Posted by: UnLimiTeD
« on: October 25, 2011, 01:18:22 PM »I always order mine to fire at 10k distance. 
Especially Lasers and Mesons.
Especially Lasers and Mesons.
Posted by: Yonder
« on: October 25, 2011, 08:01:18 AM »So the main use of those missiles is circumventing CIWS?
Interesting.
I would say circumventing point defense in general, unless you are lagging technologically behind your opponent, or are building quite slow missiles, even most non-CIWS PD will probably end up firing in Point Blank mode.
Posted by: UnLimiTeD
« on: October 25, 2011, 06:33:23 AM »So the main use of those missiles is circumventing CIWS?
Interesting.
Interesting.
Posted by: Yonder
« on: October 24, 2011, 11:28:31 PM »So in my latest game there is a good chance that I'll be forced into using Laser warheads for RP purposes, so I decided to experiment to find out the mechanics of the laser warheads in a recent (5.4.2) version. For anyone else that may be interested, here they are.
As you progress through the Laser Wavelength tree you get to "Soft X-Ray Lasers". At this point after unlocking each new X-Ray wavelength you can next unlock the laser warhead for that wavelength. At this point you can design and build laser warheads.
Every MSP of warhead in a Laser Missile adds a new laser beam to the warhead, no fractions allowed. Each laser beam has a strength depending on the current wavelength of Laser Warhead, as follows:
Soft X-Ray Laser Warhead: 2
X-Ray Laser Warhead: 4
Far X-Ray Laser Warhead: 6
Extreme X-Ray Laser Warhead: 10
For some reason there are no warheads for the Gamma spectrums.
When the missile arrives at the target each laser beam rolls a separate chance to hit, and the beam hits are placed on the armor belt randomly, not on top of one another. Strangely enough the damage patterns are missile pyramids, not the higher penetration of the beam damage model. This is pretty much the only counter-intuitive result. Note that these laser beams only target the single ship being targeted. Regardless of the amount of overkill or whether the missile has its own guidance system. The missiles did no damage against a population in over 1 atm of atmosphere, nor did they increase radiation or dust. I did not test radiation or dust on a population with no atmosphere.
The Laser Warheads deal damage before the point blank defense of either a CIWS or a more general turreted laser beam PD. Manually targeting and firing at a missile at range successfully destroyed it. I was not able to get automatic point defense fire at range to work successfully on either a normal missile or a laser warhead, but I assume that it would have destroyed the missile as readily as manual fire if I was doing it properly. In addition the lack of any range setting on the warhead makes me assume that it is just abstracted to happen right before the Point Defense fire.
As you progress through the Laser Wavelength tree you get to "Soft X-Ray Lasers". At this point after unlocking each new X-Ray wavelength you can next unlock the laser warhead for that wavelength. At this point you can design and build laser warheads.
Every MSP of warhead in a Laser Missile adds a new laser beam to the warhead, no fractions allowed. Each laser beam has a strength depending on the current wavelength of Laser Warhead, as follows:
Soft X-Ray Laser Warhead: 2
X-Ray Laser Warhead: 4
Far X-Ray Laser Warhead: 6
Extreme X-Ray Laser Warhead: 10
For some reason there are no warheads for the Gamma spectrums.
When the missile arrives at the target each laser beam rolls a separate chance to hit, and the beam hits are placed on the armor belt randomly, not on top of one another. Strangely enough the damage patterns are missile pyramids, not the higher penetration of the beam damage model. This is pretty much the only counter-intuitive result. Note that these laser beams only target the single ship being targeted. Regardless of the amount of overkill or whether the missile has its own guidance system. The missiles did no damage against a population in over 1 atm of atmosphere, nor did they increase radiation or dust. I did not test radiation or dust on a population with no atmosphere.
The Laser Warheads deal damage before the point blank defense of either a CIWS or a more general turreted laser beam PD. Manually targeting and firing at a missile at range successfully destroyed it. I was not able to get automatic point defense fire at range to work successfully on either a normal missile or a laser warhead, but I assume that it would have destroyed the missile as readily as manual fire if I was doing it properly. In addition the lack of any range setting on the warhead makes me assume that it is just abstracted to happen right before the Point Defense fire.
