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[Sheb]

They reduce loading time for freighters and colony ships.

[Madman198237]

Does anyone know why I can suddenly see size 1 missiles far outside my usual detection range? I'm detecting missiles at distances of 7+ million km. My missile sensor can detect a 50-ton object at closer to 2 million km. Is it because I have missiles moving back up the line of missile fire, even though the missiles (As I recall, anyway) have no sensors?

This battle just got horrible.

The other warship I saw earlier, using larger missiles, has come back. And it's now throwing x27 salvos of size-1, 41kkm/s missiles my way. Every 10 seconds.

It's on salvo 300+.

And it also managed to shoot down all my ASMs.

[Shooer]

Does anyone know why I can suddenly see size 1 missiles far outside my usual detection range? I'm detecting missiles at distances of 7+ million km. My missile sensor can detect a 50-ton object at closer to 2 million km. Is it because I have missiles moving back up the line of missile fire, even though the missiles (As I recall, anyway) have no sensors?

Are you picking up the missiles cross-section, or it's thermal strength.  I'm gunna guess thermal strength and you are picking up their engines with your thermal sensors.

And if you weren't aware you can't target and engage with out a active sensor lock on a target.  Just detecting things with EM or Thermal passive sensors isn't enough, unless you use smart missiles.

[Madman198237]

I know.

I haven't been.

Blasted aliens specialized in clouds of size-1 missiles and 50% ECM. And the second warship caught me with my space-pants down, as one group had just run out of missiles entirely and was moving to reload and the second (Equal) group then got stuck engaging what turned out to be a vastly superior warship.
So far, I haven't lost any warships to enemy fire, but I did abandon one to save the crew, and now I'm probably going to abandon a second of the same class for the same reason. Right now it's just pointlessly soaking missile fire, and the armor's all but gone (8 layers did a lot against those silly size-1, strength-1's, but it's still just not enough for 27 missile salvos hitting every 10 seconds).

[AlStar]

Combat is tedious. I really need some way to advance time faster, because this is just boring, honestly. Watch my missiles creep towards them at a real fast 11kkm/s, watch their size-one pinpricks streak in at 41kkm/s, and wonder why that ship hasn't run out of missiles. Volley ID just hit 140, at 5 missiles apiece, and it's smaller and slightly faster than my ships as well (8.1k tonnage estimate, 400km/s faster than me).

You got a little unlucky in the design of AI ship that you ran into. Most designs are more about throwing large volleys of big missiles at you every couple of minutes, rather than a steady stream of tiny missiles - the ones you are fighting (as you've noticed) are annoying because they'll keep triggering interrupts as your sensors pick up additional missiles.

Usually combat can move at a more decent pace - minutes/tick, rather than seconds.

[Detros]

What are space ports for? You know, the things that can be built with regular industry but don't seem to be designed anywhere.

They reduce loading time for freighters and colony ships.

And troop transports. They work like local Cargo handling systems.
Note Spaceports can't be moved.

[Madman198237]

The big problem for me was the sheer number of missiles. Point defense became useless. Also, those 12000 tonner patrol vessels (I lost three. Two combat with size 2 ASMs and one jump tender with AMMs. All but a couple of the AMMs missed because the enemy missiles were too fast.) were not optimized for antimissile work. The enemy missiles, travelling at 41kkm/s, could bypass the entire range of the 10cm laser turrets I was using as point defense in 5 seconds. When they were glitched and shooting past the first group of three patrol vessels I scored kills on every group missiles, but it wouldn't have been enough against the ridiculous salvos I was facing. I was prepared for the tactics I had faced just a few years earlier during my initial exploration push. My jump scout had been ideal for that, as the CIWS it carried was capable of shooting down 95% of the missiles fired at it, in 5 missile volleys. It's no longer capable of doing so. 27 is too many.


