Submunition change?

[wobbly]

True, but at least with my particular missile ships, good isn't enough, since you'd need to be taking 40+ warheads per salvo, and that's before multi-warhead missiles are involved

There I'd be curious whether the cost of all those missiles isn't more then the fighters your blowing-up.

[Lazerus (OP)]

There I'd be curious whether the cost of all those missiles isn't more then the fighters your blowing-up.

I should mention those are anti-ship missiles, not anti-fighter missiles.

Those are completely different and significantly cheaper.

[Paul M]

See, I didn't even know that.

I was more concerned with how you can't effectively miniaturize your multiple warhead designs even in antimatter ages, despite having ridiculous tech.   As it stands, you can overwhelm NPC missile defense anyways with sheer missile amount, I notice they never seem to carry anywhere near the stocks or layer their defenses with gun-based AMM, meaning 2-3 volleys of 10-20 missiles is usually enough.

As it stands, sander-type multi-missiles are useless against any sort of good ship design because they'll likely have 10+ layers of armor, meaning you'll be wasting a smegton of resources compared to single warhead Anti-ship missiles.

The only real use for micromissiles is anti-FAC and anti-fighter, at least in my eyes, and they don't have anti-missile defense anyways.

The use of "sander" missiles is as good as a single large warhead as the armour is ablative.  How you do the damage is more or less not relevant, only the amount.   If you look at any individual engagement it matters but when you look at the situation from the point of view of multiple battles then damage is damage.  So a single warhead impact for 9 points or 9 warheads for 1 point is pretty much the same to the target.  Where the "sander" MIRV comes into its own is if you can handle 40 inbounds but not 120.  In one case you take 1-2 leaker missiles in the other you take 80+ leakers.

But the root of the problem is that armour is ablative.  So damage is damage.  Until you fix that then you are basicaly sticking a bandage over a sucking chest wound and hoping for the best.

[Whitecold]

We have been promised the introduction of shock damage which should favor larger warheads compared to many small ones.

I'm not sure what you are trying to argue Lazerus, as you have observed the AI missile defense is pretty weak, and you want to make weapon systems possible which would reduce anti-missile capabilities even further by flooding them with micro missile spam. I don't think nerfing the limited AI defenses even further is an useful thing.

[Lazerus (OP)]

We have been promised the introduction of shock damage which should favor larger warheads compared to many small ones.

I'm not sure what you are trying to argue Lazerus, as you have observed the AI missile defense is pretty weak, and you want to make weapon systems possible which would reduce anti-missile capabilities even further by flooding them with micro missile spam.  I don't think nerfing the limited AI defenses even further is an useful thing.

It was mostly for my fighters, not for my actual anti-ship missiles, and also because at my current games tech level (Late antimatter), these sorts of things seem like they would be the norm.

And yes, I know the AI has weak missile defense, but that appears to be a flaw for every ship design of AI heritage from guided missile cruisers to FAC

While I know that it could be used to overwhelm missile defenses, lets be honest, who here doesn't have fleets that overwhelm AI missile defense as it is?