Posted by: Pallington
« on: Yesterday at 02:03:51 PM »Necro posting, but terminal guidance is for saving on engine costs and therefore gallicite, without using a full 0.5 size for retargeting on size 1 AMMs. Because those AMMs aren't going anywhere if half their space is for retarget capability.
At BCAM (i know, nobody plays high enough tech to care), 0.71 mass ratio and x600% engine burn ratio caps you out at 270k km/s. This gives 270% to hit against 10km/s (therefore 23% or so against the 120km/s ASMs you're likely to run into), and costs 3.4 gallicite. Total cost 7.4.
At 0.46x600% and terminal guidance, you save 1.2 gallicite (and 1.2 boronide but who cares), spend only 0.6 uridium, and get a missile with 176k km/s but 282% to hit against 10km/s. Can't hit missiles built around being fast but even if you had the speed to catch up, without ATG your hit chance would be a piddly 15-20% max.
I haven't done spacemaster testing but if terminal guidance actually does work as these numbers imply, then late game when you start feeling gallicite crunch you REALLY should consider slowing your missiles and putting on terminal guidance (even lower levels will probably help) to make up the aim% difference. Eventually you'll even want to not slow down the missile that much (evidently next tech level will give me an extra few dozen km/s for my engine usage since i'm not capped out)
Retarget also is much worse when you don't care to make your AMM last longer than 20s, which is most likely the case for a size 1 AMM. If you use size 2 or size 3 AMM, then retarget is much more valuable, as you will probably put enough fuel for the AMM to last minutes, at which point you can actually try multiple times. Just beware the fuel expenses.
Edit: In fact, at bigger missiles this is even more important. You could probably save 2+ gallicite from your missile just by swapping over to TG instead of relying purely on speed, and use the extra space for retargeting or fuel for retargeting. If all you need is good range and a bit more than 120% of the ASM's speed, there's a very real argument to how much gallicite you put into your AMM.
At BCAM (i know, nobody plays high enough tech to care), 0.71 mass ratio and x600% engine burn ratio caps you out at 270k km/s. This gives 270% to hit against 10km/s (therefore 23% or so against the 120km/s ASMs you're likely to run into), and costs 3.4 gallicite. Total cost 7.4.
At 0.46x600% and terminal guidance, you save 1.2 gallicite (and 1.2 boronide but who cares), spend only 0.6 uridium, and get a missile with 176k km/s but 282% to hit against 10km/s. Can't hit missiles built around being fast but even if you had the speed to catch up, without ATG your hit chance would be a piddly 15-20% max.
I haven't done spacemaster testing but if terminal guidance actually does work as these numbers imply, then late game when you start feeling gallicite crunch you REALLY should consider slowing your missiles and putting on terminal guidance (even lower levels will probably help) to make up the aim% difference. Eventually you'll even want to not slow down the missile that much (evidently next tech level will give me an extra few dozen km/s for my engine usage since i'm not capped out)
Retarget also is much worse when you don't care to make your AMM last longer than 20s, which is most likely the case for a size 1 AMM. If you use size 2 or size 3 AMM, then retarget is much more valuable, as you will probably put enough fuel for the AMM to last minutes, at which point you can actually try multiple times. Just beware the fuel expenses.
Edit: In fact, at bigger missiles this is even more important. You could probably save 2+ gallicite from your missile just by swapping over to TG instead of relying purely on speed, and use the extra space for retargeting or fuel for retargeting. If all you need is good range and a bit more than 120% of the ASM's speed, there's a very real argument to how much gallicite you put into your AMM.
