Missile Active Sensors

[Yonder (OP)]

Do active sensors on missiles act like an active sensor on a ship, highlighting a target for any fire control in range to aim at? Or do they only provide targeting capabilities for that single missile?

If it's the former, then if you have a ship with 12 missile launchers you should be able to launch one sensor missile with no payload and a large sensor, and 11 missiles with large payloads and no sensors. Does that work?

[Brian Neumann]

Missiles use onboard sensors to home in on targets if their primary fire control is cut.  This could be because the range became to great, the original target was destroyed, ect.  If a missile is launched without a target initially then it HAS to have onboard sensors or it will not hit anything.  So for your idea of one missile with a big sensor package and the rest without you would have the one missile home in on a target, but the rest would not be able to use this for their target.

As far as I know the active sensor on a missile does allow any fire control with the range to target anything that is seen by that sensor.  This is part of the reason for firing drones with big sensor packages.  It can hover there at a longer range from the target and allow your missile ships to fire without using their big onboard sensors and giving themselves away.

Brian

[Yonder (OP)]

So instead of a sensor missile with a large active sensor my "sensor missile" should carry a drone with an active sensor, which is deployed shortly before the missiles arrive at their target?

[chuckles73]

No, you'd need to launch the sensor drone before you targeted the shipbound fire controls onto the target.

eg. 
You see a thermal contact 250mkm out. 
You launch a sensor drone toward it. 
You launch fighters, they move within missile range of the thermal target. 
Sensor drone gets close enough to see the targets on active sensors. 
Fighters target their fire controls onto the enemy contacts. 
Fighters launch missiles. 
Missiles intercept target.

This scenario assumes a drone with active sensors and fighters armed with missiles.  The fighter has a fire control, the missiles do not have sensors.

[Yonder (OP)]

Ah ok, that's too bad. Thanks.

[Shadow]

Related missile sensors question. Is it true a missile needs at least one 5-sec increment to select another target if the original one is destroyed? Does that mean a group of missiles (could be several salvos travelling together at the same speed) wouldn't benefit from onboard sensors if they all reached and overkilled the first target?

[Brian Neumann]

Related missile sensors question. Is it true a missile needs at least one 5-sec increment to select another target if the original one is destroyed? Does that mean a group of missiles (could be several salvos travelling together at the same speed) wouldn't benefit from onboard sensors if they all reached and overkilled the first target?

Not quite, All of the missiles in the salvo that actually destroy the target will be gone.  Other missiles arriving in the same 5 second tick will not retarget then.  On the next 5 second tick they do retarget if they have some onboard sensor capability.  The problem with this is they are usually fairly small sensors, and the target may have moved out of range of their detection.

Brian

[Erik L]

Not quite, All of the missiles in the salvo that actually destroy the target will be gone.  Other missiles arriving in the same 5 second tick will not retarget then.  On the next 5 second tick they do retarget if they have some onboard sensor capability.  The problem with this is they are usually fairly small sensors, and the target may have moved out of range of their detection.

Brian

That usually only applies to AMM. Chances are a ship is still in range. And don't forget you can modify the resolution of the missile scanners.

[dooots]

Not quite, All of the missiles in the salvo that actually destroy the target will be gone.  Other missiles arriving in the same 5 second tick will not retarget then.  On the next 5 second tick they do retarget if they have some onboard sensor capability.  The problem with this is they are usually fairly small sensors, and the target may have moved out of range of their detection.

Brian

So do captor mines work differently?  I remember someone trying to use captor mines against a bunch of facs and all it resulted in was a few facs getting hit by a few hundred missiles.

Oh wait you said salvo, so I guess that means if all the captor mines are in the same location all the missiles they fire will be in one salvo.

[Narmio]

Not quite, All of the missiles in the salvo that actually destroy the target will be gone.  Other missiles arriving in the same 5 second tick will not retarget then.  On the next 5 second tick they do retarget if they have some onboard sensor capability.  The problem with this is they are usually fairly small sensors, and the target may have moved out of range of their detection.

Brian

But other salvos arriving in the same tick will not explode without retargeting?

So, for example, say I have a wave of five bombers, each of which launches two missiles with onboard active sensors at a waypoint close to a (let's assume stationary) enemy fleet of five ships.  Let's assume it takes three missiles to destroy one of the target ships and let's assume every missile hits. Maybe they're shipyards or something.  Whatever.

The missiles get to the waypoint and lock on to the first target, ship one.  So, the first salvo hits ship one, doesn't destroy it. The second salvo also hits ship one, the first missile destroys it. The second missile in salvo 2 is then wasted? What about salvo three? Does it not impact anything this tick?  Does it self-destruct?  Will it retarget ship two next tick? Does that mean these missiles will hang around near the waypoint, targetting a new ship each five seconds, until they're all gone?

Sorry about all the questions, I've never used missiles with onboard sensors before, so I'm completely confused as to how this works.

[Beersatron]

In terms of what happens to a missile (salvo) after its original target is destroyed:

If a missile has a sensor of any type and still has fuel then it will move to the last known position of it's original target.

