AMM or PD or both

[undercovergeek (OP)]

I have come across a second set of baddies - this second one seems to favour missiles as opposed to my raiders who only seem to fire energy weapons - my fleet is currently not set up to defend itself from missiles should the cold war go hot

Is the consensus to go for AMM or PD

or as has only just occurred to me does one design an AMM ship and leave the PD on the surrounding vessels?

what say you?

[Arwyn]

From a ship perspective, picking one role is preferred. So, if your doing AMMs, then thats it. If beam PD, thats all that ship should mount.

That being said, I think you will see most folks layer defenses.

AMMs are pretty poor early on, but get increasingly better as tech goes up. So early on, you might only used beams for PD, but as the tech gets better its pretty common to use both. AMMs tend to be long distance, and then beams as you get closer.

If your current fleet tech is mostly beam based, which is what it sounds like, I would start there and look at beam based PD. What techs do you run right now? Railgun? Laser?

[undercovergeek (OP)]

From a ship perspective, picking one role is preferred. So, if your doing AMMs, then thats it. If beam PD, thats all that ship should mount.

That being said, I think you will see most folks layer defenses.

AMMs are pretty poor early on, but get increasingly better as tech goes up. So early on, you might only used beams for PD, but as the tech gets better its pretty common to use both. AMMs tend to be long distance, and then beams as you get closer.

If your current fleet tech is mostly beam based, which is what it sounds like, I would start there and look at beam based PD. What techs do you run right now? Railgun? Laser?

Other way round - my tech is all missiles with some early beam weapons for close range combat

[undercovergeek (OP)]

From a ship perspective, picking one role is preferred. So, if your doing AMMs, then thats it. If beam PD, thats all that ship should mount.

That being said, I think you will see most folks layer defenses.

AMMs are pretty poor early on, but get increasingly better as tech goes up. So early on, you might only used beams for PD, but as the tech gets better its pretty common to use both. AMMs tend to be long distance, and then beams as you get closer.

If your current fleet tech is mostly beam based, which is what it sounds like, I would start there and look at beam based PD. What techs do you run right now? Railgun? Laser?

From a AMM ship point of view - does it do its thing automatically or do you designate the incoming missiles to the fire controller like an enemy ship

[Arwyn]

Ah, gotcha.

Okay, if your already into the missile tech, AMM's are a logical follow up. The big thing is the speed of the enemy missiles, and your engine power tech. For AMMs, you want the fastest missiles you can, so the 'Maximum Engine Power Modifier' in the Power and Propulsion tree is important. The more power you can cram into an AMM, the better.

Just as an example, lets assume the enemy missiles have a speed of 10,000 km/s.

Speed is going to be part of the chance to hit, and you want to cram the biggest engine you can into that AMM, with as much speed as you can get out it. Then enough warhead to do 1pt of damage. And then enough fuel to get 3km or better range.

So, for a low tech example, my current new game, I can do 400% engine power, and with Nuclear Thermal engines. I can build an AMM with the following, 0.7MSP for engine at 400% power, .25MSP for the warhead, and 0.05 for fuel. This gets me an AMM that has 18,000 km/s and a chance to hit at 10k km/s missile of..... 18% which isnt great. Ideally you want something more like 25% or better.

So based on your chance to hit, you want to mount missile launchers and fire controls that get you close to 100% chance to intercept as you can. In my case, that would be 1 FC and 5 launchers, and my PD settings on the FC would be 5 missiles per target. Not great, but its something.

After the AMMs, your beams are your next layer of defense.

Lasers have the best range, but a low number of shots, and can be mounted in turrets.
Railguns are cheap, decent range, have a lot of shots, but cant be mounted in turrets, so are limited to ships speed for tracking.
Gauss guns are short range, can have a good rate of fire, can be mounted in turrets.
CIWS are based on your Gauss tech, and are close in defenses for the mounting ship only.

Most folks will pick lasers or railguns and then gauss for beam PD.

Lasers are tech point intensive, and have a low rate of fire early on (determined by capacitor tech) but get increasingly better as the game goes on and the tech goes up.

Railguns are cheap, shoot a lot, but are also affected by capacitor tech determining their ROF, but have limited tracking speed. Early on, these are decent PD weapons, but as the game goes on and speeds increase, they fall off quickly for PD.

As an example, my low tech game, my railguns are 10cm, have a range of 10,000 a tracking speed of 2154 km/s (ship speed) and a ROF of 10. That means, I am going to get one shot an any enemy inbounds, and my chance to hit is pretty poor, but I am throwing 4 shots at two missiles each, with a good chance to hit overall (theoretically).

Gauss are pretty much the best close in beam PD, but are very tech intensive to get there. Early on, you want to get to a ROF of 3 as soon as you can, and high tracking speed as soon as you can. You can overbuild your turrets to make of for lower tracking speed, but that makes the turrets bigger and you wont be able to carry as many.

As an example, once again from my low tech game, my Gauss equipped destroyer escorts mount two gauss turrets with two guns each. Each gun has an ROF of 5 and shoots twice, so two guns gets me 4 shots per target, every 5 seconds, and they have 20,000 km range. Their fire control has a TS of 8,000, and the turrets are overbuilt for a TS of 16,000. My FC PD is set for 'Ranged Defensive Fire, Shots per Target 4'. So my gauss turrets can engage an enemy salvo twice, due to the range (20k) and the ROF (5). And they have a good chance to hit two missiles each time.

