Author Topic: Usage of a sniper doctrine  (Read 1389 times)

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Offline jseah (OP)

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Usage of a sniper doctrine
« on: May 04, 2011, 06:56:18 PM »
Ever since I've invested a ton of RP into cloaking and thermal reduction, I have been exploring some ideas on how to use a cloak reliant fleet.  Might as well put my RP to use. 

In particular, this idea turned up:
Code: [Select]
[b]'Marksman' Size 9 Drone[/b]
Missile Size: 9 MSP  (0.45 HS)     Warhead: 9    Armour: 0     Manoeuvre Rating: 5
Speed: 26700 km/s    Endurance: 625 minutes   Range: 1001.3m km
Cost Per Missile: 6.125
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 133.5%   3k km/s 40%   5k km/s 26.7%   10k km/s 13.3%
Materials Required:    2.25x Tritanium   3.75x Gallicite   Fuel x6250
Note the range. 

The intention to stuff 25% size launchers (2.25 HS) onto frigates, dump more RP into active sensors to get a MFC with 1 billion km range. 
Box launchers are also in the offing. 

Intention is that the drones would impact and cause damage/kill, followed by deactivating the frigate size fleet scout's massive active sensor and disappearing into the night. 
All before we enter the range of enemy sensors.  (cloaking and good thermal reduction ought to help)


Thoughts about this?  Feasible?

I do also have a conventional fleet, so the lack of staying power is not a problem.  It might give me the edge against enemies who are faster and better armed than I am though, like that wormhole that's in a border system. 
 

Offline Brian Neumann

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Re: Usage of a sniper doctrine
« Reply #1 on: May 04, 2011, 07:53:02 PM »
The only problem with this long range missile is its speed.  It is to easy a target for even early pd weapons.  You will need to have a lot of them to get even a few through the pd of your target fleet.  If you instead drop the range to about 800m km and put in a second stage that has a 20-30m km range and is faster then you would have a good concept.  The damage per missile is probably going to be smaller, but the damage inflicted should be much higher.  The second stage would probably be 2-3 times faster which both reduces the number of anti-missile missile (amm) launches against you, and makes them significantly harder to score hits.  As it stands enemy amm will probably have a 75% or better chance of getting a kill.  Their beam pd will be at least as good if not better.  So figure that their amm have a range of 10m km, your drone will take 8 minutes to cover this range.  If their amm go at 40,000 km/s then it will only take 150 seconds for them to get to you (combined closing speed).  This translates to a minimum of 4 seperate chances to counter fire on your missiles with as many missiles in each set as the pd settings have been set up for (between 1-5 amm per missile of yours).  Unless you have a massive salvo not much is going to get through all of that.  Of course you may end up burning through a lot of the amm in the process.  Now flip this around and have a high speed second stage to work with and they will get 2-3 counter launches, and their hit chances will be down to maybe 30%.  Plus when your bus stage gets to the target they will fire on them as well so this will use up even more of their counter missiles.  You might also want to have a few drones with a couple of second stage missiles without warheads.  Just to use up more of their amm inventory and give your real missiles a better chance of getting through.

Brian
 

Offline Narmio

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Re: Usage of a sniper doctrine
« Reply #2 on: May 04, 2011, 08:40:45 PM »
Yeah, chance to hit and ease of interception make crazy-long-ranged drones very hard to use effectively.  I've been experimenting with a similar idea, cloaked light carriers that launch fighters with lots of thermal signature reduction. Similar range to your setup, but the fighters can launch missiles with much better hit chances. I do find they don't have much punch, though, compared to my fleet carriers. I don't think I'll build many more of them, and instead look into a way to extend the strike range of my carriers to hit from a system away - fighter jump tenders and refueling tankers or something.

Also, when doing long-range cloaky stuff it's worthwhile to invest in missiles with active sensors onboard so you can switch off the shipboard sensors after firing.