Aurora 4x
New Players => The Academy => Topic started by: Kaiser on October 13, 2013, 06:08:56 AM
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Hi dudes, I'm trying to figure out how to design an anti - ship missile since some nasty aliens have sprung up in my solar system :P, but I really cannot understand how do it..so many parameter to take in consideration.
could anyone make me a simple example step by step?
Should I design missile engine first and the missile itself after? How much fuel?
Thank you so much
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For AMMs, I think it is best to work backwards.
You know the final product needs to be Size 1. Deduct whatever space is needed for a 1 point warhead with your tech. Deduct another 0.1 or so for fuel and agility. Whatever is left is engine, since you won't be using Armour, ECM or sensors on an AMM. Personally, I find it comes out at a 0.7MSP engine early on, and creeps down as you can shrink the WH, get the agility required in less space etc
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Personally I use these steps:
1) determine the final size of your missile. This is important. For AMMs Size 1 is best.
2) Determine the warhead. For an AMM it should be 1 point of damage.
3)The engine. For missiles i generally use either 2x or 2.5 x EP engines, but again, depends on the role.
4)Fuel. AMMs generally don't need to be more than 6 million km range, while for ASMs its entirely up to you and you sensor range. Keep your missile engine's fuel use in mind.
5) Agility. For AMMs set this as high as you can, while for ASMs just relagate the reaming space. So long as your AMMs have >50% chance of hitting enemy missiles its fine. Same goes for ASMs and enemy ships.
6)Armor and sensors. Haven't really played with these much, so I can't speak for their usefulness.
Hope this helps.
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Thank you both for the answer guys.
Just to be clear, because the section about missiles is very hard to understand.
1) I opened the missile design project and I created a 2 MSP size missile like this (1 warhead strengh, 0.8 fuel capacity, 0.2 agility, no sensors, armor or other stuff)
now, before I go to the missile engine part, I would like to have some explanations about what I just have done:
1) 1 warhead strengh has Value 3, does it mean that it will do a 3 point of damage if hit (triangular damage)?
2) 0.8 fuel capacity has value 2000, does it mean that my missile will carry 2000litre of fuel available for its travel toward the target?
3) 0.2 agility I cannot understand how the agility works, I think I should try during a fighting, but that's not a problem.
if everything is correct, how the engine missile should be setted now?
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When allocating warhead, fuel, etc. You are allocating the space given to that component. In your case, 1 point allocation gives 3 damage. Missile damage to armor is a pyramid like this:
###*###
##***##
If the missile hits an area where armor has been stripped, it will deal internal damage.
2) Yes
3) Its a little abstract, play around with it until you get your desired hitchance against your desired target speed. Agility is used to calculate (with RNG) whether or not you missile strikes the target.
Lastly, remember that the missile engine contributes to missile size so with you current 2MSP engineless missles I reccomend a 2 MSP missile engine (My rule for ASMs is 50% engine). What is your engine/power boost tech?
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When allocating warhead, fuel, etc. You are allocating the space given to that component. In your case, 1 point allocation gives 3 damage. Missile damage to armor is a pyramid like this:
###*###
##***##
If the missile hits an area where armor has been stripped, it will deal internal damage.
2) Yes
3) Its a little abstract, play around with it until you get your desired hitchance against your desired target speed. Agility is used to calculate (with RNG) whether or not you missile strikes the target.
Lastly, remember that the missile engine contributes to missile size so with you current 2MSP engineless missles I reccomend a 2 MSP missile engine (My rule for ASMs is 50% engine). What is your engine/power boost tech?