All of the above is why folks layer. Missiles can engage much further out (3k to 4k) so they have more chances to intercept (poorly in my case). Surviving missiles get engaged at 20,000 km by my Gauss turrets, then again at 10,000 by my railguns and Gauss again. Any survivors then get to potentially slam into my hull.

Against an opponent of similar tech, and a low number of launchers, these defenses will help. Against a higher tech opponent, these defenses degrade quickly. Massed box launchers against this tech = a really bad day.

No matter how good your defense layers are, missiles WILL get through. RNG and the new missile rules means you are going to get leakers, so expect some missiles will get through and hit you. Armor and shield accordingly.

[undercovergeek (OP)]

Thank you so much for these replies

[Andrew]

Ah, gotcha.

All good but you no longer need a 1pt warhead unless you want to be able to shoot missiles at ships as well (often a good thing) fractional warhead work against missiles with a formula based on the size of the incoming missile. I tend to use a warhead strength of about 0.5  particularly with early warhead strength that can save a big chunk of a 1msp missile.  ATG and multiwarheads can also work well.
Point defense guns pretty much get one shot per salvo , I have occasionally got more than one shot when 20cm lasers or similar heavy weapons are used as backup to the normal close in weapons. A 10,000Kms missile covers 50,000km in one 5 second impulse and that is such a slow missile its hardly worth firing it. Expect enemy missiles to cover around 100,000 or so km in a 5 second impulse and plan on most point defense beams firing in final defense mode.
Missile launchers you set to the number of missiles per target and the computer will start launching as soon as it can and then if it has time fire again against any target which has not had enough missiles assigned. If you are facing small salvo's your PD and shields can handle turn of the AMM's to avoid wasting resources you may need later.
I think CIWS May currently be bugged if it is don't use it, otherwise it gives high value targets an extra shot against missiles getting past the AMM's and PD fire. I often stick a couple on troop transports just in case as they can be fitted to civilian ships, better plan is not to let the troop transports get shot at but...

[Arwyn]

Just to tag in here, Andrew is right. I made a mistake on the shots fired for Gauss, its the same. Once.

As far as the warhead size, this is an area where folks will get into the weeds in Aurora theory crafting.

I still aim to do damage, as there are situations where your going to be shooting at smaller ships, and your resolution may not be low enough for your primary missile boats to even see them. Your AMM ships will, because of the Res 1 sensors. So, your AMMs may be the only thing that can fire on them. Just as an example.

Andrew has a very valid point, that if all your looking to do is knock down vampires, then fractional warheads make sense, as that mass can go back into engines or fuel. Completely valid (and effective) tactic.

Generally, I think most folks here will agree, layering defenses from a fleet perspective is the way to go.

Past that, your going to see a bunch of different opinions around the 'how'. Some folks build purely single functions ships that are tweaked to be as lean as possible while fulfilling that specific role. Absolutely works. The down side to that is you tend to have a lot of models of ships to fill all the roads.

Some folks go for dedicated ships, but that have some flexibility to cover other roles/situations. These designs dont tend to be optimal, but they fill their role and have some extra flexibility. Upside is fewer number of ships types. I prefer this personally.

Then you have some folks that go for the multirole capability. These ships can do several roles, but at the cost of massive size and costs and LONG build times. Its cool to try once, but not the most practical, especially early.

If your new to the game, pick one of the first two and tinker with what works best for your playstyle. A lot of Aurora breaks down into how many/how much resources you want to invest economically and logistically into areas. Lots of ship types means (generally) lots of shipyards unless your really good at ship designs that can be built in the same yard. Fewer classes means fewer yards, and slightly simpler logistics.

All comes down to how much complexity you like to manage.

[Froggiest1982]

I think relying solely on AMM as a PD strategy is inherently flawed and excessively costly, and if I were to employ 1 strategy only, I would probably go with Turreted PD guns.

However, in my opinion, effective PD demands a layered system incorporating AMMs, decoys, possibly turreted PD guns, or CWIS.

I enjoy incorporating plenty of RP elements into my campaigns, which sometimes leads to the inclusion of less-than-ideal ships. However, when I'm testing new strategies, I prioritize using optimal ships to establish a benchmark. In such cases, I maintain a ratio of 3 to 1 for escort to warships and implement a specialized layered defence on each ship: 1 AMM ship and 2 Turreted PD ships.

Additionally, I've recently begun equipping some PD ships with one-shot box launchers for decoys, which I fire before initiating the PD barrage.

[Jorgen_CAB]

I agree with the above... a layered defence is absolutely the most effective option in the long run. Early on you might only rely on regular PD and possibly decoys depending the techs you have researched. It also is quite possible to rely entirely on PD such as say railguns if that is the technology you have chosen to focus on for some roleplay reason.

Focusing on AMM only is of course possible but certainly far from optimal, you wold at least want to have good shields as a secondary way to absorb leaking missiles.

I rarely also build strictly focused ships on one type of weapon system. The reason is that it is much more efficient from a yard perspective to have multiple weapon system in less designs that you can build in the same yard with only slight differences on weight of weapons systems for the current needs you have. It also makes upgrade cheaper and less costly in time due to how research is progressing. It is quite rare for me to have a ship that only have PD guns on it as a fleet are going to have a layered system anyway. It is also more vulnerable to put all eggs in one basket as that means you can more easily knock the more important system out which will lead to a domino effect. This is mostly visible when you command multiple sides of a conflict at the same time.