If another enemy ship is detected by that missile whilst it is moving to the last known position then it will attack.

If it gets to the last known position without detecting anything then it will stay at that position until it either runs out of fuel or an enemy ship moves within detection range at which point it will attack.

Repeat until fuel runs out.

I am not sure about partial salvos but I presume that if 3 missiles were not used in a salvo of 6 then the salvo size will just be reduced to 3 and those missiles will still be active.

[dooots]

I just tested it out, in short no missiles are wasted in overkill.

This was my target for testing.

Code: [Select]

target class Cruiser    250 tons     23 Crew     48.6 BP      TCS 5  TH 0  EM 0
1 km/s     Armour 1-3     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 0
Maint Capacity 122 MSP    Max Repair 6 MSP

Fuel Capacity 50,000 Litres    Range N/A

This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes
I used 10 of these to fire the missiles.

Code: [Select]

Tribal class Cruiser    950 tons     110 Crew     155.4 BP      TCS 19  TH 60  EM 0
3157 km/s     Armour 1-8     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 5
Annual Failure Rate: 7%    IFR: 0.1%    Maint Capacity 102 MSP    Max Repair 30 MSP    Est Time: 9.21 Years
Magazine 21   

Ion Engine E9 (1)    Power 60    Fuel Use 90%    Signature 60    Armour 0    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 50,000 Litres    Range 105.2 billion km   (385 days at full power)

Size 5 Missile Launcher (1)    Missile Size 5    Rate of Fire 75
Missile Fire Control FC15-R5 (1)     Range 15.5m km    Resolution 5
Size 5 Anti-ship Missile (4)  Speed: 15,000 km/s   End: 22.2m    Range: 20m km   WH: 9    Size: 5    TH: 50 / 30 / 15

Active Search Sensor MR5-R5 (1)     GPS 105     Range 5.2m km    Resolution 5

Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
This missiles had 1 MSP of res 5 active sensors.

I fired 10 missiles (one salvo) at a task group made of 10 targets.  When the missiles reached their target one missile killed one target, then in the next 5 sec increment the 9 remaining missiles killed the 9 remaining targets.

I also did a second test where I fired missiles at a way point by the target task group and again 10 missiles killed 10 targets.  I actually had 2 salvos sitting at 2 different way points and 9 missiles got used from one salvo and 1 from the other.

I don't know if this is a bug or not but I had to turn off the active sensors on my ships to get the missiles sitting on the way points to pick up new targets.

[Narmio]

Interesting stuff, doots.  Are you saying that when you fired at a waypoint the ten kills happened in the same tick?  Whereas when you fired at a target ship the target was destroyed one tick and then the missiles all individually retargeted on the next tick?

Also, good to know that shipboard sensors seem to supersede missile sensors. Missiles might only use onboard sensors if they have no other sensor available?

Also, this is interesting when compared to the behaviour of captor mines, which seem to superfry the first target and not retarget at all.  What's different there?  Is it that they're submunitions that can only target what their parent stage had targetted? Is it that they (typically) use thermal rather than active sensors?

[dooots]

Yes the missiles killed all the targets in one increment when using way points, and yes it took two increments if a ship was targeted.

I don't know what the deal is with the captor mines, maybe I don't understand how they work.  I thought both the first stage (buoy/drone) and the second stage (missiles) had to have sensors so they should work like a way point I would guess.  But maybe only the first stage needs sensors and then the missiles get their target before being launched.

Update
I made a mine with 3 of the size 5 missiles inside, fired 10 at a way point and once the missile got released and hit the target group (10 targets) all 30 missiles exploded.  So it looks like captor mines are treated differently then missiles.  Another odd thing is it took the missiles 30 seconds to move after they got released.

Update 2
The 30 second delay was from me using a way point to fire the mine at, also I don't have to turn off the the ships active sensors for the missiles to find a new targets it just takes 1 increment for the missiles to realize the way point got removed.  So remove the way point before the missiles get to it for best results it seems.

Update 3
After more playing around it seems that all the missiles in a second stage of a missile/mine are treated as one missile for attacking.  If I fire 10 of my drones at 5 targets there will be 5 groups of 3 missiles looking for targets.  In the Missiles in flight tab in the Comabt Assignments Overview window it also says 3x size 5 Anti-ship missile under missile type.

Update 4
Firing 1 drone at 10 targets only destroys 1 target.  I also tested it with missiles and buoys and they behave the same as the drones.  I also tried making a mine with missiles that had no sensors and the missiles self destructed as soon as they got released.

[Sheb]

Well, I think there is a misunderstanding about what a "salvo" means. When you shoot your missiles, you'll see something like 4 UristMcMissile (4X). That means 4 salvoes of 5 missiles.

Now, when a salvo reach a target, all the missiles explode. Other salvoes will retarget if they have sensors.

So doots, what you did was in fact shooting 10 1-missile salvoes. If you shoot 1 size 10 salvo, it'll only destroy 1 target.

With mines, all the missiles fired by a mine are a single salvo, so for better results it may be a good idea to litter a lot of small mines.