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[Sirus]

Not in my games. Earth usually lasts for at least five years before I run out of anything, depending on the mineral. Sorium always runs out fastest, while duranium or mercassium tend to last longest.

[Paul]

Haha, I just realized something.

You can make missiles that release missiles that release missiles. So you can do like one size 2 missile carries them close to the target, then releases a missile. Each of those could release one, which release one each, which release one each, and so on - only needing to add a tiny bit to the missile size at each iteration just to give it enough speed and range to last a few million km to keep approaching after the first bigger one splits. As long as the first splits before it's shot down, each split after that only takes 5 seconds so the missiles will keep replicating until you get down to the last one. You could fit a tons and tons of them in each one, so you could launch one chaff missile and have it release a hundred assorted duds to waste the enemy's AMMs.

Bonus points if you add enough engine to have decent speeds in all of them, and have the last one the same speed but with maneuverability and stick an actual warhead in it. That way they would be indistinguishable on approach and would come in as one big lump of missile volleys, only the last one would be maneuverable enough to actually hit the target and would have a warhead. Could probably fit a warhead of a size 6 or maybe bigger missile in a size 10 casing with enough fuel to get close to the target and room for several iterations between the first release and the actual warhead - so by the time it's hitting the target there have already been 3 or 4 or more extra targets to be shooting at on the way in.

I'm not sure how final defensive fire works. If it shoots at the earliest detected missiles first then it might shoot down all the duds and let the actual warheads slip right through.

[Akigagak]

I sent all my automines to the moon, then shot the earth with the minerals there (.9 deposits of Duranium and MorboCorbomite. They'll likely move to Mars when Luna runs out, while I send even more towards the inner system.

Long term, the moons of Jupiter are a goddamn treasure trove. Hundreds of thousands of tons of minerals, all above .6 accessibility.

[Sirus]

That hypothetical first missile would have to be a hell of a lot larger than size 2 

While I haven't played around with missiles much, my impression is that splitting a missile like that would destroy the first one. All that stuff you're talking about would only end in a single tiny missile.

Now, if you fired off one huge missile, which split into two smaller, and so on and so forth, that would probably work. The reload time would be nasty, but it would probably work.

[forsaken1111]

Haha, I just realized something.

You can make missiles that release missiles that release missiles. So you can do like one size 2 missile carries them close to the target, then releases a missile. Each of those could release one, which release one each, which release one each, and so on - only needing to add a tiny bit to the missile size at each iteration just to give it enough speed and range to last a few million km to keep approaching after the first bigger one splits. As long as the first splits before it's shot down, each split after that only takes 5 seconds so the missiles will keep replicating until you get down to the last one. You could fit a tons and tons of them in each one, so you could launch one chaff missile and have it release a hundred assorted duds to waste the enemy's AMMs.

Bonus points if you add enough engine to have decent speeds in all of them, and have the last one the same speed but with maneuverability and stick an actual warhead in it. That way they would be indistinguishable on approach and would come in as one big lump of missile volleys, only the last one would be maneuverable enough to actually hit the target and would have a warhead. Could probably fit a warhead of a size 6 or maybe bigger missile in a size 10 casing with enough fuel to get close to the target and room for several iterations between the first release and the actual warhead - so by the time it's hitting the target there have already been 3 or 4 or more extra targets to be shooting at on the way in.

I'm not sure how final defensive fire works. If it shoots at the earliest detected missiles first then it might shoot down all the duds and let the actual warheads slip right through.

Sort of... the subsequent stages add to the original missile's size, so that size 2 missile would only release a single size 1 missile and would have no room for other stuff really. You can have a size 1 missile release 8 other size 1 missiles because then it would be size 9. You COULD shoot a size 50 missile which is just a big ball of 49 size 1 missiles.

[Bouchart]

Not in my games. Earth usually lasts for at least five years before I run out of anything, depending on the mineral. Sorium always runs out fastest, while duranium or mercassium tend to last longest.

