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[origamiscienceguy]

Which types of ship is a fast speed generally the priority? Is it better to get a couple really fast cargo vessels, or one massive slow one? What about colony ships?

[Lord Shonus]

Review for the AMM would be better if we knew the relevant techs.
At first glance I'd probably increase agility a little at the expense of engine. With AMMs you care mostly about hit rate, speed in itself is less valuable as you don't care about enemy point defence.

Speed is an inherent component of hit rate. If you're slower than what you're trying to hit, you are very unlikely to hit it.

[Metalax]

Review for the AMM would be better if we knew the relevant techs.
At first glance I'd probably increase agility a little at the expense of engine. With AMMs you care mostly about hit rate, speed in itself is less valuable as you don't care about enemy point defence.

Speed is an inherent component of hit rate. If you're slower than what you're trying to hit, you are very unlikely to hit it.

Only with unturreted weapons or missiles. With turreted weapons the speed of your ship doesn't effect your chance to hit. Although being slower is still bad because you will be unable to set the range of engagement which can leave you unable to attack if outranged as well as outrun.

[Lord Shonus]

We're talking about missiles.

[Metalax]

We're talking about missiles.

Ah sorry, mixed your response with the couple of posts above yours, which were talking about ship speeds.

[Alastar]

Review for the AMM would be better if we knew the relevant techs.
At first glance I'd probably increase agility a little at the expense of engine. With AMMs you care mostly about hit rate, speed in itself is less valuable as you don't care about enemy point defence.

Speed is an inherent component of hit rate. If you're slower than what you're trying to hit, you are very unlikely to hit it.

First sentence states the obvious, second is not entirely correct.


You maximisise your hit rate on a given weight budget for enginge+agility when
A = E-10S/M

where A is agility tonnage, E engine tonnage, S total size of the missile and M your agility rating per MSP.

Now in practice, this needs tweaking to avoid wastage through rounding and you'd stay on the side of less agility because bigger engines have advantages beyond increasing the hit chance.
More range on the same fuel, harder to shoot down when used offensively.

[Girlinhat]

Normally speed directly changes your chance to hit.  But with missiles, they cheat.  The Agility stat just makes them more likely to hit.  Simply flatly higher to-hit on targets.  So for missiles, you don't always need speed.  Agility can also be used.

[Dramegno]

I got Ion drives
4 warhead strength per msp
48 missile agility per msp
missile engine power modifier of up to 500%

and it seems the best to hit I can come up with is 64.9% for things going 10k km/s  by cutting 8000 km/s off and cutting my range by over 50%

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Missile Size: 1 MSP  (0.05 HS)     Warhead: 1    Armour: 0     Manoeuvre Rating: 23
Speed: 28200 km/s    Engine Endurance: 2 minutes   Range: 3.9m km
Cost Per Missile: 0.8537
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 648.6%   3k km/s 207%   5k km/s 129.7%   10k km/s 64.9%
Materials Required:    0.25x Tritanium   0.6037x Gallicite   Fuel x45.75

Development Cost for Project: 85RP

here is my previous design for referance

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Missile Size: 1 MSP  (0.05 HS)     Warhead: 1    Armour: 0     Manoeuvre Rating: 15
Speed: 36000 km/s    Engine Endurance: 5 minutes   Range: 10.1m km
Cost Per Missile: 0.8056
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 540%   3k km/s 180%   5k km/s 108%   10k km/s 54%
Materials Required:    0.25x Tritanium   0.5556x Gallicite   Fuel x100

Development Cost for Project: 81RP

Which design in the battle experience of those present would be more effective in battle? the biggest pros of each that I can think of is the new one has a higher chance to hit while the old one has enough range that if I miss the first volley I might be able to fire a second.

[Alastar]

New one looks better, but actually goes a little too far for my tastes.
If you care for more range for a second salvo, 0.2396 and 0.2188 are sweet spots for lowered agility to make use for more fuel.


You didn't give your fuel consumption tech, how much range would you get for a 30000km/s 60%-hit missile?

