Missiles as units (a.k.a microdrones)

[geoschmo]

Hey now, I like this idea! This has some very interesting possibilities.

[Batman]

Yeah, I'm going to play around with this. I haven't modded anything before so it may take a little while, probably this weekend.

The thing will be balancing cargo requirements. A single ship would burn through up to 30 x (#tubes) per combat!! At 5kT per missile that's 150kT/Tube. Hmm, maybe I'd better make them 1kT and put a bunch of 0 mass, one-per-missile components in the missile tech tree.

I will probably leave torpedoes alone for the moment.

[geoschmo]

So what sort of cost do you think should be involved here. Should a missle cost less/more/the same as a mine for example?

Thankfully with Se4 cargo units there is no relationship between cargo capacity and size of the caro component. You can hold 150KT worth of missles and only take up 10Kt of space on the ship if you want. So the limiting factor of the missle bodies would be how many components to you allow to fit on it.

Jeez, not just ECM, you could have missles with shields. And then different types of PDC that skip normal shields. A new tech race!

And this would probably allow missles already launched to find new targets if the initial one is destroyed. I haven't used Drones enough in combat to know that for sure. Time to do some testing...

One thing though. Most standard weapons can target drones and not seekers. You would I guess want to change these weapons so they cannot target drones?

Geoschmo

[ June 12, 2002, 21:47: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

[Batman]

I'd say that a given planet should really be able to churn out missiles. As far as the rate relative to mines, that's a little tough. If a single ship can fire hundreds per combat, then I guess they should be really cheap to build.

If that's the case, PDC would need to be smaller, or perhaps let standard weapons target missiles, otherwise missiles would really overwhelm PDC (just with sheer numbers)

[Batman]

The other thing with cargo space (especially with changing the size-capacity ratio) is the chance that changing it will screw up balance for carriers etc.

I am thinking about some special missile types. Until I get better names, I'll 'borrow' David Weber's names.

1) AFHAWKi fighter missile. Should be easy to
do.

2) SBMHAWK:warp-capable missiles (might need to model them as ships, which, if I recall, means they can't be cargo. Catch-22)

3) AMBAM. Anti-mine missiles (in the books they were described as low strength missiles with a large bLast radius, just enough to set off mines)

[geoschmo]

Well, as a starting point, you could just try to make it equivalent to the exsisting missles, and then tweak it from there as you play test it.

A CSM I take 50 KT, shoots 10 missles in a complete round of combat, and costs 400 minerals and 80 rads.

So a good starting point I guess would be to make the magazine take up 50KT of space and hold 10 missles. And make the total cost of the magazine and ten missles be the same as an exsisting CSM I.

Of course then a micro missle ship would be a one combat weapon and a standard CSM can fight in combat after combat until it's out of supply. But you can tweak these numbers to balance that out. The extended range of the miscro drones alone gives them a big advantage over standard CSM's I think.

Geoschmo

[bearclaw]

Man, I like this idea! (wish it had come up while I was creating the DN2 mod...)

What about leaving the missles as being targeted as drones but give them a really high defensive bonus (like fighters). That way, PDC's would still be your primary defense against missles but other weapons could still have a chance at hitting them.