Aurora 4x
VB6 Aurora => Aurora Chat => Topic started by: Borealis4x on March 17, 2018, 03:38:22 AM
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Seeing as every new type of missile requires you to manually distribute them across your empire and needs a missile launcher of appropriate size to launch them, it seems that it would be best to decide on keeping missiles at a similar size depending on their roles so you don't need to swap out launchers for every iteration.
For instance, is it really necessary to have 3 different sizes of anti-ship missile? If you make a bigger ship, isn't it better to simply add more existing launchers to fire more existing missiles simultaneously than to have to design a larger launcher to fire larger missiles?
I say you only need two types of missiles; anti-missile and anti-ship and that those missiles should be kept at the same size for the whole play-through with the only upgrades being new tech.
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The considerations that make me choose a particular size don't tend to change much with tech.
Size 1 for AMMs and saturation attacks.
Size 7 for something just large enough for a sensor or a 2-stage approach, a small footpring and 1HTK in a box launcher.
I may have one larger size which be pretty much anything, size 25 seems a good compromise - large enough for most complicated things I may want to try, not excessive for single-stage use.
While I may design multiple versions (different sensors, different ranges for fighters and warships etc, different splits of warhead and agility), standardising on size seems good.
Also, I don't generally upgrade things very much... old ammo will be expended liberally, obsolescent ships will be used on the fringes in peacetime and be used for risky missions in war.
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I usually have 2 or 3 types of missiles. size 1 for anti missile and size 4 and 6 for anti ship
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Size 1 AMM
A "light missile", usually in the 3-6 size range
A "medium missile", usually 2x the light.
A "heavy missile", usually 2x the medium.
A heavy MIRV that holds light missiles.
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1-2 sizes.
Size 1, for AMM's and anti-FAC missiles
Size 6 for ASM's
Occasionally I'll have specialty launchers I only make a handful of missiles for, like Size 25 for buoys or mines.
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Personally I use 2-3 sizes for 3 types of missiles. Anti-Missile, Anti-Smallcraft and Anti-Ship.
The only reason I go to 3 is that I find my Anti-ship missiles have trouble chasing fighters/FACs, while my Anti-missile missiles don't have enough damage or range to clean them up easily.
I'm also debating whether I will include a larger missile type in more developed empires for dealing with larger combat ships but I have not yet encountered large enough ships often enough where this would be advantageous.
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How do you all get away with such large missiles? I mostly use size 2 or 3, anything larger and pd weapons (especially railguns) become so space effective that it becomes easy to get all incoming missiles shot down by final fire pd, making larger missiles completely useless unless I use box launchers only.
Or do you play against the ai, which is notoriously bad at pd?
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How do you all get away with such large missiles? I mostly use size 2 or 3, anything larger and pd weapons (especially railguns) become so space effective that it becomes easy to get all incoming missiles shot down by final fire pd, making larger missiles completely useless unless I use box launchers only.
Or do you play against the ai, which is notoriously bad at pd?
Launcher size scales with ship size. So the bigger the ship, the bigger the missile. In the same number of launchers. So salvo size is not decreased at all.
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Generally just AMM and ASM, size 1 and 6 respectively.
Occasionally playing / experimenting with other sizes for special purposes.
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How do you all get away with such large missiles? I mostly use size 2 or 3, anything larger and pd weapons (especially railguns) become so space effective that it becomes easy to get all incoming missiles shot down by final fire pd, making larger missiles completely useless unless I use box launchers only.
Or do you play against the ai, which is notoriously bad at pd?
Mostly playing against the AI, but I tend to design with PD in mind.
If using large missiles, I often try to overwhelm fire controls rather than weapons, sometimes with 1 fire control per tube.
Point blank fire in a pinch (if the missile hits in the same increment it is fire, only CIWS will respond. I'm sad to see this feature go; the above is effective enough and this was a cool flavourful desperation move for ships not built for brawls).
##Launcher size scales with ship size. So the bigger the ship, the bigger the missile. In the same number of launchers. So salvo size is not decreased at all.
Used to be the other way round for me: small ships rely on salvo dispersion while larger ships overwhelm PD weapons with a single large salvo of small-ish missiles.
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Launcher size scales with ship size. So the bigger the ship, the bigger the missile. In the same number of launchers. So salvo size is not decreased at all.
That means you get smaller salvoes per HS of ship, which makes point defense easier for you opponent, because pd only cares of the number of missiles, not their size.
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Except big missiles can be armoured.
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Need? 1, maybe 2
Have? hundreds (well ok it's probably not hundreds, it just feels like it)
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How do you all get away with such large missiles? I mostly use size 2 or 3, anything larger and pd weapons (especially railguns) become so space effective that it becomes easy to get all incoming missiles shot down by final fire pd, making larger missiles completely useless unless I use box launchers only.
