Dealing with AMM spam

[Kiero (OP)]

I had trouble dealing with missile spam while fighting the Precursors.
The solution was to equip my missile destroyers with ammunition that would consume the enemy's AMMs. Only the first salvo was composed of these missiles.
Where the Precursors have their defense station equipped with AMMs. I set a Waypoint and used it to determine the target for the first salvo. The missiles, even after reaching the spot, are still targeted by the enemy defense, eating up their AMMs.

A large number of missile decoys, allows to exhaust the enemy's AMMs supply, fairly quickly.

What do you think?
What is your way of dealing with missile spam?

Specifications:

[Ghostly]

My usual MO before shield tech was to direct my missile strikes at the AMM bases before anything else, and after I started fielding shielded ships, I would bring at least one ship that could fully absorb at least one AMM salvo, because if you order the ship to reverse course as soon as the salvo is launched (and even meager thermal sensors can detect an AMM at its max range), one is all you're going to get, and if you can absorb one, you can absorb them all. However, while dealing with AMMs in that manner, I've discovered a rather exploity way of negating them almost entirely: because the AI does its interception math incorrectly, presumably due to rounding issues, if your ship ends its turn at just the edge of the AMM's launch range and immediatelly starts backing away, the AMMs will often, but not always, run out of fuel and miss on the same increment they were going to strike the ship. The launch range depends on the AMM's speed, range and the speed of your ships, for example my Precursors' AMMs have 60 kkm/s speed and just under 2 mkm range, and their launch range is ~1.6 mkm against my 10 kkm/s older generation ships and ~1.3 mkm against my fighters.

Off-Topic: AMM evasion with fighters • show

I'll admit that despite a non-insignificant chance of failure, this is still a very busted tactic, especially if you wouldn't be able to defeat the enemy AMMs otherwise, but in case your shields are already powerful enough, it just saves you so much time and so many clicks.

[Kiero (OP)]

Busted or Boosted tectics? 

There is another advantage.
Dud missiles sitting on top of AMM defense stations occupy the enemy's PD constantly. Which allows you to attack this type of resource, with other missiles. It provides a greater leakage of damage.
A second salvo of these missiles would even allow the beam-armed fleet to approach

[Steve Walmsley]

My usual MO before shield tech was to direct my missile strikes at the AMM bases before anything else, and after I started fielding shielded ships, I would bring at least one ship that could fully absorb at least one AMM salvo, because if you order the ship to reverse course as soon as the salvo is launched (and even meager thermal sensors can detect an AMM at its max range), one is all you're going to get, and if you can absorb one, you can absorb them all. However, while dealing with AMMs in that manner, I've discovered a rather exploity way of negating them almost entirely: because the AI does its interception math incorrectly, presumably due to rounding issues, if your ship ends its turn at just the edge of the AMM's launch range and immediatelly starts backing away, the AMMs will often, but not always, run out of fuel and miss on the same increment they were going to strike the ship. The launch range depends on the AMM's speed, range and the speed of your ships, for example my Precursors' AMMs have 60 kkm/s speed and just under 2 mkm range, and their launch range is ~1.6 mkm against my 10 kkm/s older generation ships and ~1.3 mkm against my fighters.

Off-Topic: AMM evasion with fighters • show

I'll admit that despite a non-insignificant chance of failure, this is still a very busted tactic, especially if you wouldn't be able to defeat the enemy AMMs otherwise, but in case your shields are already powerful enough, it just saves you so much time and so many clicks.

The AI in this area is improved for v2.6.

[Michael Sandy]

Still playing the VB6 game, but I would often build long range probe missiles with ranges in the billions of km with small active sensors.  Either the enemy shot them down, or they would get sensor readings on the enemy ships.  Either way, it was a very good way of getting information on the enemy weapons, AMM ranges, that sort of thing.  And because they had reduced fuel consumption engines, they were very cheap, so I could just make a lot of them, fire the whole magazine at an enemy planet, and bleed the enemy of AMMs.

My scout ships often had reduced fire rate launchers and a magazine, just for launching probe missiles.  And the nice thing is that cheap missiles used to soak enemy AMMs don't really go obsolete, so you can just mass produce them from your ordnance factories and stockpile them.

[Jorgen_CAB]

I rarely have these issues, it is all about overwhelming force. Simply go into your own AMM range and saturate their defences with your own AMM and ASM missiles at the same time, move in and blow them up.

Make sure you have overwhelming force at all times. If you don't then don't engage.

This will work pretty much all the time. This also is why gathering intel of enemy capability is key in all situation so you know if you should engage or withdraw.

[Grendel Marqun]

Honestly, my method for dealing with AMM spam in the early game is to just not use offensive missiles.

I DO use AMMs myself, putting just enough research into missiles to have a little bit of a decent multiwarhead capacity and letting engine technology do all the heavy lifting. Since NPR AMMs tend to have 1-point (or less) warheads, it doesn't take all that much armor to just shrug them off. Even better if you have shields.

AMMs on my ships are for when the hostiles launch stuff that's obviously too big to be an AMM, and might actually be able to hurt me. I usually keep them caged unless that "this could hurt" threat shows up.

The research I "saved" not working on offensive missiles goes into better fire controls, longer direct fire weapon range, and better engines.

Later in the game, I run missiles big enough to have 1-3 decoys on board.  I've also embraced carriers, as fighters give you an excuse to put a BUTTLOAD of box launchers into a fight and just swamp the enemy with literally hundreds of ASMs (preferably with at least one decoy each) launched all at once. Plus, they're fun! Maybe inefficient as heck, but definitely fun

[Grendel Marqun]

I rarely have these issues, it is all about overwhelming force. Simply go into your own AMM range and saturate their defences with your own AMM and ASM missiles at the same time, move in and blow them up.

Make sure you have overwhelming force at all times. If you don't then don't engage.

This will work pretty much all the time. This also is why gathering intel of enemy capability is key in all situation so you know if you should engage or withdraw.

That's great until you run into something you can't just roll over like a landslide I mean what if the hostile decides they want to invade Earth? It DOES happen!

[Jorgen_CAB]

That's great until you run into something you can't just roll over like a landslide I mean what if the hostile decides they want to invade Earth? It DOES happen!

If you can't defend Earth then you have more issues than countering AMM spam, that is not your problem.