Sorium runs out fast but a gas giant usually has some.  I typically stop fuel production after I have about 15M liters.

[Paul]

Ah, but you don't have to have them the exact missile sizes.

You can have a size 1.02 missile launch a size 1 missile.

And the 1.02 would have been launched by a 1.04, which had been launched by a 1.06, and so on and so forth.

The size 2 would have nothing but engines, fuel, and one of the size 1.2 or so missiles. The 1.2 would release a 1.18, releasing a 1.16, releasing a 1.14, releasing a 1.12, releasing a 1.1, releasing a 1.08, releasing a 1.06, releasing a 1.04, releasing a 1.02, finally releasing the original size 1.

That would just be for a ball of chaff to take up anti-missile fire though, to actually get them all the same speed as the end product warhead would require more size into each missile. Still doable, though. For instance, I just made a size 10 missile which releases a size 8.6538 missile which releases a size 7.8054 missile which releases a size 7.03 missile with a size 36 warhead. All go at 12,500 km/s, have .1 active sensors, and the last one has enough maneuverability to have a 75% hit rate against a target moving 10,000 km/s. I'm sure it could be optimized quite a bit (removing the sensors from all but the final one would help cut size down, and still confuse AI AMMs).

I tested them by making two races and having one shoot the other. They showed up on sensors first as size 10 missiles, as they got closer the sensor detected the size 9s, then size 8s, then size 7s. It didn't work though, because auto PD for some reason destroyed all the size 10s then all the size 7s then the 9s then the 8s, which meant it killed the warhead missiles before most of the duds.

The swarm of duds would still be a viable tactic though. With just a handful of missile launches you could have a few hundred missiles heading at a planet, making them fire hundreds of AMMs to destroy them. Once they've used up their anti-missiles you could switch and fire the real ones.

[Trorbes]

I think I will try some of those decoy missiles, actually.  Out of curiosity, if they launch AMMs at the first stage and it deploys the second stage before they AMMs hit, would it count as a lost contact or would it just adjust to the new volley?  Assuming the missiles are always in their sensor range and the AMMs have no sensors of their own, of course.

I am aware that they're not that stupid about AMM volleys, but I suspect that with the size of their volleys they only have a few large launchers, so unless they could fire partially-loaded launchers it would still have a significant effect on them with just a few missiles I believe.

Just because a missile has a 2nd stage doesn't mean it disappears when the 2nd stage triggers. It will still keep flying on target after it releases the submunitions, so they'll still shoot AMMs at it.

Large launchers don't work that way. Even a size 50 launcher will only fire a single size 1 missile. If they're firing a whole bunch of anti-missiles, they have a whole bunch of size 1 launchers - and they only fire as many of the launchers as they want.

Another option might be sending in one bazig super heavily armored ship with a large active sensor and a whole bunch of point defense turrets (gauss works well). It wouldn't need to be fast, enemy ships would come to it due to the active sensor and fire away at it. While this one is taking fire, smaller ships (assuming they're smaller than the resolution of the enemy sensors) could approach undetected with actives off. Even if it gets destroyed before your ships get within range, they can then activate their sensors and fight a target with less ammunition.

Wait, you can't fit multiple missiles into one launcher?  I thought that was one of the points of making larger launchers, that they'd be able to fire several per launcher. Geez, that invalidates the whole design I guess, I'm glad I disn't start production then. I don't know what I was thinking, honestly. Bluh, this thing is going to be even harder to confront then.

[Paul]

Wait, you can't fit multiple missiles into one launcher?  I thought that was one of the points of making larger launchers, that they'd be able to fire several per launcher. Geez, that invalidates the whole design I guess, I'm glad I disn't start production then. I don't know what I was thinking, honestly. Bluh, this thing is going to be even harder to confront then.