Well, I projected and researched an engine like this, my techs are little primitive yet, nuclear pulse engine:
Engine Power: 1 Fuel Use Per Hour: 6.42 Litres
Fuel Consumption per Engine Power Hour: 6.422 Litres
Engine Size: 2.5 MSP Cost: 0.25
Thermal Signature: 1
Materials Required: 0.75x Tritanium 0.25x Gallicite
Development Cost for Project: 50RP
2.5 MPS + 2 of the missile= 4.5 MPS
If I well understood, the lauchers should be at least the same size as the missle or more like this:
Maximum Missile Size: 5 Rate of Fire: 50 seconds
Launcher Size: 5 HS Launcher HTK: 2
Cost Per Launcher: 30 Crew Per Launcher: 15
Materials Required: 7.5x Duranium 22.5x Tritanium
Development Cost for Project: 300RP
Maximum missile size 5 should be good for my missile, even if there's a little waste of space. No?
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I'd boost the warhead size to 1.35 and change the fuel to 0.35, and agility to 0.8. That's just me though.
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I usually design a size .1 maximum power missile engine for making my prototype missiles, then i adjust the quantity of fuel, agility and number of .1 engines untill i get the range and speed i want, then i go and design an engine which is the same size as all the engines i allocated for that prototype missile, being one larger engine means extra range than lots of small size .1 missiles.
For example:
Size 3 Anti-ship Missile
Missile Size: 3 MSP (0.15 HS) Warhead: 5 Armour: 0 Manoeuvre Rating: 10
Speed: 24000 km/s Engine Endurance: 18 minutes Range: 25.9m km
Cost Per Missile: 2.15
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 240% 3k km/s 80% 5k km/s 48% 10k km/s 24%
Materials Required: 1.25x Tritanium 0.9x Gallicite Fuel x625
Development Cost for Project: 215RP
Designed with 1.25 MSP of x4 Warhead tech, .25 fuel and 15 size .1 ION engines,
The same missile but with one size 1.5 MSP engine would be this:
Size 3 Anti-ship Missile
Missile Size: 3 MSP (0.15 HS) Warhead: 5 Armour: 0 Manoeuvre Rating: 10
Speed: 24000 km/s Engine Endurance: 114 minutes Range: 164.8m km
Cost Per Missile: 2.15
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 240% 3k km/s 80% 5k km/s 48% 10k km/s 24%
Materials Required: 1.25x Tritanium 0.9x Gallicite Fuel x625
Development Cost for Project: 215RP
Notice the significantly larger range, also try to make your missiles whole numbers to take better advantage of the reload rate of your launchers, if you can shave that missile down to size 4 your reload speed will be 20% faster than a size 5. Or add more engine to raise your hit rate.
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ahhhh yes now it's clear.
My doubt was that I thought that once I had researched the engine missile and the missile, these were fixed and I could not edit them anymore.
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To optimize your missile use the following formula:
num_engines = (10*missile_size + remaining_space*agility_factor)/(2*agility_factor*engine_size)
where:
num_engine = number of engines to install on this missile
missile_size = the size of the missile in missile space points
remaining_space = the amount of space left over after warhead, sensors and fuel (this can be approximate)
agility_factor = this is your current agility technology value (32, 48, etc)
engine_size = how big the engine will be (1 MSP, 0.1 MSP, etc)
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On a size six missile with size 1 engines, 2.25 warhead, .25 fuel, and no armor or sensors, that formula tells me to use 2.375 engines. Or about 2.4 MSP of engines. Which leaves 1.1 Agility. That seems like a lot for an anti-ship missile.
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I'm messing around with missile design for the first time, and am curious about something:
Missile Size: 1.6 MSP (0.08 HS) Warhead: 2 Armour: 0 Manoeuvre Rating: 10
Speed: 900 km/s Engine Endurance: 21.1 hours Range: 68.4m km
Cost Per Missile: 0.5188
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 9% 3k km/s 0% 5k km/s 1.8% 10k km/s 0.9%
Materials Required: 0.5x Tritanium 0.0188x Gallicite Fuel x1250
Development Cost for Project: 52RP
How do you go from 0% chance to hit at 3k km/s to 1.8% at 3k km/s? Is there something wrong with the math calculations in the game I should be watching out for?
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On a size six missile with size 1 engines, 2.25 warhead, .25 fuel, and no armor or sensors, that formula tells me to use 2.375 engines. Or about 2.4 MSP of engines. Which leaves 1.1 Agility. That seems like a lot for an anti-ship missile.
