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[Witty]

Yeah, I found the conventional start to be a tad on the slow side, so I've restarted with a TN empire.

Things are going a bit better (ships are flying around, surveying things), so I've got a few more questions;

Missiles. Besides from geological survey buoys, is there any point to design a missile at my current tech level (ion drives, right out of game start with initial 120000 RP points). And second, can someone give me a brief rundown on the basics of missile design? All the tutorials I've looked at are pretty out of date. I was trying to design a basic PDC missile with an ion drive, and a 15 warhead, but it was putzing along at 7000 Km or around that, which I assume is pretty slow looking at other missile designs.

I'm assuming that gauss and meson-based weaponry (at 6HS and 100% accuracy?) are better for a starting PDC.

[Flying Dice]

You don't really want warheads that large. I usually stick to a standard strength-4 warhead for my main ASM from about where you are until around TL 6ish, because warhead strength doesn't matter if your missiles are too slow or unwieldy to actually hit anything. Also note that if you want to be optimal about it, you'll want to make your warheads always be square numbers (1, 4, 9, &c.) due to the way their damage is calculated.

Paul's (I think?) awesome old semi-automated spreadsheet doesn't really work much any more, so I'll lay out the basics.

1. Design your missile drives. Typically you'll want to allocate ~1/4th of the volume of a standard ASM to the drive, and at your TL a good velocity to aim for would probably be somewhere between 16,000 and 22,000 km/s.

2. Set up the rest of your design. Plug in the drive, then make your other allocations.

a) Warhead: Like I said, WH strength 4 is probably the ideal for lower levels. I only bump it up to 9 once my warhead tech is good enough that I'm still using <1.0 MSP for it.

b) Fuel: Not too much, not too little. For the typical ASM you'll want to stick to a range between 125m km - 250m km regardless of your tech level; you'll start out on the low end of that, because your drives burn more fuel and fuel slows you down a lot.

c) Agility: Start off at 1 MSP into agility. Tweak it slightly up and down until you reach the optimal chance to hit. Less is sometimes more.

d) Sensor: I typically just put in a tiny sensor, enough so that if I'm targeting an element of a fleet and destroy it, the rest of the volley can retarget.

Here's an example of a relatively high-tech ASM from my current campaign:

Code: [Select]

Missile Size: 4 MSP  (0.2 HS)     Warhead: 9    Armour: 0     Manoeuvre Rating: 42
Speed: 60000 km/s    Engine Endurance: 38 minutes   Range: 136.0m km
Thermal Sensor Strength: 0.16    Detect Sig Strength 1000:  160,000 km
ECM Level: 0.3
Cost Per Missile: 8.216
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 2520%   3k km/s 840%   5k km/s 504%   10k km/s 252%
Materials Required:    2.25x Tritanium   0.096x Boronide   0.31x Uridium   5.56x Gallicite   Fuel x2500

Development Cost for Project: 822RP

The basic idea is for this to be your standard, which can be used interchangeably on pretty much everything you make. I really like to standardize all of my missile sizes, so that in a pinch my fighters can fire ASMs, my snipers can fire fighter missiles, &c. It also serves as a basis for variation; a fighter missile would take your ASM, bump the WH up a step or two, reduce the fuel, and maybe add a second drive if it works out better that way. A long range missile (which would only come once your warhead tech is pretty good) would reduce the WH, increase the fuel, and maybe beef up the sensor. So on and so forth.

Basically, if you want to use ship-killers with oversized warheads, mount them on your fighters, because they can get close enough without being shot down for you to make the missiles pretty short ranged (25-35m km or so), which helps keep their velocity up and size down.

[Karlito]

1. Design your missile drives. Typically you'll want to allocate ~1/4th of the volume of a standard ASM to the drive, and at your TL a good velocity to aim for would probably be somewhere between 16,000 and 22,000 km/s.

To add to this, it's necessary to put research into the Maximum Engine Power modifier tech to make your missile drives fast enough. There's a point at which you actually start to lose speed because of the additional fuel mass needed, but I'll be damned if I want to try and figure that out now.

[Flying Dice]

1. Design your missile drives. Typically you'll want to allocate ~1/4th of the volume of a standard ASM to the drive, and at your TL a good velocity to aim for would probably be somewhere between 16,000 and 22,000 km/s.

To add to this, it's necessary to put research into the Maximum Engine Power modifier tech to make your missile drives fast enough. There's a point at which you actually start to lose speed because of the additional fuel mass needed, but I'll be damned if I want to try and figure that out now.

Oh, yeah. Always use the highest power modifier you have for missile drives, and make sure it keeps up with the rest of your tech. Things have been a lot more of a pain ever since the drive model overhaul, haha.

[MarcAFK]

I never follow the 'always use square numbers rule" for missiles, sure it's handy and efficient, but if i'm upgrading a preexisting missile after getting better warhead tech then simply getting more bang onto the same platform is very handy.

[Karlito]

Originally the myth on the aurora boards was something like "non-square missile warheads don't do any additional damage" which is pretty clearly false, though the preference for square numbers has stuck around. Considering you'll probably be blasting most of the armor belt away in most cases (everything but the smallest of ships), I'd say just getting the largest warhead you can reasonably fit on your missile is the best route.

[Shooer]

It's not that non-square numbers do less damage, it's that square numbers fit the perfect pyramid damage shape that missiles do.  A 4 damage missile goes 2 deep, while a 5 goes 2 deep as well but does 4 on the surface and kind of wastes that one point of damage.  This becomes a bigger difference when you do missiles with 16 damage and they ignore at least 3 layers of armor with each hit, always.

