NEBULOUS: Fleet Command - RTT Space Harpoon
- Thread starter Aineko
- Start date
It looks like you can't get the standard anti-ship missiles up to high enough speed to take advantage of the new penetrating explosive warhead?
But you can cheaply upgrade them to be resistant to chaff.
Has anybody made small-bore anti-ship missiles work? I want to be able to shoot holes in the enemy with countermissile-sized weapons but the numbers don't look great on a first draft.
But you can cheaply upgrade them to be resistant to chaff.
Has anybody made small-bore anti-ship missiles work? I want to be able to shoot holes in the enemy with countermissile-sized weapons but the numbers don't look great on a first draft.
I'm the player Mazer referred to as "exploring S2H AMMs" and they were explicitly for knocking down S3H ship-killers in the cruise stage. Once they start to sprint, I've found AMMs are basically wasted, especially if the sprinters are maneuvering, and you're basically relying on Auroras and/or Hail Mary Defenders hitting them when they straighten out.
On the plus side, Stonewalls will ez clap anything that doesn't sprint.
They don't work for that. You get at best 5km or so range, plus an anemic warhead. That's on purpose because the main dev doesn't want people using S1s to kill ships.
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If that's true they really should change the strings, since those specifically assert it can be effective against small ships.
I think it might be true. You can get them up to high enough speed to use the kinetic penetrator head that's normally reserved for sprint missiles, with enough penetration to defeat up to destroyer or even light cruiser armor and damage stats comparable to an entire turret-full of 450 HE shells. The range is bad, of course, but it's blazing fast by non-sprint standards.
I dunno if 'spikes corvettes at less than 6" gun range' is a worthwhile role for a missile, but I'm really tempted to play with it.
Oh, you can still do it but it takes about 20 S1 missiles to reliably kill a corvette and that comes to around 40-60 points. With that much, you could throw something like eight or ten S2s that will not just kill a corvette, but also kill frigs and reliably gut destroyers at two or three times the range, along with giving a good slap to anything bigger.
I tried to run an anti-scout frig with S1 missiles during the testing phase and it just didn't work out; even corvettes have trouble running down other corvettes fast enough to get in range and not get counter-ganked in the process. The one case where it worked out for me was the early game cap rushes, such as on Canyon or the A cap of Pillars. It was useful for blowing the corv off point or at least crippling it to such an extent that it had no cap pressure and couldn't contest my frig.
Jonen C
F.M.D.G.
- Location
- Lincopense, Ostrogothia, Suecia
One of the first missiles I designed was the M 101 Sandstorm.
Size one, HE, electro optical targeting. Intended use: Fire a swarm at the enemy to see what happens (they're a bit short ranged for this to be fully functional, currently they're knife fighting range missiles, block 2 is going to have to be designed for longer range).
If enemy PD doesn't waste missiles on them (ie - don't have missiles or are properly configured), they either run into stonewalls or inflict some light HE damage on the enemy, soften them up for killing missiles.
If the enemy PD isn't properly configured, they deplete munitions and allow me to mask actual shipkillers, like the M 201 Darude.
Size one, HE, electro optical targeting. Intended use: Fire a swarm at the enemy to see what happens (they're a bit short ranged for this to be fully functional, currently they're knife fighting range missiles, block 2 is going to have to be designed for longer range).
If enemy PD doesn't waste missiles on them (ie - don't have missiles or are properly configured), they either run into stonewalls or inflict some light HE damage on the enemy, soften them up for killing missiles.
If the enemy PD isn't properly configured, they deplete munitions and allow me to mask actual shipkillers, like the M 201 Darude.
poaw
The opposite of Doja Cat
Sarissas don't work as well in that role as AMMs. Their base 8 second RoF, relatively short-range, slow traverse speed, occasional misses, and inability to handle terminal maneuvers mean that any raid size greater than a very low single-digit number is going to have leakers. Alternatively you can take a VLS and some cheap S1 AMMs and have greater number of guaranteed hits during a swarm raid at the cost of longevity, but with the added benefit that AMMs are also one of the better answers to terminal-stage leakers.
Given the absolute terrors that S3Hs can be with their speed, damage potential, and support modules, the answer to them needs to happen before they stage 80% of the time. After that point they're going to overwhelm anything else if it is more than a very small number of them getting through.
Isn't EO targeting really expensive for such a throw-away munition?
Jonen C
F.M.D.G.
- Location
- Lincopense, Ostrogothia, Suecia
Aye, my own experience I've had is Auroras are decent, as long as you've got enough Auroras, and all other PD is insufficient.
