Optimal Missile Size

[Brian Neumann]

Possibly making armor a passive attribute linked to the armor tech line. At base armor you get .1 armor per MP of missile. Have that increase upwards as armor tech goes up. Smaller missiles are easier to knock down, larger missiles require 1 or more hits without depriving the missile of needed space for warhead/engine/fuel.

This could be extended to ECM also.

I like the idea.  The only problem that I have with it is that small missiles would benifit greatly.  Currently they are killed if you score any hit on them.  If a size 1 missile has any armor at all then it is no longer an auto kill.  At higher tech levels a size 1 missile could have 1 point of armor which means that a hit doing 1 point of damage only has a 50% kill chance against it.  I would rather that you have to put some armor on the missile to get any advantage.  How much armor is required however should go down as your armor tech increases.  My first thought is that you start with a 1 to 1 ratio at duranium armor, and each tech level of armor gives you a bonus just like the building tech works.  So the second level is 1.2 armor for 1 msp the fourth is 1.6, ect.  If you want big missiles to have a bonus on top of that then how about a 2% boost per msp of missile.  This will keep small missiles fairly easy to kill and still make armoring big missiles workable.

Brian

[TheDeadlyShoe]

That is almost nullifying the benefits of the missile reload rate tech line. The issue is that larger missiles have a lower survivability than smaller missiles.

Survivability and fire rate are separate issues. Eeen if larger missiles had identical survivability, smaller missiles will still have massive advantages owing to fire rate - and with size 1s, dual purpose launchers.

[HaliRyan]

Survivability and fire rate are separate issues. Eeen if larger missiles had identical survivability, smaller missiles will still have massive advantages owing to fire rate - and with size 1s, dual purpose launchers.

Don't size and RoF for missile launchers progress linearly? If so then the larger missiles would actually have the advantage from RoF due to front loading of their effective weight of fire, and therefor damage. Although if trying to shoot down loads of targets a la AMMs, then yes the smaller missiles would have a massive advantage from RoF.

[Erik L]

Right now the advantage is purely with small launchers. Smaller = more per tonnage, bigger alpha strikes, and faster RoF. The only thing going for big missiles is the bigger booms they make.

[HaliRyan]

Really? I thought it was all completely linear, with a size 100 launcher being 100 times the size of a size 1 launcher. Oh well.

Edit - Oh wait, logic fail on my part. 

[TheDeadlyShoe]

Don't size and RoF for missile launchers progress linearly? If so then the larger missiles would actually have the advantage from RoF due to front loading of their effective weight of fire,

The problem is that yes, they both scale linearly.

A size 6 missile launcher is six times the size of a size 1 missile launcher.  So you can either launch 1 missile, or 6 missiles with the same damage. There's no frontload advantage.

But a size 1 missile launcher also fires six times faster than a size 6 missile launcher. So it also has 6x the DPS. And it can dual role so you can have twice the launch weight in the same fleet (or thereabouts).

On _top_ of that, the size 1 missiles are vastly more efficient against antimissile fire in both an absolute and attrition sense.

As Erik Luken said, the only advantage of larger missiles is bigger booms.  (Well, and active sensors.)

If launchers had either fixed/normalized ROF or size, then they would be balanced on a DPS basis.

[HaliRyan]

Yeah, let's just pretend I never said any of this! 

[Theokrat (OP)]

I just came about the proposed 5.7 changes today, and realized that Steve is about to consolidate engine and missile-engine design to one process for consistency reasons. Importantly, he also announced economies-of-scale effects for ship engines, such that a larger ship engine is (slightly) more fuel-efficient than a smaller ship engine.

If that principle also gets applied to missile engines, and is sufficiently large, it could go a long way to solve our problem. Right now, most missile characteristics are independent of the size (range, speed, total damage, hit chances), but under the proposed changes that could change markedly. If a size-1 missile could not host enough fuel to reach normal combat ranges then large missiles would be viable choice and in turn AMM would make sense again.

Right now, it seems as though size-1s are a dominant strategy, and AMMs are a loosing strategy (unless one assumes a consistently suboptimal enemy - which the NPRs can be - or maybe PDCs).

[jseah]

The new engine designs make two-stage missiles with a single size 1 "head" dominant.  You can make a size 2 missile with incredible range and the super speedy size 1 missile that dodges all the AMMs. 

And while size 2 is only half the launch rate of size 1 which, at the kind of range achievable with fighter-efficiency engines, doesn't matter all that much. 

A size 1 ASM in the new system will never reach the range or final speed of a short-range sprinter with an efficient bus.  And THAT could make all the difference. 


I predict two-stage missiles are about to get very popular. 

[swarm_sadist]

Isn't a missiles size simply it's mass? And isn't mass dependent on it's volume? Since the volume of a missile will increase cubically, won't it's surface area increase squarely? Therefor, armouring a larger missile would be much more cost effective than armouring a smaller one.

Also, a larger missile would also have a smaller launcher size (per missile size) than a smaller missile.  This is thanks in part to most components required for a larger missile, such as crew stations, would require the same amount of space regardless of how small or large the missile was.  Some components, such as power stations for loading mechanisms, would benefit with the rule of cubed.

[Erik L]

Isn't a missiles size simply it's mass? And isn't mass dependent on it's volume? Since the volume of a missile will increase cubically, won't it's surface area increase squarely? Therefor, armouring a larger missile would be much more cost effective than armouring a smaller one.

Also, a larger missile would also have a smaller launcher size (per missile size) than a smaller missile.  This is thanks in part to most components required for a larger missile, such as crew stations, would require the same amount of space regardless of how small or large the missile was.  Some components, such as power stations for loading mechanisms, would benefit with the rule of cubed.

Armor for missiles doesn't work like armor for ships. It's based on the amount of msp dedicated to armor rather than the surface area, unlike ships.

[Theokrat (OP)]

Also, a larger missile would also have a smaller launcher size (per missile size) than a smaller missile.  This is thanks in part to most components required for a larger missile, such as crew stations, would require the same amount of space regardless of how small or large the missile was.  Some components, such as power stations for loading mechanisms, would benefit with the rule of cubed.

If I understand you correctly, then no this is currently not in the game. A launcher for a 100-MSP missile is one hundred times as large as a launcher required for a 1-MSP missile. It also has one hundred times the cost, as requires one hundred times the manpower.

[Theokrat (OP)]

Here is the Excel File that runs the calculations. I have reduced the number of simulations per run to 1,000 (from 10,000), so that its easier to handle.

Basically this runs a 1,000 simulated hits of a given number of missiles with a given warhead on a target with a given armour width and armour depth. It the identifies how much internal damage would be dealt in each run.

The final outcome are some statistics, i.e. the median, average and weighted average internal damage.

Edit.Fixed Link