Posted by: Venec
« on: February 28, 2010, 02:20:44 PM »Do drones work in newest Aurora? I read somewhere that their code is broken.
Posted by: Steve Walmsley
« on: February 28, 2010, 09:51:07 AM »Quote from: "Vanigo"
I have a semi-related question. Is there any difference between drones and missiles, other than the slower, more efficient engine and the fixed engine size and manuverability? Also, is there any way to deliberately slow down your drones? Seems to me like it'd be handy to have drones moving at the same speed as the launching ship, so you could stack up a single gigantic salvo of cluster missiles.The difference is the engine. As you mentioned it has a lower power-to-weight ratio and is much more fuel efficient. It is also a fixed size, like a fighter engine or ship engine.
Steve
Posted by: Father Tim
« on: February 26, 2010, 06:31:01 PM »Quote from: "Vanigo"
I have a semi-related question. Is there any difference between drones and missiles, other than the slower, more efficient engine and the fixed engine size and manuverability? Also, is there any way to deliberately slow down your drones? Seems to me like it'd be handy to have drones moving at the same speed as the launching ship, so you could stack up a single gigantic salvo of cluster missiles.
The only difference is the engine - and possibly some obscure corner of the code where Steve hasn't yet accounted for drones.
Speed equals engine power divided by object mass (min 1km/s), so the only way to slow down your drones is to put more stuff on them or use less powerful engines (Nuclear Thermal instead of Nuclear Pulse, or engines with minus power/explosion, plus fuel efficiency tech). And yes, the giant salvo is handy - so handy that using it 'broke' earlier versions of the game.
Posted by: Vanigo
« on: February 25, 2010, 10:06:10 PM »I have a semi-related question. Is there any difference between drones and missiles, other than the slower, more efficient engine and the fixed engine size and manuverability? Also, is there any way to deliberately slow down your drones? Seems to me like it'd be handy to have drones moving at the same speed as the launching ship, so you could stack up a single gigantic salvo of cluster missiles.
Posted by: Arwyn
« on: February 25, 2010, 08:37:33 PM »Quote from: "WCG"
Quote from: "Arwyn"The upside, at least in simulation, is that it clobbers the NPRs current classes.
This discussion is very useful for a newbie like me, but what do you mean by "at least in simulation"? Is there something (else) I'm missing here?
Thanks,
Bill
No, your not missing anything. You can simulate this via some quick game juggling. I have a backup copy of my game, just in case something gets corrupted. I copied the backup game, then opened it up, used SM powers to insta build and drop a small squadron of my new ships into a system with the bad guys in it. Fight breaks out and you get a quick validation of your design, in a semi-real world situation.
In the "real" game, the first test of the design didnt go so well. The NPR ambushed me at the jump point with several 7800 ton destroyers armed with seven VERY advanced lasers. My brand new shiny cruisers never got a volley off.
Posted by: WCG
« on: February 24, 2010, 03:05:22 PM »Quote from: "Arwyn"
The upside, at least in simulation, is that it clobbers the NPRs current classes.
This discussion is very useful for a newbie like me, but what do you mean by "at least in simulation"? Is there something (else) I'm missing here?
Thanks,
Bill
Posted by: AtomikKrab
« on: February 24, 2010, 12:29:47 PM »I prefer to have a 1-1 rate for amm launchers since they deal with potentially storms of missiles
Posted by: Brian Neumann
« on: February 24, 2010, 11:07:25 AM »If your gauss cannon rate of fire is high enough (4+) you might want to build a ciws system instead for point defense.
Brian
Brian
Posted by: Arwyn
« on: February 24, 2010, 10:44:53 AM »It was a bit of a trade off really. The Turret and associated fire control simply weighed too much to include. I should just strip the AMM out. I have a dedicated cruiser design for Area defense that packs in several AMM launchers and a huge magazines. I do have some lighter weight escorts, but what I saw happen was that the AMM ammo goes dry fast on the smaller ships, and to provide them with enough ammo for extended egagements (extended for missile combat at least) cranked up the mass of the ship to the point that it was better to just build a newer design.
