A question with the sequence of play.

[Ashery (OP)]

Or possibly questions, depending on how the initial answer goes.

Anyways, while searching for reasons why my anti-missile fighters were completely ineffective, I noticed this bit in the sequence of play:

# Fleets Move
# Fighter Groups Move
# Fighter Groups Reload (remaining rearm time is reduced)
# Monsters Move (including precursors)
# Missile Salvos move (including intercept, point blank point defense and damage allocation\planetary bombardment)

It didn't occur to me when I first read through that bit, but after experimenting in SM mode, I realize that this makes beam based anti-missile fighters completely useless unless the missiles are either slow enough that they will still be in range of the fighters after the movement phase (In which case any half-assed point defense would be more than enough to take care of'em) or you manually calculate where to place a waypoint in anticipation of where the missiles will be and hope that you're within firing range (Good luck with that if you're using low/mid tech gauss weapons).

I suppose the initial reason for missiles moving last was to allow one to put some additional distance between themselves and the missile salvos, but it makes it nearly impossible to carry out what should be the rather trivial order of intercepting missiles.

One possible solution is to add an intercept order that, at least when used against missiles, would simply have the ships move after the missiles do.  Would be a bit more complicated when dealing with targets that have actual initiative, but it shouldn't be too difficult.

Of course, it's always possible that I've overlooked an existing order/set of orders that will carry out what I'm trying to do, but after looking over everything again, I still don't see anything.

[Charlie Beeler]

Or possibly questions, depending on how the initial answer goes.

Anyways, while searching for reasons why my anti-missile fighters were completely ineffective, I noticed this bit in the sequence of play:

It didn't occur to me when I first read through that bit, but after experimenting in SM mode, I realize that this makes beam based anti-missile fighters completely useless unless the missiles are either slow enough that they will still be in range of the fighters after the movement phase (In which case any half-assed point defense would be more than enough to take care of'em) or you manually calculate where to place a waypoint in anticipation of where the missiles will be and hope that you're within firing range (Good luck with that if you're using low/mid tech gauss weapons).

I suppose the initial reason for missiles moving last was to allow one to put some additional distance between themselves and the missile salvos, but it makes it nearly impossible to carry out what should be the rather trivial order of intercepting missiles.

One possible solution is to add an intercept order that, at least when used against missiles, would simply have the ships move after the missiles do.  Would be a bit more complicated when dealing with targets that have actual initiative, but it shouldn't be too difficult.

Of course, it's always possible that I've overlooked an existing order/set of orders that will carry out what I'm trying to do, but after looking over everything again, I still don't see anything.

What are you trying to do?  Please include discriptions of tech and ship designs.  Also include the scenario of your issue.  Keep in mind that you have to be able to see the missiles at least 10 seconds out.

[ardem]

I think he trying to intercept missile, that are not directed at the fighters, then use point defense to knock them out.

I can see how this is failing, since point defense works with missile move, the missiles are moving out of range, before you can fire. The only way i see you being able to use these fighters is hang them around the target the missiles are firing at.

Steve would need to make some programming adjustments that Point defense can work on ship move, if not the main target, this would allow missiles to be intercepted, by guass and lasers.

At the moment have your fighters positioned near the missiles intended target.

[Ashery (OP)]

Err? Thought it was fairly straightforward what I was saying, but I'll go into more detail.

My fighter design:

Code: [Select]

Tribal class Fighter    123 tons     3 Crew     36 BP      TCS 2.45  TH 58  EM 0
23673 km/s     Armour 1-2     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 0.75
Maint Life 0 Years     MSP 0    AFR 24%    IFR 0.3%    1YR 1    5YR 22    Max Repair 15 MSP

FTR Magneto-plasma Drive E1120 (1)    Power 57.6    Fuel Use 11200%    Signature 57.6    Armour 0    Exp 80%
Fuel Capacity 5,000 Litres    Range 0.7 billion km   (7 hours at full power)

