Point Defense Turrets

[Bladeriker]

As many know, the new weapon update has added a new feature to missiles, in this case shields and the more powerful the missile the greater the shield on it.

I have been playing around with different Point Defense (PD) turrets. What I have learned I hope to pass on.

First, Beam based PD does not seem to work against missiles (though I need to try it out against bombs), in that the beam never hits the missile at all even with 100% up time on the beam and Max range of travel to the target being protected.

The old go to PD (Cannon-Cannon@100% single block systems) seems to only be effective against the swarm missiles and only in mass groups of 3 or more.

I found that C-C@~50% gave some good results. a set of three PD's that were double barrel 15 blocks to one barrel (Main of 30 with a slave of 15) could shoot down a full single barrel volley of swarm missiles(9) before they got to the target. It was even more effective against a single 30K lock no missile taking it out after 500m of travel. (Mind you that was with all three PD's active).

I plan to see what 33% slaves do and what 66% slaves do as one will shoot faster while the other will hit harder. Based on my ongoing research, it seems that for PD to be effective there needs to be a balance between rate of fire, and strength of projectile.

I did notice something when testing the swarm missiles though, which was that the PD was less likely to engage until the swarm had chosen its target. Mind you swarm tends to be high quantity low damage, and the PD was set to engage highest damage first, so that needs to be tested. I also noticed that if you tried to drop a bomb that the PD while attempting to shoot down the bomb would hit the bomber too, so keep that in mind when building Bombers.

 

[Zoolimar]

C-C now has half the DPS at the same size compared to pure cannons.

I'd say try multiple pure cannon turrets at around 10k DPS each. So one or more barrels doing 10k damage in total per group shot. Should swat missiles under 1 million of damage.

 

[JinM]

how many system blocks does a 30k lock on missile need to build?

 

[Bladeriker]

27 blocks was what I used at 100% slave. That should be close.

I did notice that when the missile did get to its target if it had taken any shield damage it seemed to do less damage, the more shield hits the less damage, but I need to test this more as it could have been hitting two shield bubbles.

 

[JinM]

So I need 30+15 CC to shoot down one 27+27 MB? Feels kinda equalized out.

 

[Top 4ce]

So I need 30+15 CC to shoot down one 27+27 MB? Feels kinda equalized out.

But you also need to hit it, which means you need coverage, so that means at least two turrets. So double the CC amount. Also this is a defensive weapon and not an offensive one.

 

[Nosajimiki]

So I need 30+15 CC to shoot down one 27+27 MB? Feels kinda equalized out.

Seems way to expensive IMO for a system of opportunity. The problems with this are
A: A missile can attack a ship regardless of if it has PDS turrets, but PDS turrets are useless unless your enemy chooses to use missiles which are no longer inherently stronger than other weapon classes.
B: These are best case scenarios. The size of PDS turrets now make them slower to track so even if it can one-shot a heavy missile with 100% accuracy a lot of potential is wasted in tracking time and/or hitting over the strength of a missile. Also lag can impact total number of shots you get off.

Missiles need to be about 5-10x softer to actually make PDS a worthwhile investment when you consider these extraneous variables, and missiles need to have much better damage profiles to actually make them dangerous enough to be worth investing in a specialized defense system anyway.

 

[Bladeriker]

I agree that for PD to be more viable there needs to be a reason, but my logic is that for larger cap ships some PD is going to be needed as PD will fire at and wreck Bombs.

Though I did see that all weapon ranges were normalized so three of four PD's can hit a missile even if the missile was fired at max range. For the best chance to drop a bomb or hit with a missile the attacker would likely need to close range opening it up to other anti ship turrets, therefore making it a risk reward system to even try.

Still there is no harm in sciencing this out

 

[Nosajimiki]

Sure, 3-4 PDs will take out a single missile, and you only get hit by the other 20... so, why not just take the 1 extra hit and add 3-4 more of your own missiles offensively? Also, missiles fly so slow now that they will never beat an alpha cannon/beam to target for making it an ideal shield wrecker, and their block damage is garbage compared to acid weapons because the radius damage model loses a lot of damage potential to occlusion, abliteratives, and empty space. So the real question may better be, why not just take those 4 big turrets you made and set them to fire-at-any/fire-at-target since they will likely outperform both missiles and AMS in that role.

 

[JinM]

But you also need to hit it, which means you need coverage, so that means at least two turrets. So double the CC amount. Also this is a defensive weapon and not an offensive one.

Yeah that also what I think. If you need the same amount of blocks (= energy per second) to counter the attack, you can as well invest this ressources into attack in the first place.

My question is: Is it really equalised out now in terms of block count?

