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[USEC_OFFICER]

Would somebody mind checking the ranges on my missile designs? I feel that my math is off somehow, both for the maximum range and the ideal separation range for the second stage. I haven't used missiles too much in my games, so I'm a bit hesitant.

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Missile Size: 2 MSP  (0.1 HS)     Warhead: 4    Armour: 0     Manoeuvre Rating: 14
Speed: 12000 km/s    Engine Endurance: 164 minutes   Range: 117.8m km
Cost Per Missile: 1.46
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 168%   3k km/s 56%   5k km/s 33.6%   10k km/s 16.8%
Materials Required:    1x Tritanium   0.46x Gallicite   Fuel x250

Development Cost for Project: 146RP

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Missile Size: 8 MSP  (0.4 HS)     Warhead: 0    Armour: 0     Manoeuvre Rating: 10
Speed: 3000 km/s    Engine Endurance: 5,032.0 hours   Range: 54,345.8m km
Cost Per Missile: 1.76
Second Stage: Stinger Missile MKI x1
Second Stage Separation Range: 150,000 km
Overall Endurance: 210 days   Overall Range: 54463.6m km
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 30%   3k km/s 10%   5k km/s 6%   10k km/s 3%
Materials Required:    1x Tritanium   0.76x Gallicite   Fuel x2750

Development Cost for Project: 176RP

EDIT: Stupid spoiler tags...

I'm looking at 54,345,800,000km for the second stage, right? 54,463,600,000km in total?

[Flying Dice]

That's obscenely, unnecessarily long-ranged. Most star systems are only ~4-5 billion kilometers in diameter at most (barring certain sorts of multi-star systems); you've got a range of 54 billion kilometers (and change) on the first stage. I'm honestly curious what sort of tech and efficiency rating you needed for the drive to reach that far.

That aside, all of that just to deliver a single slow, inaccurate, STR-4 ASM is a bit much. But I don't see why any of it wouldn't be wrong mathematically.

[Bremen]

Your missiles don't seem to have their own sensors. Do you have a 54 billion km missile fire control?

[USEC_OFFICER]

That's obscenely, unnecessarily long-ranged. Most star systems are only ~4-5 billion kilometers in diameter at most (barring certain sorts of multi-star systems); you've got a range of 54 billion kilometers (and change) on the first stage. I'm honestly curious what sort of tech and efficiency rating you needed for the drive to reach that far.

I'm at... ion drive technology, x0.4 engine power, 0.9 fuel efficiency and 5 MSP, and the base stage has an entire MSP dedicated to fuel. Mind you it takes 7 months to travel that far, but obviously it won't have as far to go if star systems are under 5 billion kilometres. To be honest I knew I had a problem when the math indicated that it had a longer range than... 7 times the orbit of Pluto, but I was expecting a five-stage monstrosity missile to get to those types of ranges, so I thought that I had added a couple extra zeros or something.

Though to be fair to my missiles, my active-sensors are even more obscenely and unnecessarily long-ranged, especially when they can detect a size-1 missile from at least several million kilometres away. Admittedly the sensors have to be 2,500 tons and give off energy like crazy to get that good detection, but at those ranges my sensor ships have more than enough time to turn off their active sensors and flee, especially if I scatter several around the system, so it's more of a one-time investment. I knew that dumping all of my starting RP into active sensor strength was a great idea.

That aside, all of that just to deliver a single slow, inaccurate, STR-4 ASM is a bit much. But I don't see why any of it wouldn't be wrong mathematically.

Given how obscene the range is on the first stage, I'm definitively going to be increasing the overall power of that missile, though given that this current game is centred around goofing with extremely long-ranged missiles than actual feasibility, I'm not too concerned either way. I'm not a very serious Aurora player, if you can't tell.

Your missiles don't seem to have their own sensors. Do you have a 54 billion km missile fire control?

Does a 9 billion one count? Alright, alright, I'll scale it down a bit, but right now it looks like my missile ships are going to be mostly gun, magazine and firing control, with a little bit tacked onto the side for the crew/engineers. Though given the extreme ranges at which I'm using them, colliers ought to replace the magazines a bit. How quickly do ships reload from colliers? If it's a day or something like that I'd need to add more magazines onto my missile ships for when they pop in close enough to the enemy to be detected by the enemy sensors, probably due to a nearby colony or something like that.


EDIT: I'm going to climb up the missile tech tree a bit before redesigning the missiles. If I going to have stupidly large missiles, they might as well be stupidly powerful too.

EDIT2:

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Missile Size: 20 MSP  (1 HS)     Warhead: 40    Armour: 0     Manoeuvre Rating: 30
Speed: 24000 km/s    Engine Endurance: 4 minutes   Range: 5.5m km
Cost Per Missile: 23.84
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 720%   3k km/s 240%   5k km/s 144%   10k km/s 72%
Materials Required:    10x Tritanium   13.84x Gallicite   Fuel x250

Development Cost for Project: 2384RP

Better design for a destructive missile?

[FritzPL]

Dunnae know buggerall, but it most certainly has a higher chance to hit.

[AutomataKittay]

It'll work as a siege missile or PDC crackers. They won't be able to catch moving ships for crap, at least not beyond fairly low tech aliens. Though 20 MSP is pretty noticible compared to size 6.

[Azated]

Are civilian shipping lines bugged in the latest version or do they just not want to build ships for me?

