AMM's

[FjordBjorn (OP)]

Could someone give me a quick rundown on AMM's? Warhead strength needed, good ranges and speeds etc.  just trying to get an idea on how they work.

[SpikeTheHobbitMage]

Anti-missile missiles need a warhead strength of 1 to kill an enemy missile.  Anything more than that is overkill.  3 warhead strength per MSP is the bare minimum to build an optimal AMM.
Chance to hit is the single most important stat, and is affected by both speed and maneuver rating.
Chance to hit, firing rate, and ammunition limits all benefit from using smaller missiles.  1 MSP is the smallest possible missile.
Minimum range doesn't actually matter, but endurance should be at least 10 seconds.  Active sensor range should be longer than AMM range, and MFC range should be similar.

For a size 1 AMM, 0.5MSP engine size is optimal at all tech levels.  Always use the highest power modifier available.
Use the minimum size warhead needed to do 1 damage.  eg at strength 3 put 0.3334 MSP into warhead.

Agility points are more complicated due to the way rounding works in Aurora, but is readily calculated using the following method:
First, add ~10 seconds worth of fuel.  The exact amount doesn't matter.
Calculate (0.5 - warhead - fuel) * Agility per MSP and round down to the nearest half.  (ie if you get 3.7, round down to 3.5.  If you get 3.2, round down to 2.5).
If the whole number part is even, add 0.0001.  (2.5 becomes 2.5001, but 3.5 stays the same)
Divide by Agility per MSP, rounding up at four decimals.  ie 0.111101 becomes 0.1112
Put this in as agility MSP.
Fill remaining space with fuel to reach exactly 1.0000 MSP.  Aurora will confirm this by showing the missile size in the summary as 1.0000 MSP instead of 1 MSP.
Edit: This information is obsolete.  Please disregard.

[Father Tim]

Alternately, AMMs are a waste of time, space and resources.  They are not in any way required and the answer to all your other questions is "it depends" -- it depends on the missiles you want to shoot them at, and the ships that carry those missiles, and the doctrine of people who crew those ships.

- - - - -

A missile needs a warhead of at least 1 damage in order to destroy anything.  No other rule matters.

[Iceranger]

Before considering designing your first AMM, make sure you have high enough missile techs. In fact, the theoretical maximum accuracy of an AMM with little to no range at internal fusion tech level is on par with equally teched beam tracking speed. If ECCM is needed on the AMMs, such equivalency comes even at later tech. So using AMMs at low tech may not be resource-efficient.

Regarding the optimal MSP allocation across different missile components, you can play with my missile optimizer in the Utilities section, to get a feel for it.

[Suxxor]

Warhead large enough to do 1 damage.
Range 1-2 mil km (you'll most likely detect missile at 3 mil km).
The rest into speed and agility.
No active sensor.

Personally when I create them I go for speed 100 k km/s.

You can use these missiles to target fighters, or just spam them at enemy ships. There's nothing like launching 50 missiles every 5 seconds from one ship.

[Zincat]

Frankly I am not a fan of AMM.
Missiles are pretty expensive. Ordnance factories are usually needed for offensive missiles. If they were free, sure they're good, but they're not, they're competing with all your other needs and are pretty costly.
They also introduce a lot of "overhead". You have to produce them, rearm ships, you can run out if you're not in your systems etc. You may need to build colliers.

It's much more cost effective to have a few gauss/laser pd ships. AMM are only for when you're outgunning the enemy already, and/or are rich.
And of course for RP.

[SpikeTheHobbitMage]

Frankly I am not a fan of AMM.
Missiles are pretty expensive. Ordnance factories are usually needed for offensive missiles. If they were free, sure they're good, but they're not, they're competing with all your other needs and are pretty costly.
They also introduce a lot of "overhead". You have to produce them, rearm ships, you can run out if you're not in your systems etc. You may need to build colliers.

It's much more cost effective to have a few gauss/laser pd ships. AMM are only for when you're outgunning the enemy already, and/or are rich.
And of course for RP.

If you outgun the enemy then you don't really need AMMs, but if they have a tech advantage then an AMM screen can thin out their ASMs enough that your beam PD has a chance to keep up.  Finding the right balance still needs a fair bit of !SCIENCE! as the rules have changed (and are still changing).

