Missiles!

[Silfir (OP)]

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Missile Size: 4 MSP  (0.2 HS)     Warhead: 4    Armour: 0     Manoeuvre Rating: 10
Speed: 15000 km/s    Engine Endurance: 187 minutes   Range: 168.6m km
Cost Per Missile: 1.75
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 150%   3k km/s 50%   5k km/s 30%   10k km/s 15%
Materials Required:    1x Tritanium   0.75x Gallicite   Fuel x1250

Development Cost for Project: 175RP

I've tried to understand what I've been reading about missiles, and above is pretty much the first I've worked out. My question is, more or less, if I've got something on my hands that might feasibly kill an alien ship (if applied in sufficient multitude). 15000 km/s sounds pretty fast and it's got enough fuel on it to go from the earth to the sun, which sounds pretty far. The hit chances seem acceptable provided I can shoot a lot of these bad boys, though I have no idea how fast I should be expecting alien ships to be. I am vaguely aware that some of them will be more ... interesting than others. I don't have agility on it yet - and since it would slow the missile down significantly and (presumably) make it easier to intercept, I have no idea whether it's worth doing.

As I understand it it's best to go for square numbers in damage - if I go for 9, the missile gets too big and/or slow, so I went for 4. Are 1 damage ASMs a better idea?

I have ion drive tech and 3 damage per MSP warheads. I'm definitely planning on researching more and better dakka (more boom on the warheads and recharge rates for the as yet undesigned launchers); I'm just trying to make a useful design using my starting technology so my idle ordinance factory workers stop playing cricket in the construction hall and stealing all my pizza.

[Brian Neumann]

This is not a bad design for a starting missile.  The main problem is it will take a lot of these to do much damage to most things you run into.  (figure that 3,000km/s is about the minimum speed for a target)  I would probably look at making it shorter range if that will let you put a bigger engine on it.  Also the first point of manoeuvreability is cheaper than the rest of them (due to rounding)  Even a little agility might make a big difference on hitting some of the likely targets. 

You might also think about designing a really short range version for use against small fast targets.  Give it a range of 10-20m km and put all the extra into engine/agility.  If you fire at a target that is within 5 seconds flight time then they don't generally get to use point defense against you missile.  Basically save these for when an enemy is going to get to beam range (ie around jump points) or they are just two small and fast to engage at any distance.

For most missile ships give them 1 fire control with a resolution 1 and a few million km range.  This is your backup in case something is to small for the longer/larger resolution missile fire controls on the ship. A first generation missile fire control will still have a 2m km range with a 50 ton (1 hull space) unit.

Brian

[Silfir (OP)]

How much chance to hit should I be shooting for? And how short a range is practical - 100m, 90m, 80m? I've been putting two 1.5 size engines in it - is one size 3 engine significantly more efficient? It's not like I put armor on the things; if it's intercepted by point defense the likely outcome probably isn't "lose precisely one engine".

I've shuffled things about and inserted some agility and it's looking like this:

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Missile Size: 4 MSP  (0.2 HS)     Warhead: 4    Armour: 0     Manoeuvre Rating: 14
Speed: 15000 km/s    Engine Endurance: 75 minutes   Range: 67.4m km
Cost Per Missile: 2.0486
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 210%   3k km/s 70%   5k km/s 42%   10k km/s 21%
Materials Required:    1x Tritanium   1.0486x Gallicite   Fuel x500

Development Cost for Project: 205RP

The gain in chance to hit looks like a very impressive 40% - at the cost of more than 50% of the range. I'm guessing there are no hard and fast answers to this - the optimal range is whatever's bigger than the range of the other dude's missiles.

Or do I have to look into fire control design first. I've got sensor strength 16 - how large can I afford to make my fire control? What range should I be gunning for?

[Jorgen_CAB]

The missile you design are completely depending on what you intend to fire it at. How fast is the oponent, what point defences do they use?

Also remember that you need an active sensor to paint the target with. The fire control only guide the missiles.

In general a missile with maneouvre rating 10 will hit a ship that is ten times slower at 100%. I usually aim at a to hit ratio of 75 to 80 percent at the speed of my enemy ships standard speed. The reason you don't want 100 percent is that your crew grade will increase the chance for the missile to hit as well.

[metalax]

I thought crew grade didn't effect missiles chance to hit?

[Charlie Beeler]

I thought crew grade didn't effect missiles chance to hit?

