You flatter me. :V
But yeah, it depends on what you're wanting from the missile, and frankly I haven't played recently or much since just after the big drive overhaul, so my missile design thought process might be a bit outdated. With that out of the way...
If you're going for a bog-standard WH-4 ASM (which, fittingly enough, is what I tend to use until I have good enough tech to fit in WH-9 without going up more than one HS), you'll want to balance your drive and fuel allotments to reach a specific sweet zone. The general rule of thumb is that less fuel is better, especially early on when all of your other components are going to be volume-hungry. Basically, it's the first of the "essential" parts to sacrifice (as opposed to secondary things like tiny sensors for secondary lock-on after target destruction), because fuel has the lowest effect per HS on performance.
I'll pull up the campaign I'm running right now as an example of relatively low-tech missile design; it's not too long after a fairly typical T/N start, and these are the techs I'm working with:
Warhead: 4/MSP
Agility: 48/MSP
Fuel Eff.: 0.7
I designed two missile drives while working on my current generation of ASMs; here's the one I used:
Engine Power: 3
Total Size: 2 MSP
Incidentally, although it's something of a flavor thing, I'd suggest inventing fluff industrial firms associated with certain types of module, and creating series designations to help keep track of things. That's a simple one; I meaning that it's the first in the series of drives, 3 being the total engine power. So if I make another one of the same generation with 2 power, it'd be the I-2, while a 12 power third-generation drive from that line would be the III-12. Anyhow, let's leave the diversion.
That's generally a safe ratio to go with on your drive; the missile I'm using is a Size-4, so the single drive represents 50% of the tonnage. Your speed is always going to be the most important aspect of missile design; it doesn't matter how big the warhead is or how long the range is if it can't catch enemies or make it through PD.
Here's the total design. This was actually the first proper ASM I produced in this game, and is fairly representative of a "normal" ASM for a TL2-4ish empire. The name is in the format [Series Name] [Role (AS = Anti-Ship, as opposed to FM {Fighter Missile, which would typically be short-ranged, high-WH}, AM {Anti-Missile}, PB {Planetary Bombardment, if I ever feel the need to saturation-bomb someone's homeworld}, etc.][Missile Size in MSP] [Model/Series Number]
Missile Size: 4 MSP (0.2 HS) Warhead: 4 Armour: 0 Manoeuvre Rating: 20
Speed: 15000 km/s Engine Endurance: 155 minutes Range: 139.2m km
Cost Per Missile: 2.518
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 300% 3k km/s 100% 5k km/s 60% 10k km/s 30%
Materials Required: 1x Tritanium 1.518x Gallicite Fuel x500
Development Cost for Project: 252RP
And here are the MSP allotments:
WH: 1 MSP
Engine: 2 MSP
Fuel Capacity: 0.2 MSP
Agility: 0.8 MSP
All else: Nothing.
So we've got a size-4 ASM with WH-4 (if you're a stickler for the efficient square-only warhead size, this is a must; 1-4-9-16-25 is your usual sequence). The speed isn't stupendous for an ASM, but it's acceptable given the tech. The range is plenty good for the tech level, especially considering that an active sensor with a range much more than that would be prohibitively large for a normal missile ship at this TL.
The Agility tends to be the finicky part of missile design, and it's harder to fiddle with now that missiles are predesigned rather than another variable, but basically what you want to do is to design your drive (with your best available engine power modifier, obviously; and again, 50% of the total size tends to be a good rule of thumb), plop it and your WH allocation on, and then fiddle with the Agility variable until you get the optimal Chance to Hit. For this tech a 300/100/60/30% spread is pretty good, and you aren't going to get anywhere near perfect on-paper accuracy until much higher tech (and even then you aren't assured of a 100% hit rate).
After that, figure out whatever you have between your current MSP value and the next highest round number, and drop that into fuel. Typically this should be pretty small, unless you're explicitly designing a LRM, or a MIRV that'll launch micromissiles at a set range, or an unarmed sensor drone. Once you reach a certain point your tech will be efficient enough for you to put a fractional bit of MSP into a sensor to let your missiles lock-on to new targets near their current location if they lose lock, which helps increase your fire efficiency against groups of enemies.
Hope that helped!
EDIT: If you're looking for JP defense, that's one of the places where I'd honestly advocate a fleet comp very heavy on the E/KW; it's pretty much the only place where they'll be guaranteed a favorable fight. You can leaven them with mid-ranged missile support ships, too, or just go for close-ranged Fuck You missiles with almost no range and large warheads, in which case you would probably want to go for more disposable platforms; think FACs equipped with a block of size-12 box launchers or something similar.
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Topic: Aurora - The Dwarf Fortress of 4X Games (Read 2840902 times)