Help with AMS in Weapons 3.0?

[DeepspaceMechanic]

I'm trying to find some advise regarding modern anti-missile systems.

As everyone knows, the Weapons 3.0 update introduced some sort of health to missiles... Related questions:

1) Is the missile health value a threshold which has to be matched/exceeded by the damage value of a cannon projectile, for the missile to be destroyed by the projectile, or is it a non-regenerative health point pool which can be depleted even by the weakest cannon projectiles, given enough hits?

2) How do a missile's damage and health values relate? What would be the HP of, for example, one launched from a 1000-module missile tube group?

3) Is there still any value to those good old, super compact, 1/1 cannon/cannon AMS turrets? Will they do the job on let's say a corvette? What range of missiles are they able to deal with?



EDIT: while waiting for answers, I built and uploaded this: Free-floating drone AMS turret

 

[MChain]

From my tests 1/1 MGs are useless even against the weakest missiles. Even with a huge number of groups they cannot take down a 100-block smart missile. The smallest artillery system I know is capable of reliably taking down small-to-medium missiles (5k block Missile-Beam 100%) was a 1062 block 50% cannon 75% explosive twin-barrel turret assembled by Nocturna. And even it needs several hits to do so.

As for missiles themselves they have an HP pool without regeneration, scalable with missile size. Not a straight line though, more of an exponential growth as Schine explained.

There's no answer to a second question though, I don't know a reliable means to figure out actual missile HP. Maybe more experienced players can explain the formulas behind it.

 

[DeepspaceMechanic]

From my tests 1/1 MGs are useless even against the weakest missiles. Even with a huge number of groups they cannot take down a 100-block smart missile. The smallest artillery system I know is capable of reliably taking down small-to-medium missiles (5k block Missile-Beam 100%) was a 1062 block 50% cannon 75% explosive twin-barrel turret assembled by Nocturna. And even it needs several hits to do so.

As for missiles themselves they have an HP pool without regeneration, scalable with missile size. Not a straight line though, more of an exponential growth as Schine explained.

There's no answer to a second question though, I don't know a reliable means to figure out actual missile HP. Maybe more experienced players can explain the formulas behind it.

Thanks for the info!

It sounds like I somewhat underestimated how hard it got to take down missiles. Good to know at least that missile health is a depletable value.

Between posting the questions and reading your answers, I built a new AMS turret of my own design, linked in the OP. I thought that turret might do the job when used en-masse, given that it has a 90 cannon/90 cannon/no tertiary weapon setup of 1800 DPS. Not as confident about its expectable effectiveness anymore.

What do you think? I will try to do a few tests with it to be sure.

 

[Mork2]

Okay I just restarted playing Starmade and for AMS I noticed that the weapon types really affect this when using small turrets.

Cannon/Cannon with 100% slave is only 10dps per block, 125% shell velocity
Cannon 20dps per block, 100% shell velocity
Cannon/Beam with 100% slave is 40dps per block, 75% shell velocity

So the cannon/cannon combination puts out the least dps per block which is fairly important with the small nature of AMS turrets.

So one method is to get 15 x 1/1 cannon/beams set to volley fire. This will result in 1 shot every second at 1200 damage each. If you get a same sized cannon/cannon system you get 15/15 which is 60 damage 5 times a second for a total damage of 300 a second.

A cannon compared to a cannon/cannon system you can get a 5 volley cannon with double the dps and same ROF as a single cannon/cannon system.

So there is a trade off in damage per block and shell speed though. For stations or slow ships the shell velocity might not matter. For your faster ships though it might.

For my station I have small AMS turrets with 15 x cannon(2)/beam(2) set to volley which gets me 1 shot a second and 2400 damage each.

 

[Tshara]

Reliable AMS is something I’m struggling with as well. One problem I’m encountering as well is turret tracking speeds. At one point missiles are just to fast for the turrets to track them in time for it to matter.

 

[Mork2]

Well maximum turret speed is when the turret is under 50/3.5 mass which is somewhere around 14.2 mass. Turret rotation then slows down until you are over 50mass. As long as you have enough mass enhancers to cover the turret mass (and enough on the first turret rotation entity) then your rotation speed will be equal to a 50mass turret. Unless these rules have changed since last time I looked.

The problem with reliable tracking is the AMS turret will put exact lead on the missile if it continues to move straight. The problem is as you move your ship it continues to change course and not fly straight resulting in the AMS shots missing. AMS defence works better with a stationary ship as the missiles start flying straight so the AMS hit easily as long as the missile was aimed at a stationary ship. So it should also work well on stations. This is also why AMS testing by firing missiles at a stationary ship works so well but works far worse in actual combat while moving.

Unfortunately while moving its hard for the AMS to hit. The shell velocity will help a bit there. So having the cannon/cannon will have low dps it has the highest velocity which will help a little.

With the previous weapon systems you could add the shotgun cannons to provide a bit of spread that would help hit the missiles a bit. But with the new weapon system you don't have that.

Two tactics I've seen on youtube videos is to have a high speed ship so that the missiles get into a tail chase allowing the AMS to work on them as they get more predictable in a tail chase. Second tactic was to use a large waffle gun to manually put up a wall of flak. I don't think this will work anymore due to the damage required to kill large missiles. On the other hand your AMS systems can aim for the largest missiles now and ignore the decoy missiles.

A tactic that might work is a waffle cannon that is logic fired on the AMS turret. The AMS turret will turn to face the missile and the logic fired weapons will fire shells around the same path somewhat. Not sure if this will even work.

 

[DeepspaceMechanic]

Okay I just restarted playing Starmade and for AMS I noticed that the weapon types really affect this when using small turrets.

