Tentative Suggestions for Missile Rebalancing by Tweaking Launcher Size Rules

[nuclearslurpee (OP)]

Let's consider a model where each BFC will engage its first salvo with the normal chance to hit p until the salvo is completely destroyed, then the second salvo with a hit chance of a * p, where 0<= a <=1, the third salvo with a hit chance of a^2 * p, and so on, until it runs out of shots from the guns it controls.

The current salvo engaging mechanism has a = 1, i.e., one FC can engage an unlimited number of salvos.

The VB6 engaging mode, where one BFC can only engage one salvo, in the above model means a = 0.

I still prefer the idea of going back to one fire control per salvo (both offensive and defensive), but this approach would require less rebalancing of mechanics and fire control costs and still sounds interesting and realistic enough that I would go for this. Maybe a fixed value of a = 0.5, though; if it is a tech line then we would see the balance shift over time which may or may not be the desired result.

[TheTalkingMeowth]

In a similar vein, we could apply the "AMMs per missile" setting to energy PD.

I.e. right now energy PD is applied as efficiently as possible, shooting at a missile until it is destroyed then moving to the next. More "realistic," at least for final fire, is that you would precommit how many shots to take at each missile. For bonus points, in final defensive fire mode we should "know" what ship is targeted by a missile and allow the shots per missile setting to be based on which vessel is targeted.

Like the beam fire control: salvo modification, this would cause a dramatic increase in the variance of interception effectiveness, which in turn forces far larger resource expenditures in order to guarantee 100% interception.

I *think* this would go a long way to mitigating the all or nothing nature of missile engagements by making leakers much more common.

Unlike the beam fire control modification, it also would introduce a tactical choice: you can gamble on complete coverage by allocating the minimum number of shots per missile (useful for cases where you are outclassed and hoping to get a cool story), or you can sacrifice some ships to ensure others come through unscathed by upping the # of shots per missile for the important assets. Escorts foregoing their own defense to shepherd a beam superdreadnought into range make for great AARs.

[mtm84]

Thank you Iceranger for bringing forth some of my idle thoughts on this matter.  I like the concept of affecting chance to hit as to me it makes for more interesting design choices, and I like the concept of minimum and maximum CTH so that there is always a chance of a hit, and there is always a chance of a miss/failure, both in beam and missile combat.

Maybe a fixed value of a = 0.5, though; if it is a tech line then we would see the balance shift over time which may or may not be the desired result.

I think tech causing a balance shift is almost always a desired result of researching in general. In this case the value seems pretty tunable, and could also be affected by things beside a tech, like ecm/eccm, crew training/morale, etc.  Maybe not in dramatic ways but even small adjustments to this value can cause noticeable changes in combat at scale I think.

Overall, I fell that affecting CTH makes more sense verses hard limits on what fire controls are capable of.  To within reason of course.  the 5 Ls range limit on beams makes perfect sense for example.

[TurielD]

If someone wants a mega-wave of missiles, they'll want to have as few FCs as possible to leave space for missiles, but it could also be viable to field half as many missiles with lots of FC in order to overwhelm enemy tracking.

Yes, but if you are only firing half as many missiles due to have lots of FC, the defender only needs half as many weapons, so they can have lot of FC too. The overall situation isn't changing.

That's only true in a missiles-vs-dedicated-pd situation. And also only with 1 type of enemy.

• Full gunboats will be less able to meaningfully engage missiles, due to having few FCs. Or they're using more tonnage on FCs for a dual role.
• If you've encountered one enemy built around swarms of small volleys and a different enemy that uses big waves, you have to make strategic decisions and compromises in ship design.

It's a matter of enabling missile tactics, rather than 'biggest wave wins, fire & forget'.
The defenses built to engage Torpedo bombers shouldn't be equally effective against ship-fired cruise missiles, but they're modeled the same.   

I will be posting some missile updates over the next few days that should have a much greater impact on missile combat in general

Alright, looking forward to what's in store! I do hope the OP's suggestion of cutting down launcher size makes it in, and the return to laser/stand-off missiles is also interesting!

