Component help

[RedSka (OP)]

I've literally just started playing and i'm messing about with some low-tech components.   If anyone could have a look at my missiles and see if all the targeting systems work alright with them I'd appreciate it.   Any improvements or ideas would be appreciated too

Basic missile:
Missile Size: 5 MSP  (0. 25 HS)     Warhead: 3    Armour: 0     Manoeuvre Rating: 20
Speed: 6400 km/s    Engine Endurance: 18. 5 hours   Range: 425. 4m km
Cost Per Missile: 2. 11
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 128%   3k km/s 40%   5k km/s 25. 6%   10k km/s 12. 8%

Target system for it:
Active Sensor Strength: 24   Sensitivity Modifier: 80%
Sensor Size: 2 HS    Sensor HTK: 1
Resolution: 60    Maximum Range vs 3000 ton object (or larger): 44,610,000 km
Range vs 1000 ton object: 4,956,667 km
Range vs 250 ton object: 309,791 km
Chance of destruction by electronic damage: 100%
Cost: 24    Crew: 4

[Nightstar]

You need a missile fire control.

That's a freakishly long range for a low tech missile.

Your active scanner has ~1/10th the range of your missile.

That much agility on a low tech missile is a waste. Put on more engine instead.

Quick thoughts ^^

[Konisforce]

The only major issue I see is a mismatch between missile range (425m km) and the sensor range (44m km).  That means your missile can fly about 10 times farther than you can see.  I'd take a lot of that fuel out and put in a bigger engine.  Also, that's the sensor to spot things (active sensor).  You want to switch the drop-down at the bottom of the create research project to be Missile Fire Control, and make one of those.  Generally, you want your sensor, fire control, and missile range to all match up, or at least, your missile to be the shortest of those three.  Seeing more than you can shoot is fine, and targeting (fire control) farther than your missile can go is good because it future-proofs and also allows you to burn through ECM some of the time, if it's a problem.

Smaller tweaks - it's pretty slow.  I'd bet you could speed it up by taking out that fuel, and maybe removing some of the agility in favor of raw speed.  Design concept here is that a missile that's slightly less to-hit but is faster overall is itself harder to hit.  You might have less of a chance of hitting with an individual missile, but more overall would get through.

Other small tweak - because of the damage system, your warhead of 3 isn't the greatest.  Reason being: 1st point of damage hurts the 1st level of armor, 2nd also hurts the 1st, 3rd the same.  4th point of damage strips 3 off of the 1st layer, and 1 off the second.  Diamond-shaped.  5th point strips 4 off the 1st, 1 off the 2nd.  6th strips 4 off the 1st, 2 off the 2nd.  So squares (1, 4, 9, 16) do the most penetration damage for a missile.  Square plus root (6 (4+2), 12 (9+3), 20 (16+4)) are also good.

That being said, your system would certainly function at shooting at things and, if it hit them, do some damage (once you get a fire control).  So for a first effort, yes!  Success!  Optimized, no, but explodey, yes!

[Paul M]

A manuever rating of 20 is pretty bad, as others have said remove a great deal of fuel and increase your manuever rating.

The 3pt warhead is fine, the square law stuff is nice but it is situationally dependant if it is meaningful or not.  Saying that the warhead is fine does not mean that if it doesn't degrade your performance any going to 4pts will hurt anything.  What size warhead is optimum for a missile is strongly influenced by what the average centre to centre impact distance is and that value is determined by the number of armour locations/volley size and adjusted afterwards by a guassian distribution.  So it is not really "generic"...but you can sort of eyeball it by taking the inverse of that and determining how many missiles are likely to hit a location per volley.  For 1 or more missiles per armour location I'd suggest warhead 2 is optimal in terms of minimizing warhead space, though 3 is a lot nicer overall, the worst size warhead is 1.  If the number of missiles you expect to land per volley is small then I would suggest strongly the square law warhead (4 or 9) as you are basically gaining the maximum advantage from any good luck that comes your way.  After that you are back to "it is on case to case basis determined what is best."  I would always strive for width of effect since overlaps build penetration naturally so 5 is better than 4 assuming the warhead space doesn't comprimise the missile performance.  The wider the effect the more chance the guassian re-distribution that comes about will result in stacking so in that sense 3 is as good as 4, 8 is as good a 9 and 5 is better than 4.  This is true until you get a reasonable chance that the missiles stack centre on centre or you figure you are very lucky.  What I don't know exactly is the width of the guassian re-distribution function, I would assume it is likely to be 1 to the square root of the center to centre distance.  Generally speaking this shifts the missiles by 0-2 armour locations from the average centre-to-centre spread with a low chance (5% or so) that they are shifted more than that.  To be frank worrying about this is a lot more trouble then ultimatly it is worth.  I would say that except for size 1 the warhead size that is the best for your ASM is the largest warhead size you can put into your missile and still achieve the speed, range and agility that lets it do its job. 