Thanks for the input though, its all good info!
Thanks for the input though, its all good info!
Posted by: Hawkeye
« on: February 24, 2010, 10:27:20 AM »The single AMM launcher realy is ineficient use of mass, because you need a missile fire control system (your Awl MCS) which takes mass. Add to this the mass of the launcher and you are at, what, 150 or 200t? for the ability to launch a single AMM each 10 seconds. If you put, say, 5 launchers on this ship, the mass only doubles (assuming the MCS masses 150t) from 200t to 400t, but you can launch 5 times as many AMMs.
I´d probably downgrade the passives, leaving the task of detecting the enemy to a dedicated fleetscout and use the saved mass for the additonal AMM launchers.
On second thought, I´d probably get rid of the AMMs alltogether and build a dedicated attack platform and another dedicated escort platform
I see you are using two CIWS. I´d probably switch those out for a single PD-turret. While this weakens the anti-missile defense, if the ship is on its own, I realy, realy don´t recomend sending single ships against an enemy. In a squadron, each turret will defend any ship in the squadron. If you have 4 of those cruiser in a squadron, this immediately doubles your last-ditch PD (4 turrets vs. 2 CIWS). If you can squeeze in a tripple turret (unlikely), it only gets better.
I´d probably downgrade the passives, leaving the task of detecting the enemy to a dedicated fleetscout and use the saved mass for the additonal AMM launchers.
On second thought, I´d probably get rid of the AMMs alltogether and build a dedicated attack platform and another dedicated escort platform
I see you are using two CIWS. I´d probably switch those out for a single PD-turret. While this weakens the anti-missile defense, if the ship is on its own, I realy, realy don´t recomend sending single ships against an enemy. In a squadron, each turret will defend any ship in the squadron. If you have 4 of those cruiser in a squadron, this immediately doubles your last-ditch PD (4 turrets vs. 2 CIWS). If you can squeeze in a tripple turret (unlikely), it only gets better.
Posted by: Charlie Beeler
« on: February 24, 2010, 10:04:16 AM »The bad news is that your Dagger ASM is slightly better at missile intercept than your Flash AMM.
Posted by: Arwyn
« on: February 24, 2010, 09:19:36 AM »Quote from: "welchbloke"
Quote from: "Arwyn"Harrington class Heavy Cruiser 12850 tons 932 Crew 2159.6 BP TCS 257 TH 400 EM 270You only have one missile fire control system for your ASMs. That means you can only fire your 20 launchers at one target. In previous threads it appears that most of us have a fire control to sensor ratio of between 1:5 and 1:10; this gives you a lot more flexibility if you have multiple targets that don't require saturation attacks. Also, why the one AMM launcher? I would have thought that would be an inefficient use of mass.
3112 km/s Armour 4-48 Shields 9-300 Sensors 24/24/0/0 Damage Control Rating 13 PPV 21
Annual Failure Rate: 101% IFR: 1.4% Maint Capacity 1365 MSP Max Repair 240 MSP Est Time: 2.87 Years
Magazine 841
Magneto-plasma Drive E9 (10) Power 80 Fuel Use 90% Signature 40 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 300,000 Litres Range 46.7 billion km (173 days at full power)
Beta R300/13.5 Shields (6) Total Fuel Cost 81 Litres per day
CIWS-80 (2x4) Range 1000 km TS: 8000 km/s ROF 5 Base 50% To Hit
Anti-Missile Launcher (1) Missile Size 1 Rate of Fire 10
Rattler FAC ASM2 Launcher (20) Missile Size 2 Rate of Fire 100
Awl Missile Control System (1) Range 2.2m km Resolution 1
Mercury Missile Control System (1) Range 51.8m km Resolution 40
Flash Anti-missile Missile (100) Speed: 39,300 km/s End: 0.8m Range: 1.8m km WH: 1 Size: 1 TH: 131 / 78 / 39
Dart ASM2 (350) Speed: 40,000 km/s End: 20.8m Range: 50m km WH: 1 Size: 2 TH: 133 / 80 / 40
Dagger D-ASM2 (20) Speed: 32,000 km/s End: 0.5m Range: 1m km WH: 2 Size: 2 TH: 138 / 83 / 41
Bugswatter Search Sensor (1) GPS 168 Range 1.0m km Resolution 1
Arclight Search Sensor (1) GPS 10800 Range 64.8m km Resolution 45
Thermal Sensor TH4-24 (1) Sensitivity 24 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 24m km
EM Detection Sensor EM4-24 (1) Sensitivity 24 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 24m km
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
Part of the reason was that I have been having to saturate the targets to get kills in on the larger ships. The Lal (NPR) seem to have better PD than I do, and its taken a lot of missiles to get significant hits in. I could put additional FC in for them, the thought actually hadn't crossed my mind, but I am concerned about space and weight.
