Missile Combat Discussion

[Shinanygnz]

What I was getting at was with the modern naval analogy was the following:
limited number of large, long range anti-shipping missiles
more, shorter ranged anti-missile/air missiles
some carry less capable (as in shorter ranged, smaller warhead) anti-ship missiles

Assuming no lucky magazine hits, how many Harpoons to kill a Tico, Kirov or Nimitz?  How many SS-N-19 Shipwrecks?

For reference a quick Google turned up this on Kirov:
The ship is armed with the Granit (Nato designation SS-N-19 Shipwreck) long-range anti-ship missile system. Twenty Granit missiles are installed under the upper deck...
An S-300F Air Defence Missile Complex is installed on the ship, with twelve launchers and 96 vertical launch air defence missiles. The Osa-MA Air Defence Missile System is supplied by the Znamya Truda Plant based at Saratov. The ship has two double launchers and 40 missiles.

If you use the typical modern attack submarine (5 - 7kt displacement) as an example instead of a ship, 20 - 30 torpedoes or missiles and 4 - 6 launchers = not a lot of salvoes.

The way I see it you are pretty much headed for this kind of scenario now.  A small number of big, nasty and/or long range missiles that are slow to reload, or more smaller ones.  I don't see this as a problem myself, but it depends what kind of combat battlespace you're wanting for your game.  Harpoon in space, 2300AD Star Cruiser (aka hide and seek with bazookas) or something else.

Btw, in the HH books, in OBS it was noted that a CL's anti-ship missile was 70 tons.

Hope I'm making sense.

Stephen

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

What I was getting at was with the modern naval analogy was the following:
limited number of large, long range anti-shipping missiles
more, shorter ranged anti-missile/air missiles
some carry less capable (as in shorter ranged, smaller warhead) anti-ship missiles

Assuming no lucky magazine hits, how many Harpoons to kill a Tico, Kirov or Nimitz?  How many SS-N-19 Shipwrecks?

For reference a quick Google turned up this on Kirov:
The ship is armed with the Granit (Nato designation SS-N-19 Shipwreck) long-range anti-ship missile system. Twenty Granit missiles are installed under the upper deck...
An S-300F Air Defence Missile Complex is installed on the ship, with twelve launchers and 96 vertical launch air defence missiles. The Osa-MA Air Defence Missile System is supplied by the Znamya Truda Plant based at Saratov. The ship has two double launchers and 40 missiles.

If you use the typical modern attack submarine (5 - 7kt displacement) as an example instead of a ship, 20 - 30 torpedoes or missiles and 4 - 6 launchers = not a lot of salvoes.

The way I see it you are pretty much headed for this kind of scenario now.  A small number of big, nasty and/or long range missiles that are slow to reload, or more smaller ones.  I don't see this as a problem myself, but it depends what kind of combat battlespace you're wanting for your game.  Harpoon in space, 2300AD Star Cruiser (aka hide and seek with bazookas) or something else.

Btw, in the HH books, in OBS it was noted that a CL's anti-ship missile was 70 tons. Hope I'm making sense.

Yes, you are. I think it is heading exactly this way too. The funny thing is that the more internally consistent and 'realistic' I try to make the game, the more it resembles modern naval warfare.

I have made the decision to change to missiles using 5x engine power (currently 4x) and 10,000x fuel use, double the warhead strength and use a missile size of 20 MSP (missile size points) per HS. This is about half the size that missiles were for detection purposes in v2.5 but much larger than missiles were treated for magazine storage. This gives a standard 3HS magazine a capacity of 50 magazine points, rather than the previous 200. I'll make a post in the Mechanics forum with the full details but it has an impact on a few other areas, such as missile fire control and targeting. As you mentioned above, I do think the trend will likely be toward Box launchers for large anti-ship missiles with reloadable launchers for smaller missiles.

Sensors are going to become very important in this model and a lot of "missile combat" will likely be the manevering to set up a long range missile shot. I will need to seriously look at stealth as well.

