Table 1: chance a missile (-4 target) survives a round of fire, based on hit bonus (crew quality, target computer and weapon accuracy) and number of turrets per incoming missile.
The upshot is any reasonably modern warship with a significant laser: incoming missile ratio will shoot down the bulk of the missiles in the fire phase. However all ships in the same hex as a detonating missile get another round of defensive fire if the missile commits to detonate. The ratios will change because in this salvo all the dead missiles are discounted.
Say your a single cruiser with a total of +5 targeting and can defend against 4 incoming missiles with 8 turrets. In the initial "normal" shots on average 25% of incoming missiles survive, leaving a single missile. This now faces a second round of fire at the 8:1 ratio, with a 0.39% chance of survival. To all intents and purposes the ship is immune to missile attack at this level.
The upshot is that in major fleet actions with significant warships missiles are almost useless. They of course force ships into close defensive formations to maximise defensive firepower, but not much more.
Now in minor actions with less gunned targets missiles do become useful. If your target is an Aconit and you shoot a pair of missiles she only has a single turret to defend against both (typically at +4), and so after the first shot there is a 40% chance both missiles are still inbound, and defensive fire in the detonation phase still has a 40% chance. There is a good chance of a missile getting through, a good chance if it does it will get hit, and a good chance if it does of wrecking the Aconit.
In a major action it's likely that you'd want to stack up and try and provoke the enemy to spend missiles attacking you whilst you put up a wall of flack. You might send out fighters to shoot down missiles etc., and try and husband yours. This is because if the missile is fired whilst the enemy is engaged in close combat then they have to choose between devoting their main fire to enemy ships or to missiles. The best use of missiles is probably to be threatening enough to force the enemy to devote their fire to them, and thus gain an advantage in the gunfight.
The best use of missile frigates like the Kennedy would thus be behind the main battlegroup, darting around, dodging missiles and throwing theirs into the fight. However, without a battlegroup fixing the enemy in a gun action the chances of inflicting damage are minimal.
Bryn...interesting article. It is possible you've hit on a way that space combat is *changing* with the advent of larger fleets, but those were not necessarily the conditions that applied when the missile concepts were first made. In all the major SC scenarios I've seen (mostly from Invasion), they are not "major actions" most of the time. The scenarios are usually 2-3 ships per side. Those don't strike me as major actions.
ReplyDeleteIs this simply an artifact of writing for a board game/RPG to keep it interesting, or have we missed something about an assumption made by the designers as to how ships in a star system maneuver and fight as units?
There are mostly just questions. I'm not disputing your math at all, just trying to reconcile the numbers with the existence of missiles in the designs in scenarios played many times. We always found missiles to be quite useful. Yes, you might only get 1-2 of a salvo through...but when they are 10 x 2 detonation missiles (or worse, those monster Kafer missiles), they hit like sledgehammers.
--Wade R.
Slight edit:
ReplyDelete"In all the major SC scenarios I've seen *other than the Battle of Beowulf*..."
There are a few other really big actions in the Kafer war, and possibly in previous wars (the Battle of Sturmwelt in 2293 is maybe a major fleet action for example).
ReplyDeleteAt 3rd Hochbaden the Terran's appear to be organised as two battlegroups - a Franco-American group and a German-Ukrainian group.
The Franco-American major ships (Tallyrand, Bassompierre and Jefferson) can defend along the broadside with 23 turrets (Tallyrand 9 and prob +6, Bassompierre 9 at prob +5 and Jefferson 5 at prob +5) or 30 forward. The Kafers have 18 communicators if they mass all missile fire then about 1-2 from each salvo will survive the defensive fire and attack. Over several salvoes the Terran ships become less effective and a single critical on Tallyrand probably doomed the Terrans.
At this point let me observe the Tallyrand's armour value appears to be a typo - backengineering says it's a 10.
However, if the Bismarck and 2 Sachsens were stacked with the Tallyrand an extra 12 defensive guns render the probability of any hits at all to really low levels, and if the whole Terran force had stayed concentrated they'd have simply absorbed the Kafer attacks with little or no effect.
The question of how ships operate is a very good one. There are two opposing requirements - stay concentrated for fighting and spread out to find the enemy. The optimal solution seems to be to keep the main group stacked and surrounded at long distance (dozens of hexes) by cheap and disposable frigates (or fast vessels capable of running back to the main group). Something like skirmishers surrounding a battleline in infantry combat.
I suspect that in the early Invasion the Terrans simply didn't cooperate well, with national contingents forming their own battlegroups and a lack of mutual support.
By some of the 2302 battles the Terrans seem to be more integrated, and the six decisive battles (The triple battles of Aurore 12-15 Jan '02, Grosshiddenfaden 3 Mar '02, 3rd 61UM 12-20 Mar '02 and Beowulf 12 Jul '02) seem to have the Terrans acting in a much more integrated manner.
If you had control of SC, how would you make missiles more important in fleet combat?
ReplyDeleteYou are assuming that the missiles detonated at range zero, which makes it vastly harder for them to survive. While detonating at range 1 makes the missiles far less effective, not taking fire in the Detonation Phase is more than worthwhile.
ReplyDeleteAnd yeah, battleships are obscenely tough targets. However, their firing arcs are also nonsensical. You can't cram that many turrets onto the front of a cylinder, that long and narrow. If you want to put them in a "collar," all able to fire forwards, you're adding to the effective frontal area of the ship, and the area that would actually need to be armored.
Frankly, I think that the Detonation Phase was one of the parts of Star Cruiser where the two drafts were smooshed together while it was going to layout, because it doesn't make sense. All weapons can fire during movement, except for detonation missiles? What? How does that work if an enemy ship moves adjacent to a detonation missile? Does the enemy ship just keep moving and the detonation missile can't fire? It's an artifact of the draft where lasers had multi-hex ranges, which is where the firing arc diagram comes from.