Gauss Cannon R3-12.5 (1x3)    Range 30,000km     TS: 23673 km/s     Accuracy Modifier 12.5%     RM 3    ROF 5        1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Fire Control S00.3 16.32-6250 (FTR) (1)    Max Range: 32,640 km   TS: 25000 km/s     69 39 8 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

My test "carrier" (Yes, I realize there are no power generators.  Thank god this was just a testing game, hehe):

Code: [Select]

Hood class Cruiser    6,000 tons     542 Crew     1041 BP      TCS 120  TH 400  EM 0
3333 km/s     Armour 4-29     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 4     PPV 42
Maint Life 4.24 Years     MSP 434    AFR 72%    IFR 1%    1YR 39    5YR 582    Max Repair 270 MSP
Hangar Deck Capacity 1000 tons    

Magneto-plasma Drive E8 (5)    Power 80    Fuel Use 80%    Signature 80    Armour 0    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 350,000 Litres    Range 131.2 billion km   (455 days at full power)

Quad R12/C3 Meson Cannon Turret (2x4)    Range 120,000km     TS: 21700 km/s     Power 24-12     RM 12    ROF 10        1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Fire Control S03 75-24000 (1)    Max Range: 150,000 km   TS: 24000 km/s     93 87 80 73 67 60 53 47 40 33

Active Search Sensor MR5-R1 (1)     GPS 53     Range 5.8m km    Resolution 1
I created a second empire using SM mode and made a test ship that launches six size four missiles that move at 20k/s so that I could test my fighters in something close to working conditions.

The missiles are detected a solid thirty odd seconds out, but the problem is that my fighter task force has no intercept type command.  All I have access to are "Move to" and "Follow" (Well, and three other commands that are meaningless in this scenario).  Using "Follow" is useless as my fighters move before the missiles.  Meaning that, thanks to the SoP, they move to the location that the missiles will move away from.

Here's the key part of the scenario as it plays out: For the sake of simplification, say we were working on a straight line with my carrier at 0, the missile volley at 600k and moving towards me at 20k/s, and my fighters sitting stationary at 550k.  I give my fighters the command to follow the missiles, expecting them to intercept them around the 500k mark.  Instead, what happens is that my fighters fly to the 600k mark, where the missiles are at at the time they act on their move order, but before I can fire, the missiles get their move and head to the 500k point.  At that point, I'm basically screwed as my fighters, while being faster than the missiles by 3k/sec, can't make up the 100k difference in such a short time frame.

So, in essence, what I'm looking for is the ability to be able to fly to where the missiles will be after their move so that my fighters can actually engage them *without* resorting to manually plotting their move every five seconds (And likely screwing up thanks to the very limited range of gauss weapons).

[Ashery (OP)]

At the moment have your fighters positioned near the missiles intended target.

Really disappointing to hear as that completely eliminates their purpose.  The whole point of using fighters instead of PD is that I'd be able to get multiple attacks per missile volley instead of relying on the single shot that most PD weapons get.  The fighter strategy seems to be one of the best ways to counter strategies like the swarm of fighters using box launchers that overwhelm PD completely, but have massive reload times.  If I get them far enough out (And the plan was to have a screen of ~1k ton ships with nothing but an engine and a large missile sensor), I'd take out most of the missiles before they even got in range of my fleet PD.

I wouldn't think it would be that hard to incorporate, though.  Another possible method is to have the game calculate where the missiles will move to before they actually move, and any task group with the intercept order will move towards that point instead of where they're at at the time of the task group's move.

[ardem]

I suggest posting a suggestion in the suggest forum.

I hope that made sense. <smile>

[Thiosk]

With what missiles can do in this game, beams are rather restricted to a secondary role anyway, and I've read other's posts that came to the conclusion that beam fighters are essentially useless, for a variety of reasons.  I must confess, I don't really like the idea of beam fighters for point defense purposes (it might be broken-levels of too-awesome).   I've thought of methods to improve the beam fighter, but havn't come up with anything remotely cogent enough for the suggestions thread.

