Effective Missile Point Defense?

[K-Boom]

Hey guys,

I'm currently designing a capitol ship for a PvP server but missiles have me worried. With the high damage and insane speeds a missile-beam system is capable of producing, only a moderately sized ship is necessary to deal millions of damage to shields and punch a hole straight to the core of any vessel. This is problematic for me as capitol ships, while fun to use, are quite costly to field while remaining very susceptible to missile fire.

To address this, I began research and testing on various methods of missile defense to find which one works best. Here are my comments on each:

1. Point Defense Turrets: Just a wall of cannon-cannons on a turret with a Bobby set to fire at missiles. Simple in theory, awful in practice. The turn rate of the thing is so abysmal that any missile faster than a continent can easily slip by if it doesn't happen to be coming from the exact direction the turret happened to be facing in the first place. On top of this, the turrets are widely inaccurate, so even when they do happen to fire in time they almost always miss despite the wide coverage of the cannon array. To make matters worse still, if a missile passes by and misses my ship, the turret will still track that receding missile and ignore any incoming missiles as long as that missile is in range.
   
   
2. Point Defense "Modules": Something I tried to see how effective it would be. Essentially the same as a point defense turret, only the module is actually docked, preventing rotation. The theory was that if a set of these were mounted to face all six directions, any incoming missile will be in front of at least one of these modules, so the module would not need to rotate to fire. While this works, the problem is the arc of fire is too shallow to make any practical use of such a system.
   
   
3. "Chaff" System: Read about this one on the forums. The idea is to have at least 6 cannon computers, each facing in a different direction, with missile computers slaved. Then the interior of the ship is liberally decorated with individual cannon barrels to create a shotgun effect with wide coverage when fired. The computers are then linked to a clock to make the firing automated. This faces a similar problem to my second attempt in that the missiles have to pretty much approach perpendicular to a given face of your ship to get shot down. Additionally, even when missiles are fired directly at a face of shotgun-cannons on auto-fire, there is still a good chance they will get through.
   
   
4. Missile Defense Drones: Another idea of mine that unfortunately did not pan out. Basically a swarm of cheap cannon-cannon mounted ships is released during battle with the sole purpose of destroying missiles. The idea here was that this would eliminate the awful turn rate experienced by turrets as AI ships can turn as fast as the ship design allows. Unfortunately, missile targeting for Bobbys only seems to work with turrets, and the feature is completely non-functional when the type is set to Ship. So this is a no-go as well.

There were a few other things I tried, but nothing was as effective as a basic point defense turret, which is sad considering how ineffective those are. I'm sure somebody at this point will be thinking that there shouldn't be a perfectly effective counter to missiles because otherwise we'll be back to the era of "the counter to capitol ships is bigger capitol ships," and I agree completely. I'm not asking for a perfect counter to missile-beam systems, I'm just asking for something that works even 20% of the time. Right now, though, we're at the point of "the counter to missile boats is to be the one who fires first," which is worse than the previous meta in my opinion since it does not take resources into account at all.

Sorry for the mini-rant on balance there. I'd just like to know if anyone has developed a reliable way of screening missiles and how to go about implementing such a system. I don't want to invest a ton of resources into a ship that's more for display than practical use, so I'm holding off on building the thing until I get this problem sorted out. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks for reading,
K-Boom

 

[Keptick]

Once the next update drops we'll be able to have turrets covering every direction in their default orientation, which will fix the problem you were having with the static docks.

The AI is in need of an overhaul too, not having every turret converge on one missile or try to shoot those incoming from behind when there's some in front of it would help tons. Target prioritization schema pls k thnx.

 

[Winterhome]

Right now, the only way to effectively use point defense turrets is not to have big and good turrets, but to have dozens, or even hundreds of small ones.

The way turret inaccuracy works means that more outputs isn't better - more individual objects aiming is.

 

[K-Boom]

Once the next update drops we'll be able to have turrets covering every direction in their default orientation, which will fix the problem you were having with the static docks.

The AI is in need of an overhaul too, not having every turret converge on one missile or try to shoot those incoming from behind when there's some in front of it would help tons. Target prioritization schema pls k thnx.

Sounds great, though that update is probably some ways away. Hopefully the AI gets an update soon as well, but targeting is an understandably tricky problem.

Right now, the only way to effectively use point defense turrets is not to have big and good turrets, but to have dozens, or even hundreds of small ones.

The way turret inaccuracy works means that more outputs isn't better - more individual objects aiming is.

Makes sense. When accuracy comes down to a dice roll, the best way to gain an advantage is to just roll more dice. Sadly this solution would still have the turn rate problems with the added effect of looking immeasurably ugly.

Thanks for your responses. A bit of a shame there's no real solution at the moment. I guess for now I'll just abstain from building anything bigger than I'm willing to lose. Following the philosophy of "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em," I'll stick to making ridiculously armed missile frigates that are small enough to radar jam. Because balance.

 

[Mork2]

With the new rail system there are some new point defence options. I like capital ships so point defence has been high on my list of things to do effectively. I have also run into the same problems. Fixed weapons very limited arc. At the moment more weapon groups doesn't help accuracy. All the weapons fire at exactly the same spot with the same random error.