Similar reasons why lasers are so good, they go so deep.  It's not until around 8 damage (probably higher) or so that lasers start to do their "spear point" damage profile, particles start doing it sooner.

[MarcAFK]

I always follow the square rule when making capital missiles though, at least during midtech when warhead strengths are still rather low. It's very satisfying to crack a ship apart with a single hit. Generally I'll make the missile able to penetrate 2-3 layers more than the enemy actually has.

[Shooer]

Starting a new game, first system generated: Quadinary system, 4 with water, none that humans could inhabit right away.  Little work and we got a home world on the second planet of the third star, the race will be able to live on... 6-8 other worlds in the system.

A system like this kind of feels like cheating, not needing to go anywhere except for minerals.  But with the race I plan on playing... this will work perfectly.

[Girlinhat]

Aurora gets big fast, really.  You'll want to get your colonies to 0-cost quickly, and then let them grow.  This quickly yields RP value, as you get highly populated, far-flung colonies that you want to defend, and who can act as their own pocket governments.  After all, when it's 4+ jumps between colonies, then the navies for each become somewhat unique and crossing help is trickier.

Plus, you can ALWAYS use more minerals.  Harvest everything forever.

[Shooer]

Well the races base statistics are 98, 34, 43, 88, 21, 30, and 40 (Ctrl-F2).  We hate you, we want nothing to do with you, and we'll kind of try to under stand what you are screaming at us. 

Also this is going to be the main war ship:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Cerberus class Missile Cruiser    8,000 tons     140 Crew     1485.2 BP      TCS 32  TH 151.2  EM 0
2700 km/s     Armour 1-35     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 3     PPV 48
Maint Life 1.08 Years     MSP 348    AFR 170%    IFR 2.4%    1YR 298    5YR 4470    Max Repair 512 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months    Spare Berths 1   
Magazine 320   

216 EP Ion Drive Masked (2)    Power 216    Fuel Use 43.03%    Signature 75.6    Exp 9%
Fuel Capacity 750,000 Litres    Range 39.2 billion km   (168 days at full power)

Trident Tube (4)    Missile Size 80    Hangar Reload 600 minutes    MF Reload 100 hours
Trident FC Mk1 (1)     Range 876.6m km    Resolution 160
Trident 1000T (4)  Speed: 9,000 km/s   End: 1.1d    Range: 844.8m km   WH: 0    Size: 80    TH: 30/18/9

Cloaking Device: Class cross-section reduced to 20% of normal
Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

80% cloak, and 75% thermal masking.
In fleets of 6, each armed with 4 of these (mixed in thermal, em and active flavors)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Missile Size: 80 MSP  (4 HS)     Warhead: 0    Armour: 0     Manoeuvre Rating: 10
Speed: 9000 km/s    Engine Endurance: 25.5 hours   Range: 824.8m km
Cost Per Missile: 43.448
Second Stage: Tip 1T x20
Second Stage Separation Range: 150,000 km
Overall Endurance: 1 days   Overall Range: 858.1m km
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 90%   3k km/s 30%   5k km/s 18%   10k km/s 9%
Materials Required:    20x Tritanium   1.674x Boronide   2.8x Uridium   18.974x Gallicite   Fuel x60000

Missile Size: 2 MSP  (0.1 HS)     Warhead: 4    Armour: 0     Manoeuvre Rating: 15
Speed: 12000 km/s    Engine Endurance: 46 minutes   Range: 33.3m km
Thermal Sensor Strength: 0.14    Detect Sig Strength 1000:  140,000 km
Cost Per Missile: 1.7224
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 180%   3k km/s 60%   5k km/s 36%   10k km/s 18%
Materials Required:    1x Tritanium   0.0837x Boronide   0.14x Uridium   0.4987x Gallicite   Fuel x500

Objectives when making contact are as follows
a) Find their homeworld
b) Get strike fleet into system and in range of their homeworld
c) Repeat b until their world has no non-nuclear missile based emissions.
d) Drop large amount of auto mines where ever and pick up output every 30-40 years.

[Flying Dice]

Originally the myth on the aurora boards was something like "non-square missile warheads don't do any additional damage" which is pretty clearly false, though the preference for square numbers has stuck around. Considering you'll probably be blasting most of the armor belt away in most cases (everything but the smallest of ships), I'd say just getting the largest warhead you can reasonably fit on your missile is the best route.

That's where the square number warheads come in. They represent appreciable boosts in damage potential per missile, and I would basically always rather have a missile move a bit faster, have a slightly higher CTH, or be slightly longer ranged than for it to sand off an extra tile of surface armor. Penetration is the name of the game for everything except railguns, gauss cannon, and to an extent carronades.

[Neonivek]

Missiles seem to be the only weapon that can really fire outside its tier range so to speak. At least that is the impression I get.

[Bremen]

Someone on the Aurora forums did a statistical study of missile damage and armor penetration once. I wish I could find it now, but IIRC the conclusion was that even in cases of particularly heavy armor (say, 10 layers vs 9 damage missiles) the square root rule held true; there was a small but significant reduction in the average amount of damage required to get armor penetration.

[Girlinhat]

Missiles seem to be the only weapon that can really fire outside its tier range so to speak. At least that is the impression I get.

Missiles are a lot like ships though, and less like weapons.  You can be low tech and build a great heaping lump of iron and ion and be able to beat down things three times your tech level, simply because you have a massive old dreadnought.  Similarly, a missile can overcome a lot of its limits by being larger, and packing a bigger punch or a faster speed simply by increasing size.  An 'at tier' missile would probably be size 1 or 2, but most people build their missiles closer to 4 or 5, because why wouldn't you go bigger and go deadlier?