[Steve Walmsley]

In a similar vein, we could apply the "AMMs per missile" setting to energy PD.

I.e. right now energy PD is applied as efficiently as possible, shooting at a missile until it is destroyed then moving to the next. More "realistic," at least for final fire, is that you would precommit how many shots to take at each missile. For bonus points, in final defensive fire mode we should "know" what ship is targeted by a missile and allow the shots per missile setting to be based on which vessel is targeted.

Like the beam fire control: salvo modification, this would cause a dramatic increase in the variance of interception effectiveness, which in turn forces far larger resource expenditures in order to guarantee 100% interception.

I *think* this would go a long way to mitigating the all or nothing nature of missile engagements by making leakers much more common.

Unlike the beam fire control modification, it also would introduce a tactical choice: you can gamble on complete coverage by allocating the minimum number of shots per missile (useful for cases where you are outclassed and hoping to get a cool story), or you can sacrifice some ships to ensure others come through unscathed by upping the # of shots per missile for the important assets. Escorts foregoing their own defense to shepherd a beam superdreadnought into range make for great AARs.

Interesting idea. I assume that in this model you gain an additional chance to hit when engaging a small amount of missiles and have a penalty for engaging greater numbers. I like the concept in principle, but maybe there is another option that achieves something similar without the need for changing fire control assignments.

What if all the firing assignments against a single wave are preset before any firing takes place. In other words, if you have 50 inbound missiles and 100 shots, every missile is engaged twice but no more than twice. That mechanic would waste some shots against missiles already killed and some would penetrate if the allocated shots missed. That is much more realistic than the current method, allows potential leakers even with overwhelming defence and eliminates any concerns about salvo sizes because every missile would be treated as part of the overall wave.

There are some complexities. Under the current system Ship A may be capable of attacking a missile heading for Ship B, but doesn't need to fire because Ship B's own point defence shoots it down. In the above scenario, Ship A would have to decide beforehand whether to fire on the missiles, regardless of whether Ship B shoots it down. There is also the question of what happens if two ships in different locations are simultaneously attacked and a third ship has to decide which to protect. Ships would also have to avoid overkill to prevent wasting MSP, and also to save slower firing weapons from wasting their shots. Finally, there are different weapon types with different capabilities and CTH, so they would have to allocated in a reasonable way.

Maybe your originally mentioned limit on fire control could be used differently. A fire control could be given a targeting priority rating and a limitation to not engage if the target was already targeted x times by higher priority fire controls.

I really like the concept if I could make it work without too much complexity.  I would need to completely change how PD is handled, as it currently happens as each salvo moves in turn.

[boolybooly]

So how do multigun turrets currently work?

I am imagining quad turret with 5 shot gauss giving 20 shots. But what if there were really 5x4 shots, ie each volley from the turret was in parallel for the 4 guns because they are firing synchronously and are targeted by the one BFC, so if it targets a particular salvo in one shot then the salvo gets 4 strikes come what may. This would commit the turret to the shot and turrets with more shots per volley would produce more overkill if the salvo was wiped out in less than four strikes.

This would end up favouring small salvo sizes against multigun turrets if the targeting was per salvo but if it was per missile it could have a significant effect on PD turret mechanics cf ship to ship turrets. PD turrets would probably not want go beyond two shots per volley (dual turret) requiring a greater investment in tonnage but ship to ship turrets could still go higher (quad) to good effect with turret size savings due to slower tracking.

Also CIWS would be a different animal.

[Jorgen_CAB]

I think that CIWS should not interact with normal PD but simply shoot at any leakers as a final layer... this would actually make CIWS important even on regular ships. CIWS should just shoot missiles for as many shots as they have and fire more effectively that way. So they could potentially shoot down as many missiles as they have shots and never waste shots on overkill.

I think that would be an interesting dynamic of how PD would work if it was changed.

