Understanding Missile Agility

[liveware (OP)]

I am struggling to understand the role that the missile agility attribute is supposed to play. For any given missile I design, adding any amount of agility to it seems to reduce the displayed chance to hit. Is the agility attribute independent of the chance to hit calculation? I could see it making sense if the displayed chance to hit calculation ignores things like CWIS or FDF weapons, in which case there is a potential trade off between pre-determined missile accuracy and actual combat effectiveness.

Anyone have any insight on this?

[TMaekler]

Generally you need to compare two missiles of the same size. If you simply add agility the size will grow and you really can't compare them any longer. What I usually do is adding agility and removing fuel respectively. So it is a game between range and agility.

How exactly agility works, I am still trying to figure out myself.

[liveware (OP)]

I've been doing something similar to you except I've been trading engines for agility. So in my case it appears that I am trading chance to hit for chance to dodge anti-missile weapons fire.

[Migi]

Unless it changed without me noticing the formulas for agility are

Code: [Select]

Hit Chance = Manoeuvrer Rating * (Missile Speed/Target Speed)

Manoeuvrer Rating = Round( 10 + (Agil / Size) )

Agil = Agil MSP * Tech

Taken all together:

Hit Chance = Round(10 + (Agil MSP * Tech / Size)) * (Missile Speed/Target Speed)

MSP put towards agility increases the missile's chance to hit, it doesn't affect its chance of dodging other missiles or PD fire.


If you reduce engine size to increase agility you will eventually (or quickly at low tech levels) start to have a missile with a lower chance to hit than a missile with more engine. (Note this will lower your missiles chance of dodging AMMs and PD fire).
If you reduce fuel and increase agility you will end up with a missile with no range. This strategy might be useful for AMMs.

[liveware (OP)]

I'm still at fairly low TN tech levels. Need to do some more rigorous testing on my end I think before I try to provide any conclusions about my existing designs.

FWIW I observed the trend of reduced chance to hit with increasing agility with both my size 1 AMM and a larger size 50 ish antiship missile. Of course it's entirely possible that somewhere in between these two extremes agility becomes more useful or obviously better.

[SpikeTheHobbitMage]

Missile agility is a funny beast as additional agility only counts if it bumps the MR.  Anything in between those critical values gives reduced CTH%.  Agility is actually more important at low to mid tech levels because it makes up for your speed deficit.  For example a last-tech size 1 dual-purpose AMM/ASM doesn't need any points to agility because a 0.45MSP photonic drive hits the speed cap.

[liveware (OP)]

Spike, after reading through your other AMM posts it seems I need to completely redesign my AMMs. I built them thinking along the old VB6 rules where a 0 warhead missile could destroy an incoming missile. It seems this is no longer the case.

[JacenHan]

I'm pretty sure 0 warhead AMMs could not destroy a missile in VB6 either. If that was the case, it seems like it was probably a bug rather than an intended feature.

[liveware (OP)]

I've definitely observed 0 warhead missiles destroying incoming missiles in VB6. It's been a while since I've played that version though so maybe not got patched out.

[ZimRathbone]

I've definitely observed 0 warhead missiles destroying incoming missiles in VB6. It's been a while since I've played that version though so maybe not got patched out.

That hasn't been true since fairly early on (somewhere around v2 or v3 I think) unless a bug crept back in - it was one of the early anti-missile spam measures (along with minimum size 1 for all missiles).

[liveware (OP)]

Maybe I observed the enemy targeting my own crappy useless missiles then in VB6? It's been years and memory is imperfect...

Anyway, back to C#. After some min-maxing I came up with the following AMM for current campaign. I'm still pretty early on but I have researched a couple of the early missile improvement techs (nothing above 3000 ish RP if memory serves):

Code: [Select]

Missile Size: 1.0000 MSP  (2.50000 Tons)     Warhead: 1    Radiation Damage: 1    Manoeuvre Rating: 22
Speed: 6,600 km/s     Fuel: 1     Flight Time: 19.5 seconds     Range: 128,700 km
Cost Per Missile: 0.640016     Development Cost: 64
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 145.2%   3k km/s 48.4%   5k km/s 29.0%   10k km/s 14.5%

Materials Required
Tritanium  0.25
Gallicite  0.390016
Fuel:  1

My design process for this missile was as follows:

1. Start with minimum warhead (0.25), fuel (0.0004), and minimum engine size (0.1).

2. Add agility until chance to hit starts to decrease or missile exceeds size 1.

3. If missile size > 1, reduce agility until below 1.

4. Now reduce agility by 0.1 and increase engine by 0.1. If this reduces chance to hit, go back to previous best design.

5. If step #4 increased chance to hit, raise agility to maximum allowed for size 1 missile with engine size produced in step 4..

6. Check if step #5 produced a missile with better chance to hit than previous best. If not, start over.

7. My result is above based on my existing technology.


I have yet to combat test this design. However, I have finally encountered an NPR near one of my mining colonies, so the time for testing may be soon.

[Iceranger]

Maybe I observed the enemy targeting my own crappy useless missiles then in VB6? It's been years and memory is imperfect...

Anyway, back to C#. After some min-maxing I came up with the following AMM for current campaign. I'm still pretty early on but I have researched a couple of the early missile improvement techs (nothing above 3000 ish RP if memory serves):

Code: [Select]

Missile Size: 1.0000 MSP  (2.50000 Tons)     Warhead: 1    Radiation Damage: 1    Manoeuvre Rating: 22
Speed: 6,600 km/s     Fuel: 1     Flight Time: 19.5 seconds     Range: 128,700 km
Cost Per Missile: 0.640016     Development Cost: 64
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 145.2%   3k km/s 48.4%   5k km/s 29.0%   10k km/s 14.5%

Materials Required
Tritanium  0.25
Gallicite  0.390016
Fuel:  1

My design process for this missile was as follows:

1. Start with minimum warhead (0.25), fuel (0.0004), and minimum engine size (0.1).

2. Add agility until chance to hit starts to decrease or missile exceeds size 1.

3. If missile size > 1, reduce agility until below 1.

4. Now reduce agility by 0.1 and increase engine by 0.1. If this reduces chance to hit, go back to previous best design.

5. If step #4 increased chance to hit, raise agility to maximum allowed for size 1 missile with engine size produced in step 4..

6. Check if step #5 produced a missile with better chance to hit than previous best. If not, start over.

7. My result is above based on my existing technology.


I have yet to combat test this design. However, I have finally encountered an NPR near one of my mining colonies, so the time for testing may be soon.

In the process don't forget to increase/decrease the engine power modifier. It also plays an important role in the missile hit rate.

If you check out my missile optimizer http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=10999.0, it will give a number of results for your inputs. You can compare each of them (double-clicking on them), and see how the agility size/ engine power/ engine size interacts with each other.

[liveware (OP)]

Ah, yes. I've kept it pegged at 200% engine power for the AMMs. For others I play around with it more. I use AMMs like a melee weapon.

[liveware (OP)]

Well, back to the drawing board. I ran out of neutronium before I could field my first armed ship. No more armoured civilian transports for me.

Starting over again. Will likely instead pursue turreted gauss cannons for AM defense / point defense purposes next after reading through some of Spike's other posts on the subject. Seems like that is probably a better option long term as they require less micro to kill missiles.

[Father Tim]

I've been doing something similar to you except I've been trading engines for agility. So in my case it appears that I am trading chance to hit for chance to dodge anti-missile weapons fire.

No, you've been trading 'chance to hit' for 'chance to hit' and -- apparently -- doing so on the side of the curve where more speed is better than more agility.