Close Assault Missile discussion (split from official 5.20 suggestions)

[ExChairman (OP)]

CAM (Close Assault Missile) for fighters... A small engine, little fuel and a big bomb at the top, can only bee used in point blank range... Aim at a ship to far and it will miss, no guidance needed, only fire control....

[UnLimiTeD]

Uhm.... so just a normal missile? You can create whatever missile you like.

[ExChairman (OP)]

Hmm, yea but I was more after the rocket pod, were there is alot small missiles... Usually for air to ground, not much of a accuracy at longer ranges but a real killer close in... Of course the fighters have to survive the defensive fire first...

[Vanigo]

Hmm, yea but I was more after the rocket pod, were there is alot small missiles... Usually for air to ground, not much of a accuracy at longer ranges but a real killer close in... Of course the fighters have to survive the defensive fire first...

So, what, dumbfire missiles that act like beams with limited ammo? That could be nice; there is something of a lack of beam options for fighters.

[On_Target]

I'm really not seeing the point of a dumbfire missile, fighter based or not.

[UnLimiTeD]

I can absolutely see the point of a beam weapon with ammo.
Theres Missiles without as well by now, so why not, adds to the tactical potential.
And allows better fighter designs;

Well, guess we can't have everything, I'd also like battery Lasers that have to be charged on a Mothership.

[Vanigo]

Yeah, the point would be giving fighters a beam option that doesn't involve cutting your accuracy down to 16% base. Something like:

Dumbfire missiles use only warhead and engine space. They only carry enough fuel for one second of operation, assumed to be a negligible amount.
Dumbfire missile engines don't use any space for steering or such, so they produce 50-100% more power for their mass.
Dumbfire missiles have a maximum range equal to the distance they can travel in one second.
Dumbfire missiles can be (and almost always are) smaller than one missile space.
Dumbfire missiles are fired from specialized launchers which can only fire one type of missile. These launchers are .5 HS per missile space of the associated missile, and are researched along with the missiles themselves.
All dumbfire missile launchers have a 5 second reload time.

Makes for a great interceptor weapon, and okay for bombing ships with no fighter defense - better range and accuracy than gauss cannons, and maybe better firepower, but limited ammo, and you have to give them bigger beam fire controls to really take advantage of the range. On the flipside, it lets you carry way more ammo than size 1 box launchers. Not much good for anything else, though - range is even lower than other beam weapons, and aside from being extremely miniaturizable it doesn't really have any compensatory advantages.

[UnLimiTeD]

Why would you need a bigger bfc for it, the range isn't that big, at the highest 300k, thats average by the techlevel you get there.
Also, the concept looks way complicated.
I'd say I'd be easier to just create some sort of accelerator tech for Missile Launchers that propels the missile, and have orbital bombs with 0.25 minimum size.

Or if someone has a better concept.
I don't think creating a whole new weapon type that is only useful for fighters is a good idea.

[Brian Neumann]

One thing to note is that Steve has supposedly limited missile sizes to a minimum of 1 msp.  This was mostly to stop the exploit of using lots of .25 msp missiles as chaff.  He would need to remove that limit for this to work.

There is already a way for fighters to carry one shot lasers fairly easily.  Use the reduced size laser and you can get some fairly good lasers that have very long recharge times.

Brian

[Vanigo]

Why would you need a bigger bfc for it, the range isn't that big, at the highest 300k, thats average by the techlevel you get there.
Also, the concept looks way complicated.

By that time, you'd be cutting fire controls for your gauss cannon interceptors down as far as they go, though.
I don't think it's really that complicated. You could simplify it to just another beam weapon that happens to have the same background techs as missiles, really, if you don't mind fixing the warhead size:engine size ratio. You could do it right in the system design window. Pick engine tech, warhead tech, and desired warhead strength. Add another dropdown for warhead:engine ratio, maybe. The behind-the-scenes calculations might be a bit complex, but I don't really see a problem with that.

Brian, yeah, that's an option, but extremely long recharge times are kind of a problem. They make it practically impossible for your interceptors to contribute to point defense, for one thing. And there should really be options for people who don't use lasers, don't you think?

[UnLimiTeD]

I'd say the easiest way in this case would be to rework laser miniaturization.
make it 4x and 16x reload instead of 5x and 20x, and add some new tech for 33% at 48x and 20% with hangar reload of X seconds, or maybe just make it a 150x or something.

As for those missiles, given the duration of 1 second, they'd be only interceptable by point blank defense fire.
Now those things could just be calculated after other missiles, so only left over Firepower shoots on them, and you could not swamp enemy Anti-Missile systems with it. Or just make them non-interceptable, Beam weapons aren't, either, and this is essentially asking for small beam weapons having a bigger punch/ time in exchange for costing ammo.
Quite the opposite of Plasma Torpedoes, which are having longer reload times in favor of not using ammo.

However it gets implemented, I think it's a logic step, and will allow for more weapon variety.

[Vanigo]

Oh, the way I see it, under the hood they would be beam weapons, with all that entails, just using missiles when they fire. Keep things simple.

I think for hangar reload versions of existing beams, railguns might be more appropriate than lasers.

[UnLimiTeD]

True, but lasers already have the tech. Railguns just seem to be completely underused for a beam weapon, because for some reason you can't put them in a turret.

[Brian Neumann]

Railguns are underutilized by most players, but not being in turrets is not a real handicap normally.  They are both better and worse than other beam weapons.  They are in general cheaper to reasearch both in the focal size, and in the range multipliers.  They have a lower max range multiplier and focal size than the other beam weapons do.  The side effect of having a lower reasearch cost is the weapon itself costs less as well.  While they can not be put in turrets, in general a turret ups the chance of hitting a high speed target by x4, with a weight penalty of in general about 33% of the weight of the weapon.  Railguns get 4 shots per weapon per cycle time so the net effect is generally a wash.  The biggest drawback is that the individual shots do relitivly low damage, and that damage is also the basis of the weapon range multiplier.  A good example is the 10cm railgun vs laser.  A railgun does 1 point of damage with 4 such shots, a laser gets 1 shot but does 3 points of damage.  With the same range multiplier the laser has 3 times the max range, and beyond the 3 point damage range the railgun doesn't even reach.  Within that range it potentially does 4 points of damage.  The 12 cm weapon does 2 vs 4 for the laser, and the 15cm does 3 vs 6 for the laser.  In general beyond the 12cm size the laser will have about double the range.

Overall I find them a great point blank weapon, and a good alternative for point defense early on.

Brian

[UnLimiTeD]

Yes, but thats the point.
If you go for beams, you either go for deep armor penetration (Lasers, Mesons) or Long Range (Lasers, Beams), or you use them for point Defense (Lasers, Gauss).
The Railgun kinda doesn't excel at anything, it's mediocre at all possible tasks, and mediocre is not good enough for point defense.
Only once the enemy has thick enough armor that lasers don't cut it anymore (pun) they have a merit, or on FACs.

However, in light of those arguments I probably agree that a railgun is a good first step for trying a system of ammo weapons.
However, will it be more powerful, or work like laser miniaturization? I mean, what is better, "will be" implies that Steve would actually like it.^^
Someone Bribe him.