So, I know there's a tutorial for beam ships, lasers and things, but there's nothing for missiles.
How does one effectively design/use missiles? Also, sensors? Turns out the beam weapon page has stuff on sensors. Go figure.
There will be a tab for missiles in the Economics window, right next to turrets. The first thing to do is design the missiles you want, so you know what range your sensors and targetting controls need to be above.
For antimissiles, you need a size of one, and a warhead strength of one, which early on will usually mean 0.2 points to Warhead. You should only need 0.1 or 0.2 points to fuel for AMM(fuel helps dictate the maximum range and endurance of your missile), put the rest into the combination of speed and agility that gets the highest interception percentage for targets going 10,000kps or faster. You can see the stats for your missile at the bottom.
For ASMs (anti-ship missiles), you will usually want between size-4 and size-10, at least early on. The warhead strength is up to you, but keep in mind you'll be shooting at armored targets. You should probably shoot for a range of at least 100M km with lower-mid tech levels, and after that, try to maximize the to-hit chance. Also, once you get to higher techs, you should be adding ECCM to your ships, which is linked to your fire-control to help reduce the effects of enemy ECM. You can also build sensors, armor and ECM into your missiles, but for lower tech levels, those are too expensive and bulky. The same goes for multi-stage warheads and drones, which you should start paying attention to after you get used to the basics.
The basic theory of ASM design is saturation of enemy defences; essentially, putting out so many missiles that enemy PD is overwhelmed. This can be accomplished in a variety of ways. One of the simplest is the use of reduced-size launchers. You can research the appopriate tech in the Missiles/Kinetics section. These are launchers that sacrifice reload time for smaller size, which allows ships to launch larger individual volleys, but farther apart, which is more likely to overwhelm enemy PD. One way to take this tactic to semi-insane levels is to practice it with size-1 missiles. This typically works better at higher tech levels, where 0.1 to Warhead could result in a strength-12 warhead, but even early on a massive swarm of fast strength-1 warheads can overwhelm enemies (this is what the *SPOILERS*Precursor*SPOILERS* ships often do to you). One advantage of this design is that your ASM and AMM can be the same missile, greatly simplifying supply issues.
Later on in the game, you can achieve serious levels of saturation with typical ASMs or with multistage missiles that launch multiple submunitions.
After designing your missiles, design your sensors and fire control. You will need seperate fire control and active sensors for antiship work and missile defence; the latter should be Resolution 1, the former can be whatever ship size you think will be the smallest you'll see a lot (for me, that is 800T for reasons that are obvious to some of us
). Your active sensors should in general be at least 133% of your fire control range (by my design standards), if possible more.
When designing launchers:
1. Make sure they are the proper size to launch your missiles. Keep in mind that launchers can launch all missiles at or below their size.
2. Make sure they are proper for their role. Size-1 launchers for antimissile work generally don't need to be reduced in size, as they are only 1HS and rate of fire is generally more important against missiles. For antiship missiles, size reduction should be appropriate to the role. For a long-range support sniper role, larger volleys (as well as enough engines to outrun enemy ships) are the most important, as they won't be closing the range and can afford long reload times. For extreme close-range missile combatants (pretty much anything below 75M km, expressly designed for that), RoF is probably more important. For mid-range, I usually go with a medium, usually 50% reduction, to achieve a balance between RoF and volley size.
Keep in mind that missile ships should try to fulfill several criteria:
1. Be able to bring to bear sufficient fire to eliminate beam-armed enemies before they close.
2. Be able to outrun enemies that outclass them in range or firepower, as well as being able to close quickly with enemies with greater range but inferior power.
3. Be able to fire for extended periods of time (BUILD MAGAZINES IN YOUR SHIPS). IOW, make sure your ships carry enough ammunition to fill whatever role you have for them. AMM ships should have enough to fire at dozens of enemy missile volleys. ASM ships should be able to put enough tritanium into space to take down any reasonable number or strength of enemies.
4. Plan for the future. If you know what sort of spoilers lurk out there, prepare for them. (Also known as don't rely only on missile ships because you need fifty metric fucktons of missiles to break some shields if you know what I mean).
/long, incoherent stream of poor advice
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Topic: Aurora - The Dwarf Fortress of 4X Games (Read 2854032 times)