First basic missile frigate

[jseah]

As I said... that works well against the computer controlled NPR's.  but won't fair so well against a player controlled NPR with a fleet designed for a missile heavy environment, especially one designed with missile fighters and FAC's in the mix.  It's a whole different game with both sides are actively controlled.

I don't know about fighters or FACs.  They don't look that useful frankly.  I do build 1kton corvettes because I built a 8 slipway naval yard that I might as well put to use building a reserve force and civilian garrison.  

Fighters and FACs lug around an engine that is not being used while taking up room in your carrier, so despite box launchers, you have only slightly more tubes per weight than reduced size launchers, for high fuel cost, logistics difficulties (fighters need one more type of factory, FACs need small shipyards with alot of slipways) and reload times comparable to 33% launchers.  

If the fleet scout packs a size 50 res 1 sensor (which mine does), no missile platform will get into firing range without being seen and shot at.  
Note to self: check if I can reduce resolution of next gen firecontrol to maintain the same size of firecon, res16 isn't good enough for anti-fighter work.  
Fighters have a problem countering ECM and if I add cloaking devices to the fleet, suddenly fighters are very hard to use (fighter mounted actives aren't going to be high res or long ranged); and I don't lose all that many launchers.  
FACs are slightly better but if you're going to use box launchers, I think I will use missile pods packing ultra-long ranged drones.  


A fleet designed for a missile-heavy environment could mean a fleet that is 33% tonnage of overcharged engines, relying on lasers for offense and PD as well as coming knocking with 50% or higher AMM escort frigates.  AMMs are cheaper than ASMs after all.  

If I had to build a fleet to counter my current one, cloaking devices and/or long range sniper drones would be the way I'd use.  Either that or a fast laser-armed fleet with thousands of AMM launchers.  
Unorthodox tactics could include a cloaked FAC that is nothing but armour and a meson to soak up AMMs.  Size reduction launchers aren't that good at dealing with beam-armed FACs and spending AMMs against armour balls will be... expensive.  

[Charlie Beeler]

Fighters are not easy to use effectively, but they have one huge advantage volume of salvos.  Granted with the active sensor changes after v4.9 they aren't as devastating as they once were.

The best place to use fighters is in support of missile ships to deliver alpha strikes that swamp missile defenses.


Cloaks:  Lets just stay that they are even harder to use effectively than fighters.

[waresky]

Fighters are not easy to use effectively, but they have one huge advantage volume of salvos.  Granted with the active sensor changes after v4.9 they aren't as devastating as they once were.

The best place to use fighters is in support of missile ships to deliver alpha strikes that swamp missile defenses.


Cloaks:  Lets just stay that they are even harder to use effectively than fighters.

+1

Carrier Groups are even deadly in this task..

[jseah]

RE: use of fighters

Delivering an alpha strike that swamps missile defences is exactly the idea of 33% size launchers.  Sure, your DPS goes down, but small swarms aren't getting through a missile defence envelope anyway. 
Might as well have your missile ships mount reduced launchers and not have to eat the long reload times for fighters. 

Cloaks:  Lets just stay that they are even harder to use effectively than fighters.

Cloaks seem pretty simple to me. 

They make your ship appear to have a smaller cross section than they normally do. 
While doing cloak research for my spy ship, I was thinking about how cloaks affect combat, especially against my fleet.  93% cloak is really a game changer. 

The end result is that I can actually pack a cloak device onto a 6kton ship, and have it appear like a 420ton fighter.  Stack some ECM on it as well as design some unusually long ranged missiles, and you'll never even get shot at.  If the cloak fleet has missiles around 120mkm range, even if it sacrifices some accuracy, it can pound away basically unanswered as the active sensors and fire control required becomes ruinously large. 

NOTE: I have yet to actually do this as it will end up requiring another round of refits, which, frankly, I'm getting tired of. 

