Tentative Suggestions for Missile Rebalancing by Tweaking Launcher Size Rules

[Jorgen_CAB]

For sub munition... Just add a 5-10% tax for the separation mechanics for all sub munitions and you will essentially fix this issue.

I also think that adding a guidance module to missiles also makes sense, they could also be linked to maximum range of the flight of the missile as well. Fire-controls able to control limited numbers of missiles also seem logical.

Adding more ECM/ECCM functionality to missile combat also can help as well as other types of munition to make a layered beam PD system more important.

Small missiles should still be important but not necessarily because they can be fired in quantity but more for specific target types such as fighters, FAC or other smaller scouts and utility ships.

[TheBawkHawk]

Finding some way for large missiles to overcome the 'PD tax' without infringing on how small missiles do it (salvo size) is my preferred solution. Volume of fire should be an option of course, and I think implementing a reduced version of what nuclearslurpee is proposing could (and to be honest likely should) be a part of that. Having some ways for larger missiles to increase their survivability and ability to penetrate PD nets without having to resort to larger salvo sizes would be healthier for the balance of the game.

I like the ideas that Steve had, with variable missile warheads doing different jobs: shaped charge or bomb-pumped lasers that decrease the warhead-per-MSP by some fraction but allow a bit of standoff distance from final fire PD nets. Reducing the warhead/MSP ratio means that even with laser penetration you need to pay a size tax to make up for the lost warhead strength, otherwise you're penetrating basically the same depth but with far less width. Side bonus of standoff warheads is increasing the utility of area-fire PD and the escort mechanics. This would prevent small missiles from getting much benefit, but lets large missiles reap the rewards of better penetration and avoiding final fire PD. There is the risk of this just shifting the meta all the way towards AMMs and not really solving anything, so I think this would need to come hand-in-hand with some way to improve the survivability (armour increasing HTK has come up a lot) or the PD-penetration ability (involving a jamming/EWar rework) of large missiles.

I'm not sure if we should split this off into a different thread? Jamming is tangentially related to nuclearslurpee's original post as they're potential ways to solve the missile issue, but I feel that EWar deserves a deep dive thread of its own if a rework is on the table.

[nuclearslurpee (OP)]

I'm not sure if we should split this off into a different thread? Jamming is tangentially related to nuclearslurpee's original post as they're potential ways to solve the missile issue, but I feel that EWar deserves a deep dive thread of its own if a rework is on the table.

This is probably a good idea, since it is something Steve wants to revisit at some point and EW should work the same for ships and missiles so it is not a missile-specific topic.

[Scandinavian]

Also, another issue this size progression will bring up is that it makes 'canister' launchers (ie. a missile containing other missiles as second stage, and no actual range/etc on the first stage) very attractive. If a Size 9 launcher is 3 HS and a Size 3 launcher is 1.73 HS, then it becomes extremely attractive to design size 9 'canister' missiles containing 3 size 2.95 (or whatever the exact size ends up being) missiles inside, getting vastly higher salvo density (~6-6.5x) and ultimately doing nothing to actually change the small vs large missiles issue, just shifting the meta for how it is done.

Yes, that is a very good point, especially if you start designing really large missiles. Size 36 is only 6 HS - 2x larger than size 9 - and you get 4x more sub-munitions.

EDIT - I don't see an easy way around the above, so what is needed is some capability that requires internal space and is a reasonable alternative to a larger missile wave. Onboard ECM/ECCM is already an option. Perhaps other warhead types could be added. Laser heads that attack from a specified range depending on warheads size and laser tech, or shaped charge warheads that are larger than normal but with improved penetration, or Tandem-charge for a similar effect. Maybe missiles with retargeting capability if they miss, or some form of evasion capabilities, or missiles with electronic damage similar to microwaves (that require large warheads). Perhaps it's time to revisit EW and add jamming and counter-jamming. Open to ideas.

Just scale the size of the "submunitions" component of a MIRVed missile to the square of the number of submunitions instead of linearly. That way you can fire 4 size 4 missiles from 4 HS 2 launchers (8 HS total) or from 1 size 64 canister fired from a single 8 HS launcher.

The in-universe justification would be that TN warheads and engines don't play nice with each other when they activate, so you can't stack them like sardines in your MIRV components.

Note that the above scaling is so punishing that it completely negates "canister" MIRVs for alpha strike purposes, but at the cost of making MIRVed warheads (canister or not) strictly inferior in terms of magazine space: A size 21 missile with a size 5 bus could carry only 2 size 4 terminal stages, which is fine in terms of launcher size (the two size 4 terminal stages launched as two separate 2-stage missiles with a size 2.5 bus each would cost just over 5 HS of launcher as opposed to just over 4½ HS for the MIRV), but take up 21 MSP worth of magazine space as opposed to 13 for the separate missiles.

