Laser Warheads

[Gabethebaldandbold (OP)]

so I was designing my new missiles, and I found a thing on special modifiers called laser warhead.  so. . .
how do I get those?
how do they work?
and, most importantly, can I make a swarm of combat drones with those?

[iceball3]

so I was designing my new missiles, and I found a thing on special modifiers called laser warhead.  so. . .
how do I get those?
how do they work?
and, most importantly, can I make a swarm of combat drones with those?

Laser warheads turn the nuclear detonation into a series of explosive lasers, quantity depending on how much WH is on the nuke. They essentially split into that many shots on impact, giving it a different damage profile, but, importantly, completely bypassing CIWS and final-fire defenses. You need x-ray laser tech, give or take, to research it.

[Gabethebaldandbold (OP)]

Laser warheads turn the nuclear detonation into a series of explosive lasers, quantity depending on how much WH is on the nuke. They essentially split into that many shots on impact, giving it a different damage profile, but, importantly, completely bypassing CIWS and final-fire defenses. You need x-ray laser tech, give or take, to research it.

so... no combat drones launched from missile launchers that go around like pew pew pew pew?

[iceball3]

so... no combat drones launched from missile launchers that go around like pew pew pew pew?

You can do the same with extreme-miniaturized fighters with lasers at the same tech level, launched from hangars.
Bomb-pumped lasers are basically the real life Project Excalibur, except fully technologically realized, and firing lasers much stronger than the nukes that they would have been intended to defeat in real life. Also, taped to a missile as the warhead.
Each missile will only fire it's payload once before it's spent, in this case, because the whole thing is blown up before it reaches the target to blast some laser it's surface.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Excalibur

[Gabethebaldandbold (OP)]

You can do the same with extreme-miniaturized fighters with lasers at the same tech level, launched from hangars.
Bomb-pumped lasers are basically the real life Project Excalibur, except fully technologically realized, and firing lasers much stronger than the nukes that they would have been intended to defeat in real life. Also, taped to a missile as the warhead.
Each missile will only fire it's payload once before it's spent, in this case, because the whole thing is blown up before it reaches the target to blast some laser it's surface.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Excalibur

ok... but the downside of miniaturized fighters is that I need to put people on them, and I can use the same space to put carry my MIG Fighters, which seem a little bit less suicidal for my pilots, and also less expensive in the long run

[iceball3]

ok... but the downside of miniaturized fighters is that I need to put people on them, and I can use the same space to put carry my MIG Fighters, which seem a little bit less suicidal for my pilots, and also less expensive in the long run

It's the cost of mobile beam platforms which can be given orders and fire multiple times.

[Noble713]

Are laser warheads working correctly now? I checked the 7.0/7.1/7.2 change notes and didn't notice anything. I thought they were broken... 

[83athom]

They have always worked as intended, they just don't work the same as regular missiles.

[Pixel1191]

Do they? I tried them a few days ago and it seemed to me that all the laser heads did, was cut the detonation strenght by 30 percent. There wasn't anything else noticeable.

[83athom]

They bypass Final Fire defenses and they have a different damage profile.

[0111narwhalz]

And what, if I may ask, is this different damage profile?

[83athom]

Of the cubed root instead of the square root that normal missiles have. Though I don't remember it additional heads separate the damage to multiple beams (you can see the number of heads a laser missile has when designing, not something you set) as I don't use them much.

[0111narwhalz]

I presume the numbers denote which tiles of armor will be broken by that level of warhead, yes? So a level 3 laser punches through three layers, one wide, but a level 3 conventional does one layer, three wide?
Laser warheads are, therefore, superior in terms of armor penetration, then? Or do you have to put so much conventional to make a similar laser that it becomes less useful?

[83athom]

Two major things. 1) Conventional missile damage technology outpaces laser warhead technology, making conventional warheads more size efficient in damage. 2) I mentioned heads on laser missiles, when you add enough MSP to a laser warhead an additional head is created. What I think happens (since I haven't tested them too much) is that you get the damage of the laser missile being overall, so is divided between the beams. So one head at 5 damage will do its damage, while two heads at 10 damage will do two 5 damage hits in different locations. In that case, a 10 damage conventional warhead out damages the 10 damage laser with two heads.

[Pixel1191]

Okay, that would explain it then, I suppose.

In other words: They aren't very useful at the moment and won't be, unless higher laser techs would be made available to them, seeing as they stop at extreme x-ray.

In my current game, a strenght-36 warhead is cut down to strenght-22 and two laser heads once I check the box. Now in theory, if you take overall damage with the different damage profile, that would be superior....but without knowing exactly what the effect of having 2 laser heads is, it's a bit of a gamble. You're either smashing through 8 layers of armor, or you're sandpapering it a bit deeper than usual at 3 layers. The difference in effect is quite big.