[Jorgen_CAB]

Frankly I am not a fan of AMM.
Missiles are pretty expensive. Ordnance factories are usually needed for offensive missiles. If they were free, sure they're good, but they're not, they're competing with all your other needs and are pretty costly.
They also introduce a lot of "overhead". You have to produce them, rearm ships, you can run out if you're not in your systems etc. You may need to build colliers.

It's much more cost effective to have a few gauss/laser pd ships. AMM are only for when you're outgunning the enemy already, and/or are rich.
And of course for RP.

It will be near impossible to deal with box launched or reduced sized launcher sized ASM salvos without a layered defence of both AMM and beam PD.

I'm used to play in campaigns that is not only dealing with NPRs (who often use full size launchers or box launchers from FAC and fighters at more limited numbers). Full size launchers can in many ways be countered with mostly beam weapons but it will be much harder when you are up against a faction that fire allot bigger volleys from their ships and/or strike crafts. If a typical missile cruiser replace most of the space for reduced sized launchers instead of magazines and perhaps keep 2-3 salvos at most then beam defences are not enough at equivalent tech levels.

At about Ion to magneto plasma level an AMM should be able to intercept a regular ASM at roughly 25-35% accuracy, so they should not be completely a waste resource wise, especially when paired together with PD and shields.

At lower tech levels it is quite fine to raise the size of AMM to bigger than 1... sometimes necessary to fit ECCM systems in them. If you hit ratio is 40% and the enemy missiles have ECM 20 your final hit ratio is 20%, that is half... the ECM modifier is an additive modifier and not multiplicative... at least it used to be in VB6 so I don't think it is changed for C#.

Raising the size of the missile from 1 to 1.2 could easily means a 30% increase in the final chance to hit, with ECM and ECCM involved it could mean even more than that. Don't stare yourself blind on the size of the missle... if increasing the size to fit an ECCM or just increase the to hit ratio is greater than the size increase in cost it can very well be worth it. You also can build a smaller missile with no ECCM and one with and all use the same 1.2 size launcher.

But I do agree that at extremely low tech levels then AMM might not be very effective.. that is why I usually lock the Agility technology at a certain level for the factions that I play with as the agility level will impact the effectiveness of AMM over time almost exponentially to the point that at end tech levels AMM have 100% chance to intercept an ASM of the same tech level.

Also don't forget that crew grade and things like CIC with the new tactical skill will increase the hit chance of AMM as well... so they can be allot more effective than you first think.

[Zincat]

Forgive me, I did not want to derail the thread. I'll just post a small explanation of my point of view and then shut up.
I am not concerned of what you wrote, Jorgen, because I consider massive salvos a "gamey" thing, especially regarding box launchers.
This is due to the fact that while you can stack box launchers on ships or facs, the hardcoded beam weapons mechanics (max one shot every 5 seconds apart from gauss, limited range, 5 second rule further limiting max range etc) do not allow for interception at a longer range/faster fire rate. I understand the game logic behind this, but it does not fit my taste as I consider it a set of "unrealistic" limitations.

Against the AI, I'll stand by my convinction that AMM can be avoided. And I consider some missile leakage acceptable.
In the scenario you spoke of, then yes you need AMM too. It's something that will never happen in any of my campaign, because even when playing multiple races I'll not "abuse" box launchers to create such massive salvos. And if instead an enemy fields 500 facs against me and I don't have enough PD, then I deserve to lose.

Anyway, it's a single player game so I don't want to impose my views on other players  Sorry, and carry on

[Jorgen_CAB]

Forgive me, I did not want to derail the thread. I'll just post a small explanation of my point of view and then shut up.
I am not concerned of what you wrote, Jorgen, because I consider massive salvos a "gamey" thing, especially regarding box launchers.
This is due to the fact that while you can stack box launchers on ships or facs, the hardcoded beam weapons mechanics (max one shot every 5 seconds apart from gauss, limited range, 5 second rule further limiting max range etc) do not allow for interception at a longer range/faster fire rate. I understand the game logic behind this, but it does not fit my taste as I consider it a set of "unrealistic" limitations.

Against the AI, I'll stand by my convinction that AMM can be avoided. And I consider some missile leakage acceptable.
In the scenario you spoke of, then yes you need AMM too. It's something that will never happen in any of my campaign, because even when playing multiple races I'll not "abuse" box launchers to create such massive salvos. And if instead an enemy fields 500 facs against me and I don't have enough PD, then I deserve to lose.