If instead we scale to the power of 3/2, the same 2x4 MIRV on a size 5 bus would yield a size 16½ missile vs. 13 for the separate two-stage missiles (but the bus would be more efficient due to larger engine size), and require 4 HS of launcher as opposed to the 5 HS of launcher for the two separate missiles. That trade-off between launcher space and magazine space does not seem unreasonable to me.

Taking the 3/2 power scaling to the extreme of a size 64 canister of size 4 missiles, this gives us 6 size 4 missiles for 8 HS worth of launcher, as opposed to the same 6 missiles taking 12 HS of launcher to launch separately. This seems still a bit exploit-y, but we can combine it with a minimum bus size (again, TN warheads do not play nice with each other in MIRVs; need scaffolding). If we impose a minimum bus size of 25 % of the total size of all submunitions, including scaling penalty (a minimum that will not be constraining for reasonable MIRV designs), then a 6 size 4 missile canister grows to size 80, or 9 HS of launcher as opposed to the 12 HS of separately launched missiles.

If 9 HS vs. 12 HS of launcher looks exploity, recall that we have now well over tripled the tonnage of colliers needed to keep this vessel in supply for a repeat performance, in order to get a 25 % reduction in warship tonnage. Now, magazines are cheaper than launchers and colliers are cheaper than warships... but probably not by a factor of 6 (assuming roughly 1:2 collier:missile warship tonnage as baseline).

So what this dynamic gives you is that huge canister MIRVs makes sense for box launcher vessels operating out of populated systems that can produce their own resupply of munitions, but very quickly become impractical for sustained power projection, or even for establishing forward bases for patrol vessels.

That does not strike me as an entirely undesirable dynamic.

[TurielD]

Yes, that is a very good point, especially if you start designing really large missiles. Size 36 is only 6 HS - 2x larger than size 9 - and you get 4x more sub-munitions.

EDIT - I don't see an easy way around the above

Firstly, that's not so terrible, because as discussed previously more missiles is greater cost, and MIRV systems especially just *eat* Gallicite. You're effectively making your navy into a glass cannon by being able to field fewer ships if all your 'engine material' (and production capacity) is going into 500 little missiles inside 100 big missiles for each of your ships.
Also Scandinavian has the right idea for a simple fix:

Just scale the size of the "submunitions" component of a MIRVed missile to the square of the number of submunitions instead of linearly.

But still... this would open the door to huge volleys of small missiles, and the actual problem there hasn't changed!
We are simply without the tools to deal with missile spam. So, while we're discussing revamping missiles anyway...

Our situation is this:

Undoubtedly awesome, but not efficient. That ship is about 60% PD by volume.

What we need is this:

A plasma cloud, EMP, guidance-disruption, flak... whatever you might chose to call it - a countermeasure against waves.

The basic idea would be to allow damage from weapons performing PD fire to 'spill over' into the rest of the wave, if and when their damage is greater than the first target missile's health. This opens the door to:

• large AMMs, especially with larger missiles becoming more feasible with the OP's change
• multipurpose missiles, regular ASMs can be used in defense without being wasted on a single hostile missile
• lasers and other higher-damage weapons being more interesting as PD again. Imagine a plasma carronade as a flak field!

To not drastically derail the balance of small<->large missiles, that probably requires a 'missile health' system similar to ground unit health, but in line with the scaling of the initial suggestion to this thread: have missile health be floor(sqrt(size)) - a size 1 missile up to (but not including) a size 4 missile has 1 health, a size 4-8.9999 has 2 health etc. This would leave smaller missiles with their 'overwhelm' health advantage while giving larger missiles a survivability advantage against lighter PD fire, as hits from damage 1 weapons would only have an x% chance of knocking out the heavier missile.

[Shuul]

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

[Steve Walmsley]

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.

[Steve Walmsley]

We are simply without the tools to deal with missile spam. So, while we're discussing revamping missiles anyway...

The problem here isn't missiles being too effective - but not being effective enough. Beam fleets are currently superior to missile fleets, with the exception of massed waves of small missiles from box launchers. Even then, I think massed railgun fighters are superior in a campaign to massed missile fighters (check my recent BSG campaign as an example http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=12909.0). My last few campaigns have either been beam-only, or primarily-beam with some missile fighters alongside beam fighters.

Even AMM spam isn't generally an issue. In my current campaign I am just sailing though attacks with waves of 200 AMMs ten seconds apart (using only beam PD) and then blasting the launch platforms. An NPR home world firing waves of 400+ AMMs at 107,000 km/s caused a temporary inconvenience, but even then I just reinforced and rolled over them. This imbalance wasn't obvious from the start, but has became apparent over time.

Simply increasing the number of small box-launched missiles isn't the solution because it doesn't improve the decision-making in-game. Instead, I need to find a way to make larger missiles more effective so that missile warfare is no longer a simple matter of 'more is better'.

