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Posted by: Charlie Beeler
« on: August 16, 2011, 08:30:45 AM »

Actually, jseah's missile design type is fairly standard.  The main thing it is missing an adjustment of engine and agility to optimize the to-hit chances. 

For arguments sake assume that any missile you face is going to use 50% of the msp for engine.  So assume that these are the minimum missile speeds that your will face at the various engine tech levels.

Nuclear Thermal
Nuclear Pulse
Ion
Magneto-plasma
Internal Confinement
Magnetic Confinement
Inertial Confinement
Solid Core
Gas Core
Plasma Core
Beam Core
Photonic
12,500
20,000
30,000
40,000
50,000
62,500
80,000
100,000
125,000
150,000
200,000
250,000

Jseah's example also illustrates a point I had not really touched yet, at an equal tech level missiles should be expected to outperform fighters in the speed department.  Expect anti-ship missiles to use 50% msp for engines and anti-missile missiles to be in the 75% or better msp for engines. 

That being said, expect weapons performance to be even worse.

Using the fighter and missile above these are the expected to-hit chances:
Range  To Hit   speed modified
10,000
20,000
30,000		7.040%
6.000%
4.960%
2.885%
2.459%
2.032%

And if the bfc is cut in half:
Range  To Hit   speed modified
10,000
20,000
30,000		6.000%
4.000%
2.000%
2.459%
1.639%
0.820%

Personally I wouldn't make a bad situation worse.  The best case scenario (range 10k or less) is that the fighters fleet has been tracking the missiles long enough, and has the supportting tech, to reduce speed difference modifier to a zero effect it still only gets one pass with three shots at just over 7% to-hit probability.  I call that totally ineffective. 
Posted by: jseah
« on: August 16, 2011, 03:50:53 AM »

My missiles are over 50% engine actually.  I estimate how well my missiles do vs my own AMM defence and try to find a missile design that has the best chance of getting through vs warhead strength. 

Warhead is about 20% of my missile.  I find any more means my missiles gets too slow to get through. 

EDIT: as it is, my AMMs hit the missile 20% of the time or so, which means if my fleet flushes its tubes against a mirror fleet, almost none out of 1.5k missiles will get through.

WH: 1
Engine: 3.1626
Fuel: 0.8374
Agility: 0
Posted by: Ashery
« on: August 16, 2011, 03:29:14 AM »

You could shave a bit off of the fighter by halving the range of the BFC, but even with the 50% increase in power tech I wasn't able to match the speed of your missiles.

Then again, it looks like your missiles are one of the designs a player could adopt in order to counter my fighters. Just what percentage of your missile is dedicated to engines? A strength six warhead on a size five missile is a definitely on the lighter side.
Posted by: jseah
« on: August 16, 2011, 02:41:42 AM »

Engine tech is at magnetic confinement drives with 0.5 fuel efficiency.  I also use a power boost of 25% to have a final engine design of 0.75 fuel use but 125% power. 

An SM-testing fighter design looks like this:
Code: [Select]
New Class #6988 class Cruiser    145 tons     4 Crew     55.5 BP      TCS 2.9  TH 94  EM 0
32413 km/s     Armour 1-2     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 0.5
Annual Failure Rate: 29%    IFR: 0.4%    Maint Capacity 0 MSP    Max Repair 30 MSP    Est Time: 0 Years

FTR Magnetic Confinement Fusion Drive E750 (1)    Power 93.75    Fuel Use 7500%    Signature 93.75    Armour 0    Exp 100%
Fuel Capacity 5,000 Litres    Range 0.8 billion km   (7 hours at full power)

Gauss Cannon R3-8 (1x3)    Range 30,000km     TS: 32413 km/s     Accuracy Modifier 8%     RM 3    ROF 5        1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Fire Control S01 40-5000 (FTR) (1)    Max Range: 80,000 km   TS: 20000 km/s     88 75 62 50 38 25 12 0 0 0

This design is classed as a Fighter for production, combat and maintenance purposesThis is simply the absolute smallest I could make a fighter with a gauss cannon.  I haven't invested anything significant into gauss but you can assume a better tracking speed if you want. 

