Suggestion: AMM doesn't need warhead

[381654729 (OP)]

It seems counter-intuitive to me that a missile getting hit by a 2. 5 ton object moving at 50000 kilometers per second relative to itself does not blow up, even if that 2. 5 ton object is just a chunk of metal with no explosives inside.  Therefore I suggest that for the purposes of shooting down missiles, your anti-missile missile needs 0 warhead.  It would rely on only the impact force to detonate the target missile.  Make it a function involving the relative speeds of the missiles involved, angle of interception, the armor on each missile, the amount of explosives present on each missile, etc, to determine whether the AMM, ship-killer, or both, survive the impact.

Such a 0-warhead missile would not do any damage to ships.

This would potentially be a "fix" for the "small missiles are always better" problem I see many complaints about.  You could make a few 0-warhead giant "missiles" with obscene amounts of armor and some active sensor to soak up an entire salvo of size-1 missiles.  Bigger missiles have a bigger chance of destroying the "dummy" missile each hit and a better chance of getting through.

I don't yet know what happens if both missiles involved in the impact have no warhead.  But this is just an idea.

Comments?

[Sharp]

Well I think the missile intercepting isn't really a direct collision but rather getting close enough for warhead to go off. Trying to intercept something going 20000km/s while being relatively tiny is going to be very hard, lasers have hard enough time and they go at speed of light (299,792 km/s).

If you have a warhead though you don't need to touch it, you can just explode nearby although nearby is still fairly close which is why it's still hard for AMM to hit ASM's.

[381654729 (OP)]

I've always thought that the missiles physically made contact because I assume the (very advanced) computer in the fire control would work out where exactly to shoot it to make them collide, but point taken.

I still think requiring one entire point of damage to shoot down a missile is excessive.  That's like saying the missile, which is designed to explode easily, takes as much force to destroy as one square of ship armor.  It might be wise to allow fractional warheads on missiles, as they have fractional armor already.  So a missile with any (0. 0001) warhead would destroy an unarmored missile, missile with 0. 2 armor would take 0. 2 points of cumulative damage to destroy, and so on.

The idea of having an armored drone (armored missile with a sensor) automatically move in the way of incoming missiles also appears to be impossible to achieve in the current version.

[alex_brunius]

Trying to fix the balance this way would promote smaller and even higher amounts of AMMs.

I would prefer going the other way around and giving ships with thicker armor 1 point of damage absorption so that AMMs don't scratch them.

Aurora doesn't need even smaller and more missiles going around IMHO.

[NihilRex]

Id like to see an AMM check box, kind of like the (nonfunctional) laser warhead one.

When checked WH is calculated in .1WH increments, and it should be assumed that .5 damage kills the target missile if not armored.  Armor should also be calculated in .1 increments, and affected by armor tech.  Dedicated AMMs would be forbidden from having onboard sensors.

This will allow for earlier effective CMs, increase the number of armored missiles, but not have a huge effect on the rest of balance.  In fact, it would reduce the effectiveness of AMMs as counter-fighter and anti-ship munitions.

Edit - To clarify, any WH outside whole numbers would be discarded when hitting ships instead of missiles, so your 1.5WH lategame CM would only do 1 damage to a ship.

[Charlie Beeler]

Prior to v3.2 0pt warhead missiles could destroy missiles.  Don't see Steve going back.  He has also been against fractional warheads as well.  

This subject comes up fairly frequently, so far those against small missiles having warheads that damage ship armor have not come up with a suggestion that Steve has publicly considered as viable.  

[Sharp]

Tbh I would prefer scrapping AMMs completely, increase the thermal output on missiles and have point defence be able to track thermal targets so no longer any need to have special AM active sensors and AMMs. With AMM's out of the way might lead to a rise in beam fighters to either harass enemy ships or escort/attack enemy missile fighters

[Narmio]

Id like to see an AMM check box, kind of like the (nonfunctional) laser warhead one.

When checked WH is calculated in .1WH increments, and it should be assumed that .5 damage kills the target missile if not armored.  Armor should also be calculated in .1 increments, and affected by armor tech.  Dedicated AMMs would be forbidden from having onboard sensors.

This will allow for earlier effective CMs, increase the number of armored missiles, but not have a huge effect on the rest of balance.  In fact, it would reduce the effectiveness of AMMs as counter-fighter and anti-ship munitions.

Edit - To clarify, any WH outside whole numbers would be discarded when hitting ships instead of missiles, so your 1.5WH lategame CM would only do 1 damage to a ship.

