How the hell do you get such accurate missiles? My missiles had a 100% chance vs 1000km/s vessels, and dropped off rapidly from there... Against 3000 km/s it had dropped to around 50%, and 5000 km/s was 20%!
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Tech research plus using that formula given above.
Post a screen-shot (or read me the figures) of your Missile engine power per MSP, agility per MSP, warhead power per MSP, etc. These four figures:
... and tell me what size missile you are interested in. Post your own figures (like my post above) and I'll reply with a high to-Hit design.
Warhead Strength per MSP = 5
Missile Engine Power per MSP = 2
Missile Agility per MSP = 32
Fuel Efficiency = 0.8
I was trying to design a Size 2 Anti-Ship missile, a Size 2 Fighter Missile, and a size 5, 12 and 20 missile.
My Interceptor Missiles had a 12% chance to hit an object moving at 10,000 km/s... ;(
Missile Engine Power per MSP = 2
Missile Agility per MSP = 32
Fuel Efficiency = 0.8
I was trying to design a Size 2 Anti-Ship missile, a Size 2 Fighter Missile, and a size 5, 12 and 20 missile.
My Interceptor Missiles had a 12% chance to hit an object moving at 10,000 km/s... ;(
What size warhead on the size-2 Fighter missile? What range? With such early-game (low-tech) values for engine and agility, you won't get a very good to-hit, but we can optimize it as much as possible.
If you mean a size-2 Point Defense (anti-missile) missile at that tech level...
Warhead Strength per MSP = 5
Missile Engine Power per MSP = 2
Missile Agility per MSP = 32
Fuel Efficiency = 0.8
... then 0.2/1.05115/0.03/0.71875 will give you a size-1 warhead (which kills any non-armored missile), a range of 3.4 m-km (which probably greatly exceeds your PD FC range anyway) and a to-Hit vs 10,000 kps targets of 46.2%. We can probably improve on that by halving the range and increasing the thrust.
EDIT: it can be improved a tiny bit... 0.2/1.0662/0.015/0.7188 gives 1.7 m-km range and 46.9% vs 10,000 kps targets.
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For an interceptor missile, without fiddling too much, I've got this with your tech:
Basically you've got extremely rudimentary tech, and your stuff will improve exponentially over the next few years of game time.
Basically you've got extremely rudimentary tech, and your stuff will improve exponentially over the next few years of game time.
And with tweaking to get rid of a few hundredths of points of excess agility, I get this:
For a size-5 anti-ship missile (at that tech level), 0.8/1.7625/1/1.4375 gives you a strength-4 warhead, a 45 m-km range, and to-Hit numbers of 267.9% vs 1,000 kps, 76% vs 3,000 kps, 53.6% vs 5,000 kps and 26.8% vs 10,000 kps. You probably won't get much better than that until you tech up a little.
@ Tai
As you might have worked out from Blue Emu's post, there are four areas relevant to missile performance (not launcher, sensor, et cetera). Engine tech obviously, under the Power and Propulsion tree. Then there's warhead damage and agility per missile size point under Missiles/Kinetic Weapons tree. Lastly, fuel efficiency under Power and Propulsion.
The first area obviously makes missiles faster for a given MSP allocated to engines, which makes them harder to swat and improves to-hit. Agility also helps to-hit and the more agility you can squeeze out of MSP obviously the more you have to spare for speed. Ditto for warhead size, and fuel efficiency. Look into boosting those areas; my next engine tech will cost 24,000 for the reactor base before the subsequent engine techs are available. By comparison 4000 points will get me more agility per MSP, 4000 will get me more damage, and 8000 will get me more fuel. So for 2/3 of the price of the base tech for new engines I can drastically improve my missiles in the other three areas.
@ Blue Emu
Hmm, I did think a 23M km sensor would see a bit further. OTOH with some experimentation I can't see myself out-ranging that 2.5M km limit: double again from 0.01 (originally 0.005) to 0.02 makes to-hit fall to 57.1% @ 10,000km/s under Kiwi's formula. Going for 0.0115 gives 2.9M km range and to-hit @ 10,000km/s of 58%. That's 14.5% to-hit against 40,000km/s missiles compared to 15.52% for the 2.6M km missile... seems I struck the break-even point (as I'd judge it, based on to-hit versus chances to-hit) with the first variant, although the exact size of my MFCs will probably affect that.
As you might have worked out from Blue Emu's post, there are four areas relevant to missile performance (not launcher, sensor, et cetera). Engine tech obviously, under the Power and Propulsion tree. Then there's warhead damage and agility per missile size point under Missiles/Kinetic Weapons tree. Lastly, fuel efficiency under Power and Propulsion.
The first area obviously makes missiles faster for a given MSP allocated to engines, which makes them harder to swat and improves to-hit. Agility also helps to-hit and the more agility you can squeeze out of MSP obviously the more you have to spare for speed. Ditto for warhead size, and fuel efficiency. Look into boosting those areas; my next engine tech will cost 24,000 for the reactor base before the subsequent engine techs are available. By comparison 4000 points will get me more agility per MSP, 4000 will get me more damage, and 8000 will get me more fuel. So for 2/3 of the price of the base tech for new engines I can drastically improve my missiles in the other three areas.