Posted by: Charlie Beeler
« on: March 30, 2011, 07:22:03 AM »Multiple shots from each AMM vs. incoming missiles, primarily. And something interesting may fall out of the way beams target high velocity objects rather than the way missiles do.
As the game stands you'll get a net negative effect. You're better off with advanced AMM's that have a range of 2-3m km (minimum), launchers that have 5 second cycles, and active sensor tech (search and fire control) to support those ranges. Beams just can't match missiles for tohit chances against high speed targets. If I recall correctly, laserheads have a reduced tohit vs an equivalent standard warhead missile.
The real killer is economics. Laserheads are significantly more expensive than an equal space of AMM's.
The niche that laserheads are intended to fill, from my point of view, is standoff anti-shipping. Even then they don't really justify their higher cost. I'll qualify that with this, I have not tried using laserheads since v4.91. To my knowledge Steve has not changed the supporting code since then, so I have no evidence to change my opinion.
Posted by: Narmio
« on: March 29, 2011, 11:11:05 PM »It would be nice if they were reworked some day. Maybe make the bomb-pumped laser warheads a missile type on their own (like buoys, drones, etc) so that you can make them a sub-munition and thus set their separation (aka firing) range. Then you could also customise their size and power. Their range would be based on what level of the tech you have (soft x-ray, x-ray, etc), significantly reduced from what you can achieve with a ship-borne laser, it wouldn't make much sense if these things could hit further than the PD lasers built to intercept them...
There are a few questions, though. If they are to use the laser damage template, should they also use (miniaturised) beam-weapon fire controls? Would those need to be built into the laser submunition? How would damage be worked out? Presumably the laser damage derives from the space allocated and your warhead damage-per-msp tech, as the nuke is the power source. But not the same as devoting the space to a normal warhead, or with the laser damage template they'd obsolete normal missiles entirely.
Ideally you'd get a situation where you could detonate your laser submunitions out in the 20-100kkm range to avoid enemy beam PD, for the tradeoff of reduced damage (because of the falloff on lasers). Or you could detonate a big laser submunition right up in your enemy's face, at 10kkm, to try to pierce through heavy armour. You'd penetrate more layers that way, but you'd do less total damage than using a conventional missile. It would be tactically interesting. Although having to create different missile designs for different separation ranges would hamper how easily you could recalibrate to match an enemy's PD.
There are a few questions, though. If they are to use the laser damage template, should they also use (miniaturised) beam-weapon fire controls? Would those need to be built into the laser submunition? How would damage be worked out? Presumably the laser damage derives from the space allocated and your warhead damage-per-msp tech, as the nuke is the power source. But not the same as devoting the space to a normal warhead, or with the laser damage template they'd obsolete normal missiles entirely.
Ideally you'd get a situation where you could detonate your laser submunitions out in the 20-100kkm range to avoid enemy beam PD, for the tradeoff of reduced damage (because of the falloff on lasers). Or you could detonate a big laser submunition right up in your enemy's face, at 10kkm, to try to pierce through heavy armour. You'd penetrate more layers that way, but you'd do less total damage than using a conventional missile. It would be tactically interesting. Although having to create different missile designs for different separation ranges would hamper how easily you could recalibrate to match an enemy's PD.
Posted by: Shadow
« on: March 29, 2011, 09:14:14 PM »Yes, that would technically work against a single salvo (per missile), due to the very short range of the resulting lasers.
In theory. I don't think laser heads work in Aurora at the moment. Steve said he kind of forgot about them.
In theory. I don't think laser heads work in Aurora at the moment. Steve said he kind of forgot about them.
Posted by: Teiwaz
« on: March 29, 2011, 08:48:48 PM »Quote from: Charlie Beeler link=topic=1368. msg32858#msg32858 date=1301400424
Why? As a submunition for a multi-warhead anti-ship system they make sense. But as a counter missile they are poor choice.
Multiple shots from each AMM vs. incoming missiles, primarily. And something interesting may fall out of the way beams target high velocity objects rather than the way missiles do.