And if it is equalised out, can PD turrets be set to "hit everything" and target enemy ships, but prioritise incomming missiles?

 

[TungstenWall]

Do only Cannons work as PD? Any chance static MB launchers could fill the role?

 

[Zoolimar]

Well PD being equal to missiles in size/energy depends on how big missiles need to be to be effective. The bigger the missiles need to be the more effective will be PD as missile HP is proportional to square root of missile damage. That means that if small missiles (under 100k damage) are good enough than PD is a waste, but if you need missiles to be over a couple millions in damage per missile to actually threaten the enemy ship PD may very well be worth it.

 

[Top 4ce]

Well PD being equal to missiles in size/energy depends on how big missiles need to be to be effective. The bigger the missiles need to be the more effective will be PD as missile HP is proportional to square root of missile damage. That means that if small missiles (under 100k damage) are good enough than PD is a waste, but if you need missiles to be over a couple millions in damage per missile to actually threaten the enemy ship PD may very well be worth it.

You raise a good point.

Might be best used on bigger ships.

 

[Bladeriker]

I was retro fitting some older PD turrets last night, and I learned some interesting things.

• For some reason having barrels on opposite sides of turret base cause the turret (under A.I.) to target backwards (just as if the computer was in backwards) I tried re-orientating the weapons computer to no effect. However, in turret control mode all turrets fired normally, in the correct direction.
• Volley fire will increase the rate of fire for a duel barrel PD, but under preforms simo-fire for actual missile destruction.
  
• Placing both barrels of a duel system turret on the same side of the turret base, seemed to fix many of the issues I was encountering with abnormal turret fire/direction/function.
  
• Using 6 small PDT doing 44 DMG per shot, duel barrel system, 50% cannon slave, I was able to take out two 10K missiles in a span of 500m. I was firing at the target from 1500m to simulate a pirate attack, or other stand off drone.

Given the amount of missile storage required to get over 2 missiles at once, I can see why a small batteries of PD could still be useful. However, when dealing with monster nukes it is advisable to have at least one PD turret that can deal with them.

 

[JinM]

• Using 6 small PDT doing 44 DMG per shot, duel barrel system, 50% cannon slave, I was able to take out two 10K missiles in a span of 500m. I was firing at the target from 1500m to simulate a pirate attack, or other stand off drone.

So you used c-c with 2-1 module count? Or 10-5? How many blocks of cannons does your pdt have?

 

[Edymnion]

Honestly I'm not even bothering with working with PDTs right now. I really don't think missile HP is going to stay as high as it is, so I'm going to wait until things get tweaked back down and then see where I need to be at.

 

[Bladeriker]

Those were 3 blocks per barrel and 3 for slave, no effects. so total 6/3

 

[Nosajimiki]

...Using 6 small PDT doing 44 DMG per shot, duel barrel system, 50% cannon slave, I was able to take out two 10K missiles in a span of 500m. I was firing at the target from 1500m to simulate a pirate attack, or other stand off drone...

This is not a helpful test since 2 10k missiles are useless. Missiles spread their damage across their whole radius with fall off the further you get from the impact zone meaning that a 10k missile would be luck to destroy a single block. So unless they finally added radius scaling, I would expect most missiles to be 100k-2 mil damage depending on how focused they are on destroying armor vs systems.

Also 20k is very easy to soak with your shields which again makes AMSing it kinda irrelevant.

Instead, try testing missile volleys designed to actually harm your ship and then see how much AMS you need to protect yourself. So, if you have a frigate with 10mil shields, fire 30 500k missiles at it. If you are designing a capital ship with 200mil shields try firing 150 2mil damage missiles.

Don't expect 100% missile screening in such tests, but you should see enough to make your investment in AMS worth the time/mass/cost/etc that you put into them.

 

[JinM]

how many blocks do i need for a 10k missile? 12-12 m-b?

my points is, if you need 6 ams that have 6+3 c-c = 49 blocks, to counter 12-12 times 2 = 44 blocks missiles, you are loosing efficiency.

 

[Zoolimar]

how many blocks do i need for a 10k missile?

500 damage per block. So 20 blocks. Or 200 blocks for 1 million damage missile which is probably the most reasonable size.

The maximum effective power for the missile is around 14-15 millions of damage. After that you gonna just waste the damage.

The thing is, unlike DPS weapons missiles and other weapons with long recharge work okay if you undersupply them with energy. My 2k mass fighter could supply 1500 blocks of DPS weapons. Which means it could also supply around 3 to 4 times more blocks of missiles. Or around 4-5k blocks. For a total salvo damage of around 20-25 millions.

Now this damage will be very bad against small ships. But could bigger ships have enough PD to stop a few bombers like this?