Point defence

[Charlie Beeler]

Some things I've found to be successful for missile defenses.  

You only need 1pt of damage to kill a missile with a missile.

This has changed with 4.0b.  missile vs missile now need to take in to account the armor of the attacking missile.  If your enemy armors thier missile even a little bit this will have a major impact on your interceptions chance of success. (1 point of armor will meen that a successfull intercept now requires twice as many missiles to succeed.)

Really?  I missed that someplace.  Not doubting, I missing things like this regularly and then get bit in the ass.  


For beam PD I still prefer the Gauss Cannon.  Yes they are mass intensive and missile armor delutes thier effectiveness.  But a quad mount with rof of at least 3 gives you 12 100% shots if your using the 6hs version.  

In my games I do cheat though.  I've modified the tech table for GC size and turret speeds and cost.  I've only got the GC through 1hs with that being 100%.  Turret speeds are 4x beam fire control speeds and matched the turret cost to the same level as beam fire control.

[Kurt]

Well, I won my fight against the six precursor vessels. I got pounded with long range salvos, while their ECM kept my long range missles to
half their range. I was testing four difference battlecruiser designs to see how they functioned in combat. The result actually surprised me.
All four had point defense suites, if they hadn't, the fleet would have been destroyed before getting into missle range.

The first design is a modified Revenge class BC. In the battle, her PD lasers were of limited use due to a tracking speed much too low
to effectively track Precursor missles. The 20cm lasers never got into range, though they were of some VERY limited use in PD mode.

snip ship designs

This was fun for sure, and we succeeded in capturing the system. There is a thermal 10 base on the first planet. Is it possible to
capture it? BTW, Steve, they have been leaving lifepods when destroyed. (Now where did I put those bamboo strips?)

Eric

Hmmm....I noticed that your ships are generally much faster than mine, but have way lighter passive defenses.  My ships tend to either focus on armor or shields, or a combination of both, and in all cases they tend to have more tonnage devoted to them than your designs.  It would be interesting to have a battle between my designs and yours.  Yours would be able to dictate the range, as they are substantially faster, but if mine can get within range of their weapons I suspect yours would suffer.  

You have a very good point about rate of fire and the utility of the smaller missile launchers that can throw larger salvos faster, however...I have found that with larger launchers with longer reload times it can be very useful to launch several salvoes combined as one against the enemy by targeting waypoints short of the enemy fleet and assembling individual salvoes there before sending them against their targets.  A five-missile salvo of size eight missiles might be easy to intercept, but a thirty missile salvo composed of those same missiles is going to be devastating.  Granted it will take longer to assemble, and in the meantime the other guy is launching his small missiles.   Hmmmm....

Kurt

[Cassaralla]

After having faced off against two NPRs that used gauss cannon turrets to great effect as anti missile platforms, I used both tactics.  Small launchers with fast cycle time and larger launchers aiming at a waypoint and gathering several salvoes into one.  My findings . . .

 - The small launchers did fine if they targeted the escort ships first, otherwise the fast cycling gauss turrets devastated my salvo density on every intercept.

 - The large salvo overwhelmed the gauss turrets massively and I ended up with massive overkill.  90 of 500 missiles ended up with no targets.


So, both tactics proved successful but the small launchers cost me a lot more missiles to destroy a fleet.  Although the missiles were cheaper I still recovered my stocks faster with the massed salvo tactic.


Then I found a Precursor.  Used the massed salvo tactic and wasted over 300 missiles as they apparently had no PD at all . . .

[Starkiller (OP)]

I noted that too. I've battled Precursors twice now, and they seem to have powerful shields and armour. Their laser weapons are strong, but I've just finished
research on Far Ultraviolet Lasers, so I can match them. I neglected missle research in favour of beam weapons, so Precursor ships have a HUGE advantage
there, and I ignored ECM and ECCM entirely, which might have been a mistake. The only area where they were strangely lacking was PD. Once you got by the
ECM, armour and heavy shielding, no PD that I could see. Still, with all the passive defenses, if they'd had PD as well, they would've been unbeatable.

Kurt, I tend to keep my passive defense light, because so far, I've only met Precursor ships and they are REALLY fast. Difference is, they are fast with
VERY heavy passive defense. I'm not advanced enough yet to have heavy weapons, passive defenses, and speed, so I had to make some choices. To use
heavy weapons would increase my tonnage fast, thus seriously reducing my speed. I would imagine that my high speed assisted in some Precursor missles
missing altogether. Shields don't take up much room, but armour still does, so I had to skimp on those.

Eric

[SteveAlt]

Could you squeeze in another Size 1 missile fire control on the Vilknarma? That way you could set it up so that they control 4 launchers each and then have the PD set to 4vs1?

Which actually leads me on to my own question for Steve: when PD is set to 4vs1 does that mean that 4 PD missiles will try to target 1 incoming ship killer missile OR that 4 PD missiles will attack 1 salvo or ship killer missiles?

OR, none of the above  

4 to 1 means that the number of missiles directed against one incoming salvo will be four times the number in that salvo. So assuming an incoming salvo of 12, your point defence will keep launching until it has 48 anti-missiles in flight. If you are launching anti-missiles in salvos of 10, for example, the first four salvos will be full and the fifth will be just 8 missiles. If the first of those salvos intercepts the incoming and destroys just one of them you will now have 38 missiles in flight vs an incoming salvo of 11. The next anti-missile launch will therefore be 6 missiles so you have 44 in flight vs 11.

Steve