Crew grade is a factor in the tohit calc's for both beam and missile fire controls.  If missiles are independent of a fire control (ie on thier own sensors) crew grade is not taken into account.

[Silfir (OP)]

How fast is the oponent, what point defences do they use?

I don't have an opponent yet; this is more about starting to fill up my stockpiles with something that will mercilessly slaughter open up alternate venues of negotiation should aliens come in scores to level my cities and steal my trading cards pay a visit. I will need PDCs and size 4 missile launchers, too. I've also designed active sensors and fire controls to match the missile.

How important are AMMs? I gather they're meant to destroy larger missiles, or to catch the ones that fly too fast in a 5 second increment for beam-based PD could touch them. Can I get away with CIWS for a while?

[metalax]

Crew grade is a factor in the tohit calc's for both beam and missile fire controls.  If missiles are independent of a fire control (ie on thier own sensors) crew grade is not taken into account.

Ah that would be why I've not been seeing it, I've been using 2 stage missiles for quite a while.

[Charlie Beeler]

Silfir, let me ask this,  What tech do you currently have available for missiles?

Engine, fuel modifier, power modifier, agility, warhead, launcher reload rate, Active grav sensor rating, EM sensor rating specificly.

[Silfir (OP)]

Just Trans-Newtonian starting tech. Ion drive, 3 warhead per MSP, pretty sure everything else is not more than one above basic. I'll check... Active Sensors are at 16, EM sensors are at 6; Missile Agility is at 32 per MSP. I have 1.25 Power Modifier available and 0.9 Fuel Consumption, and Launcher reload Rate 2.

Am I better off leaving the factories idle until I reach a certain tech threshold? I don't have a Missiles/Kinetics expert yet - nor do I have a Power/Propulsion or Sensors/Fire Control dude. I figured since there's not going to be much movement there, I can have my ordnance factories make me a couple hundred basic missiles for a rainy day.

[metalax]

Your second design is pretty close to optimal for this tech level. By fiddling with the space for fuel/agility and sacrificing a little range, you can slightly improve the hit chance.

1 size 2 engine
1.3334 Warhead
0.1040 Fuel
0.5626 Agility

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Missile Size: 4 MSP  (0.2 HS)     Warhead: 4    Armour: 0     Manoeuvre Rating: 15
Speed: 15000 km/s    Engine Endurance: 63 minutes   Range: 56.3m km
Cost Per Missile: 2.1101
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 225%   3k km/s 75%   5k km/s 45%   10k km/s 22.5%
Materials Required:    1x Tritanium   1.4702x Gallicite   Fuel x260

Development Cost for Project: 211RP

Even if you lack a missile/kinetic scientist, I'd prioritize the next level of warhead tech as that would free up a large amount of space in the missile allowing you to design this missile using the same engine.

1 size 2 engine
1 Warhead
0.1874 Fuel
0.8126 Agility

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Missile Size: 4 MSP  (0.2 HS)     Warhead: 4    Armour: 0     Manoeuvre Rating: 17
Speed: 15000 km/s    Engine Endurance: 113 minutes   Range: 101.4m km
Cost Per Missile: 2.0201
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 255%   3k km/s 85%   5k km/s 51%   10k km/s 25.5%
Materials Required:    0.75x Tritanium   1.6302x Gallicite   Fuel x468.5

Development Cost for Project: 202RP
or alternatively with a new size 2.2 engine

1 size 2.2 engine
1 Warhead
0.1125 Fuel
0.6875 Agility

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Missile Size: 4 MSP  (0.2 HS)     Warhead: 4    Armour: 0     Manoeuvre Rating: 16
Speed: 16500 km/s    Engine Endurance: 66 minutes   Range: 65.0m km
Cost Per Missile: 2.015
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 264%   3k km/s 80%   5k km/s 52.8%   10k km/s 26.4%
Materials Required:    0.75x Tritanium   1.265x Gallicite   Fuel x281.25

Development Cost for Project: 202RP

Response to the questions that I don't think anyone has directly responded to.

I'd use your missile factories to keep around one full reload for your ships/PDC's + colliers on hand but otherwise let them idle until you have improved your missile tech. I'd suggest waiting to build a real stockpile of missiles until you have researched 2 levels further in warhead, agility and fuel efficency and perhaps the next engine tech as well.