Or do you play against the ai, which is notoriously bad at pd?
I generally use a mix of heavily armoured missiles along with lightly armoured missiles to burn through AMM and point blank. of course this could be countered by using mesons, but by the if you are using mesons, that means I can bully the enemy my own AMM, wich I usually make quite long ranged, meaning I can usually just bully any fleet out of a sistem. by the way my anti-ship missiles are size 12 i know I am crazy
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I have 4-10 Missile Bodies 1-2 AAM 2-4 fighter gunboat Size (size 2-4) a Sensor Missile (size 3-6) then a Light Missile (size 6-8) a Medium Missile ( size 9-14 ) then A Heavy Missile (size 15-30 )
then 2 Mine Pod Missiles A Light one using either size 2-4 or 3-6 Missiles and a Heavy using the 15-30 size. tho i do have 2-4 others but those are Buoys, 2 Sensor 1 Survey 1 Warring.
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I have 4-10 Missile Bodies 1-2 AAM 2-4 fighter gunboat Size (size 2-4) a Sensor Missile (size 3-6) then a Light Missile (size 6-8) a Medium Missile ( size 9-14 ) then A Heavy Missile (size 15-30 )
then 2 Mine Pod Missiles A Light one using either size 2-4 or 3-6 Missiles and a Heavy using the 15-30 size. tho i do have 2-4 others but those are Buoys, 2 Sensor 1 Survey 1 Warring.
Why use 2 AMMs? Why make bigger ASMs instead of just using more of 1 size of ASM?
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I sometimes use 2 AMM versions of the same generation, different distribution of fuel and agility. Long-range versions are typically carried in full-size launchers, high-agility versions in reduced size or (usually) box launchers. The former is quite efficient when paired with a long-ranged sensor and deep magazines (more tonnage than the launchers).
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Me too. A long-range AMM for sophisticated anti-missile ships with strong fire controls and sensors, able to engage and re-engage the same incoming salvo many times... and a short-range AMM used in box-launchers or smaller escort ships. The latter have a better to-hit chance, but would tend to have more overkills and/or leakers.
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this definitely doesn't fall under "need", but i find it worth deploying a very slow (ie exactly ship-speed) missile of size one. There are a lot of highly robust static (or nearly static. . . ) units out there that you don't want to get to beam range with. probably 5% of my fleet loadout is this kind of missile. It isn't a gigantic savings in terms of BP per irradiated corpse, but it conserves the Holy Murder Mineral very efficiently.
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I have begun exploring building decoy missiles. 1 MSP missiles that are .7 MSP 30% power engines, .2 MSP fuel, and an active sensor. I don't recommend firing them at enemy ships directly, just waypoints, unless you want to receive message spam about missiles still looking for their targets.
They are ridiculously cheap and you can time on target them.
I have been testing them on my scouts against enemy Precursors, and they were quite effective at prompting the enemy to fire multiple AMMs at them. If I hadn't been trying to set up to capture the enemy planet and their AMM stocks intact, I am pretty sure I could cheaply make them waste their enemy munitions against decoys that cost maybe .05 BP. Yes, that is 20 decoys for 1 BP of production. With billions of km range.
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I usually have quite a few as I do things more for RP than outright min-max 'winning'. I like to have the usual size 1 AMMs, but sometimes I'll instead use size 2 dual purpose AMM/AFMs. I use size 3 as a LASM for attacking frigates/FACs or for saturation bombardments on enemy task groups. I use size 6 for main ASM weapons. And I like to have a larger Size 18-24 Torpedo for a heavy boom in ranged base/outpost defenses, long range shelling from an artillery cruiser, or close range kill shots launched from a bomber.
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I use only two types for Naval use.
S1 AMM and varied size ASM.
For the same reason why US Armed Forces use only one type of fuel - compatibility and easy logistics.
I also have one version of ground-orbital launched missile and one for fighters if i feel fancy to have them and not get only some light interceptors with gauss for fighter screen/pd extension.
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Four sizes for me: size-1 AMMs; size-6 ASMs; size-4 ASMs; and size-3 anti-craft missiles (ACMs). Currently my size-6 ASMs are only equipped by strikecraft. The size-4 ASMs equip my larger general-purpose warships (30-40k tons), size-3 ACMs equip 20k-ton destroyers, and all of those classes equip size-1 AMMs.
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Now when You Change Tech of course Your going to Get New Missiles, Maybe even better ones.
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Need? Zero.
Use? Usually one -- size 12 or 24 for my ICBM bases. If my game goes long enough I'll eventually build a second type -- size 1 AMMs for defense.