Cannon/Cannon with 100% slave is only 10dps per block, 125% shell velocity
Cannon 20dps per block, 100% shell velocity
Cannon/Beam with 100% slave is 40dps per block, 75% shell velocity

So the cannon/cannon combination puts out the least dps per block which is fairly important with the small nature of AMS turrets.

So one method is to get 15 x 1/1 cannon/beams set to volley fire. This will result in 1 shot every second at 1200 damage each. If you get a same sized cannon/cannon system you get 15/15 which is 60 damage 5 times a second for a total damage of 300 a second.

A cannon compared to a cannon/cannon system you can get a 5 volley cannon with double the dps and same ROF as a single cannon/cannon system.

So there is a trade off in damage per block and shell speed though. For stations or slow ships the shell velocity might not matter. For your faster ships though it might.

For my station I have small AMS turrets with 15 x cannon(2)/beam(2) set to volley which gets me 1 shot a second and 2400 damage each.

Well maximum turret speed is when the turret is under 50/3.5 mass which is somewhere around 14.2 mass. Turret rotation then slows down until you are over 50mass. As long as you have enough mass enhancers to cover the turret mass (and enough on the first turret rotation entity) then your rotation speed will be equal to a 50mass turret. Unless these rules have changed since last time I looked.

The problem with reliable tracking is the AMS turret will put exact lead on the missile if it continues to move straight. The problem is as you move your ship it continues to change course and not fly straight resulting in the AMS shots missing. AMS defence works better with a stationary ship as the missiles start flying straight so the AMS hit easily as long as the missile was aimed at a stationary ship. So it should also work well on stations. This is also why AMS testing by firing missiles at a stationary ship works so well but works far worse in actual combat while moving.

Unfortunately while moving its hard for the AMS to hit. The shell velocity will help a bit there. So having the cannon/cannon will have low dps it has the highest velocity which will help a little.

With the previous weapon systems you could add the shotgun cannons to provide a bit of spread that would help hit the missiles a bit. But with the new weapon system you don't have that.

Two tactics I've seen on youtube videos is to have a high speed ship so that the missiles get into a tail chase allowing the AMS to work on them as they get more predictable in a tail chase. Second tactic was to use a large waffle gun to manually put up a wall of flak. I don't think this will work anymore due to the damage required to kill large missiles. On the other hand your AMS systems can aim for the largest missiles now and ignore the decoy missiles.

A tactic that might work is a waffle cannon that is logic fired on the AMS turret. The AMS turret will turn to face the missile and the logic fired weapons will fire shells around the same path somewhat. Not sure if this will even work.

Thank you very much for all this useful information! Much appreciated

I will keep your pointers in mind for future AMS turret building.

 

[Mork2]

I just had to add this. I was spawning in some hostile capital ships to test my station weapons and noticed an issue that might impact AMS turrets. Cannon beam weapons had a high recoil factor which means the AI didn't fire as much as it should with a 15 shot volley. A single cannon system seemed to be more effective. Cannon/cannon didn't seem to fire at its full rate of fire so not sure what is going on exactly.

 

[Brokengauge]

Does a missiles damage potential also go down with the hp when being shot at?

If so, then even if small AMS systems can't outright stop an incoming missile, then they can at least soften the blow.

Otherwise it seems like outrunning or simply tanking missiles are the way to go, with AMS being relegated to stations only

 

[Mork2]

From everything that I've read the missile damage doesn't go down from AMS hitting it. But its possible I missed reading something somewhere.

This will be hard to explain. If you have played eve-online then I can borrow a term from there.
AMS work more effectively if the targeted missiles radial velocity is low. Translated as if your moving directly away or towards the missiles its easier for the AMS to hit. The more perpendicular you move from where the missiles are coming from the harder it is for the AMS to hit.

I put quite a few AMS turrets around my station encase a cloaker ambushes you after you undock. When you just undock your not moving to fast and the station doesn't move so the station AMS should be fairly effective in helping protect you from missiles. My latest AMS turret design has 1 x 60 block cannon so while it doesn't have a really fast fire rate (1/sec) it does do 1200 damage a shot.

This next bit is full of missing information and outright untested guesses.
One thing that might increase the AMS damage is the damage type. I can't find listed anywhere what the damage composition for each weapon type is. I have assumed its 100%. So cannons do kinetic, beams heat and missiles EM. I read somewhere that kinetic damage against shields is reduced and that heat does better against shields but not so good against armour. So if the missiles shields have the same resistances to damage then an AMS would be more effective to do heat damage.

Note however this is a chain of 3 assumptions. So if beam weapons do more damage to shields than cannons and if the shield protecting the missile has the same resistances as normal shields it might be worth while to make the AMS damage type that of beam weapons.

 

[Mork2]

Well I can confirm the cannon shield damage.
1 block cannon did 13.3 damage instead of 20. So shields are 33.3% kinetic resist against normal cannon shot.
1 block cannon with 1 heat effect did 33.3 damage instead of 40. So shields had 16.75% resist against 100% heat cannon shot.
1 block cannon with 1 EM effect did 24 damage instead of 40. So shields had 40% resist against 100% EM cannon shot.

So from this heat effect cannons do quite a bit more damage against shields. I imagine that heat does less damage to armour than kinetic.

After quite a bit of testing. A four block missile launcher takes a 11 block cannon to kill it in one shot. If you use a 10 block cannon or a 5 block cannon with 5 heat blocks which both do 200 damage they both take 2 shots to kill it. So damage type doesn't seem to matter for AMS.

So the shield HP on the missiles don't have different resistances to different types of damage like normal shields do.

With missiles I have a tendency to not use slave blocks. This results in lower power missiles with high rate of fire and high speed. Fast enough that even with 2.5 TMR and speed 3 chamber is not enough to outrun them.