My first missile combat... wtf??

[Kaiser (OP)]

sorry for the title 

I'm trying to figure out how is it possibile to destroy some alien ships on alpha centaury. this is my first attempt to fight through missiles.
As you can see on the screenshots, the aliens have not shield, only a 2 layer armor and 8000t size ship.
I hit them many times (about 14 times each one) and several nuclear detonations have appeared, but the ships look like they have not received any damage, their speed is still the original as in the intelligence informations.

Is it normal? I use a smeg missile with 5 WH damage, should I use a better one?

[SteelChicken]

5 damage warhead won't penetrate undamaged level 2 armor.  Also, its likely it said MINIMUM of 2 layers of armor.

http://aurorawiki.pentarch.org/index.php?title=Armour_and_Shields

[MarcAFK]

Hmm, an 8,000 ton ship with 2 layers only has about 71 armour in total, since 14 warheads of 5 damage would equal 70 damage then you should have seen some damage earlier, However tactical information is not exact, you only know that it has at least 2 armour since your 5 point warheads didn't cause any internal damage, what you need to do to find out the exact armour strength is basically to keep stripping away the armour untill you hit the internals, then I believe the tactical intelligence will be more accurate.

[Kaiser (OP)]

Well, I counted from events how many times I hit them, 10 times each one. It means 50 WH each ship, no? The problem is that despite my work, they have destroyed 4 my of these DD using a single particle beam cannon, frakking NPRs.

[SteelChicken]

Post your ship designs.  Also, chances are, these are spoilers you are fighting and they are likely more technologically advanced.

[Kaiser (OP)]

Code: [Select]

Baden class Missile Destroyer    9,400 tons     275 Crew     1593.2 BP      TCS 188  TH 210  EM 0
3191 km/s     Armour 2-39     Shields 0-0     Sensors 48/48/0/0     Damage Control Rating 8     PPV 24
Maint Life 4.22 Years     MSP 847    AFR 88%    IFR 1.2%    1YR 76    5YR 1147    Max Repair 175 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months    Spare Berths 0   
Magazine 194   

200 EP Nuclear Pulse Engine (3)    Power 200    Fuel Use 83.85%    Signature 70    Exp 12%
Fuel Capacity 1,000,000 Litres    Range 22.8 billion km   (82 days at full power)

CIWS-160 (1x6)    Range 1000 km     TS: 16000 km/s     ROF 5       Base 50% To Hit
Size 6 Missile Launcher (4)    Missile Size 6    Rate of Fire 45
Missile Fire Control FC102-R100 (1)     Range 102.6m km    Resolution 100

Active Search Sensor MR100-R100 (1)     GPS 16800     Range 100.8m km    Resolution 100
Thermal Sensor TH8-48 (1)     Sensitivity 48     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  48m km
EM Detection Sensor EM8-48 (1)     Sensitivity 48     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  48m km

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
It's just a basic DD, with no beam weapons, I was sure to destroy them by missiles, but my missile had a very low chance to hit (1-2 hit every 4 missiles launched); moreover my DDs could not escape due to low speed compared to aliens, so I was frakked!

This is my old missile version:

Code: [Select]

Missile Size: 5.549 MSP  (0.27745 HS)     Warhead: 5    Armour: 0     Manoeuvre Rating: 32
Speed: 5400 km/s    Engine Endurance: 5.2 hours   Range: 100.9m km
Cost Per Missile: 4.025
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 172.8%   3k km/s 32%   5k km/s 34.6%   10k km/s 17.3%
Materials Required:    1.25x Tritanium   2.775x Gallicite   Fuel x122.5

Development Cost for Project: 402RP
This is the new one, more WH, more speed, more chance to hit, I will use it soon:

Code: [Select]

Missile Size: 6 MSP  (0.3 HS)     Warhead: 7    Armour: 0     Manoeuvre Rating: 28
Speed: 10000 km/s    Engine Endurance: 167 minutes   Range: 100.0m km
Cost Per Missile: 4.7
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 280%   3k km/s 84%   5k km/s 56%   10k km/s 28%
Materials Required:    1.75x Tritanium   2.95x Gallicite   Fuel x562.5

Development Cost for Project: 470RP
A question: what does "EW" means? A PDC of mine is trying to fire, but its chance to hit is lowered by this EW.