The other main point is what is your expected target velocity?  That tells you if you need more speed or not.

Also missing is some sort of passive sensor system on the missile.  I'm not sure if a thermal or EM sensor is best but the ability to re-engage another target is useful.

Also how many launchers do you have or expect to have? 

A rather critical question is the size of the missile itself.  Given the amount of range you have here that is almost a full point of fuel I'd think so you could get fairly similar perfromance from a 4 MSP missile and that means more launchers per ship, and faster firing rates.

[Charlie Beeler]

I've literally just started playing and i'm messing about with some low-tech components.   If anyone could have a look at my missiles and see if all the targeting systems work alright with them I'd appreciate it.   Any improvements or ideas would be appreciated too

Basic missile:
Missile Size: 5 MSP  (0. 25 HS)     Warhead: 3    Armour: 0     Manoeuvre Rating: 20
Speed: 6400 km/s    Engine Endurance: 18. 5 hours   Range: 425. 4m km
Cost Per Missile: 2. 11
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 128%   3k km/s 40%   5k km/s 25. 6%   10k km/s 12. 8%

Target system for it:
Active Sensor Strength: 24   Sensitivity Modifier: 80%
Sensor Size: 2 HS    Sensor HTK: 1
Resolution: 60    Maximum Range vs 3000 ton object (or larger): 44,610,000 km
Range vs 1000 ton object: 4,956,667 km
Range vs 250 ton object: 309,791 km
Chance of destruction by electronic damage: 100%
Cost: 24    Crew: 4

Let's see...tech looks to be:
Nuclear Pulse Engine Technology
Fuel Consumption: 0.7 Litres per Engine Power Hour
Maximum Engine Power Modifier x1.25
Active Grav Sensor Strength 12
EM Sensor Sensitivity 8
Implosion Fission Warhead: Strength: 3 x MSP
Missile Agility 32 per MSP

The missile looks to be designed like this:
2msp missile engine w/Max Modifier set to x2(200%)
1msp to warhead
1.5625msp to agility
.4375msp to fuel

The Missile Fire Control (not Active Sensor, the notations about range vs target size is the tell) is as noted very short ranged compared to the missiles it's expected to guide. 

First the missile:
For your tech it is way too slow for the combat environment it can be expected to operate in.  Part of that is that your under utilizing the Max power modifier you have available. 

Try this:
Same size 5
3.9msp missile engine w/Max Modifier set to x2.5(250%)  [highest missile setting for the tech]
1msp to warhead
.1msp fuel
For offensive anti-shipping missiles I mostly stay away from applying agility to the design in favor of a larger engine for more speed.

This gives you speed 15,600kps with a to hit vs 3,000kps 52% and a range 87.8m/km and a missile cost of 1.725.

You'll need a larger fire control. Size 5 with the same resolution will give you the ability to fire at 3,000ton ships with a speed of 3,000kps in a meeting engagement (id target continues to close) at a range of 104.7m/km.  You'll need a supporting Active Sensor of size 15/res 60 for this to work.  Note that ECM will reduce your MFC's lock range by 10% for each level you can't/don't counter with ECCM.

For missile design don't worry to much about whether you're using squares of damage.  A protocol of using whole msp's for warheads works just fine. 

You do need to push your warhead tech though.  Mainly because the best size 1 AMM you can get with this tech looks like this:
size 1
.6 msp missile engine w/Max Modifier set to x2.5(250%) - speed 12,000kps
.3334msp to warhead (wh1)
.0469msp to agility (MR 12)  (48% vs 3,000 / 28.8% vs 5,000 / 14.4% vs 10,000)
.0197 to fuel - range 24m/km

But if the warhead tech was 5 per MSP it could look like this:
size 1
.7 msp missile engine w/Max Modifier set to x2.5(250%) - speed 14,000kps
.2msp to warhead (wh1)
.0782msp to agility (MR 13)  (60.7% vs 3,000 / 36.4% vs 5,000 / 18.2% vs 10,000)
.0218 to fuel - range 29.6m/km

The reason that the agility msp's aren't what you'd expect based on simple fractions has to do with rounding.

[note that size 2 AMM's can have faster speeds but lower cyclic rates]

Unless you advance to larger missiles I wouldn't be to concerned with adding sensors.  With missiles this size component space is at too high a premium for the pittance of detection range they will provide, in my opinion. 

Obviously you also need to push both Active Grav Sensor Strength and EM Sensor Sensitivity to increase you range and reduce the component size.

[RedSka (OP)]

Thanks people for everything.   I'll have another look over everyones advice tomorrow and sort it out (well as best i can given the low tech i have for now!).

