Warp Assault Vehicle

[ExChairman (OP)]

I have not tried this in C#, but can I use a fighter sized delivery system with thermal Sensors to jump throe a jumpgate and fire? Or do I have to use active sensors?

Spitfire class Warp Assault Delivery Vehicle      227 tons       3 Crew       30.9 BP       TCS 5    TH 0    EM 0
176 km/s      Armour 1-3       Shields 0-0       HTK 2      Sensors 6/0/0/0      DCR 0      PPV 3
Maint Life 0 Years     MSP 0    AFR 45%    IFR 0.6%    1YR 1    5YR 15    Max Repair 18 MSP
Magazine 20   
Lieutenant Commander    Control Rating 1   
Intended Deployment Time: 0.3 days    Morale Check Required   

Ball Turbines MIRV IFD (1)    Power 0.8    Fuel Use 40.48%    Signature 0.1280    Explosion 4%

Wong-Farmer MIRV Tube (20)     Missile Size: 1    Hangar Reload 50 minutes    MF Reload 8 hours
Carter-Chambers Warning & Control Fighter Missile FC (2)     Range 25.2m km    Resolution 100
Fisher Kinetics MIRV Ammo (20)    Speed: 60 000 km/s    End: 0.3m     Range: 1m km    WH: 1    Size: 1.00    TH: 200/120/60

Thermal Sensor TH1-6 (1)     Sensitivity 6     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  19.4m km

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 Fighter for production, combat and planetary interaction

The first MIRV ammo had ECM, forgot to remove it, type 2 will be allot faster...

Missile Size: 1.00 MSP  (2.500 Tons)     Warhead: 1    Radiation Damage: 1    Manoeuvre Rating: 10
Speed: 90 000 km/s     Fuel: 50     Flight Time: 13.9 seconds     Range: 1 251 000 km
Cost Per Missile: 2.51     Development Cost: 251
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 900%   3k km/s 300%   5k km/s 180%   10k km/s 90%

[Zap0]

You always need an active sensor lock if you want to shoot something.  If your target is right on the JP, a 0.1HS sensor will totally be enough however.

But there's also the problem of jump shock. Just after you jump through you can't fire for up to two minutes or so. That time is much reduced (to ~20-30s), but still present, if you use a squadron jump with a jump drive equipped ship. Making a squadron capable jump drive this small may be a challenge depending on tech.

Another problem: Weapons can have maintenance failures while firing now. Put the smallest maintenance storage you can find on the ship to be sure all the missiles go in the air.

Other suggestions:
* Your fighter is so slow, it might as well not have the engine imho - or do you envision a scenario where these slow speeds will be useful? A standard jump on a jump gate will always put you exactly on the center of the JP on the other side, only squadron jumps will spread you out - and in that case, the speed is too slow to get back to the gate in a reasonable time during combat.
* Why not go and make the fighter 500 tons right away? If it's intended to shoot things at point blank range it'll be detected and targetable either way. At 500 tons you can save a bit by using the overhead of sensors more efficiently.
* A missile with a warhead of 1 doesn't deliver much oomph. Maximizing the number of missiles is important to get past PD, but I'd see if I couldn't squeeze in a 2 or even 3 strength warhead. Remember that you can make missiles and launchers at sizes of decimal values like 1.3 MSP now.
* 90k missile speed is a lot, but how much you need depends on what you're fighting. Without any extra missile agility that missile can hit targets up to 9k km/s 100% of the time. If you're trying to hit something faster, slap in some missile agility. If these missiles are intended to be used in an AMM role you can cut into speed (which doubles as a missile's defense) and put as much maneuver in as needed to achieve maximum hit rates.

[Migi]

It looks like there isn't any fuel on the fighter so I don't think it can move, regardless of engine.

As an optimisation, if you are expecting to fight at short range you can use resolution 1 sensors and fire controls so that you can target any size ship or missile.

For the missile launchers maintenance failures, you have about an 20% chance of having 1 or more failures per ship, so if you are deploying a large swarm of them you should expect some misfires. To compensate for the failure you need enough MSP to cover the cost of a single launcher so that probably means the 3T or 5T maintenance storage component.

You definitely need an active sensor to target the missiles, you can't shoot at a thermal contact.
For missiles with in-built thermal (or EM) sensors, you can fire them at a waypoint and they are supposed to retarget at a thermal (or EM) contact once they reach the waypoint but AFIK that doesn't work at the moment. I think it is fixed in 1.13 whenever that gets released.

[ExChairman (OP)]

Active check
Fuel... oups check
Maintenace  check

For anyone that played starfire, I am after the SBMHWK, that is a missile pod that jumps thrue a wormhole, then releasing its submuntion at certain size classes.

The pkan with small and fast missile launched at "knife fight" range was to (hopefully) make them harder to hit. Would be the old sandpaper effect...
A size 2 would have atleast 4 in damage... but would reduce missile by half...

Hmmm

Its possible to build a "plattform" with 16-18 in armor,

[MuthaF]

SBMHWK is kinda hard to simulate, but as others said you are best to go with thermal guided missiles. I think i managed to shoot active thermal missiles without active sensors but i suspect they actually used active sensors from planetary STO ground units (it was in my current game when Humans started to colonize Sol, and while messing around with Mars ruins, they've awakened nasty Swarm from Minerva... resulting planetary bombardment and 40 yrs nuclear winter on Earth and Luna reduced pop from 11.5b to 5.5bil  )

However i would suggest for you to maybe recalibrate your thinking:
Lets pretend that your design is actual MIRV missile, its "actual" missiles are the sub-munitions, and design another jump capable carrier vehicle as SBMHWK.
You can either go with bigger carrier that would jump and release the satellite-like launchers that would release actual missiles.
Or maybe use squadron jump fighter sized carriers that can also act as active sensor platforms, or decoys as were in books, but that needs some research - which is actually book lore friendly, as those SMBHWK were really advanced and development was long and difficult - no other race had anything like that.
 

[Migi]

I only know Starfire from following the New Cold War thread. 

You could make a large commercial carrier with lots of armour and a cheap commercial jump drive and send that through the jump point.
The fighters/missile pods can deploy and fire without suffering from jump shock AFIK.
You can put a couple of 1 HS active sensors on the carrier to provide target lock.
You can take the thermal sensors off the missiles and pods which gives you more space, and you can actively pick your targets.

You'd have to design the pods with reasonable maintenance because being in a commercial hanger doesn't stop the maintenance clock.
Also a commercial carrier is likely to be fairly slow compared to your fleet and can't have shields or other military components. You might want to invest in electronic hardening to protect against mesons.

Personally, depending on how fast your enemies are and your tech levels I'd try to get WH strength 4 or 9 for small missiles and 16 or 25 for larger missiles. Strength 1 is only useful for AMMs, even a fighter can tank a handful of strength 1 hits but strength 4 starts inflicting internal damage right away.

I do like the idea of Jump Fighters to ferry the missile pods in a squadron jump, the difficulty is that increasing the squadron jump range and size both increase the size of the drive, and you need to fit it inside a 500T hull to transport other fighters. But hopefully you'd arrive outside of beam range so it would be a lot safer.