@ Blue Emu
Hmm, I did think a 23M km sensor would see a bit further. OTOH with some experimentation I can't see myself out-ranging that 2.5M km limit: double again from 0.01 (originally 0.005) to 0.02 makes to-hit fall to 57.1% @ 10,000km/s under Kiwi's formula. Going for 0.0115 gives 2.9M km range and to-hit @ 10,000km/s of 58%. That's 14.5% to-hit against 40,000km/s missiles compared to 15.52% for the 2.6M km missile... seems I struck the break-even point (as I'd judge it, based on to-hit versus chances to-hit) with the first variant, although the exact size of my MFCs will probably affect that.
The relevant formula is detection_distance = 1 / size_difference_squared.
So if your sensor is configured for res-1 (that's 1 HS) and has a range of 23 m-km, and you are trying to pick up a size-1 to size-6 missile (all of which are treated as 6/20th of a HS), then your actual detection distance will be:
D = 23 m-km x (6/20ths)squared
... or roughly 1/9th of 23 m-km, which is about 2.5 m-km. Knowing how the formulae work does help a lot when making design choices.
Naturally, a longer-range PD missile won't help unless it actually gives you an extra salvo against any incoming enemy missiles... if not, then that extra MSP would be better put into agility or speed.
I'm familiar enough with the mechanics of sensor detection, although I don't know them off the top of my head the way you do. It is handy to know; the game helpfully tells you when it can detect size-6 missiles (or smaller) if you set to 1 hull-square resolution when designing sensors, but not on tech reports. Obviously you've got to be able to lock onto something to shoot at it, and you've got to be able to see it to lock onto it, so yes, the effective range without upgrading the SWACS will be 2,515,590KM. Which means using a 2.6M km ranged AMM will be be somewhat of a waste (although perfectly sized for a 3.5HS MFC at my tech level) unless I upgrade my SWACS suite from a 500t model to a 550t model to squeeze a bit more range.
On another matter, I'm trying to find the underlying formula for missile speed. Do you happen to know it?
Unfortunately, no... nor the speed vs to-hit conversion formula either.
That is unfortunate, although I think I've worked it out. 4 engine power per MSP tech, with the percent of total missile size allocated to engines, yields:
25% = 20,000km/s
50% = 40,000km/s
75% = 60,000km/s
100% = 80,000km/s
5 engine power per MSP:
25% = 25,000km/s
50% = 50,000km/s
75% = 75,000km/s
100% = 100,000km/s
Whether the missile is size 1 or size 100, if 50% of its size is engines then it'll do 40,000km/s for 4 power per MSP. For 5 power per MSP it's 50,000 for 50%, 25,000 for 25%, 75,000 for 75%.
Which makes it pretty easy really to finish that bit of my calculator.
EDIT
Speed = (engine power per MSP * 10000) * (engine size / missile size) ?
EDIT 2
Lesson for the day: never drive a calculator while drunk.
EDIT 3
Speed = (engine power per MSP * 10000) * (engine size / missile size) * 2
Except Aurora rounds speed UP to the nearest 100.
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Not the one given in the missile design screen, top right, by any chance?
The $64 question regarding that formula is whether it uses rounded or exact numbers for the Maneuver Rating part, which is part of why I want to recreate Steve's interface for myself, to see what all the working parts are.
Yes, but that doesn't indicate where the rounding takes place. There's also the question of whether the agility rounding is in the combat engine or (as I suspect) only in the user interface... which makes the interface somewhat misleading.
EDIT: to be perfectly clear, I suspect that the combat engine uses floating-point values for agility, but the user interface only displays the integer part.
To-hit = (missile speed [ROUNDED UP TO THE NEAREST HUNDRED] / target speed) * maneuver rating [ROUNDED UP TO THE NEAREST INTEGER]
Putting the same numbers into my calculator with this formula gives precisely the same result as the interface, so this is where rounding occurs.
Yeah, and that can make a pretty significant difference for to-hit values, so I need to know this to know whether my calculator should round or not. If the game engine doesn't round then Kiwi's formula actually would be perfect, wouldn't it?
Putting the same numbers into my calculator with this formula gives precisely the same result as the interface, so this is where rounding occurs.
Yeah, and that can make a pretty significant difference for to-hit values, so I need to know this to know whether my calculator should round or not. If the game engine doesn't round then Kiwi's formula actually would be perfect, wouldn't it?
Given that the displayed missile hit chance steps if you change Agility from 7.49 to 7.50, in addition to the maneouvrability stepping, I'd be prepared to assume the combat engine uses rounded values. I'm pretty sure when I looked through the database once, numbers were only stored to 3 or 4 sf.
Edit:
Naturally
Edit:
Naturally
... you looked through the database? I thought it was password protected?
EDIT
This seems relevant: http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,3569.0.html
EDIT 2
And this... although skimming through some of what he says doesn't seem to square with what I'm seeing http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,2972.0.html
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*whistles innocently*
raistlin31
Although you really, really want to be careful. Any game where you've even opened the database doesn't really count for bug reporting, because it's so easy to accidently break it. It doesn't even ask you if you want to save changes.
Note that you can change the database to have missiles with speeds at greater accuracy than 3 sf, but I think it stores missiles you create as 3 sf.