Also, if anyone see this, what kinda range is ship combat typically at and what kinda ranges are best for main weapons?
And on a wider perspective, roughly what should i be aiming to do, just starting a game.   I have geo and gravitational survey ships scanning and colony ships and freighters designed.   Should it just be a case of mining and colonising before looking further afield for other good places to colonise?

[Konisforce]

Ship combat range varies pretty widely, but a couple of boundaries.  Beam weapons are restricted to (I believe) the distance light travels in 5 seconds, because Steve didn't want to have to deal with tracking laser packets.  So beam weapons (everything but missiles) are very short in interstellar terms. 50,000 km might be about mid-range for your tech level, for a decent chance to-hit.  But combat range is wherever you can hit the hardest while getting hit the least. 

Missile range can get nutso.  As you saw, you could design a 450 million km missile. Couldn't control it, but that's another story. So missile combat can be 50 mil km, easy.  The general wisdon is 'strong tactically, weak strategically' for missiles. Because of size constraints, missile ships can be like having a gun with just one clip.  Better hope you get him in those first shots.  And from a cost standpoint, missiles cost a lot to produce, compared to free for beam ammo.

Gamewise - yup! There's nothing you really have to do in Aurora, it's a freeform sandbox.  But if you're playing it 'normal' then ya, your home planet is 10 to 30 years from economic meltdown due to lack of minerals, so you've gotta find some.  Probably duranium or corundium.

Strategically spreading out your pop is good for tax rates, but that's up to you, as well.  It's mostly abouit bumbling around and getting into trouble.

[alex_brunius]

Generally, you want your sensor, fire control, and missile range to all match up, or at least, your missile to be the shortest of those three.  Seeing more than you can shoot is fine, and targeting (fire control) farther than your missile can go is good because it future-proofs and also allows you to burn through ECM some of the time, if it's a problem.

I don't agree that missiles always should be the shortest of the 3.

This is because enemy movement also affects actual distance missiles has to fly to target, if your enemy is fleeing you need more range on the missiles then sensors or they will run out of fuel. An enemy going at 5kkm/s will have travelled 18 million km in the hour it takes a 20kkm/s missile to fly 72 million km.

I would also like to point out that it is possible to control missiles with that range. To do it a popular approach is design missile ships without active sensors (or just small backup active sensors), and spend the savings on a several times longer range FC instead. Then you let a single dedicated Sensor ship paint enemy targets since it can easilly field the huge senor array.
You only need a single active sensor in the TG to paint enemy targets, but each ship needs a FC to be able to fire.

[Paul M]

Thanks people for everything.   I'll have another look over everyones advice tomorrow and sort it out (well as best i can given the low tech i have for now!).

Also, if anyone see this, what kinda range is ship combat typically at and what kinda ranges are best for main weapons?
And on a wider perspective, roughly what should i be aiming to do, just starting a game.   I have geo and gravitational survey ships scanning and colony ships and freighters designed.   Should it just be a case of mining and colonising before looking further afield for other good places to colonise?

In an utterly shameless self-plug you could look at my AAR and see what joys await you...I think I have done everything wrong that you can do at least once.  One consideration that is overlooked is that your ship has to survive the time it takes the missile to get to the target.  So if you have missile with say a 30 min flight time then you need to have your ships survive 30 min in combat otherwise the missiles in flight are not going to hit diddly.  Your missile is similar to my Javelin series, though the Javelin IIIA is faster, less accurate, considerably shorter ranged and has a weaker warhead, the atest design (still on the drawing board) of the Javelin--the IIIA2 has comparable accuracy.  The Javelin is; however, intended to counter a race with ships that go around 9000 km/s and to be slightly faster than their missiles.  Unfortunately field testing didn't suceed.

It largely impossible to say if there is a problem with the design (outside of the excessive range) because it really is dependant on the situation.  How many launchers do you have, how effective is the enemy's point defence, how are their ships defended passively, and how fast are they?  If you can't answere those questions specifically then design the missile to be effective engaging your own ships.  Ignore my comment about the manoeuver rating, I mistook that for agility btw, as for this tech level that is a good value.

[Konisforce]

I don't agree that missiles always should be the shortest of the 3.

This is because enemy movement also affects actual distance missiles has to fly to target, if your enemy is fleeing you need more range on the missiles then sensors or they will run out of fuel. An enemy going at 5kkm/s will have travelled 18 million km in the hour it takes a 20kkm/s missile to fly 72 million km.

True, fuel is cheap, and it's where excess space goes after agility hits your target.

[Charlie Beeler]

It's really dependent on which engagement type you use as a model when designing your missiles and fire controls.  If the model is either a meeting engagement or a stern chase of your ships then the fire controls will need the greater range if you want to use the full range of the missiles.  If your tailing the OPFOR ships then you can have the fire controls with shorter range and still have the use of the full range of the missiles.  Design for the meeting engagement ranges and you have both available for tactical flexibility.