Now note that the missile travels a bit more than twice as fast as the fighter.  The missile is optimized courtesy of the missile design spreadsheet. 
Also note that the missile travels across the entire effective firing range in 5 seconds.  (missile speed - fighter speed) * 5 = 233 435

Code: [Select]
Missile Size: 5 MSP  (0.25 HS)     Warhead: 6    Armour: 0     Manoeuvre Rating: 10
Speed: 79100 km/s    Endurance: 13 minutes   Range: 60.3m km
Cost Per Missile: 8.0887
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 791%   3k km/s 260%   5k km/s 158.2%   10k km/s 79.1%
Materials Required:    1.5x Tritanium   6.3387x Gallicite   Fuel x2093.5

Development Cost for Project: 809RP
Posted by: Ashery
« on: August 16, 2011, 02:03:37 AM »

But what tech level are you at currently? I'm sure there will be missile designs at my tech level that will be able to outrun my fighters, but that'll force changes to the missile design that weaken them in some other way.

Also note that my interceptors actually gain ground on missiles as tech progresses.  I decided to screw around and design the end game fighter and we're talking about an interceptor weighing in at 100tons and moving at 225000k/sec.  I'm not even sure what to do with that design as the fastest possible tracking speed comes in at 100000k/sec. 

Actually, change that, you can add tracking speed to fighter restricted BFCs despite the fact that they gain a free 4x from being fighter restricted.  If that is not a bug, that actually tips the scale further in favor of fighters for general use.  Pity it'll add another 10-15tons (I'll drop my BFC to 25% range instead of 33%).  The modified fighter comes in at 110tons, 204545k/sec, and takes a reduction in hit rate with the GC (10% to 8%), but sports a fancy little 200000k/sec tracking speed, hehe.
Posted by: jseah
« on: August 16, 2011, 12:04:54 AM »

A missile delivery system that aims to saturate PD defences will be unlikely to give you multiple shots. 

My current fleet uses 33% size-reduction launchers.  So arguably, your setup is designed to counter mine. 

I might note that my missiles travel at around 70kkm/s.  Designed to have a ~75% hit rate vs 10kkm/s (which turns into 100% after crew training).  This was a conscious design decision to use a 12 to 14 agility missile in order to boost speed so as to avoid PD better.  My own laser PD has less than a 30% hit rate vs my own missiles. 

Not even fighters at my tech level can travel fast enough get two shots unless they don't carry weapons.  <- hence, no advantage over normal PD. 
Not to mention my 15cm laser PD frigates multirole as anti-shipping lasers as well as jumppoint assaults (I only have one beam armed design)
Posted by: Ashery
« on: August 15, 2011, 09:48:15 PM »

Heh, nice, countering my argument by exploiting my laziness.

I should've stated: "I'll continue to disagree that PD turrets are more effective in all situations dealing with anti-ship missiles. "

I realize that the miniaturized GCs (Not turrets, their high speed eliminates the need for a turret mounting) mean that, on a per shot basis, my accuracy will be terrible, but remember that GCs scale in a linear manner with respect to their size; A HS6 GC has a 100% hit rating, while a HS0,6 has a 10%.  This means that, while a larger GC will be more consistent, the expected value, based upon HS alone, will be the same.