Agility becomes more useful as your agility factor increases and engines less so. Size 1 engines are bad because of granularity issues but regardless your choice is now 2 engines or 3. This issue is why I changed from size 1 to size 0.5 engines and also from size 0.2 to 0.1 because that allows a lot more fine tuning to the system.
The formula is for optimizing your to-hit chance and all my tests indicated that the deriviative (which is what it is) has found the maximum.
Basically you only need absurd levels of speed compared to your target when you need to use the factor (missile speed/target speed) to boost your crummy chance to hit to something half decent. When your missile is agile enough to hit the target then speed is less critical; the missile only needs to be fast enough to hit the target in the first place.
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Basically you only need absurd levels of speed compared to your target when you need to use the factor (missile speed/target speed) to boost your crummy chance to hit to something half decent. When your missile is agile enough to hit the target then speed is less critical; the missile only needs to be fast enough to hit the target in the first place.
I'm not really sure about it...
Agility is indeed very useful in the case of anti-missile missiles to get the best possible interception rate in a size-1 package, but speed is more valuable for anti-ship missiles :
- With decent tech, missile speed will be easily far faster than the ships they're supposed to hit.
- the extra speed will makes them more difficult to intercept by ennemy anti-missile defenses.
Note that I'm NOT advocating to set the ASM agility to 0 - My latest ASMs have a 41800 km/s speed and 17 MR.
This gives them a (theorical) 100% interception rate for anything below 6500 km/s speed (and 65% for a 10000 km/s target), but the high speed gives them more than a 2 out of 3 chances of surviving one of my AMMs (40000 km/s & MR30 - 67.2% survival rate).
With my current tech level (MPDs & 64 agi/MS), the usual formula will lead me to build a slow 28800 km/s and MR32 (!) missile, with indeed a nice 92.2% interception rate for a 10000km/s target... but with a survival rate to the same AMMs reduced to 56.3%.
Furthermore, faster missiles leaves less time to react for the target.
[Edit : shameless auto-promotion]
If you're really confused by the missile design window, you might try my multipurpose aurora tool to try some missiles combination without having to waste research on a test engine.
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,5855.msg60061.html#msg60061
This is a old one however...
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The formula is a maximization of the to-hit chance experession and does not take into account other factors which may influence your design choice. My statement was it needs only be fast enough to hit the target. "fast enough" is determined by what experience says is "fast enough." At some point you can say "fast enough" and go for agility.
Or put another way: a missile designed using that optimization is a good starting point for a new player. They can then tweek the design as they choose based on experience.
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Well, I researched all that I needed and this is the result:
Prinz Eugen class Cruiser 10,400 tons 294 Crew 1515.1 BP TCS 208 TH 200 EM 0
1923 km/s Armour 6-42 Shields 0-0 Sensors 12/12/0/0 Damage Control Rating 8 PPV 54
Maint Life 4.4 Years MSP 728 AFR 108% IFR 1.5% 1YR 61 5YR 910 Max Repair 160 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months Spare Berths 0
Magazine 254
100 EP Nuclear Pulse Engine (4) Power 100 Fuel Use 125.78% Signature 50 Exp 12%
Fuel Capacity 1,000,000 Litres Range 13.8 billion km (82 days at full power)
AS Devastator Missile Launcher (6) Missile Size 9 Rate of Fire 90
Missile Fire Control FC76-R100 (70%) (1) Range 76.8m km Resolution 100
Active Search Sensor MR100-R110 (1) GPS 17600 Range 100.7m km Resolution 110
Thermal Sensor TH2-12 (1) Sensitivity 12 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 12m km
EM Detection Sensor EM2-12 (1) Sensitivity 12 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 12m km
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
I think there's only an "error" of projecting: my missile has range 1.6m Km, while I have designed a missile fire control having 76.8m Km. Should the missile fire control's range match that one of the missile?
Is it anyway necessary to have the active search sensor?