Anyway, it's a single player game so I don't want to impose my views on other players  Sorry, and carry on

I think that you completely misinterpret what I said... I mainly talked about reduced sized launchers fitted to standard ships and not box launchers. I also never abuse the extreme box launch size 2-3 missile spam that you could do in VB6 for example that made beam weapons completely broken. In allot of my campaigns the launchers tend to move from full size down to 0.3 (0.25 in VB6) in size as beam become more effective and the ratio of launchers versus magazines mover from say 20% launchers and 80% magazine to 80% launchers and 20% magazines for standard ASM usage. It is not unreasonable from a RP perspective and certainly not abusing the mechanics in any way, at least not in my opinion.

A missile cruiser/destroyer would likely end up with about three types of missiles and as many salvos. A long range, medium range and a point blank torpedo type in order to take full advantage of what missile does which is alpha strike potential. It sort if is how missile combat works in real life. The long range would often be about twice the range of the max active range of the ship itself, medium about the range of the active sensor capacity and torpedoes would likely be 5-10m km tops.

The removal of matching fire-controls to missile salvo size have given beam PD an big boost advantage, not to mention the reduce in speed and/or range of missiles.

It is reasonable to look at increasing your salvo count to penetrate beam PD, why else use ASM in the first place at a certain point... it is also hard to disregard box launchers on fighters and FAC where they make allot of sense from a RP perspective?!?

I do agree that firing huge salvos of really small missiles are a bit off an abuse... but on the other hand in C# such missiles tend to be either slow, weak or short range so you should be able to counter it with longer ranged anti FAC missiles of your own.

I also would like a "capacitor 6" 10cm laser to fire 2 shots every 5 seconds... that would be nice...

[Gabethebaldandbold]

I usually make my AMM relatively long ranged, so I can use them a bit more slowly and efficiently whithout overkill, and also outrange the enemy AMM, and clean the way for my beam ships. against small salvos, AMM is unnecessary, and a waste of resources, but could be fun if you have the galicite.

[Froggiest1982]

As a game mechanic, I love Aurora Missile settings but I need to agree that if we are really talking about it's unrealistic for a missile to travel a billion KMs.

I think Steve has realized that hence the new tracking bonus mechanic which makes the AMM salvos more effective and potentially you don't even need that many launchers given enough "notice".

Would be great to have something more similar to the SciFi narrative where combat is mostly close range (I don't know what close range is in Space KMs though). I think having a cap in the weapon range could really improve some of the combat mechanics. I Don't know how much would that be though to keep it engaging and balanced.

EDIT: I know a missile in the vacuum of space can do that (travel billion km) but we are talking combat here.

[Jorgen_CAB]

As a game mechanic, I love Aurora Missile settings but I need to agree that if we are really talking about it's unrealistic for a missile to travel a billion KMs.

I think Steve has realized that hence the new tracking bonus mechanic which makes the AMM salvos more effective and potentially you don't even need that many launchers given enough "notice".

Would be great to have something more similar to the SciFi narrative where combat is mostly close range (I don't know what close range is in Space KMs though). I think having a cap in the weapon range could really improve some of the combat mechanics. I Don't know how much would that be though to keep it engaging and balanced.

EDIT: I know a missile in the vacuum of space can do that (travel billion km) but we are talking combat here.

The missile tracking bonus only apply to beam weapons though so AMM is not more effective becasue of that.

In fact beam weapons have become way more powerful in C# where missile lost range and beam weapons have been more powerful as PD. This require larger and larger missile salvos to make ASM viable from an economical standpoint. I think this is a good change as missiles was and still is dominating in general but less so now.

[Pedroig]

I plan on a 4:1 ratio of AMM's to ASM's on loadout.  That's based upon my salvo size and expected engagement length.  This includes some 2 stage AMM's which fly with the ASM salvo to cut down on enemy AMM and PD effectiveness. 

Which is seems to be unnecessary since I've yet to meet an enemy fleet which can withstand my initial salvo of ASM's and remain combat capable.  My salvos might be a tad large, seems like SD(P) type of numbers of missiles are beyond the AI's capacity to adapt/overcome.

[Gabethebaldandbold]

LP stabilization also provides some interesting ways to close range with beams against missile fleets