Armor would be an issue, but that means that they'll have to cut back elsewhere.  And it won't be particularly effective, either, as my PD will consist largely of Mesons.  ECM can also be a potential problem, but, if I'm reading things correctly, the modifier for a miniaturized GC is applied after everything else (It would be horribly broken if it didn't), and so I'll take the same percentage off of my final hit rate with both my PD and my fighters (So with an unanswered ECM2, my PD will go from 100% (For simplicity's sake) to 80% and my fighters would go from 10% to 8%.  Actually, I'll leave that bit in, but ECM actually would favor PD, as the base rate of a BFC is higher than that of my fighters (93% would go to 73% for the PD, while my fighters would go from 69% to 49%).  PD, however, is definitely easier to equip with ECCM, but it's not impossible for future fighter designs to incorporate some compact ECCM (As I progress down the +power, -efficiency track for engines, I'll have more room to work with).  However, the value of a 1HS compact ECCM would probably be less than simply increasing the size of the GC by a full HS.  That's largely dependent upon the opponent's level of ECM and the player's level of ECCM, though. 

Also, I should emphasize that these are not my only anti-missile measures.  The fighters are a system that's strong point is the exact situation where standard PD is weakest: Missile volleys aimed at oversaturating PD with little regard to how long it takes to reload.

That last bit is an interesting situation, but my fighters will still manage to get off two volleys per salvo, so while they won't be as effective as straight PD, they won't be useless.
Posted by: Charlie Beeler
« on: August 15, 2011, 07:24:43 PM »

Quote from: Ashery on August 15, 2011, 04:36:35 PM
The reload rate was for some size four launchers that the opponent was using.

I'll continue to disagree that PD turrets are more effective in all situations as they're prone to being over saturated when dealing with low RoF, high quantity strategies (Fighters using box launchers, for instance).  And that is the exact area where my fighters would excel, as their time on each group of salvos is dependent upon the amount of time the opponent takes to reload.

Steve shouldn't need to change the way initiative works, I'm just looking for the game to calculate where the enemy will be in five seconds/at the end of the movement phase and move to that point (All of the information to do so is already presented to the player) instead of moving to where it was when the movement phase started.

Never said that PD turrets are more effective in all situations, nothing is.  Example, fighter strikegroup alpha strikes are best countered by smallcraft with the express mission if engaging said strikegroup beyond it's attack range of the fleet being defended.  Said intercept smallcraft mount size 1 box launchers and are set to missile defense initially.  That is just one counter and is not the only one.  Another is a fleet that is heavy on distributed missile defense with an emphasis on counter missiles and PD turrets to deal with the leakers.  etc etc etc.  

The problem with using the reduced size GC turrets I've already pointed out,  the one in your design reduces the 10kkm to-hit chance from 69% to less than 9%.  If the AI adds armor and/or ECM things get worse fast.  Even if your facing a fleet with a 30 cyclic rate your not going to stop the incoming missiles before the next salvo is in range without an overwhelming force advantage.  

I've played with the fighters a lot.  Trying to use fighters as missile interceptors is not effective within the current game mechanics.  They can be used, as I've described, as a moderately effective standoff PD platform.  Their best role is the antishipping strike...with missiles.  

Hey, play it out and writeup an AAR that proves me wrong.  My opinion is that you can't consistantly enough to make it effective without "gaming" both sides.  

One more thing to consider, there is an AI NPR that uses salvo of 66 missile traveling at 45k kps and faster.  Those also have a cyclic rate of 10 seconds.

Posted by: ardem
« on: August 15, 2011, 07:04:46 PM »

I think an intercept command is actual a good idea, all that steve needs to do if on this command allow the moving craft to fire at missiles.

That why I said suggest it and hope steve implements it
Posted by: Ashery
« on: August 15, 2011, 04:36:35 PM »

The reload rate was for some size four launchers that the opponent was using.

I'll continue to disagree that PD turrets are more effective in all situations as they're prone to being over saturated when dealing with low RoF, high quantity strategies (Fighters using box launchers, for instance).  And that is the exact area where my fighters would excel, as their time on each group of salvos is dependent upon the amount of time the opponent takes to reload.