There are a number of systems I'm planning on using together for effective point defence.

Point defence turrets
Since the AI bug using the extended ranges of beam slaved weapons now works properly my planned design for point defence turrets involves 3 weapons all controlled by the same bobby AI.
1. Cannon - Beam: extended range means that when missile - beams are fired from beyond 2 sector range the point defence turret should start rotating early at 2 sector range.
2. Cannon - Cannon: standard rapid fire point defence weapon. Hopefully rotated around in time due to the cannon-beam weapon. Since the bobby AI usually engages with all weapons as long as one is in range it should if rotated around already have rounds firing down range before the missile gets to 1 sector range.
3. Cannon - Missile: shotgun effect. If the turret only turns around in time to get off one salvo make it a wide spread one as well.
Weaknesses- still needs time to rotate around but should react faster against longer range missile strikes. If someone fires some decoy missiles past you the point defence turrets will still rotate to engage them as they fly away from you (I've read about this haven't tested).

Slaved point defence on main turrets.
Due to the new docking system set up a fixed point defence weapon set to shoot missiles on a normal preferably long range turret. The main turret will rotate to engage ships and the point defence gun will end up pointing at the hostile ship and will only fire at missiles in that direction.
Weakness may end up pointing at a target not launching missiles. In a multi faction fight may even defend targeted enemy ship against other enemy missiles firing at it. Also a VLS type missile system may arc out of the firing arc of the weapon but they would have to be pretty close to you.

Forward facing point defence weapons
If I am bow on to the target to use my main weapons its also good to have a few fixed point defence weapons pointing at the same target or at least hopefully at the biggest most dangerous target.

Wall of flak
Use many of each system. Since each bobby AI fires at a random error target point each salvo, rapid fire cannon will generate 10 separate trajectories per second, use many bobby AI turrets to generate even more different shot trajectories. You can even slave extra Bobby AI fixed weapons to point defence turrets to generate more trajectories assuming they turn around in time. This does generate more lag though in large enough quantities.

Default rail position
Since there is a default orientation for turrets it should be possible to default point defence turrets in different directions to at least get some pointing in the right direction quick as the worst angle should be 45degress in two axis as long as you have turrets default turned in each of the 6 basic directions. Especially since you can either reset them or after a while of no combat they should reset themselves.

Server settings
Increasing speed limit and not increasing sector size with the same multiplier makes missiles more effective than default values. Since it will take less time to cover the same weapon ranges.

 

[Mork2]

Note in the last couple of updated missile beams have slowed down max speed multiplier.

A follow up on this and did some combat testing and noticed an interesting effect. I made a battery of 4 of those PD turrets with the cannon/cannon, cannon/missile and cannon/beam systems and put the batteries in a line on a flat plate. My server speed limit was double default and so is the sector size.

The problem with the faster missiles was if the turrets rotated around in time to engage as previously stated. I was generally firing from 400m out to 2km. Missiles dumb fired past the target decoyed the point defence turrets to fire in the wrong direction if it flew past. Which allowed me to score some hits.

When this happened though the turrets changed behaviour and engaged me. Turrets were set to Turret, Active, Missile. Not sure on faction settings. But point defence and my ship were separate factions. So after a hit was scored the point defence missile turrets automatically open fired on me laying down a standard hail of fire. Even while no missiles were in the air they continued to engage. If I fired FOF missiles sideways not every turret seemed to fire at the missiles but enough as they got closer. The point defence was far more effective since it was already aiming in my direction the entire time.

Hopefully if already set to hostile the missile defence turrets will auto engage hostiles now while no missiles are flying.

At this point it was rare for 1 out of 20 FOF missiles to make it to the turrets fired at a little under 400m range. The single homing missiles also rarely got through at that range though a VLS setup might have a better chance between the speed and off angle firing. Firing large numbers of missiles from the same direction shouldn't make to much of a difference since the shots that miss the targeted missile have in increased chance of hitting other missiles as the number of missile increases unless they are spread out.

At 400m it was taking around 4 seconds for the 20 FOF missiles to get there and the 4 turrets should put over 240 shots in that time the majority of which missed. 160 rapid fire and 2 salvos of shotgun rounds for another 80. If you halved the number of turrets you could probably half the range at which shots get through.

Problems with my test is that it wasn't a large ship where missiles could be aim at angles at other docked entities and the fact that it wasn't moving. Moving towards the target would give the turrets less time engage.

Missiles might still get through if you can decoy some point defence fire away with dumb fired homing missiles off to a side. But it should be a lot harder if the cannon beam weapon causes the point defence turret to rotate to engage your ship at 2 sector range and has the rest of the weapons lined up for your missiles.

In theory if I put a small missile beam system on the point defence turret it should rotate to engage you at 3.2 sector range but not may missiles for the PD turrets will be seen since the cannon shots will wipe them out automatically.

Also note though that higher max speed settings without increasing the sector size gives missiles less time required to cross the defensive weapons envelope and less chance to score hits and rotate around in time.

Hope this helps someone.