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Posted by: obsidian_green
« on: April 14, 2018, 10:13:19 AM »

As a non-combat related suggestion, you might consider increasing deployment times. My first generation of warships shared the 12-month intended deployments of your designs, but I increased it to 18 months in subsequent generations because my task groups weren't completing "task force training" before the crews became antsy, but the longer deployment-times proved beneficial of themselves. (I also use a very small, very slow fleet trainer---packs right into a carrier so I can go train afar afield, if need be---so my ships don't waste much fuel during training.)
Posted by: Gabethebaldandbold
« on: April 13, 2018, 09:04:28 PM »

If the defender relies on AMMs and has a fixed point they are defending, you can fire decoy missiles at a waypoint associated with that point.  Fire missiles that cost 1/10 what an AMM does from 3 billion km away.  It may be an exploit of the AI to do this, of course.
but he is thinking more like pvp tatics, so you would need to mix in some real missiles to make things interesting.
Posted by: Michael Sandy
« on: April 10, 2018, 09:58:02 PM »

If the defender relies on AMMs and has a fixed point they are defending, you can fire decoy missiles at a waypoint associated with that point.  Fire missiles that cost 1/10 what an AMM does from 3 billion km away.  It may be an exploit of the AI to do this, of course.
Posted by: Gabethebaldandbold
« on: April 10, 2018, 03:47:21 PM »

You could try the battle rider aproach, and put a big ship on acarrier. That ship wont need a lot in the ways of maintenance and range, and the carrier doesn't really need that much speed. You could very well send it at 14000 km/s and still have enough range for combat manouvers and enough firepower to be scary
Posted by: SevenOfCarina
« on: April 08, 2018, 12:18:39 AM »

Instead of draining their AMM magazines, try overpowering their fire controls.  Each fire control can only target one salvo at a time.  So fire lots of salvos.  This usually means lots of small ships with a handful of launchers each.  Or big ships with a nearly as many FC's as launchers.
My AMM ships are built specifically to counter this. I have five full-size launchers per fire control, and I typically launch five missiles per missile. Each ship can launch 400 AMMs in the time it takes one ASM to cross sensor range, so each AMM ship can target 80 missiles. I don't think dragging along a hundred fire controls is worthwhile.

The only way through is either overwhelming salvo size, or overwhelming magazine space. Ideally, both are needed.
Posted by: Barkhorn
« on: April 07, 2018, 06:43:50 PM »

Instead of draining their AMM magazines, try overpowering their fire controls.  Each fire control can only target one salvo at a time.  So fire lots of salvos.  This usually means lots of small ships with a handful of launchers each.  Or big ships with a nearly as many FC's as launchers.
Posted by: SevenOfCarina
« on: April 07, 2018, 08:02:34 AM »

Well, I went that route and tried to build small 2000 ton Missile Attack Craft with the Excoriate ASM, but I ran into a major problem. Namely, I can't get useful salvo sizes without using box launchers, and if do use box launchers, I have nowhere near enough magazine space to overwhelm the point defence of my mainline fleet, even with very large swarms.

For about 29,000 BP (the cost of my fleet), I can build ~40 missile boats, each carrying 10 ASMs and 30 AMMs, for a total of 400 ASMs and 1200 AMMs. Unfortunately, I'll need to close to ~50 million kilometres to fire my missiles with the gunboats, so they need to be faster than my mainline fleet, which results in them turning into fuel-guzzling hogs with barely any range. So they're useless for anything other system defence. Even then they'll need to advance under a missile onslaught, and since my mainline fleet can carry 440 ASMs, about 200 ASMs will find their mark with the number of AMMs the missile boats have. Since the missile boats are so small, they have no shields and barely any internal HTK, so even two hundred missiles will kill half of them. At that point, the remaining craft have too few missiles to overwhelm point-defence, and what makes it through can wound maybe one ship. Then my warships will close to AMM range and slaughter the remaining missile craft.

