Missile Design temporarily unsolved

[scratch (OP)]

Hi all,

First post .     I've been trying out Aurora for a few days now and have a lot of it reasonably under control (mining, terraforming, leveraging civilian transport, geo and grav scanning etc).   

I'm playing 6.   2 and simply haven't been able to get my head round missiles and their design.     The wiki page seems to be quite good on the theory, but not how to actually do it.     Sizes, magazines, warheads, engines, fire control?  All good.     Putting it together as a missile and then producing one?  No idea at all.   

Any help much appreciated .   


Scratch

[alex_brunius]

Normally you aim for either a combined size (MSP) of 1.0 for an Anti missile missile (AMM) or 3.0 - 5.0 for an Anti Ship missile (ASM). We also don't want a size 3.5 missile since launchers come in integer size (3 or 4), launching a smaller missile is possible but somewhat of a waste.

The first step is to design a missile engine. You want maximum engine power mod to make it as fast as possible and normally want to devote around half of you missile for engines (so 0.5 size for AMM and 1.5-2.5 size for ASM).

Once you have a missile engine designed and researched you can go into the design of the missile itself. You allocate Missile size points (MSP) to things that are required for a simple offensive missile and those two things are primary "Warhead Strength" and "Fuel Capacity".

To get as much as possible out of your size points you can either play around with allocations and watch the "value" change, or calculate how much you need. To get for example 4 "value" for your damage you can calculate that you would need 1.333 MSP allocation on warhead if your technology for warhead is "Strength 3 x MSP" (Implosion Fission Warhead).

To start out with you don't really have to worry about many other things, but later on you generally want to start adding Agility to at least AMMs.

You missiles don't need any sensors, they are guided by the Missile fire control of the launching ship.



Once you have a design of a missile finished and researched you can start production in your Ordnance Factories.


To design a magazine is more straight forward. Both technologies affecting it you always want the latest one, but for starting out you can just make sure you have the basic level of both and design a working magazine. The Magazine Size you want can be calculated based on how many reloads you want to bring on your ship. If you have five size 4 ASM launchers and want to bring 8 reloads you want magazine(s) with a total capacity of 5*4*8 = 160

[scratch (OP)]

Once you have a missile engine designed and researched you can go into the design of the missile itself. 

Thanks Alex, I appreciate the help .   One question, "you can go into the design of the missile itself".   How do I find that screen, because I've looked in Component Design and Class Design and can't figure it out.

[alex_brunius]

Thanks Alex, I appreciate the help .   One question, "you can go into the design of the missile itself".   How do I find that screen, because I've looked in Component Design and Class Design and can't figure it out.

Aha, Bottom of F2 economics screen you have 2 extra buttons to design more complex things that use other designs as input, these are "Missiles" and "Turrets".


Edit: These buttons are also present in the bottom of the component design window, at least in version 6.3 Beta.

[scratch (OP)]

Thank you .   I don't think I would have found that without stumbling on it by mistake.

[Somnus]

Thanks for the informative answer! I too have been trying to figure this out.

[LizardSF]

Thanks for the informative answer! I too have been trying to figure this out.

In most 4X games, you just have to explore the galaxy.
In Aurora, you have to explore the interface, too.

[Bryan Swartz]

Lol, so true!

[scratch (OP)]

Normally you aim for either a combined size (MSP) of 1. 0 for an Anti missile missile (AMM) or 3. 0 - 5. 0 for an Anti Ship missile (ASM).  We also don't want a size 3. 5 missile since launchers come in integer size (3 or 4), launching a smaller missile is possible but somewhat of a waste.

The first step is to design a missile engine.  You want maximum engine power mod to make it as fast as possible and normally want to devote around half of you missile for engines (so 0. 5 size for AMM and 1. 5-2. 5 size for ASM).

Once you have a missile engine designed and researched you can go into the design of the missile itself.  You allocate Missile size points (MSP) to things that are required for a simple offensive missile and those two things are primary "Warhead Strength" and "Fuel Capacity".

To get as much as possible out of your size points you can either play around with allocations and watch the "value" change, or calculate how much you need.  To get for example 4 "value" for your damage you can calculate that you would need 1. 333 MSP allocation on warhead if your technology for warhead is "Strength 3 x MSP" (Implosion Fission Warhead).

To start out with you don't really have to worry about many other things, but later on you generally want to start adding Agility to at least AMMs.

You missiles don't need any sensors, they are guided by the Missile fire control of the launching ship.



Once you have a design of a missile finished and researched you can start production in your Ordnance Factories.


To design a magazine is more straight forward.  Both technologies affecting it you always want the latest one, but for starting out you can just make sure you have the basic level of both and design a working magazine.  The Magazine Size you want can be calculated based on how many reloads you want to bring on your ship.  If you have five size 4 ASM launchers and want to bring 8 reloads you want magazine(s) with a total capacity of 5*4*8 = 160

So, having come back to this (particular bit of the game - I've been busy terraforming Mars and now need to get PDCs up and a defense fleet before poking my nose into a neighboring system), some more questions .

