AMM with Ion Drive

[andrea69 (OP)]

I just designed this:

Missile Size: 1 MSP  (0.05 HS)     Warhead: 1    Armour: 0     Manoeuvre Rating: 22
Speed: 18000 km/s    Engine Endurance: 6 minutes   Range: 6.8m km
Cost Per Missile: 0.7054
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 396%   3k km/s 132%   5k km/s 79.2%   10k km/s 39.6%

The engine is 0.5 MSP based on Ion Tech, power is maximized.

Few questions:
1) Why put more than 1 engine on a missile?
2) Can you get better hit chance at this tech level?
3) Even maximizing the power of the engine the fuel consumption is not an issue; I used just 0.01 MSP for fuel obtaining a range of 6.8 m km, more than enough for a AMM. Looks like for missiles there is no reason to design fuel efficient engines. Is that so?

[Erik L]

Tech is a bit past yours by two or three levels, but this is an AMM I designed.

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Missile Size: 1 MSP  (0.05 HS)     Warhead: 2    Armour: 0     Manoeuvre Rating: 82
Speed: 30000 km/s    Engine Endurance: 49 minutes   Range: 88.2m km
Cost Per Missile: 2.315
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 2460%   3k km/s 820%   5k km/s 492%   10k km/s 246%
Materials Required:    0.5x Tritanium   1.815x Gallicite   Fuel x1250

Development Cost for Project: 232RP

Engine size is .1, Warhead is .1, Fuel is .5, and Agility is .3

Just for smegs & grins, I designed a 4 MSP light ASM with the same tech and same engine.

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Missile Size: 4 MSP  (0.2 HS)     Warhead: 20    Armour: 0     Manoeuvre Rating: 70
Speed: 75000 km/s    Engine Endurance: 10 minutes   Range: 44.1m km
Cost Per Missile: 13.55
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 5250%   3k km/s 1750%   5k km/s 1050%   10k km/s 525%
Materials Required:    5x Tritanium   8.55x Gallicite   Fuel x2500

Development Cost for Project: 1355RP
Warhead, fuel, agility and engines are all 1 MSP.

[Nightstar]

1: You can't make an engine bigger than 5 MSP, so for some wierdo giant missiles, you may need multiple engines. Otherwise, no good reason.
2: I don't actually know what your techs are, so I can't say.
3: Yup. Unless you intend to shoot them at ships, you're best off with top multiplier and very little fuel.

The general AMM to-hit optimization formula is E = 5/A + S/2, where E = engine size, A = agility tech, and S is the space left over after you subtract warhead and fuel. If I had to guess, you might be better off with 0.6 engine instead of 0.5.

Erik> That has to be the worst designed AMM I have ever seen. Congrats.

[Erik L]

Erik> That has to be the worst designed AMM I have ever seen. Congrats.

Considering I spent a total of about 1 minute to design it, I wouldn't expect much.

And after building the ASM (which also received approximately 1 minute of design time), the ASM is woefully subpar.

[andrea69 (OP)]

The general AMM to-hit optimization formula is E = 5/A + S/2, where E = engine size, A = agility tech, and S is the space left over after you subtract warhead and fuel. If I had to guess, you might be better off with 0.6 engine instead of 0.5.

Interesting; I don't like using formulas, but I'm curious, so: E=(5/48)+(1-0.25-0.01)/2=0.474, so the closest is 0.5. Indeed before choosing I designed a 0.4, a 0.5 and a 0.6 engine, tried all of them, and at the end I chose the 0.5.

Thanks to both