I don't like to use missiles, because I'm playing Age of Sail or Steam & Steel or maybe Star Wars. . . What I'm not playing is Modern Wet Navies in Space (with supercarriers, aegis cruisers and massive anti-shipping missile strikes).
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I usually go with one size 1 AMM, one size 4 or 6 ASM, 1 size 12 multy-warhead ASM and sometimes a size 24 torpedo (short range, high speed, huge payload... Just for the boom).
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It varies for depending on what background I choose for a game. For example, I'm running an Honorverse style game at the moment with two counter-missile types (because I realised the combat settings won't automatically use size 2 missiles as countermissiles and had to switch to size 1), four different sizes of anti-ship missile depending on the size of the launch platform (size 5 for destroyers, 10 for heavy cruisers and so on), with the three larger sizes then coming in a multistage format to accomodate 'canister' rounds of size 1 countermissiles.
On the other hand, my latest game has around four missiles, size 1 for anti-missile/fighters, size 2 as a lightweight anti-ship missile (playing on maximum tech as an Andromeda Ascendent setting), and then two size 10 missiles, one with over one thousand million KM's range, the other trading about three quarters of that range and a chunk of warhead strength for an extra 60,000 km/s. I might end up reworking that one in fact since it's got less strength than the size 2 missile!
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I'll usually have two sizes, but more than two models. Size 1 is for AMMs (fast, short range, WH1), but sometimes I make a slower, longer-range size 1 missile (maybe WH2) for taking out enemy fighters or for fighting through enemy AMM defenses. My main ASM is size 4 or 5 (or 3 or 6 occasionally) and I will often have different versions: a fast, long-range one with WH9 for example, and a slow, short-range one with WH16. If I'm going up against enemies of a lower technology level with slow ships, I'll use the big bombs, and if I'm facing enemies too fast or dangerous for that, I'll use more of the faster missiles.
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While looking forward in to C# Aurora I can see the size and launchers becoming a bit muddled since the throw rate of larger launchers now are not that greater than smaller ones. You can now easily have more types of missiles used in the same launcher with just a low efficiency hit for a higher versatility in their use. I could easily see a main cruiser or destroyer having say size 8 launchers and use them for firing everything from size 4 and up for different reasons, such as anti-craft to anti-ship missiles. AMM launchers could easily be size 1-3 now and you could use several different types of AMM and anti-fighter missiles. Short range ones are size one and anti-craft/fighter are size 3 while long range AMM might be up to size 2.
There probably are reasons to go with larger missiles now with all the electronics you want to cram into them as well as range now being harder to get so you need bigger missiles for good ranges and the electronics needed to hit.
Also... given that small sensors now are allot more effective than before I really think that missiles which guide themselves at targets are going to be much easier to use. So, fire missiles without revealing your position or keeping a sensor scout on target might be more of a thing now.
I can certainly see the missile type and uses becoming more complex than before and at the same time more interesting.
In the current version of the game I basically have one AMM size 1 missile a size 3-4 anti-craft missile and size 6-8 main armoured anti-ship missiles. So usually about four types of missiles
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I like Size 1 or 2 "Missile Bullets", just ASMs designed for throw weight. All speed, warhead and little to no agility. Basically gyrojets. They work pretty well... on paper.
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There is a bit of a difference between missiles actively in production, and missile stockpiles one expects to use at some point.
I have a lot of different missiles in stock that I won't make more of, but will use on the occasion that I have more magazine space. I try to use up the older missiles first.
But broadly, I have:
Sensor missiles designed to fire at waypoints billions of km away, and then loiter for months. Cheap 1 MSP missiles, so I can carry a lot of them, and use them in system that I know has a presence because of wrecks, so I can find out what bodies have ships based at them. They can also detect troops and the small thermal associated with Deep Space tracking sensors.
Decoy missiles for soaking enemy AMMs.
AMMs
AFM, (basically, longer ranged than AMMs, not quite as accurate), used to kill fast scouts as well
sandblasters missiles designed to hit ships in the 4k km/s range. Typically 5 million km range
sandblasters missiles designed to hit ships in the 1k km/s range.
Once I have cloaked warships, I intend to build a time on target design, perhaps a size 4 launcher with size 3 missiles. These will be classified by their separation range. I have a couple of thoughts regarding 2-stage missiles. Since the first stage doesn't have highly boosted engines, it might end up that a 2-stage missile is only slightly more expensive than the final stage. So a lot depends on whether I am more magazine constrained or ordnance BP constrained.
Firing at relatively stationary targets with a time on target missile, you could have literally billions of km of range. If you want a 10k first stage, you either need a somewhat bigger first stage, or much shorter range.