Posted by: welchbloke
« on: February 24, 2010, 06:28:42 AM »Quote from: "Arwyn"
Harrington class Heavy Cruiser 12850 tons 932 Crew 2159.6 BP TCS 257 TH 400 EM 270You only have one missile fire control system for your ASMs. That means you can only fire your 20 launchers at one target. In previous threads it appears that most of us have a fire control to sensor ratio of between 1:5 and 1:10; this gives you a lot more flexibility if you have multiple targets that don't require saturation attacks. Also, why the one AMM launcher? I would have thought that would be an inefficient use of mass.
3112 km/s Armour 4-48 Shields 9-300 Sensors 24/24/0/0 Damage Control Rating 13 PPV 21
Annual Failure Rate: 101% IFR: 1.4% Maint Capacity 1365 MSP Max Repair 240 MSP Est Time: 2.87 Years
Magazine 841
Magneto-plasma Drive E9 (10) Power 80 Fuel Use 90% Signature 40 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 300,000 Litres Range 46.7 billion km (173 days at full power)
Beta R300/13.5 Shields (6) Total Fuel Cost 81 Litres per day
CIWS-80 (2x4) Range 1000 km TS: 8000 km/s ROF 5 Base 50% To Hit
Anti-Missile Launcher (1) Missile Size 1 Rate of Fire 10
Rattler FAC ASM2 Launcher (20) Missile Size 2 Rate of Fire 100
Awl Missile Control System (1) Range 2.2m km Resolution 1
Mercury Missile Control System (1) Range 51.8m km Resolution 40
Flash Anti-missile Missile (100) Speed: 39,300 km/s End: 0.8m Range: 1.8m km WH: 1 Size: 1 TH: 131 / 78 / 39
Dart ASM2 (350) Speed: 40,000 km/s End: 20.8m Range: 50m km WH: 1 Size: 2 TH: 133 / 80 / 40
Dagger D-ASM2 (20) Speed: 32,000 km/s End: 0.5m Range: 1m km WH: 2 Size: 2 TH: 138 / 83 / 41
Bugswatter Search Sensor (1) GPS 168 Range 1.0m km Resolution 1
Arclight Search Sensor (1) GPS 10800 Range 64.8m km Resolution 45
Thermal Sensor TH4-24 (1) Sensitivity 24 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 24m km
EM Detection Sensor EM4-24 (1) Sensitivity 24 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 24m km
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
Posted by: Arwyn
« on: February 24, 2010, 12:39:15 AM »Now that is some great information, especially the bit about armor.
Ironically, I had just whipped up a new cruiser design, with the goal to put as many missiles on the target per volley as I can. I crammed a bunch of size 2 missiles with miniaturization into the heavy cruiser design. This gave me 20 missiles per volley, per cruiser. The issue I saw was an NPR that was really good at knocking down smaller salvoes, so I was having to gang up several ships to get past the PD. The new design gives me a massive throw weight in S2 missiles, and at much larger ranges than the NPR is running right now. Down side is the slow reload rate. Compared to the previous Size 6 launchers though, its only 40 seconds, so instead of a volley every minute, I get one just over every minute and a half.