So, how do you counter those things? My present thought was to just overload a ship with CIWS (My CIWS is highly effective, even against these missiles) and some extra-long-range laser PD, make it go substantially faster than the enemy vessels, and send it out there with long-range MIRVs. I think the enemy can only engage at about 12 million km (That's the range they hang out at when fighting me, anyways), so I'm going to invest in several points of ECCM and fight from about 40 million km. At least, that's where my new MIRV works from. Although I'm going to work up a size 10 armored missile capable of taking the hits from those blasted AMMs. Every time I get a missile close the enemy hits it with AMMs every cycle, launched in groups from 2 to 7. So far, they've had a near-100% kill rate against my missiles, which are half the speed or less of their AMMs.

[Lord Shonus]

The AI spamming AMMs at ships is a bit of a problem all around. It prevents AIs doing this from being any real threat (I've fought and conquered AIs that had exactly one ship armed with proper shipkillers out of a dozens-strong fleet) because any significant armor belt completely trivializes the threat, and ensures that they are very annoying to have to deal with due to interrupt spam and rapid depletion of your own defensive missiles.

[Madman198237]

They're actually plenty lethal when you can't kill them.

What ship do you use to take them out? 27 missile volleys, one damage per missile, capable of shooting down low-grade 22000 km/s size 2 unarmored missiles with ease, before immediately resuming full volleys against the firing vessel. The things take several volleys to do it, but they punched through the standardized 8 layers of armor all my ships use.

No armor belt can trivialize that. Not unless you get to truly absurd numbers. Basically, that thing is capable of, by itself, chewing through the armor of any ship that can't generate 27 shields in 10 seconds. Every shot kills the armor. It's vaguely like getting hit with railguns or even gauss cannon, except, you know, the things are long ranged enough that your own beam weapons can't reply.

[Detros]

So, just entered combat for the first time. Well, two-sided combat. Last time I was just running from hostile aliens I had encountered. Turns out, my jump scout's CIWS systems are so good, they can shoot down even 99% of size 1 missiles travelling at 41000 km/s. Of course, it has 4 of them, but still. The first time I deployed it, they were using, I believe, a size 3 or 5 missile travelling much slower. Now, however, one of the two ships I originally detected is firing a literal stream of size-one 41000 km/s missiles, of strength 1, and the game has had my forces identify them as "Doberman Anti-missile Missiles".
Yeah, they're not terrible effect, but my poor AMMs, travelling at just 24000 km/s don't have a chance. Luckily, my ships are shielded, recharging faster than I can take damage, and I have good point-defense lasers.

Yeah, NPRs just love their deep magazines. Streams of AMMs can actually be more dangerous then just few big birds once a minute.

OK. Interesting. Does the AI usually make poor targeting decisions? The AI on the ship I'm fighting appears to have extreme numbers of these size-1 missiles, and is using them liberally. However, he keeps switching targets, a couple of times the target switch, for some reason, actually saved me some armor damage. One of my ships actually hit <1 shields because I had run out of AMMs, but the next salvo sailed on by, hit an entirely different vessel several million kilometers behind me (Compared to the enemy). Also happened to be the vessel with CIWS.

Yes, I noted too they like to spread the fire. I have recently pondered if this may be caused by what they see on sensors or if this is just their tactics.

Combat is tedious. I really need some way to advance time faster, because this is just boring, honestly. Watch my missiles creep towards them at a real fast 11kkm/s, watch their size-one pinpricks streak in at 41kkm/s, and wonder why that ship hasn't run out of missiles. Volley ID just hit 140, at 5 missiles apiece, and it's smaller and slightly faster than my ships as well (8.1k tonnage estimate, 400km/s faster than me).

You can temporarily turn your sensors down. Or via SM set it so there will be no detection in the given system.
That may help you to get over the initial I-see-the-first-of-them-and-now-I-wait-till-they-get-closer period.

[Madman198237]

The tedium actually comes from the once-every-ten-seconds missile spam, which makes it impossible to advance time at a decent rate during the "I shoot you, you shoot me" phase of combat.