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Well, I researched all that I needed and this is the result:
Prinz Eugen class Cruiser 10,400 tons 294 Crew 1515.1 BP TCS 208 TH 200 EM 0
1923 km/s Armour 6-42 Shields 0-0 Sensors 12/12/0/0 Damage Control Rating 8 PPV 54
Maint Life 4.4 Years MSP 728 AFR 108% IFR 1.5% 1YR 61 5YR 910 Max Repair 160 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months Spare Berths 0
Magazine 254
100 EP Nuclear Pulse Engine (4) Power 100 Fuel Use 125.78% Signature 50 Exp 12%
Fuel Capacity 1,000,000 Litres Range 13.8 billion km (82 days at full power)
AS Devastator Missile Launcher (6) Missile Size 9 Rate of Fire 90
Missile Fire Control FC76-R100 (70%) (1) Range 76.8m km Resolution 100
Active Search Sensor MR100-R110 (1) GPS 17600 Range 100.7m km Resolution 110
Thermal Sensor TH2-12 (1) Sensitivity 12 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 12m km
EM Detection Sensor EM2-12 (1) Sensitivity 12 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 12m km
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
I think there's only an "error" of projecting: my missile has range 1.6m Km, while I have designed a missile fire control having 76.8m Km. Should the missile fire control's range match that one of the missile?
Is it anyway necessary to have the active search sensor?
Your ship design has no standard loadout either. This means when one comes out of the yards, the magazines are empty. And if you forget to load them, they will end up in battle with no missiles.
Look on the Fighters/Ordnance tab of the ship class design window.
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Your ship design has no standard loadout either. This means when one comes out of the yards, the magazines are empty. And if you forget to load them, they will end up in battle with no missiles.
Look on the Fighters/Ordnance tab of the ship class design window.
sorry I don't understand, what's "loadout"? do you mean missile already loaded? This is only the project, I have not any of this ship yet, I want design a better fire control ;)
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Prinz Eugen class Cruiser 10,300 tons 290 Crew 1473.9 BP TCS 206 TH 200 EM 0
1941 km/s Armour 6-42 Shields 0-0 Sensors 12/12/0/0 Damage Control Rating 8 PPV 54
Maint Life 4.53 Years MSP 715 AFR 106% IFR 1.5% 1YR 56 5YR 846 Max Repair 160 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months Spare Berths 0
Magazine 254
100 EP Nuclear Pulse Engine (4) Power 100 Fuel Use 125.78% Signature 50 Exp 12%
Fuel Capacity 1,000,000 Litres Range 13.9 billion km (82 days at full power)
AS Devastator Missile Launcher (6) Missile Size 9 Rate of Fire 90
Missile Fire Control FC1-R18 (70%) (1) Range 1.6m km Resolution 18
AS - 8-5 Devastator Anti-ship Missile (30) Speed: 4,700 km/s End: 4.1d Range: 1646.7m km WH: 6 Size: 8.5 TH: 22/13/6
Active Search Sensor MR100-R110 (1) GPS 17600 Range 100.7m km Resolution 110
Thermal Sensor TH2-12 (1) Sensitivity 12 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 12m km
EM Detection Sensor EM2-12 (1) Sensitivity 12 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 12m 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
Here we are, this is the final project more or less: I designed a new fire control which has the same range as the missile. Only a question: what is this "End: 4.1d" in the missile's features?
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End is short for endurance. As in your missiles will travel 4.1 days before running out of fuel. The listed range for your Devastator missile is 1.6467 billion km not 1.6 million km.
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Loadout is the standard missile complement the ship carries. In your second example, the 30 AS - 8-5 Devastator Anti-ship Missile are the loadout.
And your missile has 1000x the range of your fire control. Now it's been a while since I designed any ships in Aurora, but that is striking me as very short ranged.
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I'm frakking stupid!! I thought it was 1.6 millions, instead it's 1miliard and 600millions Km!! Well, thanks to everyone guys
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Just remember Steve is British, and so skips the milliard thing. Sort of like us Americans :)
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Just remember Steve is British, and so skips the milliard thing. Sort of like us Americans :)
eheh sure ;))
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Going back to the optimization question, although I have to admit I try to avoid going into the math on something I do for fun, the full situation probably is helped if you stick a few formulas into the mess.
