Missiles and the like

[Eldred]

If I design a ship with say 100 MkI Standard Missiles, then the ship goes into battle and fires 50 missiles at some poor unsuspecting soul, I think I should have 50 left. However, I suspect the game mechanics mean that I will still have 100 left. Is this right??

 

I suspect that this is cos the missiles are an integral part of the ship design - ie they don't fit into a seperate bay - like interceptors in the fighter bay. (Incidentally, if I have 100 interceptors in the fighter bay and 50 are destroyed in battle do I have 50 left or 100?).

 

Wouldn't it be better to have missiles contained in a missile battery - which could hold so many 1,000 tons of missiles ready for use and also keep track of how many have been used?

[hobknob]

Missiles do not use expendible munitions so you don't have to reload them. Drones and fighters will have to be reloaded. Do we know yet if every fighter you carry goes out in every combat or will cargo spaces other than fighter bays keep spares and automatically fill them in? I would think that they should. We already have missile's in "missile bays" and we already have to keep track of how many of them we have. They are called drones.

[Eldred]

The ANZ order indicates that "missiles" are really missile launchers - presumably with an infinite amount of missiles to fire - as they don't diminish with use!

 

I thought that Drones are similar to missiles - but are capable of being manouevered in flight to hit a particular target. Aren't drones really like "pilotless" fighters loaded with munitions - a bit like a robotic kamikaze pilot

[Aquilonia]

I think missiles are a mechanism RTG miss taken.

For simulation purposes they should have been expandable too, like drones.

And it is not clear if for example a fleet has 100 Mk I Std.Missile (launcher?) is 100 total missiles per combat or 100 missiles per round ?

[hobknob]

Well, missiles in SNII didn't fire every round. They fired on round 1,4,7, and that was about it. If you could survive the initial volley you had the opportunity to kill the enemy. Drone on the other hand fired once and that was it. The descriptions for missiles are a little bit vague on the details, as are most weapons sytsems. It would be nice to have some basic idea how much damage things do and what kind of ranges they opperate in. I really hate having to guess and hope that a weapon system that will take me 20+ turns to research will actually do something close to what I want, ie., standoff at range, close and knife fight, etc..

[RTGPete]

If you have 100 missile launchers, they will fire every round. Missiles, unlike drones and fighters, were eliminated as expendables to ease an already detailed economic system.

[EternusIV]

Good news about Missiles

[RTGPete]

Actually, fighters and drones are not eliminated as they are used (unlike SN II, where drones were destroyed by blowing themselves up when in proximity with an enemy vessel). In this way, fighters and drones are not completely expended - they fire again and again just like missile launchers. Additionally, they are more efficient in dishing out damage (per ton) than regular weapons. Why not use them exclusively? When an enemy has defensive systems, they degrades the firepower of the countered weapon. This is true for defensive systems against lasers, and for those against fighters and drones. However, fighters and drones can be destroyed utterly and reduced in effectiveness, while regular missile launchers can only suffer reduced efficiency. I thought about making drones completely expended (as in SN II), but the logistics, already a challenge, may well have become unbearable.

 

So...fighters and drones are nice weapons: they dish it out, and can be used again and again. But...they can be destroyed piecemeal, unlike lasers and missile launchers, and suffer badly against heavy enemy defenses. Once your enemy sees you using them, or any weapon for that matter, you might expect him to do whatever he can to come up with the appropriate defenses

[Aquilonia]

Now we know more about missile type weapons, we may build the right ships to improve Tygen active defensive conquest strategy...

Thank you Pete..

[President Guztov]

Missles are indeed very impressive weapons. I have seen some that mass 8000 tons. Now thats a BIG

missle. There are defenses yes but there are also improvments to the missles themselves making them harder to track shoot down outrun etc... The tech tree for this weapon system is HUGE as Im sure it is for all the other weapons systems. The really great thing is that if a player finds another player that he can work with they can each supply each other with weapons systems they have researched down a particular tech tree. This will enable each player to really concentrate on a particular system without

worrying about neglecting another. Granted this will require a level of trust and cooperation that some may find difficult but the end result are 2 positions that are much stronger then either could be on thier own.

Empires of the Galaxy take heed!!!

President Guztov

CIC Takarran Space Forces

[Clan Elder 'Keen]

While we are posing questions, a fighter bay indicates that it provides support for 10,000 tons of fighters. Does the ship also need 10,000 cargo bays to physically carry the fighters as part of the fleet?

[Eldred]

No, all the physical carrying, support, and everything else to do with the fighters is done by the fighter bays.

[President Guztov]

And take note that not fighters are the same. We have seen fightercraft as large as 500 tons.

[PhaseDragon]

I can remember way back when SuperNova first came out I tried making thousands of tiny ships with one laser and one missile to take advantage of the single ship targeting rules. I am sure that I was not the only one that saw this possible exploitation. The solution to add fighters and drones was really cool but I never got a chance to actually use them in a combat situation. Looking forward to using them now though. (Battlestar Galactica was one of my favorite shows growing up).