[TheTalkingMeowth]

Interesting idea. I assume that in this model you gain an additional chance to hit when engaging a small amount of missiles and have a penalty for engaging greater numbers. I like the concept in principle, but maybe there is another option that achieves something similar without the need for changing fire control assignments.

I don't think you need to vary the accuracy based on the number of missiles targeted for this proposal to have the desired effect. I do agree that figuring out an appropriate UI to make this useable might be challenging. As a starting point, though, it is exactly the same idea as applies to AMMs where you set how many AMMs to shoot at a given target so that UI could be stolen.

What if all the firing assignments against a single wave are preset before any firing takes place. In other words, if you have 50 inbound missiles and 100 shots, every missile is engaged twice but no more than twice. That mechanic would waste some shots against missiles already killed and some would penetrate if the allocated shots missed. That is much more realistic than the current method, allows potential leakers even with overwhelming defence and eliminates any concerns about salvo sizes because every missile would be treated as part of the overall wave.

This is precisely what I'm proposing.

I added two additional wrinkles:
1. The User sets the number of shots per missile, rather than it just being #shots/#missiles. This would rarely be used without wrinkle 2
2. The user sets the number of shots per missile based on which ship the missile is targeting

There are some complexities. Under the current system Ship A may be capable of attacking a missile heading for Ship B, but doesn't need to fire because Ship B's own point defence shoots it down. In the above scenario, Ship A would have to decide beforehand whether to fire on the missiles, regardless of whether Ship B shoots it down. There is also the question of what happens if two ships in different locations are simultaneously attacked and a third ship has to decide which to protect. Ships would also have to avoid overkill to prevent wasting MSP, and also to save slower firing weapons from wasting their shots. Finally, there are different weapon types with different capabilities and CTH, so they would have to allocated in a reasonable way.

If we only apply these changes to final defensive fire (idea being that since it's last minute there is no time to wait and see the effects, but in every other mode you have at least 5 seconds to spread out your shots to get the current, 0 waste behavior), most of these questions are eliminated. For different weapon types with different CTH, if the number of shots is a per fire control setting the only within fire control accuracy variation is with gauss turrets...perhaps instead of a number of shots per missile, you set an "expected kill" probability and that determines how many shots to take?

Maybe your originally mentioned limit on fire control could be used differently. A fire control could be given a targeting priority rating and a limitation to not engage if the target was already targeted x times by higher priority fire controls.

I really like the concept if I could make it work without too much complexity.  I would need to completely change how PD is handled, as it currently happens as each salvo moves in turn.

If you require the user to set per beam fire control how many shots to allocate per incoming missile, whether or not that varies depending on which ship is targeted, you won't *have* to change that each salvo moves in turn and experience FDF in turn since we'll just take however many shots we can until we run out. But it would still be better if the change were made, so that we don't get weird scenarios where the PD is supposed to prioritize the flagship but doesn't do anything because the salvos targeting the flagship moved last and all the shots were expended on the earlier, lower priority salvos.

[Steve Walmsley]

I think it would have to apply to all point defence because ranged PD can effectively function as point-blank PD and I think we should assume that all firing decisions are made simultaneously in a given increment.

The least complex way of handling this seems to be:

• Give each fire control an assigned number of missiles (FCAM), regardless of point defence mode - this will have to be a new parameter in addition to PD mode.
• Assign each ship a point defence priority (which to protect first)
• Conduct missile movement and determine the list of missiles that are about to hit each ship.
• Cycle through all targeted ships, starting with the highest priority
• Cycle through each missile targeted on each ship
• Assign a point defence shot to each missile
• The shot for each missile should come from the closest ship to the point of missile detonation, which could be itself. Where ships are equally close, the shot should come from a weapon associated with the fire control with highest FCAM.
• If all missiles have shots assigned and there are still available weapons, the cycle should repeat for a second shot and if necessary for third, fourth, etc. shots.
• In no cases during the process, will any weapon be assigned to a missile if that missile has already been allocated shots equal to the FCAM or greater.
• All weapons fire simultaneously and the results are assessed
• Possibly (as Jorgen_CAB suggested) CIWS is ignored until this point and then get a final shot at any leakers.