Currently I'm not designing to be cost competitive, which means I tend to use very expensive designs.
The challenge then is to identify nonessentials and pare down the design.
- Location
- Seattle, Washington
I feel like bothering with anything more expensive than radar seekers on S1s is kind of a waste, since S1s simply do so little damage
poaw
The opposite of Doja Cat
Even Auroras will come up short if a lot is invested into the missiles. The jammer or decoys absolutely ruin the Aurora's ability to handle large numbers of missiles. The changes to battleshorting them also mean you can be swamped by pure numbers if the salvo is large enough (a 10 missile salvo CL can push 6 - 8 hits through 12 auroras with 20 missiles).
The design is meant for missile defenses to be layered. Stonewalls, Rebounds, and Defenders all provide a reasonable value in comparison to their point costs/power requirements. You can pair a rebound + defender on both pairs of ventral mounts on a CL for 15 points more and 860 less power than a single Aurora. If all you're dealing with are 1 or 2 leakers that get through your AMMs then they're completely adequate provided those leakers aren't 50+ point doom missiles (in which case you deserve to get hit).
I think it'd work better if players could set PD engagement logic for individual ships and weapons and if we were given more options for assigning behaviors. So that you wouldn't end up with situations where your Auroras end up using up all their cycle time on something which would have been easily intercepted by a Defender or using long-range S2 AMMs on targets just outside of your S1 AMMs range. Instead you could tell the Sarissas to engage things farthest away first and work their way in, while the defenders handle the closest things first and work their way out, with Rebounds/Stonewalls going after the slowest, and Auroras targeting anything moving fast. You can kind of do that with missiles already, but only by creating new variants of the missiles and assigning them different logic, and even then you don't have all the functions needed to create a coherent layered defensive.
- Location
- Seattle, Washington
The PD controller assigns PD in order of most to least expensive, assigning targets ordered first by highest speed and secondly by largest missile. The missile decoys count as S3 to PD controllers. S2H count as S2, and S3H count as S3. Also missiles heading for the ship are always higher priority than missiles that aren't heading straight for the ship
At least, I believe that is what mazer (the dev) said at one point.
I do agree that it would be nice to be able to set priorities for PD turrets.
poaw
The opposite of Doja Cat
I think the missile decoys are actually coded as S4 to ensure that they actually function in their role.
In case anyone ever has problems with beam DDs:
You can build a S1 missile with a HEKP warhead that has just enough penetration to hit a DD on the nose and grey out its' beam.
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Unrelated: I beat Apocal because he was too afraid of ESM and left his radar off, so I got 3x PD-heavy gun CLs to 4.5km and erased all of his missiles and torpedoes before their engines even turned on. He got one successful salvo off and didn't knock out anything critical on the one ship he hit.
In case anyone ever has problems with beam DDs:
You can build a S1 missile with a HEKP warhead that has just enough penetration to hit a DD on the nose and grey out its' beam.
-----
Unrelated: I beat Apocal because he was too afraid of ESM and left his radar off, so I got 3x PD-heavy gun CLs to 4.5km and erased all of his missiles and torpedoes before their engines even turned on. He got one successful salvo off and didn't knock out anything critical on the one ship he hit.
- Location
- Seattle, Washington
Yeah, earlier today I was fighting a missile/gun heavy cruiser in my pure gun CH, and I just kept shooting down his missiles as they launched. At close range, cold vs hot launch does matter when it comes to PD penetration
You left out the match that had you losing a CH to a pair of Gun CLs with a secondary battery of a grand total of twelve torps.
It took ten straight minutes of dumping AP 250mm to finish his CH.
- Location
- Louisville, GA
If your ships has gun mods (ammunition elevators, mostly) then 120mm RPF makes for very good P. As long as the 120mm guns aren't engaging a ship at the time, they'll autofire on incoming missiles. if enemy ships are close, you'll need to goto weapons tight so they aren't autofiring on ships. Also, they bursts of the shells tend to KO your own counter missiles, meaning that you mostly won't be able to use them while your 120mms are blazing away.
You can also manually target missiles with 250mm RPF with good results, if you get there in time.
You can also manually target missiles with 250mm RPF with good results, if you get there in time.
Jonen C
F.M.D.G.
- Location
- Lincopense, Ostrogothia, Suecia
- Location
- Seattle, Washington
As one of the permanent testers, I feel it is fair to say that the testing for the update is going well. I think people will appreciate the balance changes that are coming with the update as well.
NEBULOUS: Fleet Command - The Protectorate Update + Midweek Madness 25% Discount - Steam News
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