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[Metalax]

Magazine design is an interesting balancing act.

A magazine has a base htk of 1 although this can be boosted up to 10 at the expense of missile capacity, with the amount of capacity loss being determined by armour tech level. This means that larger armoured magazines lose less capacity than an equivalent tonnage of smaller magazines of the same armour level. However that larger number of smaller magazines would add more total htk to the ship design allowing it to soak more damage.

At low armour tech or low feed system tech armouring magazines will result in them having very low capacity, as tech improves smaller magazines become more favourable.

Note also has to be made of when magazines are destroyed. A large magazine being destroyed will either result in a large number of missiles being flushed into space or a large detonation that may destroy the ship outright. If using smaller magazines the missile loss or potential detonation will be smaller but there will be more chances for a detonation to occur as each magazine destroyed needs to successfully flush it's missiles.

Also note that crew requirements mean that using an equivalent tonnage of smaller magazines will require up to double the crew with their attendant crew quarters being required as well.

[MarcAFK]

The whole damn game is a delicate balancing act, everything when it comes to design is variable in some way.
.... I need to get back to my game now.

[tryrar]

Ok, I've just destroyed the mobile component of a Precursor force in Alpha Centauri. The problem is there appears to be a couple AMM PDCs on the fifth planet that are soaking up everything I can throw at them. Rather than waste a whole hell of a lot of missile trying to run their AMMs out, I was thinking of sending in some armored drop shuttles to land a force to take over the PDCs. Would that actually work?

[Sheb]

They would probably be blown up by the AMM. You'll need tons of armor.

[tryrar]

Well, yeah, that's assumed

I could also rush some microwave tech and attempt some HARM operations. It would also require a hard armored ship, but I have decent shield techs(just ran out of room to put them on my 15k ton cruisers, for next time I guess), so either option does have a good chance for success

[MarcAFK]

You could make the shuttles stupidly fast to avoid missiles, but being AMM's they're probably going to be much faster than your shuttles, your best bet is to distract the AMM's with some mass gauss or railgun equipped decoys, put large actives on them so they become big targets.... It's going to be a rather expensive operation.
Maybe try very fast shuttles as small as possible, cloaked and with high thermal reduction, just see how close they can get before getting fired at, perhaps make some similar shuttles which are equipped the same way but have actives you can turn on as decoys just before you get close enough, then send the decoys away with the missiles screaming after them, while your actual shuttles close.

[Sheb]

Or you could make a civilian mass of armor and CIWS and hope their missile stockpile ain't too big.

[MarcAFK]

Yeah there's that option, probably the best really.

[tryrar]

yup, 10 layers of armor and 500 tons of shields means nothing when you regularly get hit with 62 missiles per ship >_>

Plan B then, that hulking mass of civilian armor and CIWS you mentioned

[Metalax]

Of course you could always do the sit at the edge of their engagement range trick and skip back and forth over the line letting them launch missiles, only for them to die when they run out of fuel before reaching you. Much more micro-management of course but much less expensive to implement.

[tryrar]

Motherfucker one of them is a laser PDC. Parking my decoys at the planet to run them out of missiles is now having the opposite effect, and for some reason they won't move away

Edit: Managed to get one to park at a waypoint out of beam weapon range, and eventually stopped getting shot at, so I'm currently sending my followup assault transports(after my navy blew the laser PDC of course)

[Sharp]

Probably panicking if they don't move, or could be fuel destroyed

You can try fooling AMMs with MIRVs to try and get them to fire at MIRV before it separates. Or just try and stagger firing waves so a wave of missiles can slip by.

You can use your own AMMs as well as their high speed has a good chance of hitting the PDC as well. Very expensive to take out AMM PDC bases though whatever happens, (apart from exploiting AI by moving in/out of range)

[tryrar]

meh, my decoyes dried up their AMM supplies, so it's just a matter of time. Oddly enough, when I combat-dropped my troops onto the planet, there's no option to attack the pdc on the ground unit tab. I'm thinking it could actually be an orbital installation....

[Flying Dice]

Yes, the Precursor bases are typically orbital stations.

[RedKing]

Yup. I had a game where I ran the AMM station dry and sent in four squadrons of fighters to tear that bitch up. That's when I found out that the other one which had been non-combatant wasn't a sensor base or repair base, but a Gauss Cannon PD base. 

Warning though: sometimes they can resupply. A few hours after the AMM station stopped firing, it started back up and demolished what was left of my crippled fleet. Don't know if there was a collier somewhere in system that I missed, or if the planet had reserves of ammo.