EDIT: Some weapons are less likely to hit - railguns vs gauss turrets for example, or firing at range vs point blank. Perhaps there should be another parameter for a fire control, which is how many actual physical shots comprise a 'shot' for the purposes of engagement. Or maybe simply a FC priority, which is used for ordering instead of using the FCAM for ordering. That way you can assign railgun fire controls (for example), a low priority and high FCAM and ensure that higher accuracy shots from other weapons are assigned first.

[Iceranger]

I think it would have to apply to all point defence because ranged PD can effectively function as point-blank PD and I think we should assume that all firing decisions are made simultaneously in a given increment.

The least complex way of handling this seems to be:

• Give each fire control an assigned number of missiles (FCAM), regardless of point defence mode - this will have to be a new parameter in addition to PD mode.
• Assign each ship a point defence priority (which to protect first)
• Conduct missile movement and determine the list of missiles that are about to hit each ship.
• Cycle through all targeted ships, starting with the highest priority
• Cycle through each missile targeted on each ship
• Assign a point defence shot to each missile
• The shot for each missile should come from the closest ship to the point of missile detonation, which could be itself. Where ships are equally close, the shot should come from a weapon associated with the fire control with highest FCAM.
• If all missiles have shots assigned and there are still available weapons, the cycle should repeat for a second shot and if necessary for third, fourth, etc. shots.
• In no cases during the process, will any weapon be assigned to a missile if that missile has already been allocated shots equal to the FCAM or greater.
• All weapons fire simultaneously and the results are assessed
• Possibly (as Jorgen_CAB suggested) CIWS is ignored until this point and then get a final shot at any leakers.

This is a great approach and is likely to make PD less 'all-or-nothing' than it is now.

Although I don't quite see the point of the parameter FCAM. Without it, this tie "Where ships are equally close, the shot should come from a weapon associated with the fire control with highest FCAM" can be broken by randomly choosing a ship that still has shots, or choosing the FC with the highest chance to hit and assign a shot. Or maybe instead of starting with the closest ships, starts with ships with the highest hit chance (which is likely to be the closest ships anyway, and the closest ships with better officers/tracking bonus/ECM and such will be chosen first).

• Possibly (as Jorgen_CAB suggested) CIWS is ignored until this point and then get a final shot at any leakers.

This seems to be a great way to give CIWS more love and actually it suits its purpose.

[Steve Walmsley]

I think it would have to apply to all point defence because ranged PD can effectively function as point-blank PD and I think we should assume that all firing decisions are made simultaneously in a given increment.

The least complex way of handling this seems to be:

• Give each fire control an assigned number of missiles (FCAM), regardless of point defence mode - this will have to be a new parameter in addition to PD mode.
• Assign each ship a point defence priority (which to protect first)
• Conduct missile movement and determine the list of missiles that are about to hit each ship.
• Cycle through all targeted ships, starting with the highest priority
• Cycle through each missile targeted on each ship
• Assign a point defence shot to each missile
• The shot for each missile should come from the closest ship to the point of missile detonation, which could be itself. Where ships are equally close, the shot should come from a weapon associated with the fire control with highest FCAM.
• If all missiles have shots assigned and there are still available weapons, the cycle should repeat for a second shot and if necessary for third, fourth, etc. shots.
• In no cases during the process, will any weapon be assigned to a missile if that missile has already been allocated shots equal to the FCAM or greater.
• All weapons fire simultaneously and the results are assessed
• Possibly (as Jorgen_CAB suggested) CIWS is ignored until this point and then get a final shot at any leakers.

This is a great approach and is likely to make PD less 'all-or-nothing' than it is now.

