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Post by Rocket Witch on Mar 14, 2017 17:45:28 GMT
Form up!
A grid/cube/cylinder/sphere/spikey star shape (for the last one consider the principle of the star fort) of hundreds of warships can converge a lot of defensive fire on incoming waves. Less valuable assets can be placed at the outside or 'front' facing the enemy while progressively more prized ships are physically walled off toward the rear or centre. A close formation masses into one big blob on sensors too (resolution depending), making targetting of individual ships more difficult.
Some way out in the front of the fleet would be grids (or completely surrounding it would be roughly spherical layers) of laser drones, cycling in and out as they run out of fuel or take damage like a conveyor.
So what about the horrible vulnerability to a high yield nuke that does penetrate? Well no one paradigm will defend against everything, but forming the foremost 'layer' of a fleet (ie. further out than the laser drones) are waves of strikecraft passing and potentially engaging each other; it would always be an option to mobilise them purely defensively if you're under serious attack.
This is the modus operandi of space combat in my own paracosm, but you'll note I said "hundreds of warships" and it may not apply so well to the fleets in CDE.
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Post by Durandal on Mar 14, 2017 19:24:59 GMT
Rocket Witch, that would be a great idea for Children of Dead Earth II: Electric Coilgun Buggaloo
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Post by concretedonkey on Mar 14, 2017 21:37:42 GMT
I think I already said it a couple of times but I use I couple of drones for this. For a swarm of less than 40 missiles usually one drone is enough. Its an evolution of my old decoy drone with a small laser slapped on it. Thing is that engine gimballs are still very vulnerable especially on small missiles with all the weight savings so a single drone passing through the swarm can kill a lot of missiles, make some of them turn sideways flaunting its hot radiators and they are as sure as dead from the defensive lasers on the capital ship. The ones that do not turn and continue expose their engines to the drone's laser. Drones are then refueled and reused for the next wave.
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Post by Enderminion on Mar 14, 2017 21:56:30 GMT
I think I already said it a couple of times but I use I couple of drones for this. For a swarm of less than 40 missiles usually one drone is enough. Its an evolution of my old decoy drone with a small laser slapped on it. Thing is that engine gimballs are still very vulnerable especially on small missiles with all the weight savings so a single drone passing through the swarm can kill a lot of missiles, make some of them turn sideways flaunting its hot radiators and they are as sure as dead from the defensive lasers on the capital ship. The ones that do not turn and continue expose their engines to the drone's laser. Drones are then refueled and reused for the next wave. this idea is sound so heres a challenge, the missiles turn and do not present their engines to your lasers, find a way to counter that
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Post by ross128 on Mar 14, 2017 22:09:24 GMT
Well, turning would use up the missiles' delta-V because most missiles, even the ones with large dV reserves, tend to have short burn times and long turn around times (due to narrow gimbals, to maintain a slim profile). Their limited thrust vectoring also means they have a large forward component when turning, which will throw them off course if they're turning to evade.
So missiles don't turn efficiently, though if the algorithm was a little more clever it could do a quick pulse to start turning and then cut engines to drift-turn.
However, a more practical counter to drone interception may be to just make sure the cost and weight of your missile volley is slightly less than the drone that would intercept them. Then order them to kill the drone, knowing that you can make that trade all day. Of course, that's a question of whether you have a window where your missile swarm can be too small to intercept cost-effectively, but too big to stop with PD.
Another thing you can do is mix multiple missile types, allowing you to split the wave if threatened with interception. Have some inert decoys in the mix that you can split off and sacrifice, or throw in some anti-drone nukes that can counter-intercept the drone and disarm it with nuke flash. If most of your missiles have fairly similar sizes and performance characteristics, they can be mixed and split easily.
One thing that's interesting, since mirror resistance to thermal damage seems to currently be bugged, I wonder if it's possible to make a nuke that can disarm a laser ship by detonating at the edge of its engagement range. Nuclear flash-bang.
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Post by concretedonkey on Mar 14, 2017 22:20:55 GMT
I think I already said it a couple of times but I use I couple of drones for this. For a swarm of less than 40 missiles usually one drone is enough. Its an evolution of my old decoy drone with a small laser slapped on it. Thing is that engine gimballs are still very vulnerable especially on small missiles with all the weight savings so a single drone passing through the swarm can kill a lot of missiles, make some of them turn sideways flaunting its hot radiators and they are as sure as dead from the defensive lasers on the capital ship. The ones that do not turn and continue expose their engines to the drone's laser. Drones are then refueled and reused for the next wave. this idea is sound so heres a challenge, the missiles turn and do not present their engines to your lasers, find a way to counter that as I already said most do not turn,then the laser from the drone kills them. if they do it the lasers from the ship kills them. ross is right btw, the key is price efficiency. the drone must be cheap enough if lost and you must try to guide it and keep it alive untill it can refuel for the next wave.
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Post by Enderminion on Mar 14, 2017 22:23:06 GMT
this idea is sound so heres a challenge, the missiles turn and do not present their engines to your lasers, find a way to counter that as I already said most do not turn,then the laser from the drone kills them. if they do it the lasers from the ship kills them. ross is right btw, the key is price efficiency. the drone must be cheap enough if lost and you must try to guide it and keep it alive untill it can refuel for the next wave. But if they did turn how would you counter that?
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Post by caiaphas on Mar 14, 2017 23:32:46 GMT
as I already said most do not turn,then the laser from the drone kills them. if they do it the lasers from the ship kills them. ross is right btw, the key is price efficiency. the drone must be cheap enough if lost and you must try to guide it and keep it alive untill it can refuel for the next wave. But if they did turn how would you counter that? They address that. If they do turn they necessarily present their nozzles to the ship they're targeting, and THAT lases them. Anyways, I'm rather fond of a three-layered defense myself. Lasers at range, peashooters for terminal defense, drones (mostly sandblasters) as a forward screen.