Nope, the point of larger launchers is to fire larger missiles

Big missiles can fit larger warheads, which will penetrate larger armor thickness. Can also be used for other handy things, like releasing a bunch of smaller missiles on approach or whatever.


Just tested the dud idea by making a progressively slightly larger missile up to size 1.2 (launched 1.18, 1.16, 1.14, 1.12, 1.10, 1.08, 1.06, 1.04, 1.02, and 1.0 with armor). I then made a size 10 missile that released 5 of them and flew a ways to deliver them at high speeds, dropping them at 3 million km out. The PD was set to act at 3m km, so by the time my other ships shot them down they had released the 6 1.2s, and by the time they were gone they had released theirs, and so on and so forth. Each size 10 missile provided 56 different targets. Launching 20 of them made my ships auto point defense waste all 1100 PD missiles, with 20 of the chaff missiles still drifting slowly toward the ship.

Fun fun. A player would be smart enough to temporarily disable their AMM defenses until the useless slow moving dud missiles had impacted, but it would still be an incredibly annoying tactic if the game was multiplayer haha. Especially if you followed them in with real missiles, so they'd have to target your missiles manually to prevent their automated system from shooting all the useless chaff.


If you did it long enough with a tiny increase each time you could probably have the missile just about reach the target (since it would release the next phase every 5 seconds, and even if it was immediately destroyed as soon as the ship could target them it would keep releasing the next step before that happened) before suddenly releasing a fast moving missile with an explosive. That would be funny, they'd shoot and shoot and shoot and the missiles just wouldn't go away.

[MarcAFK]

I then made a size 10 missile that released 5 of them and flew a ways to deliver them at high speeds, dropping them at 3 million km out. The PD was set to act at 3m km, so by the time my other ships shot them down they had released the 6 1.2s, and by the time they were gone they had released theirs, and so on and so forth. Each size 10 missile provided 56 different targets. Launching 20 of them made my ships auto point defense waste all 1100 PD missiles, with 20 of the chaff missiles still drifting slowly toward the ship.

.... 1100 / 36 equals 3 PD missiles per chaff? Anyway i just made first contact in proxima centauri, Time to test what i've learned about Antimissiles..
The first contacts i recieved was a squadren of 7 size 10k ships, which launched 7 missiles (one each?) with a warhead of 12.
I've managed to create a size 2 missile that drops a size 1.5  Missile that drops a size 1 missile.... But i haven't seen any antimissiles used by these guys yet so i'm going to con centrate on something to knock out his ASMs first.

[forsaken1111]

I was assuming that you wanted the missiles to actually hurt the enemy when they hit as well as waste his PD fire.

[Paul]

.... 1100 / 36 equals 3 PD missiles per chaff? Anyway i just made first contact in proxima centauri, Time to test what i've learned about Antimissiles..
The first contacts i recieved was a squadren of 7 size 10k ships, which launched 7 missiles (one each?) with a warhead of 12.
I've managed to create a size 2 missile that drops a size 1.5  Missile that drops a size 1 missile.... But i haven't seen any antimissiles used by these guys yet so i'm going to con centrate on something to knock out his ASMs first.

No, just one. 55 separations plus the original = 56 per, times 20 fired = 1120. Plus the last 50 were armored, so assuming approx 2 hits per missile for those it'd be more like 1170 possible wasted anti-missiles firing one per target with repeats on the armored ones not destroyed

I was assuming that you wanted the missiles to actually hurt the enemy when they hit as well as waste his PD fire.

You could do that easily enough on the last ones, but making each iteration both fast enough to hit a target and have a warhead would make them far too big. I tested doing it with one big warhead on the last set with a few duds before it to distract PD, but the automated PD doesn't fire at them in the order they were detected - it picks them at random. In my case it shot down the actual warheads before destroying most of the useless ones.

