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Posted by: Narmio
« on: August 22, 2013, 05:22:31 PM »

One of the things that I like to do with mid-game missile combat is design a series of "First strike" missiles with absurdly long range and onboard sensors. I make them to fit my normal missile platforms, but give them a massive range that far exceeds my MFCs, instead firing them at a waypoint en mass and hoping they hit something valuable -- usually with a small scout parked nearby enough to watch the damage. 

I usually like up-close missile combat, but this way I can drop a ridiculous number of warheads on particularly irritating aliens from the other side of a system and not have to significantly redesign my fleets.
Posted by: MarcAFK
« on: August 21, 2013, 08:34:16 AM »

Of course once your missiles get into the PDC's sensor range you'll be stuck with 5 second ticks till they land, On the bright side the detection range of your missiles will be well short of the range your ships would be detected at, which significantly reduces the time you'll spend in 5 second tick purgatory.
This is the main reason why i favor long range missile combat myself.
Posted by: Aloriel
« on: August 21, 2013, 02:05:23 AM »

I've already designed and built one of these:
Code: [Select]
ADC Leucotis class Decoy    1,000 tons     4 Crew     192.8 BP      TCS 20  TH 360  EM 0
18000 km/s     Armour 1-8     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 0
Maint Life 1.37 Years     MSP 12    AFR 80%    IFR 1.1%    1YR 7    5YR 103    Max Repair 10 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 0.1 months    Spare Berths 6    

20 EP Magneto-plasma Drive (18)    Power 20    Fuel Use 69.18%    Signature 20    Exp 12%
Fuel Capacity 5,000 Litres    Range 1.3 billion km   (20 hours at full power)
I've also SM'ed my fighters to have just one 25% size reduction missile launcher instead of the box launchers. They can reload those. So, they're useful again, even if they only have 1 launcher instead of 2.

EDIT:
An additional factor is that my line ships are now MUCH better designs. This war has taught me a number of lessons, and I have compensated for those with refits of my entire fleet (although the carrier won't get the upgrade before I go back in).

My Diadem cruisers should be able to eliminate the threat completely from 150 million km away (well outside their range). They have enough missiles for 70+ salvos of 10 missiles each. If they run out of missiles, I have a collier to reload them periodically. It carries a complete reload for 1 cruiser. I'll also have the missiles on the carrier, and all the bombers (which can now fire again).

This should, ideally, be enough to take out all of their launchers.
Posted by: MarcAFK
« on: August 21, 2013, 01:22:07 AM »

Maybe you should just use your current fighters as decoys, they're almost 4 times the AMM's speed and you can't really reload them because of the bug you're experiencing.
Posted by: Aloriel
« on: August 19, 2013, 10:54:16 PM »

That's crazy brilliant. Seriously. Especially since I have a carrier as the flag ship of the task force. The catch is trying to figure out how ineffectual their missiles are. I may have to think about that one for a while, and do some in game research.
Posted by: Narmio
« on: August 19, 2013, 08:38:55 PM »

It sounds like you could probably design a fighter against which their missiles have an effectively 0% hit chance.  Build a bunch of crazyfast decoy fighters with 2-3 armour and no weapons, and just park them in orbit around their planet until they're out.  If the hit chance is low enough you may not even have to proceed at 5 second intervals.
Posted by: Erik L
« on: August 16, 2013, 03:22:18 PM »

Hmm. If they don't even attempt to intercept your missiles, maybe fool them into expending their AMM against a large slow heavy missile. Scale a missile to be interceptable by them, load it up with armor and fire it. That should soak up their AMMs enough to give you a break in the missile curtain to get ships through.
Posted by: Aloriel
« on: August 16, 2013, 03:06:36 PM »

The decoy system, and the scaled firing won't actually make a difference in this case. The fact is that their missiles are so slow, and mine so fast, that they have a 0% chance to intercept. Even my older Tomahawk Mk 1 they had no success against, although they actually fired AMMs against those. My Mk 2 moves at nearly 10x their AMM's speed (22,400 vs 2500). They don't even fire AMMs against them.

So, I've designed a new missile cruiser that I will upgrade the older Edgar class to. It will have a bit more than 5x the missile storage, and a couple extra launchers. This new cruiser will be strong enough to have a guaranteed kill on 1 PDC per salvo (as opposed to almost guaranteed), and be capable of some 70+ salvos. It'll also have new launchers that are much faster reload.

That should be enough to eliminate the PDCs, ideally.

Unfortunately, it'll be a lot larger too. I think my missile cruiser is going from about 31k tons to about 38k tons.
Posted by: Hawkeye
« on: August 16, 2013, 02:34:18 PM »

Hm, in earlier versions, the AI tended to skimp on the number of firecons used, so you could swamp it with many small salvos.

Blue Emu (from Paradox Fame) came up with a way to do this.

Say, you have a ROF of 30 seconds.
You assign 1 tube to each FC and open fire.
5 sec later, you assign another tube to the same FC, so another missile is fired.

Important! Leave the already fired tube assigned!

Rinse repeat until the first launcher has reloaded.

Due to the reload time and the intervals, your launchers have fired, your ship will now shoot a missile per FC every 5 seconds.

The launchers to FC ratio should be equal to your ROF / 5


It is a bit of an exploit of the way Aurora works, but in a case like yours I will overlook it :)
Posted by: JacenHan
« on: August 16, 2013, 12:56:02 PM »

As a suggestion for your bombardment cruisers, try designing a large, armored "decoy" missile to draw out AMM fire. Of course, with that many missiles, it might not do much.
Posted by: Aloriel
« on: August 16, 2013, 11:38:41 AM »

Quote from: Erik Luken on August 16, 2013, 08:19:35 AM
Build and design bombardment cruisers. Firecons, and mongo big magazine space, then target the planet. See how much of their capacity gets diverted to interception, and maybe you can get other ships closer in.

This is what I am going to do. Withdraw, redesign, and hit them harder with more ships.

First, I'm going to make sure my espionage team lands safely though.
Posted by: Erik L
« on: August 16, 2013, 08:19:35 AM »

Build and design bombardment cruisers. Firecons, and mongo big magazine space, then target the planet. See how much of their capacity gets diverted to interception, and maybe you can get other ships closer in.
Posted by: SteelChicken
« on: August 16, 2013, 08:15:07 AM »

Getting in and then out of range works OK.  Hitting them with longer range missiles works as well.
Posted by: Aloriel
« on: August 15, 2013, 10:26:44 PM »

Heh, no. That won't help. :) Actually, I'm quite thankful for their slowness. Although, with the tech difference, I might still be faster than them. It's hard to say.
Posted by: Hawkeye
« on: August 15, 2013, 09:57:43 PM »

There seems to be an issue with NPR missiles, which makes them way too slow.

http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,5427.msg59524.html#msg59524

Not that this will help you though :)