I actually think this could be an interesting change -- although I would make 0.1WH the amount necessary to kill an unarmoured missile, and 1WH sufficient to kill all missiles. Between those extremes an armour- and damage-dependent probability would apply. Warheads of less than 1 would, against larger targets, simply have a percentage chance of doing 1 damage. Missiles of total size less than 1 would remain illegal.

Leaving aside the exact details, the result of this would be that unarmoured missiles become easier to intercept (as AMMs would require less warhead space), and that optimal AMMs (for unarmoured targets) would do 10% of their current damage to ships.  The question of whether to increase warhead allocation on AMMs above the 0.1 minimum would be decided by strategic need.

Those changes sound like a net positive to current metagame -- designers would be forced to decrease the effectiveness of their AMMs to maintain their current "last-ditch dual-purpose" status. AMM effectiveness would increase, tipping the scales towards offensive beam weapons. Beam fighters and armoured missiles would both receive a boost.

[doomsought]

Why stop at AAM? Kinetic Impactors are a legitimate warhead choice. Deal damage based off the mass and speed of the missile (missile armor is now useful!), but drastically reduces hit chance.

[sublight]

I'd actually like to see the Laser Warhead option brought back for use in AMMs.

A Laser Warhead might do 1/4th damage per shot (0.25 increments) but gain multiple intercept chances, similar to railguns, with the number of laser warhead shots increasing by tech level.

[Arwyn]

I agree, it would be interesting to see the laser warheads be useful, and the AMM idea has merit.

The other reason for warhead requirements is that the original idea was that rather than make a direct kinetic hit (hard) it was far easier to fry the electronics (targetting computers and sensors) of an ASM by detonating a nuke close by. So, its not really necessarily a direct hit, but a proximity kill rendering the ASM inert, blind, or scrambled. Or it could be close enough to vaporize the missile.

The armoring was likewise expanded to be real armor, and/or ablative shielding protecting against radiation/heat, ect.

[swarm_sadist]

It seems counter-intuitive to me that a missile getting hit by a 2. 5 ton object moving at 50000 kilometers per second relative to itself does not blow up, even if that 2. 5 ton object is just a chunk of metal with no explosives inside. 

Technically, since acceleration is infinite in Aurora, mass must be 0 for the sake of momentum. Therefor, kinetic energy would be 0 as well, or very close to 0. Ramming in TN would require a VERY large ship to do so effectively and velocity would have virtually no impact.

[waresky]

It seems counter-intuitive to me that a missile getting hit by a 2. 5 ton object moving at 50000 kilometers per second relative to itself does not blow up, even if that 2. 5 ton object is just a chunk of metal with no explosives inside.  Therefore I suggest that for the purposes of shooting down missiles, your anti-missile missile needs 0 warhead.  It would rely on only the impact force to detonate the target missile.  Make it a function involving the relative speeds of the missiles involved, angle of interception, the armor on each missile, the amount of explosives present on each missile, etc, to determine whether the AMM, ship-killer, or both, survive the impact.

Such a 0-warhead missile would not do any damage to ships.

This would potentially be a "fix" for the "small missiles are always better" problem I see many complaints about.  You could make a few 0-warhead giant "missiles" with obscene amounts of armor and some active sensor to soak up an entire salvo of size-1 missiles.  Bigger missiles have a bigger chance of destroying the "dummy" missile each hit and a better chance of getting through.

I don't yet know what happens if both missiles involved in the impact have no warhead.  But this is just an idea.

Comments?

In realtime any AMM got WarHead. More effort,more efficent destroy close-area

[Bgreman]

Technically, since acceleration is infinite in Aurora, mass must be 0 for the sake of momentum. Therefor, kinetic energy would be 0 as well, or very close to 0. Ramming in TN would require a VERY large ship to do so effectively and velocity would have virtually no impact.

I don't think picking and choosing which real-world physical principles apply is all that meaningful.  Infinite acceleration isn't really possible in the first place, so trying to derive other Aurora physics from that as a first principle doesn't make much sense.  If you're going to handwave one aspect, might as well handwave whatever else is necessary.  Trying to create internal consistency when there is none is weird.

Put another way, F = m*a no longer seems to apply at all, hence "Trans-Newtonian."

[waresky]

I don't think picking and choosing which real-world physical principles apply is all that meaningful.  Infinite acceleration isn't really possible in the first place, so trying to derive other Aurora physics from that as a first principle doesn't make much sense.  If you're going to handwave one aspect, might as well handwave whatever else is necessary.  Trying to create internal consistency when there is none is weird.

Put another way, F = m*a no longer seems to apply at all, hence "Trans-Newtonian."

+1 for me.