Defeating AMM Spam

[Borealis4x (OP)]

What is the best way to defeat the AI's tendency to load up their fleets with hundreds or thousands of AMM missiles? I try to play with a carrier-based fleet but always run into the problem of either my bombers or their missiles being intercepted and destroyed.

Is there a better way to counter this than just waiting until their AMMs are dry by launching as much ordinance at them as you can?

[Steve Walmsley]

What is the best way to defeat the AI's tendency to load up their fleets with hundreds or thousands of AMM missiles? I try to play with a carrier-based fleet but always run into the problem of either my bombers or their missiles being intercepted and destroyed.

Is there a better way to counter this than just waiting until their AMMs are dry by launching as much ordinance at them as you can?

I'm currently advancing into the storm with a lot of railguns

[Triato]

A lot of armor and shields

[Borealis4x (OP)]

What is the best way to defeat the AI's tendency to load up their fleets with hundreds or thousands of AMM missiles? I try to play with a carrier-based fleet but always run into the problem of either my bombers or their missiles being intercepted and destroyed.

Is there a better way to counter this than just waiting until their AMMs are dry by launching as much ordinance at them as you can?

I'm currently advancing into the storm with a lot of railguns

Who knew that battleships would make a return once we've reached space.

[Arcturius]

Maybe this is obvious, but if you are attacking with missiles another option is to increase your salvo size (use lots of box launchers) to overwhelm the enemy point defence.  Then it won't matter how many AMMs they have - only how many they can launch in parallel.

Other than that:

• point defence (your own AMMs, Railguns or Gauss) - you will need a lot.
• shields + armor - you will also need a lot as usually the enemy usually attacks the same ships over and over.

[Black]

Yeah I encounter lot of AMM spam as well. Shields and lot of gauss cannons are the best counter.

You can try to kite the missiles as well. Setup two waypoints and cycle with your fleet between them on the edge of AMM range, so the salvo will launch but run out of fuel before it reach your ships. It obviously works only if enemy defends the planet and is unwilling to leave orbit. I did it few times but it feels bit like cheating.

[chrislocke2000]

Your own AMM spam is a great way to help deal with this as well. Setting a couple of your AMM ships to offensive fire can help divert a decent number of their missiles as they switch to defensive fire. If you limit the number of AMMs you are firing each round you can make sure your own magazines last whilst you get to within beam range.

[QuakeIV]

Shoot tons of fast decoys into them.

[Froggiest1982]

Shoot tons of fast decoys into them.

If you don't mind the clutter (you can always pick up later) and the poor soul you'll lose, provided you remember to unassign officers you can use Chaff like any other fighter jet.

This is a very simple and cost-effective example

Adelphi class Chaff      73 tons       1 Crew       7.1 BP       TCS 1    TH 8    EM 0
5530 km/s      Armour 1-1       Shields 0-0       HTK 1      Sensors 0/0/0/0      DCR 0      PPV 0
Maint Life 0 Years     MSP 0    AFR 14%    IFR 0.2%    1YR 0    5YR 4    Max Repair 5 MSP
Lieutenant Commander    Control Rating 1   
Intended Deployment Time: 15 days    Morale Check Required   

Nuclear Pulse Engine (Fighter) (1)    Power 8    Fuel Use 252.98%    Signature 8    Explosion 10%
Fuel Capacity 1,000 Litres    Range 0.98 billion km (49 hours at full power)

This design is classed as a Fighter for production, combat and planetary interaction

I do add small bays to my PD ships later in the game as an extra layer of defense and they usually precede my fleet.

They are also good to test enemy capabilities.

[DFNewb]

I normally use beam ships only so we just charge right through.

[Michael Sandy]

There are a couple of sleazy ways to beat it:

1) Build a crap ton of 1 msp missiles that are nothing but a cheap reduced power engine and a dinky bit of fuel, that you can therefore fire at a waypoint from a billion km away.  Fire those in the general direction of the enemy and they will often fire 3 AMMs for about 1 BP each at missiles that cost you .05 BP to build

2)  Find out their exact AMM range.  Dance on the edge of it, go in, draw their fire, run away, missiles explode in space, repeat until enemy is out of missiles.  It can be expensive in scouts to determine their exact range, but once you have it, all you need is to have some units that are small and distinctly faster than the enemy fleet.

3)  If you don't know the EXACT range, dance on the edge of their range with heavily shielded warships, take some hits on the shields while running away.  In either case, you want a really overpowered res 1 sensor to give you time to react and to help you calculate their exact range.

[Borealis4x (OP)]

No one is saying anything about adding electronic countermeasures to missiles and fighters. Does that do anything to 'confuse' AMMs and help mitigate their effectiveness somewhat, or are the effects against same-tech opponents so negligible that it isn't worth it?

[Garfunkel]

It'll shorten their MFC range a little bit and it might make few missiles more to miss but it isn't going to be a huge change unless your ECM is massively better than their ECCM.

[Zincat]

I build mostly beam warships fleets
A few gauss only PD ships work wonders

But honestly, massed lasers or railgun works too. 10cm lasers are generally better imo, as they can also double as good anti-ship and anti-fighter weapons with high enough tech. I generally do not build gauss exclusive ships until my fleet is decent (playing with very slow tech, so it's not easy to just research what you'd like)

It also really helps that beam warships have generally good armor and shields. And a few straggler AMM don't really hurt.

[TheTalkingMeowth]

It'll shorten their MFC range a little bit and it might make few missiles more to miss but it isn't going to be a huge change unless your ECM is massively better than their ECCM.

Ditto. ECM is a "win more" tech. If you don't already have an advantage, it doesn't do much. I think the new way of applying it makes this less true than it was in VB6, but...yeah. It's not exactly a "balance" issue; running into a spoiler race fleet with ECM50 when you have jack smeg is really painful. More of a design issue, in that investing into ECM is useful only in that it forces your opponent to match the investment. Maybe if ECCM countered a percentage of the enemy ECM, so that no matter how good the enemy ECCM is, having ECM is better than no ECM, would work better. I haven't thought about it in detail.