Also, will NPRs that don't have jump tech, or don't use it, every come after you? This nation is registering, on what is apparently its only colony, just a strength 10 thermal signal, IIRC. I didn't have an EM sensor there at the time (The EM sensor-carrying vessels had probably all died at that point.

[Lord Shonus]

They're actually plenty lethal when you can't kill them.

What ship do you use to take them out? 27 missile volleys, one damage per missile, capable of shooting down low-grade 22000 km/s size 2 unarmored missiles with ease, before immediately resuming full volleys against the firing vessel. The things take several volleys to do it, but they punched through the standardized 8 layers of armor all my ships use.

No armor belt can trivialize that. Not unless you get to truly absurd numbers. Basically, that thing is capable of, by itself, chewing through the armor of any ship that can't generate 27 shields in 10 seconds. Every shot kills the armor. It's vaguely like getting hit with railguns or even gauss cannon, except, you know, the things are long ranged enough that your own beam weapons can't reply.

An 8000 ton ship with four belts of armor will pretty much laugh at this sort of thing, as you will need to take dozens of hits before taking even a single point ofinternal damage unless you're really, really unlucky. In that time, you should have been able to take them out with your own missiles (size 2, by the way, is too small to make an effective shipkiller - at that point you'd be better off just spamming AMMs yourself. It should be trivial to mount at least a dozen size-5 offensive tubes, more if you reduce-size them.) or even closed into energy range and tore them apart.

From the sound of things, you're either trying to cram too much into your ships, or your ships are too small. Either try to cram enough offensive tubes to get through their defenses, or mount enough AMMs to sweep their AMM spam out of space while you close to beam range. Early game lasers are crap at missile defense, just delete them.

[Madman198237]

My armed patrol vessels are 12000 tons, work with multiple size-2 missile tubes and a pair of dual 10cm lasers for antimissile/close range. The problem was a combination of underestimating the missiles needed to kill the enemy vessel (Had to fire off 120 size two, strength 5 missiles to kill the things) and being a shade slower than the enemy was. Also, because of how they used size-one missile swarms, I couldn't get close enough for long enough with my FACs to do damage.

Also, the attempt to communicate with them was a complete failure, so I've got no information on them. At all. Other than "They use really, REALLY fast missiles and move just slightly faster than my patrol vessels".

[Detros]

The enemy missiles, travelling at 41kkm/s, could bypass the entire range of the 10cm laser turrets I was using as point defense in 5 seconds.

For antimissile work, don't use small lasers in "area defence" setting, for that use 15cms and up. Packs of 10cm railguns, 10cm lasers and gauss cannons are good for that too, but only in "final defensive fire" setting. For GS and small lasers use turrets to raise their tracking speed.

One decent CIWS on every combat ship can do miracles, too.

[Flying Dice]

My armed patrol vessels are 12000 tons, work with multiple size-2 missile tubes and a pair of dual 10cm lasers for antimissile/close range. The problem was a combination of underestimating the missiles needed to kill the enemy vessel (Had to fire off 120 size two, strength 5 missiles to kill the things) and being a shade slower than the enemy was. Also, because of how they used size-one missile swarms, I couldn't get close enough for long enough with my FACs to do damage.

Also, the attempt to communicate with them was a complete failure, so I've got no information on them. At all. Other than "They use really, REALLY fast missiles and move just slightly faster than my patrol vessels".

They're Precursors, guaranteed. That's one of the most common types of Precursor force you'll run into, a handful of anti-missile ships.

If you can't catch and kill them now, try to back off and come back when you can. Good odds that there's a Precursor listening outpost somewhere in the system with a missile stockpile, so they're just going to run away and rearm if you manage to drain their magazines. Build something with a very large active sensor for system scanning and an E/KW warship fast enough to overtake. Probably something with a lot of 10cm laser turrets, since those are good for both anti-missile work and close-in attacks against fast targets. As Detros said, use them in FDF PD mode.