Guide to defeat Laser at the lowest cost.

Advanced Battle Tutorial:

Here is a "quick" tutorial on how to defeat long range laser using multipurpose "sub capital ship" drone and tactics previously described. But this time with more details and some picture. For this battle*, I used 5 Valkyrie III displayed on the previous page.

Each Valkyrie III carry:

20 Dwarf 2.66kt(nuclear missile)
40 lancer (decoy/KKV)
50mm gun that shoot 10g round at 2.7km/s. (with intercept speed its 5.3km/s) 
It also carry flare missile but I didn't use them in this battle.

The foe have 9 mostly stock ships, for demonstration sake, relatively easy stuff:
3 laser frigates 
3 sentinels 
3 patrol ships and
3 modified Solar lance, (better armor and lasers are tad stronger.)

1-Intercept
Striking with multiple drone work better when the approach is as centered as possible because you want to surround your enemy in battle. If you plan on doing similar tactic with a single drone then you should be slightly off center, it will save you some fuel later on. AI does not dodge much, that part will be more difficult against player. Here I spent 2.6km/s Dv on intercept, I could have gone for a higher speed but screen grab would have been even more difficult. With design like mine you want to keep at least 1/3 of your Dv for battle maneuver, more if your drone have a higher mass ratio.

2-Deployment
As I said, I want to surround the enemy, so the first thing to do is to set formation on scatter. Its almost always a good thing to do. I also drop 5 decoy missile to cover me while I am doing this. Be ready to shut down main engines not too long after battle start.  All my sub capital ship have nuclear RCS mounted on the rear. This allow rotation control without accelerating and burning fuel too much. Having them mounted only on the rear also mean that keeping ship oriented will make vessel drift, that's a good thing as it will make them harder to hit. 

3-Start
Let the formation scatter a bit, but not too much. If you scatter your vessel to far their missile may miss. Cut main engines and set formation to Broadside (in my case that's forward but whatever). If you look at the picture you will notice that enemy are already firing at decoy. Do not let the enemy firing at your ship when sideways, it have expose your engines, so you need these 5 flare right at start.

4-Missile wave
Wait a bit before launching missile, your drone will have more time to spread. Its a good thing because they will close on the enemy from a wider angle, turrets will have to turn further when switching target and your missiles are more likely to target different ships.  Send small wave of 5 nuclear missiles mixed with 5 decoy missiles per drone. You can send more decoy on the first wave. Stronger enemy laser are, closer wave should be. The main advantage in doing this is that your missile have less chance to go for a already dead target.  This is also the only way to defeat flare missile at this point. Does not currently matter as AI does not know how to use them! Note that all engines are off, orientation keeping is optional during that phase.

5-Firing gun
Once all nuclear missile depleted, you should still have few decoy, keep them for later. Turn RCS truster on, make sure you have maneuver set to broadside, and press ignore range to fire. Note that I am still 500 km away. Accuracy is better at high speed, what mater is not distance but travel time. My gun are accurate enough to hit a static target 1 min away, but not necessarily if moving. So what you want to do is to jump to enemy vision and look at wish ship is not moving. Start switching target, starting by the static one and moving one as you get closer. 2 second per target is enough with my gun, but it is preferable to shoot longer than that because you do not want to have two volley flying at the same target. The first volley could trow the target off course and make the second one miss. Note that drones regained most of their Dv, its because playload is gone. This will be helpful for the next phase.

6-Flyby and Second pass
Given you scattered at start, the flyby should be some-wait far, that plus the drifting caused by rear RCS and gun firing should keep your drone relatively safe. On my part, on two rematch I did't lost any. So, as soon as you fly by what to do is to set formation to pursuit, this will turn the drones and they will start decelerating and accelerating toward the target for a second pass. If enemy still have functional laser, the decoy missile that you still have should be used. The second pass is usually much slower so fire once you are close enough. Again, switch between target, static first.

Rinse and repeat.


*These picture are in fact from two battle, screen grab while fighting is difficult.

It only works on low power lasers. The reason for this is that the Tantalum Hafnium Carbide has very low specific heat, so when the laser hits it the material will heat up very quickly. The high melting point allows it to dissipate heat by radiating it away, but any powerful laser can put so much power on such a small spot that the Tantalum Hafnium Carbide can never radiate away enough heat to remain solid.

I haven't had a chance to mess with it myself, but has anyone had any success in reflective Silver/Aluminum coatings yet? And was there ever a consensus made about the paper thing Amorphous Carbon/S-gel/Amorphous Carbon scheme?

On my capships I use a general layout of: Diamond/Graphite Aerogel/Boron which so far has done pretty well at preventing general laser damage, with turrets coated in either Diamond or strait Graphite.

I have had success with these against a few configurations of high power (GW range) violet lasers.  Can fit a few thousand in a craft without hardly any mass penalty (but a small cost penalty).  Might be able to do better with more aramid.  I usually accelerate ~1.5km/s towards the laser fleet, launch 100 of these, accelerate them another 1.5km/s, scatter the group initially in battle, then give them a default homing.

If anyone wants to experiment with them I would be curious to see if they observe substantially different results.

Hm. How dependent are those designs on the laser frequency? Should we be trying to make high-powered lasers from every gain medium?

It work against your laser, I do not know for the other. Do you have others colors in the 10gw?

Your efficiency is sub-optimal. You want the lasing rod and the arc lamp to be as close as possible.