On Thu, Mar 24, 2016 at 5:53 PM, Ethan McKinney <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:

The missing questions:

How much are your missile magazines mass-limited?

Volume, then mass. The handling system is almost certainly build for a certain size missile, with adequate mass handling capacity.

How likely is a single standard missile to hit its target?

Can you make fancier missiles just by spending more money, without an increase in mass?

Depends. Currently, we do that most easily by swapping out the sensor package and software upgrades. IE if the original sensor had a 1m resolution, and the current sensor has a 20cm resolution, swapping the sensor and improving the software can provide a substantial improvement, if the rest of the system can support it.

One of the changes to CWIS was replacing the chain gun with a rocket launcher.

Or with a small increase in mass? By how much?

How restricted are you in how many missiles you can fire/control at the same time?

Suppose that two missile - armed ships are volleying missiles at each other. Both have the same launch and guidance capacity. If one ship's missiles have a 1% chance off hitting and the other ship's missiles have a 2% chance of hitting, the ship with the better missiles is going to win. Depending on damage effects, it's likely to take far less than half the damage suffered by the loser (we'll assume assume simple Lanchester Law combat).

This may be a better model:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvo_combat_model

Obviously, assumptions change this a lot, but simply assuming that better missiles is a waste is, well, not thought-through.

On Mar 15, 2016 12:58 PM, "Greg Nokes" <xxxxxx@nokes.name> wrote:
Honestly, I don’t really see the value in fancy missiles. The vast majority of them will be killed in transit anyways, so the more that you can toss at an enemy the better. The cheaper they are the better. I see missiles as a wave trying to overwhelm defenses.

That's a difference in underlying assumptions.

ZUNI pods are useful, but the rockets have crap accuracy. Adding laser guidance increases the cost of the missile, but also provides a huge performance improvement.

If you fire a bunch of cheap missiles with minimal guidance, most of them will miss, allowing the defender(s) to concentrate point defense only on the obvious threats.

"Any sufficiently advanced parody is indistinguishable from a genuine kook." -Alan Morgan