[Charlie Beeler]

RE: use of fighters

Delivering an alpha strike that swamps missile defences is exactly the idea of 33% size launchers.  Sure, your DPS goes down, but small swarms aren't getting through a missile defence envelope anyway.

 
Your making absolute statements.  As I have pointed out repeatedly, a human controlled NPR (or player race) can make a hash of that statement.  As an example, it's not unusual for a 10k carrier to have a strike group of around 20 250t (hs5) fighters each with a salvo of 4-5 missiles that can engage from 20mkm.  Very few have an effective missile defense that reaches that far.  And that throw weight (both missile and salvo volume) far exceeds the capability of a similair weight warship with 33% launchers.  Add in the speed advantage of the fighter, the carrier has the potential of engaging a non-carrier force without effective reply. 

Yes, you can specificly design a force that will reduce and mostly negate the fighters engagement advantage...until the opponent makes changes to offset your new doctrine.  That is why playing human/player controlled NPR's vs only AI controlled NPR's is such a challenge.

Might as well have your missile ships mount reduced launchers and not have to eat the long reload times for fighters.

 
Fighters with box launchers actually reload faster that equal tech 33% launchers(x15 vs x20) and the 25% launchers are even worse (x100).  There are two handicaps that box launchers do have in this department, the reload rate tech does not apply and the time it takes the from them to return to the hanger to rearm. 

Cloaks seem pretty simple to me. 

They make your ship appear to have a smaller cross section than they normally do. 
While doing cloak research for my spy ship, I was thinking about how cloaks affect combat, especially against my fleet.  93% cloak is really a game changer.

 
Cloaks are just as mass intensive as jump engines until you advance the efficiency enough, not cheap of quick.  An that 93% cloak is a 5th level tech and requires a minimum of 132,000rp to field...not an effective early tech.

The end result is that I can actually pack a cloak device onto a 6kton ship, and have it appear like a 420ton fighter.  Stack some ECM on it as well as design some unusually long ranged missiles, and you'll never even get shot at.  If the cloak fleet has missiles around 120mkm range, even if it sacrifices some accuracy, it can pound away basically unanswered as the active sensors and fire control required becomes ruinously large.

Missiles with EM or Thermal sensors don't require an active lock no "ruinously large" MFC required.  Average to good missile defenses can easily handle the reduced salvos that a cloaked ship will throw.  etc etc etc. 

For every tactic there is a counter, the trick is to be the one with the newest ecfective one first.

NOTE: I have yet to actually do this as it will end up requiring another round of refits, which, frankly, I'm getting tired of. 

My point all along is a simple one, if you only play against the AI combat become fairly standardized.  Throw in human controlled NPR's and those standardized stratagies and tactics become a liability.

[jseah]

Oh no, of course.  I am not saying that tactics will not change if I was playing against a human-controlled NPR. 
I would expect tactics to evolve as we think of counters to each other's current fleet.  (and anticipating such counters and countering THEM)
Sure, cloak isn't an early game strat.  You can't really spare 1.5 years on cloak research that is mostly useless until you hit TL5 cloaks or its a prolonged ceasefire. 

I'm just not entirely sure that fighters can be any more useful than reduced size launchers. 
The 5x reload time advantage over 33% reduction is taken up by flight time to and fro from the carrier.  Unless you're launching missiles from a missile pod in the carrier which is a strategy I am considering (but probably won't implement because it's just too crazy XD)

Then again, if I was going to use fighters, I wouldn't pack 20mkm missiles.  Ships can lock up fighters somewhere around 40mkm or so with their MFC (if future- and ECM- proofed) and two ASM missiles would easily blow a fighter away.  You end up losing alot of your missiles in their tubes. 
15ktons of carrier + fighters vs 15ktons of ship (5kton escort, 10kton reduced size launchers) would lose alot of their fighter complement before launch. 
Now if the fighters launch proper ship-to-ship ASMs, with 60+mkm, then yes, the salvo goes unanswered.  I wonder how you fit a MFC that big into a 250ton fighter though.  Could be possible with a ~400ton fighter, I've designed one that went something like that and had 3 or 4 layers of armour. 
A cloaked 2kton corvette at TL6 or 7 though... now THAT's scary.  Impossible to resolve, able to mount decent sensors and ECCM, reduced size tubes.  Used in a strike fighter role, I wouldn't know how to counter them at all. 