[Brian Neumann]

I am not sure when missiles move, but I think it is when the initiative for the launching ship would have them move.  To go after the missiles just put your initiative rating to 0.  This will be lower than any ship would normally be at and will allow you to move after the missiles move.

Brian

[Charlie Beeler]

Ashery, those fighters will have an extremely low effectiveness vs just about anything.  Sorry, but that is a consiquence of the reduced size GC's, the GC's range and the fire control selected.  If you can get the fighters to 10kkm or less they only have a 69% to hit, and the reduced GC's make that really 8.625%. 

Your correct about the sequence of play, with all ships moving first fighters moving second and missiles last missile(initiative dictates sequence within each movement type), intercept by fighters will not work.  I believe that Steve built the sequence this way with the intent that fighters will always have intiative over ships and missiles will always have initiative over ships and fighters.

Your best bet for a fighter intercept of missiles is to use the escort functionality of the task groups.  It's not perfect and the limited range of the GC's make even more difficult(60kkm engagement window).  But, you can (with a sensor suite with long missile detection range) set the escort range and bearing that will give the fighters a small, albet better, chance to get some standoff shots.  This is actually someplace where lasers will be a better choice than GC's since they can give you a better range window. 

Also select a bfc that has the 4x range modifier.  This gives you the best tohit change and shorter ranges.  Yes they will be quite large, especially if you have the 4x tracking speed as well.  you do get some help with fighters effectively starting at 4x tracking bonus. 

[Ashery (OP)]

@Charlie

But you miss their core design principle: To be as light and as fast as possible in order to keep up with all but the fastest missiles.  Sure, I could go lasers for more range, but that adds on a good 140 tons at that tech level, halving the number of fighters I can carry and crippling their speed advantage.  The same thing would be argued if I increased the size of the BFC to maximize their to hit.  They rely on being able to keep up with all but the fastest missiles so that they can attack during multiple phases.

Around this tech level, for half a HS less than the hanger, you can put in a quad gauss turret tracking at 20k with a base hit rate of 67%.  Note that this does *not* include the non-trivially sized BFC that you'll need to properly target the missiles, but lets be generous and give the design advantage to the system that's thought superior.  If we throw in the BFC that I designed for my carrier we're looking at an additional 3HS and an accuracy of 93% at 10k.  Let's also assume that the missiles are moving at 20k, as that's a fairly realistic expectation at this tech level, with a reload of 30sec.  Oh, and because I'm lazy, I'll just fix the gauss rate of fire at four.

So, with all that said, my fighters are looking at three to four phases of combat to the turret's one due to the 30sec reload.

Fighters: With three phases of combat, we're looking at 3 * 32 * 0,086 for their expected number of hits.  With four, it'd simply be 4 * 32 * 0,086.  (Phases of combat * shots per phase * accuracy, if it wasn't clear).

Turret: We're looking at roughly 16 * 0,62.

Feeling too lazy to do some arithmetic, so I'll just simplify the three to 16 * 0,51 for the fighters@3, 16 * 0,68 for fighters@4, and 16 * 0,62 for the turret.

This is, of course, a simplification of the combat as other factors are not included for the sake of simplification.  There's no missile tracking bonus, which is something that would favor the turret slightly.  The missiles are all assumed to be in a single salvo, which favors the turret heavily.  In a more realistic setting, even if the fighters were barely half as effective in my simplified model as the turret, they may well take down more missiles if the turret is forced to fire on a salvo with only four missiles in it.  ECM/ECCM haven't been included at all.  There are probably other influencing factors that I haven't included here, but this should get the point across that the fighters hold up well against the turrets on paper.

@general

The thing is, I can already accomplish what I want to do (intercept the missiles), but it's a complete pain in the ass as I'm forced to visually estimate, without a grid, where the missiles will end up after their phase of movement.  Combine that with the fact that I'll have to be sending many squads of fighters to that location (Each "carrier" (Escort is a better name) only carries eight) and I'll be doing several minutes of tedious micromanagement to pull off a single phase of anti-missile combat.

