First, is anyone actively using the multi-warhead capability, i.e. “Missiles can choose to divide their Warhead Strength into multiple attacks, with each attack having a damage value equal to Warhead Strength / Number of Warheads… The multiple attacks will all be applied against the same target… The additional space required is equal to 0.1 MSP * (number of warheads - 1). The capability is likely to be most useful for AMMs, especially against missiles equipped with decoys.”
It does seem like it would be effective at stripping decoys off larger, decoy-heavy missiles. This was implemented back in 2.0 but I’ve yet to play with it since I typically lean away from missiles and into beam combat. I’m curious if anyone else has and whether it was a useful design approach?
Second, directed specifically @aurorasteve , back in 2.0 release notes you mentioned “I may also add a form of fragmentation warhead to missiles, that would be ineffective against ships but able to eliminate decoys and small missiles.” Since you’ve played a lot since then, do you still think that’s a worthwhile add, or will that idea be shelved? It seems somewhat redundant to the multi-warhead concept.
I used them extensively in my last game. My typical TF was based around a Carrier, Light Cruiser, and two escort destroyers. My destroyers had my most capable AMMS, but I loaded MIRV AMMs on the carrier tubes for short range defense. They were quite capable at catching the strays that occasionally leaked through escort destroyers AMM screen and defensive fire from the cruiser and fighters. I also made an offensive MIRV but honestly I was getting better results from heavier more capable cruise missiles so I abandoned the concept. I ended the game but I was starting to have problems maintaining supply of those expensive missiles in wartime and I was considering going back to a cheaper MIRV.
I just realized that a spoiler is shooting size 2 AMMs at me that have two 1.001 strength warheads in each missile, so the NPCs at least are using multiple warheads in AMMs.
It took me a sec to figure out that’s what was going on. My initial reaction to a warhead of 1.001 strength was… “Is this a laser-warhead AMM???”
Against missiles a fractional damage determines the % chance that a successful intercept actually destroys the missile. I’m too lazy to look up the rules but its not a linear 0.5 damage has 50% chance, it also depends on the size of the missile being intercepted.
Against actual ships the fractional part does nothing. You must to at least 1 damage to do anything to a ship and even if your damage is above 1, its always rounded down to the integer, discarding the fractional part.
It is warhead_damage x 20 / target_missile_size with the latter in MSP. For warheads with 1 full damage, the chance is always 100%, so a size-50 missile for example gets no special benefit to survival.
This doesn’t apply for decoys, so if a fractional warhead hits a missile decoy that kills off the decoy, which makes fractional-warhead AMMs useful to thin out decoys even if they’re too small to efficiently kill the missiles.
I believe fractional damage is applied against shields. EDIT: see here, fractional damage applies to shields, populations, ground units, and shipyards as well as missiles.
Shipyards is an interesting one, aren’t they kind of like 0-armour space stations?
Does that mean fractional damage can still do work on internal components on ships assuming the armor isn’t present at the hit location? Particularly ones with low HTK?
Unfortunately I don’t have the design since I accidentally nuked all of my Aurora saves while trying to clean up space on my SSD.
They did work fairly well. I never had a problem intercepting missiles (as long as my AMM stocks never ran dry)
I don’t think they’d do much good for an ASM because of how armor penetration patterns (to my knowledge, which may be woefully outdated) for missiles works.
Actually they would work fine up to warhead damage 3, because the pattern for warhead damage is a flat line 3 wide. Wouldn’t lose any armor penetration until you divide 4 or greater damage into smaller hits.