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Post by Enderminion on Mar 14, 2017 23:35:03 GMT
Well I can't read...
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Post by concretedonkey on Mar 15, 2017 5:09:45 GMT
But if they did turn how would you counter that? They address that. If they do turn they necessarily present their nozzles to the ship they're targeting, and THAT lases them. Anyways, I'm rather fond of a three-layered defense myself. Lasers at range, peashooters for terminal defense, drones (mostly sandblasters) as a forward screen. as caiaphas said it . we have only 3 cases, one of which I've never seen happen 1 turn towards the side - roughly 90 degrees towards both dangers - you are much more vulnerable from the sides even if your engine is pointing somewhere in the darknes. And as Rocket Witch said in reality there will be multiple drones from multiple angles in a multilayered defense. I actually want this to happen and usually at the same time the drone is closing in on the swarm I give the scatter order to the ship. 2 continue pointing towards the capital ship. This is what I mostly see since the drone is much colder than the capital ship and since mine only pull around 3G (I may have to upgrade that) the distance is really not that large. This is then a race between how far the missiles could get because the drone has a much less capable laser than the ship. Multiple drones could counter that. Also I usually turn the drone towards the ship to and I'm starting to boost back to make the relative speed between them smaller and to give the drone more time on target. Case 3 never happens - point toward the drone - missies will die probably in less than a second from the ship's lasers. What the missiles could do to counter it is to scatter at the start - which risks to ruin their intercept, but also makes the swarm a less packed target . If we were in a real situation I would probably call for multiple angles of attack but we can't do that for the moment.
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Post by Easy on Mar 17, 2017 2:29:58 GMT
I negotiate an end to hostilities making the enemy's attack undesirable for both parties at which point trade flourishes and everyone gets rich.
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Post by caiaphas on Mar 17, 2017 4:49:10 GMT
I negotiate an end to hostilities making the enemy's attack undesirable for both parties at which point trade flourishes and everyone gets rich. I come to power, (foolishly) have you fired and publically disgraced and humiliated, at which point someone's Premier gets shot and everything devolves into a gigantic WWI-esque mess (in SPACE).
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Post by lawson on Mar 19, 2017 20:20:50 GMT
I think I already said it a couple of times but I use I couple of drones for this. For a swarm of less than 40 missiles usually one drone is enough. Its an evolution of my old decoy drone with a small laser slapped on it. Thing is that engine gimballs are still very vulnerable especially on small missiles with all the weight savings so a single drone passing through the swarm can kill a lot of missiles, make some of them turn sideways flaunting its hot radiators and they are as sure as dead from the defensive lasers on the capital ship. The ones that do not turn and continue expose their engines to the drone's laser. Drones are then refueled and reused for the next wave. Just made a high acceleration flare/laser drone. With a 65MW heat signature and a 1.4MW pumped laser, it obliterates missile swarms it passes or it gets nuked to hell and protects the mother ship anyway. Next I think I'll see how effective a cost/delta-v optimized version of this drone is if I keep the same laser.
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Post by concretedonkey on Mar 19, 2017 20:38:05 GMT
I think I already said it a couple of times but I use I couple of drones for this. For a swarm of less than 40 missiles usually one drone is enough. Its an evolution of my old decoy drone with a small laser slapped on it. Thing is that engine gimballs are still very vulnerable especially on small missiles with all the weight savings so a single drone passing through the swarm can kill a lot of missiles, make some of them turn sideways flaunting its hot radiators and they are as sure as dead from the defensive lasers on the capital ship. The ones that do not turn and continue expose their engines to the drone's laser. Drones are then refueled and reused for the next wave. Just made a high acceleration flare/laser drone. With a 65MW heat signature and a 1.4MW pumped laser, it obliterates missile swarms it passes or it gets nuked to hell and protects the mother ship anyway. Next I think I'll see how effective a cost/delta-v optimized version of this drone is if I keep the same laser. Nice . I'll post mine at some point , thing is that one of them revolves around using a wide beam anti-laser and I'm still on shaky ground with that. On one hand I really like what it did to the gameplay . On the other hand I'm not sure how its going to look like after the next patch. The other however has a reasonably large 40cm apperature, however its hideously armored (decorative graphogel) and explodes instantly when deployed in tactical combat. So... I'm not sure they are ready.
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Post by lawson on Mar 23, 2017 14:01:26 GMT
Just thought I'd share some pictures of what I've been playing with recently. First up, my flare/laser missile. The dual reaction mass breaks "homing" orders, but just telling it to burn towards the target is enough. Best to disable the laser when passing the missiles but it's usually not required. Launch it with "split fleet" disabled for automatic return for refuel but the Neon/MPD backup drive has plenty of delta-V to get back manually. Next up is a new type of flare missile. In this case I'm using engine heat to distract the oncoming missiles. As far as I can tell engine heat is only effected by engine temperature, expansion ratio, and throat diameter. Changing the length of the engine bell has no effect. Increasing the outlet temperature of the reaction mass has no effect. Reducing the thrust of the engine has not effect. So... you CAN make engines with more heat signature that thrust power. (I think this is bugged) Oh, and the launcher for this flare doesn't reserve any volume for the engine bells btw, missiles home in on the brightest source of IR light. Distance matters. For example my 159MW flare will distract missiles from my 35GW mass production laser-star as long as the flare is 1/16th as far from the missiles.
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