Author Topic: Missile, Bouy, and Drone designs  (Read 1412 times)

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Offline PTTG (OP)

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Missile, Bouy, and Drone designs
« on: December 07, 2011, 05:22:51 PM »
What are some good missile designs for general use?

Let's say I want some size 1 missiles with a good balance of impact force, agility, speed, range, and tracking ability. It's a lot to ask from a size one missile, I know, so if that's too much, what's most important?

Is it better to design for small salvos of size 5 or more, or can I keep the missiles at size 1 and have some effectiveness?

How do multi-stage missiles work?

And finally, Buoys and Drones. What is up with them? How are they different? Are they effective for scanning systems? I know I can put sensors on them, but is that at all more effective than a couple of ships?
 

Offline TheDeadlyShoe

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Re: Missile, Bouy, and Drone designs
« Reply #1 on: December 07, 2011, 06:10:38 PM »
There's a lot of different approaches to missile design.  A lot of it depends on what you are fighting.  One year you can have high damage/speed missiles that never get in range of the enemy you are fighting, because the enemy has superior speed and range; the next year you can compensate with higher range and your magazines run out before the enemy takes enough damage.  Generally you want to achieve enough salvo density/speed to overwhelm defenses while maintaining enough range/damage to be competitive.

Because of how antimissile defenses and missile launchers work, the game generally favors smaller faster missiles.  Size 4 is generally accepted as a useful compromise. You can fit a 1MSP warhead, good speed, good fuel, useful agility.   My general purpose missiles at gamestart are almost always size4 missiles with 1MSP warheads.  However, there are important advantages to heavier warheads, most notably penetrating light armor common to lighter warships.   A FAC with 2 layers of armor can with a little luck be mission killed by a single hit by a strength 9 warhead.  Strength 4 warheads will take many more hits.

You can in fact simply use all size 1 missiles and succeed in the game though it's mildly exploitive. The problem is that it's near impossible to defend against size 1 missiles with either beam or AMM defenses owing to the sheer quantities involved.  Additionally they launch much faster.

There's also the consideration of whether you want to overwhelm the enemy with massive salvos or with sheer volume of fire. Minaturized launchers provide bigger bangs in one salvo, but have less overall rate of fire.  Note that at least IMO, if you want to use larger missiles you should consider minaturization or even box launchers; this helps minimize the disadvantage of larger missiles vs smaller ones. 

Buoys have reactor ratings that give them long loiter time compared to missiles. So you can use them to autonomously defend warppoints (with second stages) or points of interest.   They are not really for providing sensor coverage of a system, just of single points (like WPs or planets).  Their expense and effective vs ships is purely situational.
« Last Edit: December 07, 2011, 06:15:25 PM by TheDeadlyShoe »
 

Offline PTTG (OP)

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Re: Missile, Bouy, and Drone designs
« Reply #2 on: December 08, 2011, 12:34:31 AM »
Thanks, very helpful.