The info about the AMM had been very helpful.
Whats about offensive missiles? A few size6-designs have been mentioned and a active sensor suit. So far Ive never used active sensors on missles, so what do you use as good early and mid-game design? And whats about electronic warfare capability?
thx
The active sensors, or passive sensors on a missile allow the missile to home in on a target if they can be detected by the missile's own sensor capability. This most often happens if the original target was destroyed, when the follow on waves reach the spot where it was destroyed they will be looking for an alternate target. If they see some they will randomly pick one as a target and attack it. Having a small sensor package on larger missiles is a good way to avoid loosing a bunch of expensive missiles due to overkilling the target.
Missile ECM will make hitting the missiles much harder. the net difference between (ECM-ECCM)x10 is the percent reduction in the beam weapons to hit chance, and the missile weapons fire control range.
Armour works as the chance that a hit actually destroying the missile is the damage the weapon does to the missile/(sum of missile armour and the damage). This means that a one point warhead on a pd missile will have a 50% chance to kill a missile it hits that has 1 point of armour. As missile interception chances at lower tech level's are around 25%, this can make a big difference in how many counter missiles are required to stop an incomming salvo. It also works the same way against beam weapons/gauss cannon. One point of armour will make light railguns and gauss cannon much less effective as pd weapons. heavier railguns and lasers will still work reasonably well (a 10cm laser does 3 points of damage so has a 75% chance to kill what it hits against 1 point of armour).
For small missiles it is a difficult question as to whether any sensors/defences are practical. For larger missiles having some space set aside can be very effective. It all depends on your design strategy. The only thing that better tech does not help is the effectivness of armour. This is just a constant based on how many MSP you put into it.
Brian