As for Thermal Sensor missiles vs cloak, the sensor is either really big, in which case you have an ineffective or huge missile; or it fails to lock anyway.  Ships will have moved from their original position from the time you launched and predicting where they will go is pretty darned difficult.  Especially if they have survived one such salvo and are actively moving randomly. 
You need a sensor range big enough to cover their movement range during your time of launch.  That's a really big sensor.  I don't know, but dedicated ~1 MSP to sensor in a size 6 missile or so sounds pretty crazy to me. 

[Charlie Beeler]

With fighters, as with all long range combatants, you have to keep ahead of the game with sensor efficiency.  With a good active efficiency you can pack a fairly small MFC into a fighter that can resolve the warships you intend to engage.  Odds are better than even that you'll loose some fighters before thier missile reach terminal attack range (unless sensor equiped) you won't loose them all.  Unless the opfor has a segnificant sensor advantage.

[jseah]

With fighters, as with all long range combatants, you have to keep ahead of the game with sensor efficiency.  With a good active efficiency you can pack a fairly small MFC into a fighter that can resolve the warships you intend to engage.  Odds are better than even that you'll loose some fighters before thier missile reach terminal attack range (unless sensor equiped) you won't loose them all.  Unless the opfor has a segnificant sensor advantage.

Sensor equipped fighter missiles... hmmm.  That sounds interesting. 

I just had an idea.  A large drone with a sensor and a few terminal attack missile submunitions.  Will the drone lock onto a target it passes by on its way to a waypoint and fire it's munitions?  That would work pretty well.  You can fit large sensors on size 20 drones without compromising range too much. 
IE. can a drone fire short ranged missiles with their own sensors at targets within their sensor range?
EDIT: or better still, can a drone (whose firing platform has blown up) with sensors fire submunitions at targets when the submunitions don't have sensors?

Also, "opfor"?  I presume you mean "opposition", but I've never met that term. 

[Charlie Beeler]

Once you have a relatively mature sensor tech, adding small active or thermal sensors to missiles is a good idea.  All missiles.  That allows them to have a chance to attack the intended target if the launching MFC is lost for whatever reason.

There are several threads around that decuss missile buses in detail so I won't rehash them here.  I'll only say that in my games they have not been cost effective solutions.

opfor = opposing force

[waresky]

Once you have a relatively mature sensor tech, adding small active or thermal sensors to missiles is a good idea.  All missiles.  That allows them to have a chance to attack the intended target if the launching MFC is lost for whatever reason.

There are several threads around that decuss missile buses in detail so I won't rehash them here.  I'll only say that in my games they have not been cost effective solutions.

opfor = opposing force

Age of tread upon that:))..

MIssile doctrine are a deadly matter..

[Thiosk]

One question i've had is, what constitutes small sensors?  Are we talking .1 MSP or 1 MSP here?

[Charlie Beeler]

One question i've had is, what constitutes small sensors?  Are we talking .1 MSP or 1 MSP here?

That is really dependent on your sensor tech level and what range at you want the missiles to find thier own targets.  Some what that range to be 50k km others want it to be 500k km.

[Brian Neumann]

One question i've had is, what constitutes small sensors?  Are we talking .1 MSP or 1 MSP here?

For me a small sensor is one where I can have the missile spot a reasonable target at least 10 seconds flight time away.  This is enough for terminal guidance but not much more, and is really just there in case the firing ship loses it's fire control in the last couple of minutes of flight, or if the original target had way to much overkill so that the extra missiles can target something else and not be wasted.

Large sensors would allow for tracking a reasonble target for 10+ minutes.

Brian