A question with the sequence of play.

[jseah]

A missile delivery system that aims to saturate PD defences will be unlikely to give you multiple shots. 

My current fleet uses 33% size-reduction launchers.  So arguably, your setup is designed to counter mine. 

I might note that my missiles travel at around 70kkm/s.  Designed to have a ~75% hit rate vs 10kkm/s (which turns into 100% after crew training).  This was a conscious design decision to use a 12 to 14 agility missile in order to boost speed so as to avoid PD better.  My own laser PD has less than a 30% hit rate vs my own missiles. 

Not even fighters at my tech level can travel fast enough get two shots unless they don't carry weapons.  <- hence, no advantage over normal PD. 
Not to mention my 15cm laser PD frigates multirole as anti-shipping lasers as well as jumppoint assaults (I only have one beam armed design)

[Ashery (OP)]

But what tech level are you at currently? I'm sure there will be missile designs at my tech level that will be able to outrun my fighters, but that'll force changes to the missile design that weaken them in some other way.

Also note that my interceptors actually gain ground on missiles as tech progresses.  I decided to screw around and design the end game fighter and we're talking about an interceptor weighing in at 100tons and moving at 225000k/sec.  I'm not even sure what to do with that design as the fastest possible tracking speed comes in at 100000k/sec. 

Actually, change that, you can add tracking speed to fighter restricted BFCs despite the fact that they gain a free 4x from being fighter restricted.  If that is not a bug, that actually tips the scale further in favor of fighters for general use.  Pity it'll add another 10-15tons (I'll drop my BFC to 25% range instead of 33%).  The modified fighter comes in at 110tons, 204545k/sec, and takes a reduction in hit rate with the GC (10% to 8%), but sports a fancy little 200000k/sec tracking speed, hehe.

[jseah]

Engine tech is at magnetic confinement drives with 0.5 fuel efficiency.  I also use a power boost of 25% to have a final engine design of 0.75 fuel use but 125% power. 

An SM-testing fighter design looks like this:

Code: [Select]

New Class #6988 class Cruiser    145 tons     4 Crew     55.5 BP      TCS 2.9  TH 94  EM 0
32413 km/s     Armour 1-2     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 0.5
Annual Failure Rate: 29%    IFR: 0.4%    Maint Capacity 0 MSP    Max Repair 30 MSP    Est Time: 0 Years

FTR Magnetic Confinement Fusion Drive E750 (1)    Power 93.75    Fuel Use 7500%    Signature 93.75    Armour 0    Exp 100%
Fuel Capacity 5,000 Litres    Range 0.8 billion km   (7 hours at full power)

Gauss Cannon R3-8 (1x3)    Range 30,000km     TS: 32413 km/s     Accuracy Modifier 8%     RM 3    ROF 5        1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Fire Control S01 40-5000 (FTR) (1)    Max Range: 80,000 km   TS: 20000 km/s     88 75 62 50 38 25 12 0 0 0

This design is classed as a Fighter for production, combat and maintenance purposesThis is simply the absolute smallest I could make a fighter with a gauss cannon.  I haven't invested anything significant into gauss but you can assume a better tracking speed if you want. 

Now note that the missile travels a bit more than twice as fast as the fighter.  The missile is optimized courtesy of the missile design spreadsheet. 
Also note that the missile travels across the entire effective firing range in 5 seconds.  (missile speed - fighter speed) * 5 = 233 435

Code: [Select]

Missile Size: 5 MSP  (0.25 HS)     Warhead: 6    Armour: 0     Manoeuvre Rating: 10
Speed: 79100 km/s    Endurance: 13 minutes   Range: 60.3m km
Cost Per Missile: 8.0887
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 791%   3k km/s 260%   5k km/s 158.2%   10k km/s 79.1%
Materials Required:    1.5x Tritanium   6.3387x Gallicite   Fuel x2093.5

Development Cost for Project: 809RP

[Ashery (OP)]

You could shave a bit off of the fighter by halving the range of the BFC, but even with the 50% increase in power tech I wasn't able to match the speed of your missiles.

Then again, it looks like your missiles are one of the designs a player could adopt in order to counter my fighters. Just what percentage of your missile is dedicated to engines? A strength six warhead on a size five missile is a definitely on the lighter side.

[jseah]

My missiles are over 50% engine actually.  I estimate how well my missiles do vs my own AMM defence and try to find a missile design that has the best chance of getting through vs warhead strength. 

Warhead is about 20% of my missile.  I find any more means my missiles gets too slow to get through. 

EDIT: as it is, my AMMs hit the missile 20% of the time or so, which means if my fleet flushes its tubes against a mirror fleet, almost none out of 1.5k missiles will get through.

WH: 1
Engine: 3.1626
Fuel: 0.8374
Agility: 0

[Charlie Beeler]

Actually, jseah's missile design type is fairly standard.  The main thing it is missing an adjustment of engine and agility to optimize the to-hit chances. 

For arguments sake assume that any missile you face is going to use 50% of the msp for engine.  So assume that these are the minimum missile speeds that your will face at the various engine tech levels.

Nuclear Thermal Nuclear Pulse Ion Magneto-plasma Internal Confinement Magnetic Confinement Inertial Confinement Solid Core Gas Core Plasma Core Beam Core Photonic

12,500 20,000 30,000 40,000 50,000 62,500 80,000 100,000 125,000 150,000 200,000 250,000

Jseah's example also illustrates a point I had not really touched yet, at an equal tech level missiles should be expected to outperform fighters in the speed department.  Expect anti-ship missiles to use 50% msp for engines and anti-missile missiles to be in the 75% or better msp for engines. 

That being said, expect weapons performance to be even worse.

Using the fighter and missile above these are the expected to-hit chances:

Range  To Hit   speed modified

10,000 20,000 30,000

7.040% 6.000% 4.960%

2.885% 2.459% 2.032%

And if the bfc is cut in half:

Range  To Hit   speed modified

10,000 20,000 30,000

6.000% 4.000% 2.000%

2.459% 1.639% 0.820%

Personally I wouldn't make a bad situation worse.  The best case scenario (range 10k or less) is that the fighters fleet has been tracking the missiles long enough, and has the supportting tech, to reduce speed difference modifier to a zero effect it still only gets one pass with three shots at just over 7% to-hit probability.  I call that totally ineffective.