Posted by: Jorgen_CAB
« on: May 20, 2020, 02:27:42 AM »Quote from: Pedroig link=topic=11480. msg134028#msg134028 date=1589935192Quote from: Ulzgoroth link=topic=11480. msg134023#msg134023 date=1589934175
-Using a slow cruise stage means an increased risk of alien missiles hitting your missile ships before your missiles hit them. If they knock out the launching ship while the missiles are in flight, they won't work because there's no fire control. (Unless the missiles have their own active sensors. )
-Using an extremely slow missile like this risks the target simply flying away from it. The enemy fleet might do more than 6kkm/s!
-If the enemy had fighters or antimissile pickets forward of the main fleet, potentially not making themselves too easy to detect, they could clobber your missile salvos before terminal-stage separation while they're sitting ducks. No idea whether the AI would ever do that.
Both of these have the same answer, depends on what "slow" means and what the separation distance is compared to the defenders abilities. The first is the easiest to counteract since it is quite easy to have separation range longer than AMM range. The second is a tad trickier, but in general can be cancelled/countered by having fighter escort the 1st stage to separation range, maybe even throwing out some AMM's out there to add to Salvo density, even if they won't hit full range. . .
The risk of losing the FCM platform before missile impact is indeed a real one, hopefully my PD envelope could hold his salvo and preserve the the launch platforms. This was all designed considering my admittedly limited experience of what I have observed from the NPRs at this tech stage. Hopefully this would be aided by being able to launch outside his range and then hold the range open for a while.
One of my ideas behind this design, I have no idea if the AI would actually take this into account, was that seeing such a laughably slow missile salvo inbound the enemy would continue to close on my fleet seeing it as easy kills.
The most likely thing that would happen if someone know that your missiles was so slow they would simply turn and run away effectively making your missile into only useful at VERY short ranges.
Now... the NPR are not smart enough to do this either... but they might do it by mistake if their FC have a good range. NPR missiles also tend to have pretty good ranges too.