Steve

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

These changes to missiles and magazines acutually fit in well with the DCQ concept for reloading.

  If you have the crew, and the reloads, why not allow reloads in space?

I'd add in the restriction that you can't be moving while reloading (or else risk losing some of your precious deck crews...).

Then the single large volley ship design becomes viable.  It just takes a couple days to reload. Instead of a couple weeks/months - if it has to return to base.

  Just a thought  - if you don't allow some form of mobile reloading of box launchers you put a very huge advantage to the defender in combat. As if there already isn't a big one with the planet combat

  Adding in reloading shifts the balance back a bit.

With the other changes I am going to make I do agree that Box Launchers are likely to become more common and that some type of reloading in space is likely to be required. I will certainly be adding the ability to reload box launchers at a planet with sufficient maintenance facilities. I am still not convinced about deck crews effectively going EVA to reload the launch tubes, although I agree it might be possible if, as you suggest, the ship remains stationary for a couple of days. What I may add though is some type of replenishment module that allows one ship to reload the Box Launchers of a second without the need for a hangar deck.

Steve

[Father Tim]

Btw, in the HH books, in OBS it was noted that a CL's anti-ship missile was 70 tons.

Stephen

Aye, but the CL itelf was 60,000 tons, creeping up to ninety to a hundred thousand tons as the war progressed.  Or in Aurora terms, 300 HS.  Superdreadnoughts are five and a half to six million tons (five million tons equals 100,000 HS).

[simon]

Can we getmore speacialized warheads like the expanding rod warheads used in air defense missiles    but ineffective against other targets types iam thinkin maybe calling laser-ring warheads or you could summon the naming committe to give it a nice sounding name also thinkin about a emp pulse warhead bomb pumped or whatever something in the line of the microwave weapon which ihope can be turret mounted in later versions. If you can come up with other branches in the missile warhead linage tree it would be spice to the tounge.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Can we getmore speacialized warheads like the expanding rod warheads used in air defense missiles    but ineffective against other targets types iam thinkin maybe calling laser-ring warheads or you could summon the naming committe to give it a nice sounding name also thinkin about a emp pulse warhead bomb pumped or whatever something in the line of the microwave weapon which ihope can be turret mounted in later versions. If you can come up with other branches in the missile warhead linage tree it would be spice to the tounge.

I'll give it some thought. I would be wary of mounting the microwave weapon as a warhead because of its considerable effectiveness. Short-range is the balancing factor. Although perhaps a less effective version that only worked 25% of the time, or gave affected systems a much higher resistance chance, might be a possibility. I will also be looking at electronic warfare in a lot more depth at some point to make it a more interesting area and I will include missile-related EW in that.

Steve

[simon]

It is seameless that's what i like about the missile design window. :wink:  Iam thinking the slot for missile separation can be adoped to include stand off illumination modes or remote activation modes. This could be another branch in as missile and electronic sytems become more advanced. Ps thought you should have held out the cluster munitions option until some tech was researched like the way ICBMs evolved from unitary warheads to MIRVS. I agree an emp warhead with lesser effect that  the ship mounted variant would balance the diet better
 What do you think about jamming technology ?   should it go after active sensors or fire control systems and also do you think decoys should be inthe mix so that as technolgy improves they can mimic launch platforms emission signals better and for longer periods. I imagine some think you can stash in the magazine so that it supplies are exhaustable. You could fix this in perhaps as technology improves. Like to hear what you think about this ingredients

[simon]

Aurora, aurora, aurora brings out that little Stalin. It got me wondering, what do you guys think of bio-chem warfare weapons possibly missiles so you can dust your opponents ideal world with area denial weapons? I imagine plague simulation with reverse population growth and infrastructure forming the bedrock past which declines cannot happen because civilian populations will be protected. Can this be used to tip missiles as a warhead whose effectiveness can be upgraded through research in chem-bio warfare so that the hotter the agent the less you need to waste planet and the harder the clean up .

