Ad Astra! ... an Aurora Forum Game, run by blue emu

[blue emu]

Our fleet has arrived within bombardment range of the planet... roughly 95 m-km out. No reaction at all. Not even any turn interrupts. Time to turn on our long-range sensor and take a look.

[Ciryandor]

Crazy but possibly viable suggestion:

Can there be an attempt to bait the PDCs to firing off salvos of missiles at the Rocks before/during the full-fleet salvos, since there is a need to get in close anyway?

[blue emu]

Yup... they're there all right. All three of them. Commencing bombardment with homing decoys.

Crazy but possibly viable suggestion:

Can there be an attempt to bait the PDCs to firing off salvos of missiles at the Rocks before/during the full-fleet salvos, since there is a need to get in close anyway?

Yes, but first I'm going to try and destroy them from a safe distance. Assuming that those size-24 missiles carry strength-36 warheads, they are perfectly capable of destroying both Rocks with a single salvo each.

[Cromelex]

That long range sensor is awesome..

[TheLoneGunman]

Can't wait to see what happens!

Hopefully they're running low on PD missiles.

[blue emu]

That long range sensor is awesome..

It's even more awesome that the picture shows... it reaches far beyond the sun on the opposite side to the planet.



The first "train" of twenty size-1 Decoy missiles is on-the-way. This should soak up about sixty of their PD missiles.

[blue emu]

When our missiles had closed to about 5 m-km from the planet, we started getting turn-interrupts. Presumably, that's the edge of their detection-range for size-1 missiles.

[blue emu]

First PD intercepts at 3.3 m-km out. Each decoy is getting hit by three PD missiles. Excellent. That was our hope.

[Capt. Kiwi]

When our missiles had closed to about 5 m-km from the planet, we started getting turn-interrupts. Presumably, that's the edge of their detection-range for size-1 missiles.

All of the MIRV missiles don't split until 4 m-kms, if I remember correctly, and the detection range will be longer... That's unfortunate, they're going to be much less effective than hoped.

Edit: So impact is at 3.3 m-km. What speed were those decoys travelling at? And what speed were the PD missiles going? It might work after all, as long as the PD doesn't intercept the slower MIRVs too much earlier. It might even be perfect, if the MIRVs are detected before splitting but hit afterwards.

[blue emu]

All of the MIRV missiles don't split until 4 m-kms, if I remember correctly, and the detection range will be longer... That's unfortunate, they're going to be much less effective than hoped.

Edit: So impact is at 3.3 m-km. What speed were those decoys travelling at? And what speed were the PD missiles going? It might work after all, as long as the PD doesn't intercept the slower MIRVs too much earlier. It might even be perfect, if the MIRVs are detected before splitting but hit afterwards.

Our size-1 decoys move at 18,000 kps. There is no combat feed-back for how fast the Prix PD missiles move, since I have no res-1 sensor coverage that far away... all I get is "size-1 Nuclear Explosion detected x3"... but the PD missiles that our fleet encountered in the first battle of Wolf 294 travelled at over 68,000 kps... 23% of light-speed.

Our first train of twenty decoys has been destroyed. All intercepts took place between 3.3 and 3.5 m-km out, typically 3.4 m-km. The Prix used 60 PD missiles so far. I will fire a second train of twenty decoys.

[Capt. Kiwi]

First detection at 5 m-km
First intercept at 3.3 m-km
1.7 m-km / 18000 kps = 94 s elapsed
5 m-km / 94s = 53000 kps relative velocity

PD missile speed of about 35000 kps, unless there was a delay between the first time increment interuption and firing (possibly due to range limitations). 35000 kps would be great news, they'd struggle to hit our MIRVs unless they catch them before separating. I suspect there is a delay somewhere though, hopefully because their range is too short.

[Count Lake]

Chew through those missile stocks blue emu! I want those Prix wailing for their mothers as the overwhelming barrage of REAL missiles breaks through with no PD to take them on.

[blue emu]

Our second train of decoys has been destroyed. Sixty more Prix PD rounds wasted. Perhaps I'll have each ship fire one decoy in salvo, to check and see how many PD launchers they will use simultaneously.

[blue emu]

We've passed through a five-day build-cycle cut-off, and the planet has moved on in its orbit. I'm adjusting our fleet position to keep it in bombardment range. Scientist Bo Mosberg has perfected a Military version of the Magneto-Plasma Drive. It will increase our fleet speed by over +50% (to about 6500 kps), if no major changes are made to the designs.

[TheLoneGunman]

We've passed through a five-day build-cycle cut-off, and the planet has moved on in its orbit. I'm adjusting our fleet position to keep it in bombardment range. Scientist Bo Mosberg has perfected a Military version of the Magneto-Plasma Drive. It will increase our fleet speed by over +50% (to about 6500 kps), if no major changes are made to the designs.

Sounds good.

If we can get a viable fighter version up and running our Gnats would be even faster!

[blue emu]

OK, I tried a massed fleet salvo of single decoys... a sort of "dry run" for a real fleet salvo... and he took them out ten salvos at a time, with three PD missiles on each. It looks like he has ten PD fire controls, controlling 30 PD launcher tubes. Not sure how those FCs would be divided between his three ships... three, three and four? I'm starting to wonder what our Fighters could do if they could get within launching range without being wiped out... that would be 120 one-missile salvos for him to deal with. He would need to cycle each launcher twelve times before our missiles arrived. Sixty seconds.

Still... no hurry to risk the Fighters. We've still got hundreds of decoys left. I'll try another full fleet salvo of singles, but this time I'll use all the ships, each firing one size-1 decoy.

[Capt. Kiwi]

If we're still using 4c missiles, 120 1 missile salvos would only get through 1.5 m-km of PD before being stopped, about half way. We're either going to have to empty their stocks of PD missiles or aim for synchronised attacks to get massive saturation.

[blue emu]

Jeeze... this is taking a long time to set up. Bear with me for a few minutes, I'm going out for a smoke.

I think the way to saturate them with fire is to take advantage of our differences in missile speed. A missile launcher can fire sub-calibre munitions (ie: you can fire a size-1 missile from a size-4 launcher), so we would fire off a big salvo of our slowest missiles first, then wait a certain number of seconds and fire off a salvo of somewhat faster missiles, wait another while and fire off a salvo of our fastest missiles... all timed to arrive in the target area at the same moment.

Unfortunately, the combat-orders delay is likely to mess this elegant plan up, since the delay is semi-random and staggers the salvos by an unpredictable amount.

[Capt. Kiwi]

Fortunately we don't have to be precise to the second with an attempt at time on target, although it would be nice if we could. As long as the last missiles are entering the kill zone while the first missiles are still being fired at (as opposed to hit) they'll get a bit further before being fired at, although not as far as if they arrived at the same time. If the delay between firing fast and slow missiles is more than twice our reload time, we can even fire multiple volleys of slow missiles before the fast ones and aim to have them arrive slow-fast-slow to try and apply more stress on their defences.

[Count Lake]

A really complicated situation it seems but I hope it all works out.