Steve shouldn't need to change the way initiative works, I'm just looking for the game to calculate where the enemy will be in five seconds/at the end of the movement phase and move to that point (All of the information to do so is already presented to the player) instead of moving to where it was when the movement phase started.
Posted by: Charlie Beeler
« on: August 15, 2011, 03:54:35 PM »

Quote from: Ashery on August 15, 2011, 03:08:29 PM
@Charlie

But you miss their core design principle: To be as light and as fast as possible in order to keep up with all but the fastest missiles.  Sure, I could go lasers for more range, but that adds on a good 140 tons at that tech level, halving the number of fighters I can carry and crippling their speed advantage.  The same thing would be argued if I increased the size of the BFC to maximize their to hit.  They rely on being able to keep up with all but the fastest missiles so that they can attack during multiple phases.

Around this tech level, for half a HS less than the hanger, you can put in a quad gauss turret tracking at 20k with a base hit rate of 67%.  Note that this does *not* include the non-trivially sized BFC that you'll need to properly target the missiles, but lets be generous and give the design advantage to the system that's thought superior.  If we throw in the BFC that I designed for my carrier we're looking at an additional 3HS and an accuracy of 93% at 10k.  Let's also assume that the missiles are moving at 20k, as that's a fairly realistic expectation at this tech level, with a reload of 30sec.  Oh, and because I'm lazy, I'll just fix the gauss rate of fire at four.

So, with all that said, my fighters are looking at three to four phases of combat to the turret's one due to the 30sec reload.

Fighters: With three phases of combat, we're looking at 3 * 32 * 0,086 for their expected number of hits.  With four, it'd simply be 4 * 32 * 0,086.  (Phases of combat * shots per phase * accuracy, if it wasn't clear).

Turret: We're looking at roughly 16 * 0,62.

Feeling too lazy to do some arithmetic, so I'll just simplify the three to 16 * 0,51 for the fighters@3, 16 * 0,68 for fighters@4, and 16 * 0,62 for the turret.

This is, of course, a simplification of the combat as other factors are not included for the sake of simplification.  There's no missile tracking bonus, which is something that would favor the turret slightly.  The missiles are all assumed to be in a single salvo, which favors the turret heavily.  In a more realistic setting, even if the fighters were barely half as effective in my simplified model as the turret, they may well take down more missiles if the turret is forced to fire on a salvo with only four missiles in it.  ECM/ECCM haven't been included at all.  There are probably other influencing factors that I haven't included here, but this should get the point across that the fighters hold up well against the turrets on paper.

@general

The thing is, I can already accomplish what I want to do (intercept the missiles), but it's a complete pain in the ass as I'm forced to visually estimate, without a grid, where the missiles will end up after their phase of movement.  Combine that with the fact that I'll have to be sending many squads of fighters to that location (Each "carrier" (Escort is a better name) only carries eight) and I'll be doing several minutes of tedious micromanagement to pull off a single phase of anti-missile combat.

Actually no I didn't miss your intent.  As you've found out already, it can't work within the current game mechanics.  Yes, with a speed advantage you should be able to "tail" a missile salvo.  But unless Steve changes the movement sequence to be speed/initiative only it's move micromanagement than it is worth.

From a tactical, strategic and logistics point of view your better of with the mass being dedicated to a fullsize point defense suites on all ship of the fleet for final mutual defense.

Where are you getting a reload rate of 30seconds?  It sure isn't Gauss Cannons, they all have a 5 second cyclic rate.  Lasers have a variable rate dictated on weapon size, capacitor, and power availability.
Posted by: Ashery
« on: August 15, 2011, 03:08:29 PM »

@Charlie

But you miss their core design principle: To be as light and as fast as possible in order to keep up with all but the fastest missiles.  Sure, I could go lasers for more range, but that adds on a good 140 tons at that tech level, halving the number of fighters I can carry and crippling their speed advantage.  The same thing would be argued if I increased the size of the BFC to maximize their to hit.  They rely on being able to keep up with all but the fastest missiles so that they can attack during multiple phases.