I'm trying to design a PD anti-missile with Stellarator Fusion Reactor and Magneto-plasma tech researched.   Fuel consumption is at 0. 6 liters / engine power hour.   fwiw I have gas-cooled fast reactor technology.   And I come up with the following 0 agility 0. 5 fuel capacity 0 active sensor design.

Missile Size: 1. 2 MSP  (0. 06 HS)     Warhead: 1    Armour: 0     Manoeuvre Rating: 10
Speed: 6700 km/s    Engine Endurance: 216. 1 hours   Range: 5 213. 2m km
Cost Per Missile: 0. 35
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 67%   3k km/s 20%   5k km/s 13. 4%   10k km/s 6. 7%
Materials Required:    0. 25x Tritanium   0. 1x Gallicite   Fuel x1250

Development Cost for Project: 35RP

It's too big (at 1. 2 MSP), and it's classed as an anti-ship missile.

I need to decrease MSP by . 2, increase speed, decrease endurance, increase maneuverability. . . .  and. . .  I'm scratching my head .   I'm either missing something / omitting something on the research front, or not understanding the design approach.

tx in advance .   


Scratch

[Brian Neumann]

You have something wrong here with your missile.  For Magneto-plasma tech the speed should be above 30,000km/s  You also have way to much fuel.  Most anti-missiles only go 2-5 million km before they run out of fuel.  You can design the missile with .001msp in any component.  Try designing a new missile engine with about .6-.7 msp (missile size points) in size, .01 in fuel and whatever the smallest amount gives you a warhead size of 1.  If there is anything left over then put it into agility.

When you design your missile engine you will want to use the biggest speed modifier you can.  This will give it a huge fuel consumption rate, but you are looking at a close range system that doesn't need to run very long.  A few minutes is usually all you can use as the sensors to see a missile incoming are not going to have a target beyond that sort of range.

Brian

[alex_brunius]

So, having come back to this (particular bit of the game - I've been busy terraforming Mars and now need to get PDCs up and a defense fleet before poking my nose into a neighboring system), some more questions .

I'm trying to design a PD anti-missile with Stellarator Fusion Reactor and Magneto-plasma tech researched.   Fuel consumption is at 0. 6 liters / engine power hour.   fwiw I have gas-cooled fast reactor technology.   And I come up with the following 0 agility 0. 5 fuel capacity 0 active sensor design.

Missile Size: 1. 2 MSP  (0. 06 HS)     Warhead: 1    Armour: 0     Manoeuvre Rating: 10
Speed: 6700 km/s    Engine Endurance: 216. 1 hours   Range: 5 213. 2m km
Cost Per Missile: 0. 35
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 67%   3k km/s 20%   5k km/s 13. 4%   10k km/s 6. 7%
Materials Required:    0. 25x Tritanium   0. 1x Gallicite   Fuel x1250

Development Cost for Project: 35RP

It's too big (at 1. 2 MSP), and it's classed as an anti-ship missile.

I need to decrease MSP by . 2, increase speed, decrease endurance, increase maneuverability. . . .  and. . .  I'm scratching my head .   I'm either missing something / omitting something on the research front, or not understanding the design approach.

tx in advance .   


Scratch

It looks like you have far to much fuel and too low engine power on the engine you have designed. When designing missile engines you almost always want the "Power / Efficincy Modifier" way down to the bottom and research the max power mod to be x3 (x6 for missiles).

As a result of to low powered engine and to much fuel your missile can run for 9 days with a range of over 5000 m km, when you will be hard pressed to design sensors that can spot an enemy missile for it to intercept at even 1% of that distance.

[scratch (OP)]

Thanks guys.   I'm out tomorrow night (Christmas party, so drunk), and have friends down for the weekend (so not playing, and drunk), so won't have a sober chance to take another look at this until Sunday night / Monday.

I'll report back then .

[Somnus]

Okay, I still really have no idea what I'm doing with missile/launcher/sensor/magazine design. Would someone maybe be willing to create something with what I've got and explain the design choices?

I've got:

Magneto-plasma engine tech
Active Grav 16
EM Sensor Sentivity 6
Fuel Consumption 0.9

Not sure what else you might need to know.

Thank you in advance, very much. Combat is still completely over my head with this game.

[Starmantle]

Warhead strength and Agility per MSP is also important to know,  plus Maximum Engine power modifier. 

But if it were me, at that level, I'd go for a size 4 anti-ship missile. 

First, I'd go to "design research projects" and make a size 2.5 engine with something close to my maximum engine power modifier.

After taking some time to research that, I'd go to the missiles screen and add one of those engines, plus enough warhead space to equal a size 4 warhead (0.8 space if you have a warhead strength of 5) and divide the other 0.7 space or so between fuel and maneuverability.

80 million km range would be okay, but more is better. 

Of course, it's all also a balancing act vs. your missile fire control.

Anyway, it's pretty shooting-from-the-hip advice, but it might get you in the right direction. 

It takes a lot of trial and error. 

[Narmio]

I would also add that the "Maximum engine power modifier" tech line is virtually mandatory for non-hilariterrible missiles.  I would get it to at least x2.00 (giving you a missile engine max of 4x the power-to-weight ratio of your basic ship engine) before even trying to field missiles.