It could still be useful to get past heavy final fire point defenses, with one split right before impact. That way the casing that got it all the way there would act as separate volleys and if it really is targeting at random would have a 50% chance of being shot down first by the final defensive fire, leaving the dangerous warheads to impact as normal. All you would need on the main warhead is engine and fuel, with the other set with maneuverability for greater hit chance and very little fuel since it wouldn't have to go far. You'd be losing on the final warhead strength, but if facing an opponent with very strong point defense it might be worthwhile.

Although, in that case, you might be better off getting around the PD just by abusing the way fire controls only target one volley at a time - just fire 10 single missile volleys and unless they have 10 separate fire controls they won't shoot down all of them. It would require more fire control systems though, and a bit more effort targeting them since you have to assign the target for each fire control separately.

You could make a crazy design like I did once where you make a ship with hangar bays and put 10 ships with nothing but a size .3 fire control, a size 10 box launcher, and a command module in each. That way you can fit 10 size 10 box launchers each with their own fire control in each size 21 hangar deck. To launch them you just hit the button to launch para in the TG window, then in the combat assignment window you target one of them and hit copy target to TG. Then you wait 5 seconds and hit recover para to put them back onboard and begin reloading (takes 75 minutes for size 10 box launchers). The downside is you have to build them separately, and they don't count as fighters due to not having a fighter engine - so you have to dedicate a shipyard to building tiny 100 ton box launchers to add to your other ships lol. They build really fast though. You also have to stop for 5 seconds to fire them, since they can't move with your fleet unless docked. But the advantages more than make up for it - you effectively get ten size 10 missile launchers complete with separate fire controls for only 1050 tons, with a reload of 75 minutes. The equivalent reduced size launchers would be 1250 tons even without fire controls, and you would need launcher rate 7 to get a better reload time (83.33 minutes for reload rate 6, 71.5 minutes for reload rate 7).

-edit- The mini self contained launchers in hangar bays is also handy for pulling tricks against enemies with longer missile range than you, like launching them and running away. They're so tiny that their sensors won't pick them up until really close, and as long as they're chasing you you can just run directly away and have them go right to your launchers' range. You have to have active sensors longer than your missile range for it to be useful though.

[Bouchart]

What does a flag bridge do?

[Flying Dice]

I would assume it fills the same role as in real life: providing a bridge for an admiral on their flagship from which to command the fleet, while the normal bridge is used for the captain of the ship to command from. Because you generally don't want a fleet commander trying to run their fleet and a ship at the same time. Of course, this is all flavor currently because the player is acting as the supreme commander for the fleet.

[Paul]

A flag bridge is for a task force commander and his staff officers.

If you want the bonuses provided by the task force management, they must be in the same system. You can either have them on a planet, or aboard a ship with a flag bridge. Bringing the fight to an enemy would obviously require a flagship with flag bridge if you wanted the bonuses. I'm not entirely sure what all you get from them. I know the operations guy and the commanders training bonus and operations bonus help with your task force training, and I think fighter ops makes them reload box launchers faster on fighters. The survey bonus helps your survey ships survey faster, and I think logistics helps your ships load cargo or colonists faster. I'm not sure if they help the actual combat or not, you could probably find more info on the official forums.


Did you guys know a ship with a hangar will not only overhaul docked ships for free (not even minerals used), but it will repair them using maintenance supplies? I'm using a PDC hangar on my lost scenario game and was surprised when it fully repaired the armor on my 40,000 ton carrier using a few maintenance supplies.

It does throw errors if it's a PDC doing the repair though. I assume probably because the PDCs don't even have a record of maintenance supplies, even if you add maintenance storage they don't show any. I reported it, so hopefully that aspect gets fixed.

Another caution with docking big ships in PDCs is to make sure you undock any ships in them first. The game doesn't store ships within ships within ships, so if you docked a carrier full of fighters in a PDC for overhaul the fighters will go poof. You have to either leave them out and just let the carrier overhaul them when it gets back out, or make a larger hangar capacity to store them beside it.