Although I don't quite see the point of the parameter FCAM. Without it, this tie "Where ships are equally close, the shot should come from a weapon associated with the fire control with highest FCAM" can be broken by randomly choosing a ship that still has shots, or choosing the FC with the highest chance to hit and assign a shot. Or maybe instead of starting with the closest ships, starts with ships with the highest hit chance (which is likely to be the closest ships anyway, and the closest ships with better officers/tracking bonus/ECM and such will be chosen first).

• Possibly (as Jorgen_CAB suggested) CIWS is ignored until this point and then get a final shot at any leakers.

This seems to be a great way to give CIWS more love and actually it suits its purpose.

The main purpose of FCAM is to avoid overkill. If you assign main weapons a low FCAM, they won't fire if the PD weapons are sufficient to handle the attack. Also, I've added an edit to my original post regarding the ordering of fire. Probably better to use a separate parameter.

[nuclearslurpee (OP)]

What if all the firing assignments against a single wave are preset before any firing takes place. In other words, if you have 50 inbound missiles and 100 shots, every missile is engaged twice but no more than twice. That mechanic would waste some shots against missiles already killed and some would penetrate if the allocated shots missed. That is much more realistic than the current method, allows potential leakers even with overwhelming defence and eliminates any concerns about salvo sizes because every missile would be treated as part of the overall wave.

This is great and you should do it. 

So how do multigun turrets currently work?

Multi-gun turrets function as a single weapon, which is one reason why full-size multi-gun Gauss turrets are prone to wasting shots.

I think that CIWS should not interact with normal PD but simply shoot at any leakers as a final layer... this would actually make CIWS important even on regular ships. CIWS should just shoot missiles for as many shots as they have and fire more effectively that way. So they could potentially shoot down as many missiles as they have shots and never waste shots on overkill.

I think that would be an interesting dynamic of how PD would work if it was changed.

+1 to this too.

[Zap0]

Now this is a real change. I like it, as it gives potential for some leakers to get through and eliminates some other weirdness.

Instead of number of shots, sum of tracking speed (tracking capacity) should determine distribution of shots. To shoot down a missile moving at 20k km/s, you need a shot with a tracking speed of 20k km/s. Or two shots with 10k km/s, and so on. That way you don't have 10% to-hit gauss considered equally effective to turreted weapons.

[SpaceMarine]

Missile costs are far too much in their current form and need to be rebalanced to have an equal equation against beam based fleets.

Current logic behind missiles being expensive is that they provide a significant advantage in range against beam foes and enable the potential of wiping out an enemy fleet without being touched yourself which is invaluable.

However with new laser warheads and other munitions + a redirection to larger missiles I believe the costs will effect the use of missiles especially if the idea is to have reloadable launchers be more viable, so I recommend the following:

Reduce the costs of all "dumb" missiles ie missiles without laser warheads, without ECCM, without ECM (Notably decoys in whatever form should be reduced as well), specifically the gallicite cost, people especially with box launchers are having to fire entire fleets worth of BP at opponents.

Keep current costs for "smart" missiles, ECM, ECCM, Laser warheads, Advanced guidance etc, the current costs being high are fine in these areas as these will be more selective missiles or you expect to pay extra for what you get, so for example an AMM which costs 50 minerals currently with no ECM or ECCM or anything would cost say 30 instead and if it did have ECM and ECCM or advanced guidance retargeting its cost would be 50.

Furthermore the main cost of missiles is the logistics of moving them around strategically, larger missiles should be reduced in cost and all dumb munitions while higher tech munitions with specialised warheads, levels of electronic warfare and additional guidance should be more expensive, IRL missiles avionics are some of the most expensive part of the weapon.

[nuclearslurpee (OP)]

Reduce the costs of all "dumb" missiles ie missiles without laser warheads, without ECCM, without ECM (Notably decoys in whatever form should be reduced as well), specifically the gallicite cost, people especially with box launchers are having to fire entire fleets worth of BP at opponents.

The most significant fix here would be to simply halve gallicite costs. Missiles already have a unique 2x overboost multiplier which is hand-waved as due to single-use engines blah blah blah, so we can apply the same justification to reducing the cost as well.