[Charlie Beeler]

@Charlie

But you miss their core design principle: To be as light and as fast as possible in order to keep up with all but the fastest missiles.  Sure, I could go lasers for more range, but that adds on a good 140 tons at that tech level, halving the number of fighters I can carry and crippling their speed advantage.  The same thing would be argued if I increased the size of the BFC to maximize their to hit.  They rely on being able to keep up with all but the fastest missiles so that they can attack during multiple phases.

Around this tech level, for half a HS less than the hanger, you can put in a quad gauss turret tracking at 20k with a base hit rate of 67%.  Note that this does *not* include the non-trivially sized BFC that you'll need to properly target the missiles, but lets be generous and give the design advantage to the system that's thought superior.  If we throw in the BFC that I designed for my carrier we're looking at an additional 3HS and an accuracy of 93% at 10k.  Let's also assume that the missiles are moving at 20k, as that's a fairly realistic expectation at this tech level, with a reload of 30sec.  Oh, and because I'm lazy, I'll just fix the gauss rate of fire at four.

So, with all that said, my fighters are looking at three to four phases of combat to the turret's one due to the 30sec reload.

Fighters: With three phases of combat, we're looking at 3 * 32 * 0,086 for their expected number of hits.  With four, it'd simply be 4 * 32 * 0,086.  (Phases of combat * shots per phase * accuracy, if it wasn't clear).

Turret: We're looking at roughly 16 * 0,62.

Feeling too lazy to do some arithmetic, so I'll just simplify the three to 16 * 0,51 for the fighters@3, 16 * 0,68 for fighters@4, and 16 * 0,62 for the turret.

This is, of course, a simplification of the combat as other factors are not included for the sake of simplification.  There's no missile tracking bonus, which is something that would favor the turret slightly.  The missiles are all assumed to be in a single salvo, which favors the turret heavily.  In a more realistic setting, even if the fighters were barely half as effective in my simplified model as the turret, they may well take down more missiles if the turret is forced to fire on a salvo with only four missiles in it.  ECM/ECCM haven't been included at all.  There are probably other influencing factors that I haven't included here, but this should get the point across that the fighters hold up well against the turrets on paper.

@general

The thing is, I can already accomplish what I want to do (intercept the missiles), but it's a complete pain in the ass as I'm forced to visually estimate, without a grid, where the missiles will end up after their phase of movement.  Combine that with the fact that I'll have to be sending many squads of fighters to that location (Each "carrier" (Escort is a better name) only carries eight) and I'll be doing several minutes of tedious micromanagement to pull off a single phase of anti-missile combat.

Actually no I didn't miss your intent.  As you've found out already, it can't work within the current game mechanics.  Yes, with a speed advantage you should be able to "tail" a missile salvo.  But unless Steve changes the movement sequence to be speed/initiative only it's move micromanagement than it is worth.

From a tactical, strategic and logistics point of view your better of with the mass being dedicated to a fullsize point defense suites on all ship of the fleet for final mutual defense.

Where are you getting a reload rate of 30seconds?  It sure isn't Gauss Cannons, they all have a 5 second cyclic rate.  Lasers have a variable rate dictated on weapon size, capacitor, and power availability.

[Ashery (OP)]

The reload rate was for some size four launchers that the opponent was using.

I'll continue to disagree that PD turrets are more effective in all situations as they're prone to being over saturated when dealing with low RoF, high quantity strategies (Fighters using box launchers, for instance).  And that is the exact area where my fighters would excel, as their time on each group of salvos is dependent upon the amount of time the opponent takes to reload.

Steve shouldn't need to change the way initiative works, I'm just looking for the game to calculate where the enemy will be in five seconds/at the end of the movement phase and move to that point (All of the information to do so is already presented to the player) instead of moving to where it was when the movement phase started.

[ardem]

I think an intercept command is actual a good idea, all that steve needs to do if on this command allow the moving craft to fire at missiles.

