Anti-missile Missile

[Chairman (OP)]

Got a situation were I encountered an alien, a hostile alien... He manged to netrulize my only real missile boat, (offensive missiles atleast) so I used my destroyer escorts to fire salvoes of AMM at his ships, after a couple of salvoes his armour were gone and soon my laser ships managed to kill him...

But my question is: Is it realy possible for an AMM to do damage to a big ship...? The AMM should be small, realy small and fast to catch it´s bigger prey (Missiles) and only enough punch to kill the missile... Don´t know if he got any missile defence but all AMM that locked on hit, so if he got any he couldn´t catch those small and fast missiles...
So why build bigger slower missiles? When the fast and small ones will probobly do the jobb better and cheaper...

[ZimRathbone]

Individual AMMs are cheaper, but against serious ships (ie with more than 2 armour) they suffer from lack of penetration, and so tend to have to sandblast the armour off before they cause damage.  Bigger missiles with bigger warheads are much more likely to start causing internal damage before a high proportion of armour has been removed (especially if you're lucky enough to get a couple of hits in the same area of armour).

However a much bigger disadvantage is that AMMs tend to be myopic, rarely with more than 3mKm range at the early levels so ite means that (1) you have to endure all the way across your enemys big missile range before you can engage and (2) you can end up within torpedo or beam range of the enemy much more easily if you are not carefull and (3) if you're slower than the enemy you may well never get a shot at them at all - frequently the case for me with precursors.  In fact until Steve started the precursors suicide runs once they ran out of ammo I very rarely managed to destroy them.  Now all I do is endure their missile attacks until they run out and then they kindly come to me for recycling in pretty much the manner you described.

[a1s]

if you add just a bit of fuel to your AMM designs, they can fly as far as your regular combat missiles (my opinion is that you should keep these missile classes separate though, and, tech level permitting, you should increase warhead yield a bit) and you can launch a lot more of them per minute then big missiles (because small launchers are both smaller (duh) and reload faster) in addition to presenting more targets for interception, this decreasing the effect of enemy CIWS.
let's examine 2 designs of equal tech level:

Code: [Select]

Hammerer 06-33-15
Missile Size: 6 MSP  (0.3 HS)     Warhead: 15    Armour: 0     Manoeuvre Rating: 11
Speed: 33300 km/s    Endurance: 21 minutes   Range: 41.2m km
Cost Per Missile: 7.1083
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 366.3%   3k km/s 121%   5k km/s 73.3%   10k km/s 36.6%
Materials Required:    3.75x Tritanium   3.1593x Gallicite   Fuel x2405fires 1 time per minute (60 seconds), so with 6 units of space available it will do 0.25 DPS

Code: [Select]

Piranha II LRM
Missile Size: 1 MSP  (0.05 HS)     Warhead: 2    Armour: 0     Manoeuvre Rating: 11
Speed: 32800 km/s    Endurance: 33 minutes   Range: 64.4m km
Cost Per Missile: 1.0711
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 360.8%   3k km/s 110%   5k km/s 72.2%   10k km/s 36.1%
Materials Required:    0.5x Tritanium   0.3101x Gallicite   Fuel x625

Development Cost for Project: 107RP
fires 1 time per 10 seconds, has a 0.2 DPS on it's own and you can fit 6 launchers into 6 spaces for 1.2 DPS. And it goes further (though it does hit marginally less often).

if you trade a few tubes for magazines, you'll easily be able to afford sandpapering the armor off your enemy before wreaking havoc on it's unprotected insides.

[Brian Neumann]

The side benifit of doing what A1S proposes is that all of your ships become effective escorts as well.  Adding one or two fire control set up to intercept missiles is fairly easy (2-4 hs each), especially if you decide to just put in small fire control for them as a backup to their primary anti-ship role.  It may be fairly short ranged, but should still get a couple of counter launches per incomming salvo off.

Brian

[Charlie Beeler]

Larger missiles have a very definite place in Aurora.  They give you space for larger warheads, more fuel (ie range), sensors, armor, ecm, etc.  They are the reach out and touch someone platforms.  

While it is true currently that Precurser's and AI NPR's have limited capabilities where missile defense is concerned, Steve is gradually improving the code with each release.  

The best way to learn the various configurations that you can create for missiles is to have your NPR's player controlled instead of AI.  Yes, it can be a vary tasking way to play, but you are also playing against the most challenging opponent your going to find....yourself!