Posted by: Michael Sandy
« on: June 11, 2020, 02:38:49 PM »In VB6, there is a niche for minimum sized cloaked missile ships, (around 40-60HS) as successor to a strike fighter role. Strikefighters work by launching from outside effective enemy missile range. But as sensors and fire controls increase in power, it becomes a lot harder to make fighters small enough to also mount a fire control large enough to hit the enemy from beyond the enemy's AMM range.
Cloaked missile ships use much longer ranged missiles, because they can carry much larger fire controls while having cross sections on the order of a fighter. Being undetected isn't as important as being untargetable. Unlike fighters, cloaked missile ships are large enough so that the mass for ECM and ECCM does not prohibitively affect performance.
An issue for cloaked ships in Aurora4x is that it is only useful if you can get the ship distinctly smaller than the enemy's MFC resolution, and therefore the most effective cloaked warship is the smallest possible. Interestingly, as technology increases, cloak efficiency and minimum sized cloak combine so that the minimum sized cloaked ship remains about the same.
Cloaked missile ships use much longer ranged missiles, because they can carry much larger fire controls while having cross sections on the order of a fighter. Being undetected isn't as important as being untargetable. Unlike fighters, cloaked missile ships are large enough so that the mass for ECM and ECCM does not prohibitively affect performance.
An issue for cloaked ships in Aurora4x is that it is only useful if you can get the ship distinctly smaller than the enemy's MFC resolution, and therefore the most effective cloaked warship is the smallest possible. Interestingly, as technology increases, cloak efficiency and minimum sized cloak combine so that the minimum sized cloaked ship remains about the same.