[Mini]

There haven't been any bug reports for that since 6.2 has been released, so it's probably some requirement you're not meeting. Just to make sure, do you have things for the civilians to do? If you started with a conventional start they might want cargo handling researched before they build things, and if the only demand is for colonists then make sure you've also researched the colonist transport component I can't remember the name of.

[Azated]

After a thorough search of this forum, the aurora forums and even google, I still don't understand something.

How does the speed of a ship affect its tracking speed for missiles? If a ship is very fast, does it need a fire control?

I remember reading somewhere that if a ship is fast enough, it'll use the speed instead of an active sensor, but I can't remember anything more about the subject.

[MarcAFK]

To be honest it's always better to have stupid quantities of smaller missiles than a few larger ones so you can get through amms.
But if you can launch 100 of those size 20's in a salvo you're looking at some awesome planetary defences.

[Metalax]

After a thorough search of this forum, the aurora forums and even google, I still don't understand something.

How does the speed of a ship affect its tracking speed for missiles? If a ship is very fast, does it need a fire control?

I remember reading somewhere that if a ship is fast enough, it'll use the speed instead of an active sensor, but I can't remember anything more about the subject.

Speed of the launching ship has absolutely no effect on missiles. You always need a firecontrol to launch missiles at targets. In order to target a ship it always needs to be illuminated by an active sensor, although that sensor does not have to be on the firing ship. It is possible to target waypoints using missiles that carry their own sensors without needing an active sensor covering it however.

The only time a ships speed is used when firing weaponry, is for determining a non-turreted beam weapons tracking speed. The weapons tracking speed is the greater of the ships speed or the racial tracking speed tech. For actual firing, the tracking speed used is the lower of the weapons tracking speed or the beam firecontrol tracking speed.

[AutomataKittay]

After a thorough search of this forum, the aurora forums and even google, I still don't understand something.

How does the speed of a ship affect its tracking speed for missiles? If a ship is very fast, does it need a fire control?

I remember reading somewhere that if a ship is fast enough, it'll use the speed instead of an active sensor, but I can't remember anything more about the subject.

Speed of ship only affects beam weapon tracking, it's either higher of the ship's speed or gearing technology ( I forget the name, exactly ) if it's not turreted. Then it's compared to lower of either it or fire control tracker for beam weapons.

Active sensor have nothing to do with it, outside of how far it can track things with fire controls of either kinds, and it don't have to be on the ship itself.

You might've read about ships running away from missile to buy more time to shoot them down or for them to run out fuel/sensor/FC range.

[USEC_OFFICER]

It'll work as a siege missile or PDC crackers. They won't be able to catch moving ships for crap, at least not beyond fairly low tech aliens. Though 20 MSP is pretty noticible compared to size 6.

Then I guess that I can drop the warhead power, again. Man, designing anti-ship missiles are hard at the lower tech levels. What should I be aiming for, stats-wise? More speed? More maneuverability?

To be honest it's always better to have stupid quantities of smaller missiles than a few larger ones so you can get through amms.
But if you can launch 100 of those size 20's in a salvo you're looking at some awesome planetary defences.

I'm planning on having another missile that's packed with a bunch of tinier missiles, similar to a shotgun or shrapnel shot. A couple of those ought to get past enemy AMMs (provided that they don't shoot down the incoming missiles before they separate).

[Metalax]

Then I guess that I can drop the warhead power, again. Man, designing anti-ship missiles are hard at the lower tech levels. What should I be aiming for, stats-wise? More speed? More maneuverability?

Typically when designing a missile I'd start with 20% warhead, 10% fuel, then use the following to figure out engine/agility proportions.

If S = the missile size,
and M = your current missile agility per MSP (depends on tech),
and T = the total MSP available for Engines plus Agility,

Then E = (T/2)+(5xS/M) is the amount of MSP that should be used for Engines

Round engines up to the nearest first decimal, put the rest into agility. I usually design a size 0.1 missile engine with each new engine tech level to use in designing a missile then replace them with a single engine of the required size.

Due to the way agility rounds you can usually transfer some of it's size over into additional fuel without droping the actual agility score as both fuel and agility can be specified to 4 decimals places.

Once you are happy with the design make a note of the space for each segement and design a single missile engine of the specified size. You will need to reopen the missile design screen after the missile engine is researched/instanted for it to show up in the list.

Of course the proportions can be altered if you need a missile with specific characteristics, but this produces a good workhorse design.

[AutomataKittay]

It'll work as a siege missile or PDC crackers. They won't be able to catch moving ships for crap, at least not beyond fairly low tech aliens. Though 20 MSP is pretty noticible compared to size 6.

Then I guess that I can drop the warhead power, again. Man, designing anti-ship missiles are hard at the lower tech levels. What should I be aiming for, stats-wise? More speed? More maneuverability?

I was a bit off about not being able to catch the ship, I just checked my current ( 5.60 ) game, and your ship-killers should be able to catch ships with ion tech just fine, if it get through the PD screen. If the engine output scaling didn't changed too much to later version, it's around as fast as a ion fighter with nothing but smallest fuel and crew part without engine mods.

Also, I just noticed the warhead power, 40 can crack through 6 layers of armor and a bit more damage to higher layers. It's pretty much perfect for PDC killer role!

Or just killing something stupidly tough.

I generally aims for missiles fast and manuaverable to get 100% hit ( or close as I can ) against my fastest ship of line ( two engines every 1000 tonnes ) and enough firepower to crack around 4 or 5 layers of armor ( around 16 or 25 warhead at minimum ). Fighters and gunboats get the AMM to their face