance of speed and strength and, to a lesser extent, chance to hit.
As has been said before, the complexity of Aurora means that there is no one right way to do things.
What do you think? What works for you?