BTW - I have also found that higher levels of ECM make AMM spam very ineffective as the smaller missiles cannot carry ECCM.

[Shuul]

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

Yeah, with this explanation it makes more sense, maybe there can be additional system, usable only for larger missiles, to make them more survivable/evade chance in addition to ECCM? e.g. dummy warheads, extra thrusters for evasion, chaffs?

[Gyrfalcon]

I’m reading Empire Rising, and in early books they use decoy missiles that generate false ‘extra’ missiles to sucker point defense fire. Would that be an idea?

The usage disappears later, generally because waves are tens of thousands strong instead of a few missiles at a time.

[nuclearslurpee (OP)]

Yeah, with this explanation it makes more sense, maybe there can be additional system, usable only for larger missiles, to make them more survivable/evade chance in addition to ECCM? e.g. dummy warheads, extra thrusters for evasion, chaffs?

The problem is that if you make it "usable only for larger missiles", there has to be a consistent justification for that - otherwise we have the problem that Starfire has where fighter-only weapons are much more size-effective than ship-based weapons - in that case, why can't ships mount a large array of those fighter weapons?

Fixed-size components like ECM work better here, because you can put them on a small missile but the efficiency is questionable in those cases, at least until very high tech levels (at MaxTech it is possible to design a size-1 AMM with 100% hit chance and ECCM with space left over, but MaxTech is its own weird and completely unbalanced part of the game).

I’m reading Empire Rising, and in early books they use decoy missiles that generate false ‘extra’ missiles to sucker point defense fire. Would that be an idea?

No, because the cost of making a decoy missile is not appreciably different than the cost of making a real missile, since usually gallicite (engine) cost is the limiting factor, while I've never heard of anyone running even close to a shortage of tritanium (warhead).

[Steve Walmsley]

I’m reading Empire Rising, and in early books they use decoy missiles that generate false ‘extra’ missiles to sucker point defense fire. Would that be an idea?

The usage disappears later, generally because waves are tens of thousands strong instead of a few missiles at a time.

You can effectively do that now, using fast size-1 missiles without warheads and sending them in ahead of the main wave (either individually or via MIRVs).

If we start looking at 'sensor ghosts', or something similar, then ships should be able to do that too on a larger scale, which makes larger missile waves less effective.

You have to consider ships and missiles as just different size objects with the same physical characteristics and limitations, unless you can create a plausible reason within that physics framework why something that applies to missiles does not apply to ships. Bear in mind that in Aurora, missiles are to spacecraft as torpedoes are to ships in the real world. They both operate in the same medium.

[Steve Walmsley]

(at MaxTech it is possible to design a size-1 AMM with 100% hit chance and ECCM with space left over, but MaxTech is its own weird and completely unbalanced part of the game).

Yes, I will start fixing that at some point. It's just I have never got close enough to worry about it

[nuclearslurpee (OP)]

(at MaxTech it is possible to design a size-1 AMM with 100% hit chance and ECCM with space left over, but MaxTech is its own weird and completely unbalanced part of the game).

Yes, I will start fixing that at some point. It's just I have never got close enough to worry about it

I personally have found that tweaking the missile agility techs to increase by ~25% per level like most other techs has worked well. Currently the tech levels are something like 20, 32, 48, 64, 80, ... and I tweak them down to 20, 25, 32, 40, 50, ...

This pushes back a bit the point where agility-spec AMMs start to dominate, lowers the maximum agility tech to (IIRC) 250 which precludes a "perfect" AMM at MaxTech, and doesn't really affect the NPRs very much since their missile designs use very little agility anyways.

However, this is a thread about missile buffs so I should stop talking now. 

[Steve Walmsley]

(at MaxTech it is possible to design a size-1 AMM with 100% hit chance and ECCM with space left over, but MaxTech is its own weird and completely unbalanced part of the game).

Yes, I will start fixing that at some point. It's just I have never got close enough to worry about it

I personally have found that tweaking the missile agility techs to increase by ~25% per level like most other techs has worked well. Currently the tech levels are something like 20, 32, 48, 64, 80, ... and I tweak them down to 20, 25, 32, 40, 50, ...

This pushes back a bit the point where agility-spec AMMs start to dominate, lowers the maximum agility tech to (IIRC) 250 which precludes a "perfect" AMM at MaxTech, and doesn't really affect the NPRs very much since their missile designs use very little agility anyways.

However, this is a thread about missile buffs so I should stop talking now. 

Speaking of missile agility, one option I was considering was allowing agility for evasion purposes, as well as interception. However, I am a little nervous on agility in general. It's something that missiles have that ships don't and the mechanic of how it actually works is not obvious (beyond the maths). I was considering removing it entirely as something of an anachronism.