To determine the chance a missile will hit the target you are looking at a compound equation that is simple:
final_to-hit_chance = ((1-f)^n)*((1-g)^m)*(1-h)*k*l
f is an expression that takes into account the chance the missile is intercepted by long range counter missiles. This is unfortunately complex. It depends a lot on the enemy's technology, sensors, fire control, missile design, rate of fire, etc. It also depends on if they are firing in 1v1 or something else. It also depends on your missile design: Armour, speed, ECM have effects on this.
n is the number of counter missile salvos you will have to evade.
f and n are linked and quite frankly vary from player to player since you are likely fighting different designs and so on.
g is an expression that takes into account all close range point defence fire on a missile from consorts. It is influenced by the enemy defences mainly, but also by your missile parameters.
m is how many attempts are made and I'm simplifying somewhat in that I doubt all ships assisting have a similiar chance to hit. Likely the (1-g)^m should be (1-gm)*(1-gm-1)...(1-g0)
h is the point blank point defence fire probability function of the target
k is a a fuction of missile range, launch range, target velocity, missile velocity, and missile endurance. This says if the missile can hit the target. It will have a value of 1 or 0. You should ignore it during an analysis and simply say I will always launch when I can hit the target for sure.
l is the basic to-hit formula (missile speed/target speed)*agility
Now it should be, I hope obvious, this is a non-tractable problem. It is dependent on circumstance (ex: launch range), target, and launcher. There is unlikely to be a single optimal solution but instead a large area of parameter space where the overall expression is maximum and possibly this is not single valued so you have several possible solutions that give you essentially identical maxima.
If you make even some guesses on what these values are then you can do a simple bit of number crunching to get a extimate on effectiveness:
So if I just toss some numbers in there (from Cocyte):
Missile 1 has a final to hit of 92% and an AAM interception chance of 45%
Missile 2 has a final to hit of 67% and an AAM interception chance of 33%
I assume that no PD exists and that the 3v1 will be used for interceptions. I assume in both cases that only 1 interception chance is possible.
M1 = (1-0.45)^3*0.92 = 0.15 (15% chance to hit)
M2 = (1-0.33)^3*0.67 = 0.20 (20% chance to hit)
If the number of interception chances is different so M1 is intercepted twice and M2 only once then:
M1 = ((1-.45)^3)^2*0.92 = 0.025 (2.5% chance to hit)
If both are intercepted twice:
M2 = ((1-0.33)^3)^2*0.67 = 0.06 (6% chance to hit)
If you factor in PD then the chance of any missile getting through drops. If you then sum it up (to account for a typical salvo) though it becomes different, and substantially so if you say you can saturate their point defence or not, since in any case there isn't much difference in performance point defence wise so missiles intercepted by point defence fire will likely be eliminated.
Assume 8 missiles fired: 4 intercepted by AAM fire; 4 not:
Number of M1 hitting target = 4*.92 + 4*0.15 = 4.28
Number of M2 hitting target = 4*.67 + 4*0.20 = 3.48
At the end of the day the performance between the two missiles isn't exactly overwhelming different (for that particular situation anyway). Those two numbers aren't going to look too much different in a battle since they are the mean and there is the deviation to account for.
But what I hope I have shown is that it is not a straighforward thing. When you end up multiplying different probabilities together what may look like big differences tend to vanish. They may come back in the standard deviation...plus I'm not sure at all what that to hit distribution function would look like (it is not likely to be guassian for example).
Also by choice of numbers in an example I can skew the results I present. This is an unfortunate problem with this kind of analysis...it is a bias that anyone reading this stuff has to keep in mind.