That why I said suggest it and hope steve implements it

[Charlie Beeler]

The reload rate was for some size four launchers that the opponent was using.

I'll continue to disagree that PD turrets are more effective in all situations as they're prone to being over saturated when dealing with low RoF, high quantity strategies (Fighters using box launchers, for instance).  And that is the exact area where my fighters would excel, as their time on each group of salvos is dependent upon the amount of time the opponent takes to reload.

Steve shouldn't need to change the way initiative works, I'm just looking for the game to calculate where the enemy will be in five seconds/at the end of the movement phase and move to that point (All of the information to do so is already presented to the player) instead of moving to where it was when the movement phase started.

Never said that PD turrets are more effective in all situations, nothing is.  Example, fighter strikegroup alpha strikes are best countered by smallcraft with the express mission if engaging said strikegroup beyond it's attack range of the fleet being defended.  Said intercept smallcraft mount size 1 box launchers and are set to missile defense initially.  That is just one counter and is not the only one.  Another is a fleet that is heavy on distributed missile defense with an emphasis on counter missiles and PD turrets to deal with the leakers.  etc etc etc.  

The problem with using the reduced size GC turrets I've already pointed out,  the one in your design reduces the 10kkm to-hit chance from 69% to less than 9%.  If the AI adds armor and/or ECM things get worse fast.  Even if your facing a fleet with a 30 cyclic rate your not going to stop the incoming missiles before the next salvo is in range without an overwhelming force advantage.  

I've played with the fighters a lot.  Trying to use fighters as missile interceptors is not effective within the current game mechanics.  They can be used, as I've described, as a moderately effective standoff PD platform.  Their best role is the antishipping strike...with missiles.  

Hey, play it out and writeup an AAR that proves me wrong.  My opinion is that you can't consistantly enough to make it effective without "gaming" both sides.  

One more thing to consider, there is an AI NPR that uses salvo of 66 missile traveling at 45k kps and faster.  Those also have a cyclic rate of 10 seconds.

[Ashery (OP)]

Heh, nice, countering my argument by exploiting my laziness.

I should've stated: "I'll continue to disagree that PD turrets are more effective in all situations dealing with anti-ship missiles. "

I realize that the miniaturized GCs (Not turrets, their high speed eliminates the need for a turret mounting) mean that, on a per shot basis, my accuracy will be terrible, but remember that GCs scale in a linear manner with respect to their size; A HS6 GC has a 100% hit rating, while a HS0,6 has a 10%.  This means that, while a larger GC will be more consistent, the expected value, based upon HS alone, will be the same.

Armor would be an issue, but that means that they'll have to cut back elsewhere.  And it won't be particularly effective, either, as my PD will consist largely of Mesons.  ECM can also be a potential problem, but, if I'm reading things correctly, the modifier for a miniaturized GC is applied after everything else (It would be horribly broken if it didn't), and so I'll take the same percentage off of my final hit rate with both my PD and my fighters (So with an unanswered ECM2, my PD will go from 100% (For simplicity's sake) to 80% and my fighters would go from 10% to 8%.  Actually, I'll leave that bit in, but ECM actually would favor PD, as the base rate of a BFC is higher than that of my fighters (93% would go to 73% for the PD, while my fighters would go from 69% to 49%).  PD, however, is definitely easier to equip with ECCM, but it's not impossible for future fighter designs to incorporate some compact ECCM (As I progress down the +power, -efficiency track for engines, I'll have more room to work with).  However, the value of a 1HS compact ECCM would probably be less than simply increasing the size of the GC by a full HS.  That's largely dependent upon the opponent's level of ECM and the player's level of ECCM, though. 

Also, I should emphasize that these are not my only anti-missile measures.  The fighters are a system that's strong point is the exact situation where standard PD is weakest: Missile volleys aimed at oversaturating PD with little regard to how long it takes to reload.

That last bit is an interesting situation, but my fighters will still manage to get off two volleys per salvo, so while they won't be as effective as straight PD, they won't be useless.