So smaller missile boats don't work, because they're too fragile. I'll have to upgrade these to full size, short-range missile warships, but even then I won't get useful salvo size without box launchers, and using box launchers means I can't reload, which amplifies my magazine issue. So that doesn't work either. The only way I've successfully killed my fleet so far is by bringing along twice the number of ships.

Actually, since I need to build two fleets anyway for each expansion route, this might not be a problem. ;D
Posted by: TT
« on: April 05, 2018, 05:42:43 PM »

One thing you could do that would increase your broadside per ton is supplement your fleet with som missle frigates.  Make them half the size or smaller, little armor, no shields, just an engine, a fire control, a small magizine and all the reduced size launchers you can stuff on the frigate.  The ship relies on being the least visible element of the fleet for defense and since you have fewer bells and whistles, you will be able to place more missiles per ton. That is a strategy I use and the frigates can also provide colony support more easily. Good Luck
Posted by: Gabethebaldandbold
« on: April 05, 2018, 04:06:29 PM »

By the way beware of lagrange points, the enemy can use them to close to point blank
Posted by: SevenOfCarina
« on: April 05, 2018, 02:18:02 PM »

Okay, I have a design : the Excoriate Anti-Ship Missile
Code: [Select]
Missile Size: 3 MSP  (0.15 HS)     Warhead: 4    Armour: 0     Manoeuvre Rating: 16
Speed: 80000 km/s    Engine Endurance: 12 minutes   Range: 57.5m km
Active Sensor Strength: 0.0176   Sensitivity Modifier: 180%
Resolution: 10    Maximum Range vs 500 ton object (or larger): 10 000 km
Cost Per Missile: 4.3584
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 1280%   3k km/s 416%   5k km/s 256%   10k km/s 128%
Materials Required:    1x Tritanium   0.0108x Boronide   0.0176x Uridium   3.33x Gallicite   Fuel x790.5

Assuming equal magazine space, an AMM ship can throw three AMMs per ASM, so that's a kill chance of 65.7%, which means one in three missiles will make it through point-defense. Assuming I can double the number of launchers per ship, the fleet now throws 80 missiles per salvo, of which ~27 will penetrate, dealing 108 damage .... which might actually be enough to kill a ship in a salvo or two.
Posted by: SevenOfCarina
« on: April 05, 2018, 02:04:07 PM »

So, effectively, you're telling me to engage at point-blank with missiles. What if I abandon the two-stage concept, double the terminal stage to 5 MSP, and increase the warhead to strength-9, while retaining the 80,000 km/s speed? Would that work?
Posted by: misanthropope
« on: April 05, 2018, 01:58:45 PM »

big picture, i think, is that you've prepared to fight the last war.   you're at the dawn of the Age Of Invincible AMMs and your ASMs give up *everything* for range.

A leaker or two isnt going to cut it, when you're only throwing 4 damage per missile.   your missile cruiser can absorb its own broadside quite safely, and has a pretty good chance of running its evil twin clear out of ammo and living to tell the tale.   warning.

one fewer AMM ship, one more ASM ship, use i dunno, size 3 single stage, 60k missiles; otherwise clone your fleet.   i think that counters your fleet pretty hard.   i think its also the period where fighters have basically made real ships obsolete, but even if im right fabricating an example is too much work.
Posted by: SevenOfCarina
« on: April 05, 2018, 12:00:36 PM »

Yeah, that would be doable, particularly if your species is more adaptable. I've set my humans' gravity tolerance to 0.8g-1.2g, which means I have literally no worlds in Solsys other than Earth with a colony cost of less than 3. And Earth is an irradiated hellhole.
Posted by: Gabethebaldandbold
« on: April 05, 2018, 11:57:04 AM »

You said you were quite isolacionist so what I would do is try to lock all your sistems and leave you in a cage of railguns. Assuming we have populations of equal size, unless you can break through I should be able to grow faster since I can expand freely, and eventually try to snowball from there, but it would take a long time to do so.
Posted by: SevenOfCarina
« on: April 05, 2018, 11:50:37 AM »

These are quick response fleets, meant for defense rather than offense, and the occasional deep strike raiding mission. I'm not conducting jumppoint assaults without dedicated vessels.