The upside, at least in simulation, is that it clobbers the NPRs current classes. So far, in about 5 volleys, I can cripple their biggest ship, or at least smash it up bad enough the lighter fleet elements can get in with smaller salvoes and knock it out of action. With the (limited) payload that it has, that gives me a shot of knocking out three of their cruisers to one of mine. Not bad odds, especially since it makes my older destroyers effective again.
The MAJOR downside though is FEEDING this thing. A pair of these things eats up my missile stockpile like Congress on a spending spree!
(And yes, I know there is a discrepancy between the Anti-Missile Control system range and the search sensor range.
)
Harrington class Heavy Cruiser 12850 tons 932 Crew 2159.6 BP TCS 257 TH 400 EM 270
3112 km/s Armour 4-48 Shields 9-300 Sensors 24/24/0/0 Damage Control Rating 13 PPV 21
Annual Failure Rate: 101% IFR: 1.4% Maint Capacity 1365 MSP Max Repair 240 MSP Est Time: 2.87 Years
Magazine 841
Magneto-plasma Drive E9 (10) Power 80 Fuel Use 90% Signature 40 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 300,000 Litres Range 46.7 billion km (173 days at full power)
Beta R300/13.5 Shields (6) Total Fuel Cost 81 Litres per day
CIWS-80 (2x4) Range 1000 km TS: 8000 km/s ROF 5 Base 50% To Hit
Anti-Missile Launcher (1) Missile Size 1 Rate of Fire 10
Rattler FAC ASM2 Launcher (20) Missile Size 2 Rate of Fire 100
Awl Missile Control System (1) Range 2.2m km Resolution 1
Mercury Missile Control System (1) Range 51.8m km Resolution 40
Flash Anti-missile Missile (100) Speed: 39,300 km/s End: 0.8m Range: 1.8m km WH: 1 Size: 1 TH: 131 / 78 / 39
Dart ASM2 (350) Speed: 40,000 km/s End: 20.8m Range: 50m km WH: 1 Size: 2 TH: 133 / 80 / 40
Dagger D-ASM2 (20) Speed: 32,000 km/s End: 0.5m Range: 1m km WH: 2 Size: 2 TH: 138 / 83 / 41
Bugswatter Search Sensor (1) GPS 168 Range 1.0m km Resolution 1
Arclight Search Sensor (1) GPS 10800 Range 64.8m km Resolution 45
Thermal Sensor TH4-24 (1) Sensitivity 24 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 24m km
EM Detection Sensor EM4-24 (1) Sensitivity 24 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 24m km
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
Ironically, I had just whipped up a new cruiser design, with the goal to put as many missiles on the target per volley as I can. I crammed a bunch of size 2 missiles with miniaturization into the heavy cruiser design. This gave me 20 missiles per volley, per cruiser. The issue I saw was an NPR that was really good at knocking down smaller salvoes, so I was having to gang up several ships to get past the PD. The new design gives me a massive throw weight in S2 missiles, and at much larger ranges than the NPR is running right now. Down side is the slow reload rate. Compared to the previous Size 6 launchers though, its only 40 seconds, so instead of a volley every minute, I get one just over every minute and a half.
The upside, at least in simulation, is that it clobbers the NPRs current classes. So far, in about 5 volleys, I can cripple their biggest ship, or at least smash it up bad enough the lighter fleet elements can get in with smaller salvoes and knock it out of action. With the (limited) payload that it has, that gives me a shot of knocking out three of their cruisers to one of mine. Not bad odds, especially since it makes my older destroyers effective again.
The MAJOR downside though is FEEDING this thing. A pair of these things eats up my missile stockpile like Congress on a spending spree!
(And yes, I know there is a discrepancy between the Anti-Missile Control system range and the search sensor range.
