PD missile inefficiency

[Zeebie (OP)]

My PD missile systems work...sort of.  My active sensors have range 4m and resolution 1, but enemy missiles only get detected at 300k. Most of the time (maybe 80%?) my AMMs get launched right away.  About half of the time, though, the enemy missiles impact before the AMMs can intercept (it's not just that they miss).  What are the factors that go into interception? What do I need to tweak to get a better interception rate?

[Charlie Beeler]

Odds are good that your AMM's are slower that the ASM's you want intercepted.  At certain range breaks the ASM's will travel further that the AMM's can cover for the intercept, effectively flying right by without an intercept chance.  This is not "realistic" but it is a function of movement and intercept routines in the program.

The only real option you have is improve your missile engine tech.

[metalax]

You will want longer range sensors, currently you are picking them up far too close. The detection range for missile size 6 or smaller missiles is roughly 1/9th of the normal detection range, if you look at the details when designing a resolution 1 active sensor it will show the detection range for size 6, 8 and 12 missiles.

The earliest that your AMM's can attempt to intercept is 10 seconds after detection. They can launch 5 seconds after detection and will move to intercept the next increment. If you have a short detection range it is possible for the enemies missiles to cross your detection range to impact on your ship before your AMM's get a chance to move.

[Jikor]

For a decent chance to intercept the missiles you ideally would want to detect them at around 2 million meters. At low tech levels (Active Grav 10 em 5) You need around a size 20 sensor.

[Victuz]

Yeah for my sensors about 50 years in with the classical empire start I made sure that my sensors cover at least 5m over the actual full range of the AMM's themselves. It seems to work well enough as they have in general range of 25-30m km. This would probably scale depending on your fuel efficiency and how many engines you put on them.
Also a tip from me, with early tech (for me at least) it's often way better to make missiles as fast as possible rather than as agile as possible.
Agility very quickly turns into dead weight that doesn't really contribute to actually hitting the damn things at all, while engines give you a higher chance to hit on a much better "curve" I'd say. This might possibly change as you get higher missile agility but for me more raw POWAH works better than being agile.

On a side question from me. In case of AMM's do I need multiple fire controls for all the AMM launchers or can there just be one for say 20 of them working well enough?.
My AMM ships have 20 launchers with 4 controls (so 5 launchers per fire control) but I don't know if it actually serves any purpose or just serves as dead weight.

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Bud AMM class Missile Frigate    5 500 tons     422 Crew     2197.4 BP      TCS 110  TH 64  EM 1140
3636 km/s     Armour 4-27     Shields 38-250     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 2     PPV 10
Maint Life 2 Years     MSP 499    AFR 121%    IFR 1.7%    1YR 166    5YR 2496    Max Repair 630 MSP
Magazine 181   

Military Magneto-Plasma (5)    Power 80    Fuel Use 60%    Signature 12.8    Armour 0    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 200 000 Litres    Range 109.1 billion km   (347 days at full power)
Delta R250/12.5 Shields (15)   Total Fuel Cost  188 Litres per day

AMM Launcher  (20)    Missile Size 1    Rate of Fire 40
AMM Missile Control (4)     Range 32.3m km    Resolution 1
Savior AMM MK.2 (181)  Speed: 41 600 km/s   End: 11.5m    Range: 28.8m km   WH: 1    Size: 1    TH: 319 / 191 / 95

AMM Active Sensor (1)     GPS 420     Range 46.2m km    Resolution 1

Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

Actually while writing this down I kind of answered myself, the use would be the fact that I can have multiple controls intercepting missiles with different amounts of rockets at different ranges.
But is there any mechanical change with the hit chance or anything?

[Hawkeye]

As with everything in Aurora, it depends

Every Firecon can only engage one single target (in that case, a salvo of enemy missiles) per 5 second increment.

If you are facing relatively few, but large salvos of incoming ASMs, few or even only one AMM-Firecon will be sufficient.

If you are facing many, small salvos, on the other hand, you will need many AMM-Firecons, or some of those salvos will get _very_ close before they get targetet by AMMs.

[Victuz]

Ah I get ya. That would explain how when I was fighting the spoilers every 4th salvo or so would get past. Amazingly enough survived that fight heavily battered but without a single ship loss or even a casualty, thank god for shields.

[Bgreman]

I had actually derived a criterion for how to allocate MSP to engines/agility for max hit chance.

If S is the amount of msp devoted to engines + agility (after fuel, warhead, armor, and sensors are allocated), then if S < 10 * missile size / agility tech value, you want to put all your remaining MSP (i.e., all of S) into engines.  Otherwise, you want to put s_engines = 1/2(S + 10*Missile Size) into engines and s_agility = S - s_engines into agility.

Too bad this goes out the window for 6.0.