[Erik L]

EW = Electronic Warfare.

Basically the ECM on the target is reducing the effective range of your fire controls. ECCM linked to a fire control counteracts this effect.

[Kaiser (OP)]

yes, in fact they have ECM

[Kaiser (OP)]

again the same ships, trying to fire them with lasers, messages say "energy weapon fire cannot penetrate an atmosphere with a pressure of 1.00".

Can someone explain me what does it means?

[Sematary]

Are you firing at a planet?

[Anarade Relle]

Yeah, that message only comes up when your targetting a planetary target.

Your Missile Destroyer isn't bad.

[Black]

again the same ships, trying to fire them with lasers, messages say "energy weapon fire cannot penetrate an atmosphere with a pressure of 1.00".

Can someone explain me what does it means?

You have a PDC with lasers or something like that right? Those will not work if they are built at planet with atmosphere. If you want to build PDC on planets with atmosphere you will have to use missiles or messons.

[Hawkeye]

To expand on that atmosphere thingy:

Beam weapons, except for Mesons, have their damage reduced when shooting through atmosphere.

0.1 atm will reduce damage by 10%, 0.5 atm will take off 50% of damage and so on up to 1 atm, where no damage at all is dealt.
Also, after reduction, the damage is rounded _down_ which makes damage-1 weapons all but useless even in the thinnest of astmospheres

Mesones are _not_ affected by atmosphere, but are precission weapons, so can only be used to take out PDCs, but are no use vs. ground troops or populations (you would have to shoot every inhabitant on the ground singularly, i.e. one after the other, as there is no area of effect).

Re. your Missile Destroyer:
They are actually pretty fast, given Nuclear Pulse Engines.
I see your newer missiles are now a full size, i.e. no 5.something. This is good, as a fractional sized missiles are an inefficent use of space (you need a size 6 launcher to fire a 5.1 size missile)
Personally, I would probably have reduced the size to 5 for an additional tube and tried to get missile speed up to around 12 or 13k, but that is a very personal thing and your size 6 is fine too. It definitely packs more punch than my regular size-5 ones.

Maintenace time is a bit excessive, with just 1 year of deployment time, you could easily half that (or third it)

Also, if those ships work in groups of 3+, drop the CIWS and put a small Gauss turret on them.
CIWS only protects the ship it is on, while regular PD-turrets protect the entire TG. Yes, turrets are larger but with several ships, the benefit of an interlocking PD system is a quite large.
(A CIWS is roughly half the size of a regular dual PD turret or about the size of a single gun turret, so if 3 ships have a single gun turret, you have three barrels protecting every ship in your TG instead of the CIWS´s two and the more ships in the TG, the better it gets. Of course, you now need a res-1 sensor too, but a rather short ranged will be sufficient and in the long run, you want to employ a layered missile defense, i.e. Anti-missile missiles and PD guns, anyway)

[Kaiser (OP)]

Thank you for the answers guys,

well, yes my lasers were mounted on a PDC located on earth, but when I built it I thought it would have been positioned not on earth but in orbit of it. Now I understand why this message.. i was starting to think that such ships had some atmosphere inside 

About my missiles and ships, thank you Hawkeye for the detailed explanation, yes first missile was pretty smeg as I was not able to manage fine the decimals among WH, fuel, Agility etc etc. The second one looks better with no wasting of space and in fact I finally destroyed the aliens as I hit them many times 

[MarcAFK]

I'm going to ask if you used the maximum available multiplie on the engines on those missiles, if not, design new ones, theres no reason to use slower engines, since fuel tonnage is minimal for most missiles.