0.5 engine*5.0
0.198 Agility MSP
0.052 fuel
0.25 warhead

[Dramegno]

Sorry I have .6 fuel consumption and this falls between my previous designs but I like it more than my 2nd design. It has a range of 11.6m km

[Rolepgeek]

Question for everyone.

Do you find Size 6 missiles to be just right for ASM duty? At low-ish tech levels, I feel like there's not enough room for warheads, and Size 12 fits a single 5 MSP engine in very nicely. Is the range/alpha strike increase worth the easier detectability?

As well, does Fighter production make use of stocked constructed Ship Parts, like Box Launchers? And will engine-less fighters launched from PDCs stay with the planet as it orbits or be left behind?

Finally(ish), for fuel harvesting, is it more effective to just have big slow fuel harvesters than stay out for a few years and come back every once in a while (possibly timed for when they have the shortest distance to go based on orbits), or massive bases with giant tankers that go out and collect every once in a while using hyper-efficiency engines?

[Flying Dice]

Obligatory "It's not the size, it's how you use it." 

More directly, not really, no. I use size 5-6 at TL1-2, but past that I use size 4, since at TL3ish that's enough for a STR-4 warhead, ~66% CTH against 10km/s targets, speed in the 18,000-24,000km/s range, and a decent maximum range. Smaller missiles means smaller launchers and more missiles in the magazines, which means larger salvos and/or better combat endurance; a ship that gets a few STR-4/9/16 hits per salvo is more valuable than one which has all of its STR-9/16/25 missiles shot down; a ship which can get some weaker hits every salvo for a lengthy battle is worth more than one which might get one or two stronger hits per salvo if they're lucky, and can't fight for as long without running dry. Adjust variables to suit roles.

It also makes them cheaper and faster to produce, if you're in dire straits.

Detectability doesn't mean much for your missiles; the AI doesn't exploit potential tech advantages by figuring out your range from metaknowledge and hovering it, and you're not going to get missiles small enough to avoid all anti-missile fire unless you build AMMs that are basically just ECM pods.

But yeah. As with many other things in Aurora, missile design has several core principles to keep in mind for optimizing (the square-warhead rule, knowing to look for the peak value from agility, &c) but still has plenty of room for personalization.

[Rolepgeek]

I plan on using a lot of box launchers and other massive-salvo-based weapons, and getting a few hits in that penetrate/get shock damage seems like it would be more helpful than sandblasting away their armor. :/

Though, considering the way reloads/size work, in terms of actual time, the larger missile-users will take longer to run through their magazines

EDIT: I dunno. Using salvo/missile pod style weapons also might mean I can't make use of the extra range of larger missiles, and larger salvos would result in a massive increase in effectiveness, I'd wager. Maybe they'd work as decent anti-anti-missile decoys, with armor and some ECM or something.

Speaking of which...at what point, against either AI or theoretical human opponents, does ECM become advantageous/useless or whatever?

[Girlinhat]

ECM is essentially ALWAYS useful.  If the enemy has 1mil fire con range, and you have ECM 1 - the enemy now has 900k range.  It flatly reduces their firecon range by 10%.  ECM 2 by 20%, and so on.  Against beam ships this is most brutal, as they're limited to 1.4b km maximum, so an ECM 1 immediately drops 140k off their range, and you can't over-engineer a beam firecon to get that range back.

Similarly, ECCM is a great insurance.  If the enemy has ECM then you're at the disadvantage, but ECCM counters ECM at 1:1.  Beam ships essentially should always have an ECCM per fire control.

Against missiles it's not as useful, as a 10b range is now 9b, and that's still A HUGE range, but for beams it's really painful.

[Shooer]

ECM effects beam FCs differently than missile FCs.  You got it right that with missiles it's a percentile loss of range but with beams it a loss in accuracy.  Still percentile incremental as with missile FCs.

I ALWAYS try and get ECCM 1 before really building ships, it's actually quite cheap to research.  I never stop investing in ECM/ECCM, it's development just slows down like everything else as costs go up.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

My first game of Aurora the Precursors had ECM 5.  This has since made me always go for any form of ECCM and ECM development early game.