)Harrington class Heavy Cruiser 12850 tons 932 Crew 2159.6 BP TCS 257 TH 400 EM 270
3112 km/s Armour 4-48 Shields 9-300 Sensors 24/24/0/0 Damage Control Rating 13 PPV 21
Annual Failure Rate: 101% IFR: 1.4% Maint Capacity 1365 MSP Max Repair 240 MSP Est Time: 2.87 Years
Magazine 841
Magneto-plasma Drive E9 (10) Power 80 Fuel Use 90% Signature 40 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 300,000 Litres Range 46.7 billion km (173 days at full power)
Beta R300/13.5 Shields (6) Total Fuel Cost 81 Litres per day
CIWS-80 (2x4) Range 1000 km TS: 8000 km/s ROF 5 Base 50% To Hit
Anti-Missile Launcher (1) Missile Size 1 Rate of Fire 10
Rattler FAC ASM2 Launcher (20) Missile Size 2 Rate of Fire 100
Awl Missile Control System (1) Range 2.2m km Resolution 1
Mercury Missile Control System (1) Range 51.8m km Resolution 40
Flash Anti-missile Missile (100) Speed: 39,300 km/s End: 0.8m Range: 1.8m km WH: 1 Size: 1 TH: 131 / 78 / 39
Dart ASM2 (350) Speed: 40,000 km/s End: 20.8m Range: 50m km WH: 1 Size: 2 TH: 133 / 80 / 40
Dagger D-ASM2 (20) Speed: 32,000 km/s End: 0.5m Range: 1m km WH: 2 Size: 2 TH: 138 / 83 / 41
Bugswatter Search Sensor (1) GPS 168 Range 1.0m km Resolution 1
Arclight Search Sensor (1) GPS 10800 Range 64.8m km Resolution 45
Thermal Sensor TH4-24 (1) Sensitivity 24 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 24m km
EM Detection Sensor EM4-24 (1) Sensitivity 24 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 24m km
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
Posted by: sloanjh
« on: February 23, 2010, 11:17:23 PM »A few things to be aware of:
1) If you don't put "fixed size enhancements" (such as seeker heads or armor) on a missile, then the performance characteristics scale exactly. In other words, if you cut all the parameters of your warhead = 2 missile in half, then you'll end up with a size 1 missile that costs half as much and has a strength-1 warhead, but is identical in terms of speed, hit probability etc.
2) Launcher rate-of-fire is inversely proportional to the missile size. So a size-2 launcher requires twice as long to load as a size-1 launcher.
3) It costs point defense just as much to shoot down a size-1 missile as it does a size-2 missile with the same performance characteristics (and no armor).
4) The depth of penetration of a missile warhead goes like the square root of the warhead strength. So strength 1, 2 and 3 warheads will only do damage to the 1st armor layer, strength 4-8 will do damage to the 2nd armor layer, strength 9-15 to the 3rd and so on. This means that 2 strength-1 hits will do the same type of damage (1st armor layer only) as a single strength-2 hit (up to 2nd-order probability effects which are small for reasonably sized ships). This is because the damage template for a missile warhead looks like a "pyramid", e.g. 5:3:1 damage to the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd layers of armor for a strength-9 hit.
5) The minimum launcher size is 1.
What this means is that the following:
A) A size-1 missile has a O(N) advantage over a size-N missile (with the same characteristics and an Nx warhead) in terms of rate of fire - the launchers cycle N times as fast.
B) A size-1 missile makes the point-defence problem somewhere between N and N^2 more difficult, since each salvo has N-times as many missiles (albeit with N-times as weak warhead), and the higher rate of fire could make it necessary for point defence to deal with as many as N-times as many salvoes in the same period of time.
C) A size-N missile can penetrate armor more deeply. This is a big advantage for big ships with armor which can be penetrated in a single hit. If a single hit can't penetrate the target's armor, then you have to sandblast away almost the entire tonnage of armor on the ship before your missiles begin penetrating. Since the minimum armor strength is 1, any warhead less than strength-4 is guarenteed to require more than one (and probably many more than one) hit in order to do internal damage.
D) Mounting seeker heads or armor is N-times less expensive, relatively, on a size-N missile.
The upshot of this is that there is an ongoing tactical debate about missile size. The two camps are "sand-blast with lots of small missiles with small warheads" and "blast deep holes with a few big missiles with heavy warheads". The thing to realize is that using size-2 warheads on anything other than a size-1 missile gives you the worst of both worlds. If you're in the sandblasting camp, then you should design a size-1 warhead missile that's 1/2 has big (which will probably up the enemy's point defense problem by 4x). If you're in the heavy-warhead camp, then you should go for a size-4 or size-9 warhead to get deeper penetration.