[Father Tim]

This is already handled by the 'enhanced radiation warhead' line of tech.  Unless you mean a way to kill a planet's population without reducing it habitability to you, which is something Steve specifically wants to avoid.  Starfire's ability to fry a planet and plant your own colonists two days later was specifically cited as part of the 'too big, too fast' problem that allowed the Rigellians to go from one planet to half a trillion beings across 130-something inhabited systems in less than fifteen years.

[simon]

I was thinking along the lines of something that accelerates population decline rate slowly(it's killing rate increases with time)  but so that if left unchecked the population can die out. I agree it should not be a planetary smash and grab weapons and contaminated planets should be hostile to all races. What do you think about a slow burn weapon that leaves facilities intact and you can survive intact if handled on time ?

[schroeam]

What about the good old fashioned Neutron Bomb... Kill off everyone, but the factories, research labs, mines, etc. are all saved, ready for use.

Adam.

[SteveAlt]

What about the good old fashioned Neutron Bomb... Kill off everyone, but the factories, research labs, mines, etc. are all saved, ready for use.

That is effectively the enhanced radiation warhead. The Neutron Bomb was sort of a nickname for what was officially referred to as the Enhanced Radiation Weapon.

Steve

[SteveAlt]

Aurora, aurora, aurora brings out that little Stalin. It got me wondering, what do you guys think of bio-chem warfare weapons possibly missiles so you can dust your opponents ideal world with area denial weapons? I imagine plague simulation with reverse population growth and infrastructure forming the bedrock past which declines cannot happen because civilian populations will be protected. Can this be used to tip missiles as a warhead whose effectiveness can be upgraded through research in chem-bio warfare so that the hotter the agent the less you need to waste planet and the harder the clean up .

I have considered this in the past but I don't want to make it a weapon that could easily wipe out a population so you can just move in and take over. To create biological and chemical weapons you would need knowledge of the biology of the targeted species. This could be gained through the study of conquered populations or POWS. I guess you would get a research project for each alien race for which you have prisoners, along the lines of those in the UFO series of games. You would also need other tech lines to provide general bio weapon knowledge in the first place and eventually you would create a bio weapon in the same way as developing a new missile design. Researching the bio weapon would require the use of research facilities and there would be a small chance of contamination so somewhere out of the way would be a good idea. If you dust a planet with a bio agent that did eventually kill the population, then it would likely hang around for a long time and possibly mutate to affect other species, including your own

Bio agents would have a contagion rating, which would determine how quickly they spread, an incubation period, which would determine how long before the disease presented symptoms and a lethality. Ships movings between affected populations would have a chance to spread the disease. This would eventually appear on the ship itself based on the incubation period but perhaps not before it infected a second world. I guess there would also have to be medical facilities to fight any plagues and develop an antidote or vaccine. Plagues could also mutate in terms of their lethality, incubation and contagion rating, as well as which species they may affect. Perhaps plagues could also be present at the sites of ancient ruins. It is a fascinating area and I would like to add soemthing along these lines at some point. It wouldn't be in version 4.0 though.

Steve

[simon]

When i am lose i go down to Dr Coops Australia air power(Google me) site where he frets about moskits and Chinese flankers, what caught my eye was his representation media of comparative BVR missile ranges which makes range differentials  easy to understand. It would definitely look nice on aurora and calibrating missiles and their fire control systems would be easier to understand. I imagine side by side graphical representation of missiles and fire controls which whose colors changes as accuracy drops, designing it to also include speed/kill probability could be added if possible.  :twisted:

[SteveAlt]

When i am lose i go down to Dr Coops Australia air power(Google me) site where he frets about moskits and Chinese flankers, what caught my eye was his representation media of comparative BVR missile ranges which makes range differentials  easy to understand. It would definitely look nice on aurora and calibrating missiles and their fire control systems would be easier to understand. I imagine side by side graphical representation of missiles and fire controls which whose colors changes as accuracy drops, designing it to also include speed/kill probability could be added if possible.  :twisted:

I have had a look at the page and it does make interesting reading. I won't have time to do anything for this version but something along those lines would look very good. I will add it to my list of future mods.

Steve