AMM's are important to thin out incoming salvoes so that your beam PD/CIWS can finish them off. If you carry sufficient numbers of AMM's and have enough launchers you can also use them to completely destroy incoming salvoes, although this will consume more resources rebuilding your stockpiles. If you are fighting an enemy using 2 stage missiles, you ideally want your AMM's to be able to take out the bus stage before it releases it's payload. As long as you are picking up the incoming missiles on your active sensors at a decent range you can always(allowing for recharge times) get one round of fire off at incoming missiles with your beam PD if you set it to final fire mode.

You will almost always want to use a single engine on your missiles, for example to use the sizes in your question, 1 size 3 engine is roughly 54% more efficient than 2 size 1.5 engines.

Size of missile firecontrols is very dependant on what size ships you want to be able to target. Even at this low tech level you should be able to get decent range against ships with fairly small sensors. I tend to aim for around 50 million km range with your tech level, which only requires a size 2 firecontrol against 5000 ton targets. Note that AMM firecontrols will be huge to get any decent range at your tech level, you need to boost active sensor and em tech before they become practical.

[Silfir (OP)]

Another quick question; how do magazines work in relation to PDCs, and deployment time for that matter? Do I need anything of the sort if I'm stationing the PDCs on my homeworld only? I'm imagining there's a delay in reloading from planet stockpiles if the PDC magazines run empty?

EDIT: I destroyed my first rotten alien filth, which dared to fly too closely to my beautiful homeworld. Now they've destroyed one piddly little unarmed scout shuttle of mine, and I destroyed a humongous evil unarmed scout? jump ship? of theirs (albeit at 9200 tons!) and only spent like 600 missiles to do it!

I foolishly built approximately 15 PDC only to find out I apparently had to manage their magazines and give them a commander each until they would do anything. I found out I had to individually assign each PDCs' missile launchers to a fire control and then the target (aforementioned alien filth), and also manually assign the missiles to the launchers because (as I'm finding out right now) I missed my opportunity to do it in the class design screen. 15 "open fires" in the Individual Ship Details screen would then result in the satisfying blue dots standing in for three optimistically named Carnage missiles. Good news is that reloading from the population is instant; bad news is that it's not automatic. Is there a way to do that?

Just to make sure: What's the easiest way to tell my PDC fleet to shoot at something in its range? There should be a way to order the entire fleet, right? Is there a way to order my PDC fleet to shoot at everything in sight that is not my own ships?

And to ask a in-universe question not related to the interface, just what was it I just destroyed? It seemed to fly at a speed three times of the the warships that mutilated my suicide scout and most definitely was unarmed. It spent a whole load of time randomly flying around and following some random ships, and periodically returning for a good view of my homeworld (not knowing I was frantically researching and manufacturing the tools of its destruction at the time) Of the ships I discovered, it was the only one to enter Sol, and since there are no jumpgates involved, I'm guessing it must have been some sort of jump scout.

EDIT2: If you could also tell me how I'm supposed to get rid of a Divide By Zero error in "OrbitalMovement" that would be great. It kind of sounds like it requires divine powers, and I don't think I've researched that yet.

[Hawkeye]

There is no delay in reloading from a population, but it is
1) just because Steve hasn´t gotten around to program a delay in for this and would be gaming the system and
2) micromanagement hell, to manually reload each PDC every time they shoot at something. Generally, I follow the same principles re. PDC magazins as I do with ships and give them enough ammo for 10 to 20 salvos.

Re. assinging missiles to launchers, launchers to firecons, firecons to targets etc.

Battle Control Window (F8) is your friend

You set up one of your ships (missiles/launchers/beams/...), assign PD settings and then hit the "Copy Race" button on the right. This sets up all ships of the same class just like the one you just did.

Similar procedue for assigning targets. Assign target(s) to one of your ships and then hit "Class in TG" or "Class in Sys" to copy the target assignment to every ship of the same class in that task group or in-system.

After that, you hit ""Open Fire" in the "Current Fleet" Area

As for what it was you destroyed, who knows.   May you live in interesting times 


Re. the divide by zero  error. Try turning off orbital movement for asteroids and/or planets and see if it solves things. Other than that, I have no idea.

[Silfir (OP)]

Well, turning off orbital movement for planets did it. Everything's so stationary now... Since it's probably related to a bugged randomly generated planet, I guess I'll be best off paying closer attention in the future and deleting and regenerating the most recent system once the error starts showing up. I'd already suspected it was something like that, but I'll be buggered if I know after which system it started showing up.

Not like this isn't the fiftieth time I've deleted the game and restarted from scratch. Hooray for sandboxes!