Final Defensive Fire at close range

[clement (OP)]

In a game I am currently playing, I am attempting to avoid using missiles because I found it boring to follow the same pattern every time.

To that end, I have a civilization who's ship designs are centered around Railguns. The issue I have run into, which I was not expecting, is related to Final Defensive Fire with the railguns against incoming missiles.

All of my ships have some point defense but I was expecting that by having the 10 cm Railguns and their respective Fire controls set at Final Defensive Fire (10k km) that they would shoot at anything that was going to hit. However, when I have closed to within my firing range (20K km) and engaged the enemy, when they launch missiles they all hit immediately and nothing but the single CIWS turret fires on the incoming missiles. The missiles I have been fighting against have a speed of ~25,000 km.

Am I missing something in my setup in order to get my railguns to fire defensively?
-I have 2 railguns assigned to each firecontrol.
-There is more power than needed for the weapons on the ship.
-The firecontrols are set to Final Defensive Fire (20,000 KM)
-The firecontrols are set to open fire.

Below is the Frigate class ship I was using for point defense of the fleet. I have attached a screen shot of the firecontrol settings for the ship class.

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Firefly class Frigate    5,000 tons     490 Crew     1118.4 BP      TCS 100  TH 330  EM 0
4400 km/s     Armour 5-26     Shields 0-0     Sensors 8/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 2     PPV 20
Maint Life 2.93 Years     MSP 280    AFR 100%    IFR 1.4%    1YR 48    5YR 725    Max Repair 120 MSP

Magneto-plasma Drive E8.4 (5)    Power 88    Fuel Use 84%    Signature 66    Armour 0    Exp 10%
Fuel Capacity 200,000 Litres    Range 85.7 billion km   (225 days at full power)

CIWS-160 (1x4)    Range 1000 km     TS: 16000 km/s     ROF 5       Base 50% To Hit
10cm Railgun 40K-5 (4x4)    Range 40,000km     TS: 4400 km/s     Power 3-3     RM 4    ROF 5        1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0
25cm C4 Plasma Carronade (1)    Range 160,000km     TS: 4400 km/s     Power 16-4     RM 1    ROF 20        16 8 5 4 3 2 2 2 1 1
Fire Control 160K-5000 (3)    Max Range: 320,000 km   TS: 5000 km/s     97 94 91 88 84 81 78 75 72 69
Stellarator Fusion Reactor Technology PB-1 (3)     Total Power Output 18    Armour 0    Exp 5%

Navigation Sensor (1)     GPS 1600     Range 12.8m km    Resolution 100
Anti-Missile Active Search Sensor (1)     GPS 32     Range 2.6m km    Resolution 1
Thermal Sensor TH1-8 (1)     Sensitivity 8     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  8m km

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes


[Hawkeye]

The problem here is, that the enemy launches missiles and they hit within the same 5-second increment. This means, your actives have no time to spot them and your guns have no time to shoot at them.
Unfortunately, that is how Aurora works.

[clement (OP)]

Crap!

So knife fighting range is very painful once every 60 seconds for me....

That is why I have these I suppose.

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Devastator class Destroyer    10,000 tons     1192 Crew     2099.4 BP      TCS 200  TH 660  EM 0
4400 km/s     Armour 5-41     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 4     PPV 69
Maint Life 2.89 Years     MSP 525    AFR 200%    IFR 2.8%    1YR 93    5YR 1391    Max Repair 120 MSP

Magneto-plasma Drive E8.4 (10)    Power 88    Fuel Use 84%    Signature 66    Armour 0    Exp 10%
Fuel Capacity 320,000 Litres    Range 68.6 billion km   (180 days at full power)

CIWS-160 (1x4)    Range 1000 km     TS: 16000 km/s     ROF 5       Base 50% To Hit
10cm Railgun 40K-5 (3x4)    Range 40,000km     TS: 4400 km/s     Power 3-3     RM 4    ROF 5        1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0
15cm Railgun 120K-15 (6x4)    Range 120,000km     TS: 4400 km/s     Power 9-4     RM 4    ROF 15        3 3 3 3 2 2 1 1 1 1
25cm C4 Plasma Carronade (3)    Range 160,000km     TS: 4400 km/s     Power 16-4     RM 1    ROF 20        16 8 5 4 3 2 2 2 1 1
Fire Control 160K-5000 (4)    Max Range: 320,000 km   TS: 5000 km/s     97 94 91 88 84 81 78 75 72 69
Stellarator Fusion Reactor Technology PB-1 (8)     Total Power Output 48    Armour 0    Exp 5%

