Couple of thoughts on a couple of different subjects in this entire thread:
1.   Missile Agility NEVER made sense, that's not how missiles work in real world physics.   AAM's and SAM's in atmo both are either direct fired "tracking" objects which have advantage of no G limits and smaller mass, but don't have any actual avoidance agility.   Physics makes making any drastic change to a course once massive acceleration has occurred in a vector very hard to overcome the inertia.

If its decided that missiles might have more then 1 HTK, you could judt base it on size.  1 HTK per 50 tons or fraction there of.  Size 20 missiles are 50 tons.

Quote from: Shuul on February 20, 2023, 05:29:22 AM

I would love to see return of missile armor, something that can take more space and allow missile to survive at least 1-2 hits from gauss

Missile armour would have to match the mechanics of ships to avoid breaking the physics. Lets run an example using laminate composite armour, which is 5th generation tech.

If we create a tiny ship to approximate a missile, using only a fighter crew quarters, we need 0.174 units of laminate composite, which is 0.0145 HS, or 0.725 tons. The 'ship' is 2.725 tons in total. 1 MSP is 2.5 tons, so that is a missile of size 1.09 MSP, that requires 0.29 MSP of space (27%) dedicated to armour in order to create a missile with 1 armour. For that size of missile, it would likely end up with no warhead.

If I add a small maintenance storage to our 'ship', that changes to 14.175 tons, or 5.67 MSP. For 1 armour, 2.175 tons of laminate is required, or 0.87 MSP (15%). The missile design could alternatively include ECM, ECCM and onboard sensors for a total of 0.75 MSP and still have space left over for additional fuel or engine, etc.  For earlier armour, the situation is much worse.

Even if that was considered acceptable, we are still using the same mechanics as ships, so we also have to consider shock damage. As the missile is likely less than 1 HS and the damage would be at least 1, a shock damage check would be automatic. For each point of incoming damage, there would be a cumulative 20% chance of destroying the missile regardless of armour.

This would also either add missile damage tracking to Aurora, or some form of HTK check where a missile with 2 HTK (1 armour) would have a 50% chance of being destroyed. I would also probably have to implement some form of missile recognition to add to tactical intelligence so that the AI could prioritize inbounds that it was most likely to destroy (because if I was the defender I would want that option).

In summary, the implementation of consistent mechanics across all sizes of ships and missiles means that missile armour is not that effective in terms of mass, especially at lower tech (which is why I removed it), and would result in other mechanics being added.

I will focus instead on other options to make missiles more survivable.

Quote from: TheTalkingMeowth link=topic=13191. msg164251#msg164251 date=1677555275

Quote from: nuclearslurpee link=topic=13191. msg164247#msg164247 date=1677551622

-Snip

Back of the envelope calcs suggest size 2 AMMs with retargeting are going to be really cost effective, possibly in exchange for reduced density of missiles killed/launcher tonnage.

For ASMs I think PD means retargeting is useless. 

It's a recurring issue that missiles are a more difficult target than ships are, so accuracy related investments are more useful for AMMs than they are for ASMs.

Given the inclusion of Laser warheads and the refactoring of how PD works, I don't agree.

Quote from: nuclearslurpee on February 27, 2023, 08:33:42 PM

I am actually thinking about larger than size-1 AMMs with the retargeting module, because if you can make the first interception attempt far enough out, you get several chances to hit and that could make up for being e.g. size 2 instead of size 1.

For ASMs I think it is probably more useful than it feels because we have to remember that Agility has been removed, so even-tech ASMs will probably be maxing out at around 70% chance to hit, or so. The catch of course is that PD might make it a moot point.

Back of the envelope calcs suggest size 2 AMMs with retargeting are going to be really cost effective, possibly in exchange for reduced density of missiles killed/launcher tonnage.

For ASMs I think PD means retargeting is useless.

It's a recurring issue that missiles are a more difficult target than ships are, so accuracy related investments are more useful for AMMs than they are for ASMs.

The module that enables you to retarget seem interesting to me and I don't thin you will be able to really abuse it. If you put it in an AMM it will increase the size considerably (especially if you want a really fast AMM and ECCM as well), in anti ship work it will be susceptible to multiple turns of beam PD when it misses.

To be honest I'm not really sure when you want to use it... perhaps if you can launch ASM at extreme range outside enemy normal PD on really larger missiles. On AMM you still need to make sure the missile is at least as fast as the ASM they want intercept otherwise the ASM will just move away from it once it misses. It can also possibly be used if you have a really fast reloading launcher so the missiles is not overwhelmed by PD once the miss the ship they are targeted in more missiles come in every 10-15 second or so... It can also be very effective against fighters and FAC that tend to have limited PD capabilities.

OK so if the base is a shaped charge, then the AMM WH is some type of proximity spherical explosion.  Enough to hurt a missile an a higher probability of hit, but too unfocused to damage a ship.