Around this tech level, for half a HS less than the hanger, you can put in a quad gauss turret tracking at 20k with a base hit rate of 67%.  Note that this does *not* include the non-trivially sized BFC that you'll need to properly target the missiles, but lets be generous and give the design advantage to the system that's thought superior.  If we throw in the BFC that I designed for my carrier we're looking at an additional 3HS and an accuracy of 93% at 10k.  Let's also assume that the missiles are moving at 20k, as that's a fairly realistic expectation at this tech level, with a reload of 30sec.  Oh, and because I'm lazy, I'll just fix the gauss rate of fire at four.

So, with all that said, my fighters are looking at three to four phases of combat to the turret's one due to the 30sec reload.

Fighters: With three phases of combat, we're looking at 3 * 32 * 0,086 for their expected number of hits.  With four, it'd simply be 4 * 32 * 0,086.  (Phases of combat * shots per phase * accuracy, if it wasn't clear).

Turret: We're looking at roughly 16 * 0,62.

Feeling too lazy to do some arithmetic, so I'll just simplify the three to 16 * 0,51 for the fighters@3, 16 * 0,68 for fighters@4, and 16 * 0,62 for the turret.

This is, of course, a simplification of the combat as other factors are not included for the sake of simplification.  There's no missile tracking bonus, which is something that would favor the turret slightly.  The missiles are all assumed to be in a single salvo, which favors the turret heavily.  In a more realistic setting, even if the fighters were barely half as effective in my simplified model as the turret, they may well take down more missiles if the turret is forced to fire on a salvo with only four missiles in it.  ECM/ECCM haven't been included at all.  There are probably other influencing factors that I haven't included here, but this should get the point across that the fighters hold up well against the turrets on paper.

@general

The thing is, I can already accomplish what I want to do (intercept the missiles), but it's a complete pain in the ass as I'm forced to visually estimate, without a grid, where the missiles will end up after their phase of movement.  Combine that with the fact that I'll have to be sending many squads of fighters to that location (Each "carrier" (Escort is a better name) only carries eight) and I'll be doing several minutes of tedious micromanagement to pull off a single phase of anti-missile combat.
Posted by: Charlie Beeler
« on: August 15, 2011, 08:23:05 AM »

Ashery, those fighters will have an extremely low effectiveness vs just about anything.  Sorry, but that is a consiquence of the reduced size GC's, the GC's range and the fire control selected.  If you can get the fighters to 10kkm or less they only have a 69% to hit, and the reduced GC's make that really 8.625%. 

Your correct about the sequence of play, with all ships moving first fighters moving second and missiles last missile(initiative dictates sequence within each movement type), intercept by fighters will not work.  I believe that Steve built the sequence this way with the intent that fighters will always have intiative over ships and missiles will always have initiative over ships and fighters.

Your best bet for a fighter intercept of missiles is to use the escort functionality of the task groups.  It's not perfect and the limited range of the GC's make even more difficult(60kkm engagement window).  But, you can (with a sensor suite with long missile detection range) set the escort range and bearing that will give the fighters a small, albet better, chance to get some standoff shots.  This is actually someplace where lasers will be a better choice than GC's since they can give you a better range window. 

Also select a bfc that has the 4x range modifier.  This gives you the best tohit change and shorter ranges.  Yes they will be quite large, especially if you have the 4x tracking speed as well.  you do get some help with fighters effectively starting at 4x tracking bonus. 
Posted by: Brian Neumann
« on: August 15, 2011, 05:23:19 AM »

I am not sure when missiles move, but I think it is when the initiative for the launching ship would have them move.  To go after the missiles just put your initiative rating to 0.  This will be lower than any ship would normally be at and will allow you to move after the missiles move.

Brian
Posted by: Thiosk
« on: August 15, 2011, 04:37:02 AM »

With what missiles can do in this game, beams are rather restricted to a secondary role anyway, and I've read other's posts that came to the conclusion that beam fighters are essentially useless, for a variety of reasons.  I must confess, I don't really like the idea of beam fighters for point defense purposes (it might be broken-levels of too-awesome).   I've thought of methods to improve the beam fighter, but havn't come up with anything remotely cogent enough for the suggestions thread.