Anti-Missile Active Search Sensor (1)     GPS 32     Range 2.6m km    Resolution 1
Navigation Sensor (1)     GPS 1600     Range 12.8m km    Resolution 100

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

[TheDeadlyShoe]

Speed will help, both in decreasing the number of ASM hits and in controlling range for your railguns.  Speed is also extraordinarily useful for railgun point defence, as improved tracking speed will increase your anti-missile capabilities. 

[clement (OP)]

I may end up redesigning the ships to have more speed and drop their armament a little bit.

My first battle was with an NPR that was peaceful until the day communications succeeded. As soon as that happened, a fleet of theirs containing 4 14K ton missile ships that was about 20K KM from one of my military fleets in a system I had a colony on activated sensors and fired a full volley of missiles on my fleet. I had my defenses setup but they were so close everything got through except for 1 missile hit by CIWS. The first volley destroyed half the defensive weapons and all of the sensor capacity on my command/jump ship.

After that volley of missiles my 2 Devastator class Destroyers opened up and destroyed 1 ship each on their first volley. Because of my higher fleet speed and the initial close range of the engagement, I was able to destroy their fleet before they could reload. However, since that point I have been unable to close to the ranges I need for my weapons while defending against missile volleys of 20+ missiles.

As best I can see, pure speed is my best bet to solving this problem.

[ThatBlondeGuy]

The best suggestion I have to rectify this is to just sit out at the 10 second travel time or so for the missiles.  Then when you know how long it takes the enemies to reload, you dive in between volleys hit and run so that when the next attack from missile fire occurs you out at a range (at least far enough away so that your railguns can screen from the missiles) so increasing speed is the best way to deal with this problem.  As Deadlyshoe said.

[Nathan_]

The problem here is, that the enemy launches missiles and they hit within the same 5-second increment. This means, your actives have no time to spot them and your guns have no time to shoot at them.
Unfortunately, that is how Aurora works.

this is an initiative issue I think, if he goes first you don't have a chance to hit the missiles, but if your ships get initiative you can generally get 1 shot at them right as they come out of the launch tube.

[Brian Neumann]

this is an initiative issue I think, if he goes first you don't have a chance to hit the missiles, but if your ships get initiative you can generally get 1 shot at them right as they come out of the launch tube.

Unfortunately this is not an initiative issue.  As was said previously the problem is that in each 5 second turn there is one step where the active sensors detect what is there.  The order of the round however places this after movement, but before weapons are fired.  As the missiles are fired after this, but all movement is finished before you get back to this point the missiles are fired, move and impact during the following move segment.  There is no way for weapons to bypass this when the missiles are fired from such a short range. 

I think that the CIWS get around this because they have thier own dedicated sensor, and when Steve coded them they were assumed to always spot incomming missiles.  This has happened before even when a ship was sensor blind from having just transited a jump point.

Brian

[ThatBlondeGuy]

Unfortunately this is not an initiative issue.  As was said previously the problem is that in each 5 second turn there is one step where the active sensors detect what is there.  The order of the round however places this after movement, but before weapons are fired.  As the missiles are fired after this, but all movement is finished before you get back to this point the missiles are fired, move and impact during the following move segment.  There is no way for weapons to bypass this when the missiles are fired from such a short range. 

I think that the CIWS get around this because they have thier own dedicated sensor, and when Steve coded them they were assumed to always spot incomming missiles.  This has happened before even when a ship was sensor blind from having just transited a jump point.

Brian

Indeed CIWS is designed as the 'last' chance and they always get a shot off at any missiles within the five second increment. The problem with other point defense systems is it takes over 5 seconds to detect, target, and fire the weapon at the missile, within the five seconds the missile has left the tube and hit your ship. Which is why for Close quarters attack ships, CIWS is generally a better bet.