Posted by: Brian Neumann
« on: March 29, 2011, 10:27:32 AM »There is a difference between ciws and the other beam point defense (bpd) Ciws only fires at the 1,000km range and only to protect the mounting ship. The other bpd can be set to protect all ships, only the mounting ship, and to fire at any designated range. If they are set for more than 10,000km however most of them start to see a very rapid drop-off in accuracy. I have seen plenty of bpd fire control with a 50% accuracy at 30-40,000km so just increasing the range for final defensive fire to 20,000km means that you are dropping the base chance to hit from around 90% to 66-75% then modify that by the relative tracking speed. You could easily end up with an effective intercept range of half what it would be closser in. If you don't set it out that far however the laser warhead is going to go off without your bpd even trying to stop it. I am sure you see the trade-off's required here.
Brian
Brian
Posted by: Charlie Beeler
« on: March 29, 2011, 07:07:04 AM »Interesting. Has anyone tried using these as the payload for an AMM?
Why? As a submunition for a multi-warhead anti-ship system they make sense. But as a counter missile they are poor choice.
Posted by: Charlie Beeler
« on: March 29, 2011, 07:04:11 AM »So its essentially a Anti-CIWS specialized missile?
Not CIWS specificly. They are a means to counter beam point defense final fire.
Posted by: Teiwaz
« on: March 28, 2011, 08:34:14 PM »Interesting. Has anyone tried using these as the payload for an AMM?
Posted by: voknaar
« on: March 03, 2011, 10:56:03 PM »So its essentially a Anti-CIWS specialized missile?
Posted by: Brian Neumann
« on: March 03, 2011, 10:29:10 PM »From the original idea, the real reason to use the laser warheads was not to increase the penetration of the armor, but for a standoff weapon. Currently most people set their final defensive fire mode for 10,000km. The laser warheads are presumably going of beyond this range. To get that final defensive fire from your beam weapons you would need to set it farther out, which also reduces the chance of hitting the incomming missiles. CIWS had not been invented at this point, but would probably not get any chance to engage at all as they fire when the missile reaches 1,000km from the ship.
Brian
Brian
Posted by: Narmio
« on: March 03, 2011, 08:49:00 PM »I know this is a serious necro, but since there's only a few posts in it and I can't find much in the way of discussion of these since. . .
I just discovered that the techs for X-Ray Warheads are still in-game, were they ever expanded on? Do they work? Did Steve ever do those experiments with them that were mentioned in this thread from more than two years ago?
I'm assuming, although haven't tested this, that a laser warhead gives you the equivalent of a 10cm point-blank laser hit for each point of warhead you put in the missile. It doesn't seem like you can make the laser any bigger, it instead adds more warheads.
But what's the damage template and total damage of those warheads? Given that with a comparable level of warhead technology a warhead of size 1 can be hitting the third level of armour (once you get past the Warhead 8 tech, at least, which is kinda comparable in cost to X-ray laser tech), will a laser warhead actually penetrate deeper than this? I know a damage 10 laser at point blank seems to get through 5-6 levels of armour, but these laser warheads don't seem to be that big.
Why are there individual smallish laser warheads anyway? Wouldn't one warhead you could increase in size work better, as presumably the only reason to use laser warheads over normal ones is extra penetration?
I just discovered that the techs for X-Ray Warheads are still in-game, were they ever expanded on? Do they work? Did Steve ever do those experiments with them that were mentioned in this thread from more than two years ago?
I'm assuming, although haven't tested this, that a laser warhead gives you the equivalent of a 10cm point-blank laser hit for each point of warhead you put in the missile. It doesn't seem like you can make the laser any bigger, it instead adds more warheads.
But what's the damage template and total damage of those warheads? Given that with a comparable level of warhead technology a warhead of size 1 can be hitting the third level of armour (once you get past the Warhead 8 tech, at least, which is kinda comparable in cost to X-ray laser tech), will a laser warhead actually penetrate deeper than this? I know a damage 10 laser at point blank seems to get through 5-6 levels of armour, but these laser warheads don't seem to be that big.
Why are there individual smallish laser warheads anyway? Wouldn't one warhead you could increase in size work better, as presumably the only reason to use laser warheads over normal ones is extra penetration?