In other words, you should either cut all the parameters on both warhead-strength-2 designs by a factor of two (note that this will not change the hit probabilities at all) or go for heavier warheads that can do penetration damage.
The place that you will often see strength-2 warheads is on a "deer slug" ASM round for size-1 AMM launchers. Since the minimum launcher size is 1, you trade off engine power for warhead in a missile that's design to attack ships yet can be fired from AMM launchers on escorts.
It also means that it's a good idea to put at least strength 3 armor on combatants that will typically be attacked by missiles - this will force anything other than very heavy warheads into sandblasting mode.
John
1) If you don't put "fixed size enhancements" (such as seeker heads or armor) on a missile, then the performance characteristics scale exactly. In other words, if you cut all the parameters of your warhead = 2 missile in half, then you'll end up with a size 1 missile that costs half as much and has a strength-1 warhead, but is identical in terms of speed, hit probability etc.
2) Launcher rate-of-fire is inversely proportional to the missile size. So a size-2 launcher requires twice as long to load as a size-1 launcher.
3) It costs point defense just as much to shoot down a size-1 missile as it does a size-2 missile with the same performance characteristics (and no armor).
4) The depth of penetration of a missile warhead goes like the square root of the warhead strength. So strength 1, 2 and 3 warheads will only do damage to the 1st armor layer, strength 4-8 will do damage to the 2nd armor layer, strength 9-15 to the 3rd and so on. This means that 2 strength-1 hits will do the same type of damage (1st armor layer only) as a single strength-2 hit (up to 2nd-order probability effects which are small for reasonably sized ships). This is because the damage template for a missile warhead looks like a "pyramid", e.g. 5:3:1 damage to the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd layers of armor for a strength-9 hit.
5) The minimum launcher size is 1.
What this means is that the following:
A) A size-1 missile has a O(N) advantage over a size-N missile (with the same characteristics and an Nx warhead) in terms of rate of fire - the launchers cycle N times as fast.
B) A size-1 missile makes the point-defence problem somewhere between N and N^2 more difficult, since each salvo has N-times as many missiles (albeit with N-times as weak warhead), and the higher rate of fire could make it necessary for point defence to deal with as many as N-times as many salvoes in the same period of time.
C) A size-N missile can penetrate armor more deeply. This is a big advantage for big ships with armor which can be penetrated in a single hit. If a single hit can't penetrate the target's armor, then you have to sandblast away almost the entire tonnage of armor on the ship before your missiles begin penetrating. Since the minimum armor strength is 1, any warhead less than strength-4 is guarenteed to require more than one (and probably many more than one) hit in order to do internal damage.
D) Mounting seeker heads or armor is N-times less expensive, relatively, on a size-N missile.
The upshot of this is that there is an ongoing tactical debate about missile size. The two camps are "sand-blast with lots of small missiles with small warheads" and "blast deep holes with a few big missiles with heavy warheads". The thing to realize is that using size-2 warheads on anything other than a size-1 missile gives you the worst of both worlds. If you're in the sandblasting camp, then you should design a size-1 warhead missile that's 1/2 has big (which will probably up the enemy's point defense problem by 4x). If you're in the heavy-warhead camp, then you should go for a size-4 or size-9 warhead to get deeper penetration.
In other words, you should either cut all the parameters on both warhead-strength-2 designs by a factor of two (note that this will not change the hit probabilities at all) or go for heavier warheads that can do penetration damage.
The place that you will often see strength-2 warheads is on a "deer slug" ASM round for size-1 AMM launchers. Since the minimum launcher size is 1, you trade off engine power for warhead in a missile that's design to attack ships yet can be fired from AMM launchers on escorts.
It also means that it's a good idea to put at least strength 3 armor on combatants that will typically be attacked by missiles - this will force anything other than very heavy warheads into sandblasting mode.
John