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TL dr; you need faster missiles. A lot faster. Less fuel, more engines, higher engine power multiplier. 100 m km is a good range to try for right now, I think. Try and make your missiles size 6 instead of size 8.5; they'll be harder to detect that way, as well as faster firing and more efficient use of the missile launcher space. As well, a WarHead(WH) of 4 would be better than 6, if you decrease the missile size. But mainly, reduce fuel, increase engine power and number, and make it smaller.
Bigger missile fire control, as well, should help. Should probably have your active sensor and your fire control at the same resolution.
Mostly, you just need more tech; nuclear pulse tech is really low tech, remember.
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So if I just toss some numbers in there (from Coyote):
Missile 1 has a final to hit of 92% and an AAM interception chance of 45%
Missile 2 has a final to hit of 67% and an AAM interception chance of 33%
don't forget those to-hit are against a 10000 km/s target - this kind of speed is quite uncommon for med game warships. Up to 6500 km/s, both missiles have a 100% to-hit chance, so the faster one have a significant advantage.
One of the computer-played race in my current game have a higher propulsion tech than me (i'ld say one or two levels above mine), and 80% of their ships are cruising at no more than 6000 km/s.
All in all, this kind of analysis is nicely summed up in the title of the thread.
PS :I'm not a Coyote...
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Sorry will correct that...actually "significant advantage" is not present, that is my point. Even if you assume both missiles hit 100% of the time, the difference at the end of the day between 15% to get through the counter missiles and 20% will be lost in the noise of the statistics and probably even more so given you are talking about a bog standard PC random number generator which isn't completely random. One of two places where speed turns out to be critical is deriving the number of such intercepts since that will drive down the to-hit chance extremely rapidly, even if their chance to be interecepted is low. The other place is in determining that function k, which is the "maximum effective range" of your missile against a running target. After that at some point velocity will saturate in terms of effective results, as I said earlier you just get to a point where you can say "fast enough." But that point won't be universal.
Yeah, it is why I usually avoid doing stuff like this but then I make a general statement and people get all nit picky about some small part. But when you are actually doing a chain like that either you do it or you can lead yourself down the merry path to la la land. But I think Aurora has a problem in that speed becomes "the one stat to rule them all" in the game. The reality is that relative velocity should be more critical to missile interception chances, where the missile should have a to-hit chance that has something like (missile_velocity-target_velocity) factors. So a missile should hit best if it is moving at say twice the target velocity or something but with a fall off if the missile is too slow or too fast. This would probably keep missile velocities a lot more sane.
This whole situation also contributes significantly to the size 1 missile spam. As it becomes harder and harder to produce a large fast missile, and easier and esier to make a 1 pt warhead carrying missile that goes at speeds that render interception difficult. Basically it comes down to the part of the formula that looks like (1-hit_chance)^m^n where m is an integer between 1 and 5, and in practical terms n is an integer between 1 and 3. m is the art of interception 1v1 to 5v1 and n is the number of such interception attempts. The problem is that for m=3 and n=2 that is (1-hit_chance)^6 which for just about any value of hit_chance is a small number. So in practice you need a lot of inbound missiles for even 1 of them on average to hit. Thus snowing the target under with size 1 missiles which are far easier to make fast enough to reduce n to 1 and equally easily numerous enough to make m also 1, becomes the optimal solution...as experience has shown.
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It's not so much that speed rules the other factors, but that speed is the easiest one to understand enough it's impact on the results.
The second easiest to manipulate, but is usually discounted by players, is salvo count within volley. You can usually sacrifice a small number (1 or 2) launchers to add an additional MFC. This will reduce the number of missiles in an individual salvo but raise the number of salvos in a task group volley. By raising the salvo count you increase the potential of saturating the defenses. Paul's formula does touch on this, but I suspect that several players do not notice the effect.
Back to the OP's query about missile design.
In reality, trying to design any system in game only is a bad idea. The various game components are just too complex to do it reliably. The best approach is build tools outside of the game for design analysis. For missiles this is actually quite easy to do since all the relevant data points and formulas have been extensively discussed in several topics over the last year and half. The primary starting point is the discussion of the changes for v6.0 in suggestions.