Oh no it's another weapon system!
I know I've been putting a few of these things out there, but I figure that's
what the lists for and I'm not huge on the political setups of the game
universe at the moment.;)
So I was thinking, what can I do to overbalance ordinance in the game? Well I
came up with it. We get missiles for nothing!
Yes that's right, instead of spending mass and points on more missiles, why
not just have 1 missile that can be 3? So I came up with the ECM missile.
ECM MT Missile: * produces 3 missile counters (2 dummy and 1 missile); dummies
must remain within 2mu of the actual missile * does no damage
And low, I even have some numbers to back this up:
For 2 Counters: Ratio of Regular ECM PDS to Missile Missiles Missiles Hits 25%
1/2 1.5 1.2
2/2 1 0.9
3/2 0.75 0.675
4/2 0.5 0.525
For 3 counters: Ratio of Regular ECM PDS to Missile Missiles Missiles Hits 25%
1/2 1.5 1.25
2/2 1 1
3/2 0.75 0.75
4/2 0.5 0.625
Ok, now the break down on how I figured these. Missiles against 1 PDS have a
50% chance of evading and missiles against 2 PDS have a 25% chance. ECM decoys
and real warhead missiles will be hit along the same ratio as each makes up in
an attacking swarm. In calcs I used a base of 20 missiles.
As you can see in the numbers, ECM missiles decrease missile attacks against
low PDS targets and increase missile attacks against targets
with 2/1 odds but only slightly. The real fun with ECM missiles is with
them it forces the defender to pick which missiles to hit more carefully since
he might be loading PDS against a dummy. With ECM missiles the choice can go
either way, the defender might get lucky and only choose real warheads to
shoot at and leave the dummies mostly alone, decreasing the effectiveness of
the attack even more or he might shoot mostly at dummies letting a greater
number of warheads in then average.
> On Wednesday, December 19, 2001, at 11:52 PM, Jaime Tiampo wrote:
> ECM MT Missile:
So what's the MASS and POINT COST?
Surely not the same as a regular MT missile, as these would appear to be
far superior.
> Sean Bayan Schoonmaker wrote:
Same mass and point cost. It's just a swapable warhead. How do you see them as
superior. By my calcs they change the average number of actual
warhead impacts by 0 except when PDS outnumber missiles by 2/1 or more.
The only difference they create is the choice of which missiles to shoot at so
that there is a chance that you will shoot more at a fake missile then a real,
or the other way round.
> On Thursday, December 20, 2001, at 01:52 AM, Jaime Tiampo wrote:
> ECM MT Missile:
Just for clarity sake (for me) each ECM MT Missile ends up being 2 dummy
missile counters and one standard MT Missile counter. The dummies act like
normal missiles (with the limit of proximity to the real one) and the missile
with the real warhead does damage as per a normal MT missile. Is this right? I
want to make sure so I can understand the tables you sent better.
Thanks,
> On Thursday, December 20, 2001, at 09:53 AM, Kevin Walker wrote:
> Just for clarity sake (for me) each ECM MT Missile ends up being 2
This is how I saw it, and having 3 targets is definitely an advantage over
just 1, particularly in a SML, or fighter heavy environment.
> Kevin Walker wrote:
Half right. Each ECM missile has 2 dummy counters and an actual missile
counter, but the ECM missile does no damage. The space used for a regular
warhead now has an ECM suite in it.
> Sean Bayan Schoonmaker wrote:
> This is how I saw it, and having 3 targets is definitely an advantage
hmm.. aparantly more then one person misread what I wrote. I'm sorry. To
clarify: The ECM missile does no damage. The counters do no damage. It's
purely a spoofing unit.
> On Thursday, December 20, 2001, at 03:04 PM, Jaime Tiampo wrote:
> Half right. Each ECM missile has 2 dummy counters and an actual
So the ECM MT is only particularly useful when teamed up with normal or EMP MT
missiles then if I understand things correctly. The ECM missile is a single
missile with no warhead that does damage, creating instead 2
dummies in addition to it's own signature and it can be used to escort
other MT ordinances. Have I got is straight now? ;-)
> Kevin Walker wrote:
> So the ECM MT is only particularly useful when teamed up with normal
*touches the side of his nose and winks*
;)
> At 1:04 PM -0800 12/20/01, Jaime Tiampo wrote:
As this has a RL equivalent, why not just put ECM on the Real missiles
instead? Thats what SAC did years back when they initially built and deployed
Quail as a "dummy" missile. It was easier to add the ECM and dummy features to
the real things than launch dummies that did it instead.
> Ryan M Gill wrote:
I'm not sure what you're getting at here, are you saying to take a regular MT
missile and add some sort of ECM to it aswell?
If so here's my reasoning for the method I put forward: 1) it's easier to make
a new system then to add it to an old one and rebalance the mass and points
for it having a whole new set of abilities. 2) keeping it the same cost means
you can design ships to have MT missiles a just choose the warhead types at
game time instead of having to recalc the ship 3) I didn't want to fiddle with
the existing missile rules and thought having dummy counters along with the
real ones were a quick and simple way of simulating ECM in missiles
> On Thursday, December 20, 2001, at 04:26 PM, Jaime Tiampo wrote:
> I'm not sure what you're getting at here, are you saying to take a
> If so here's my reasoning for the method I put forward:
Interesting reasons for doing this. I wholeheartedly with reasons 2 and
3.
Here's my quick probability runs (not using completely proper statistical
conclusions though):
column 1 #PDS (spread evenly against the targets)
column 2 2 MT missiles - total of 2 targets for PDS)
column 3 1 MT missile escorted by 1 ECM MT missile (makes 3 more
targets) - total of four targets for PDS
1 1.5 0.875 2 1 0.75 3 0.75 0.625 4 0.5.5 5 0.37 0.438 6 0.25 0.375 7 0.188
0.219 8 0.125 0.25
My calculations came to the following conclusions:
- Using 2 MT missiles (2 real bogies total) in group A and 1 MT missiles
escorted by 1 ECM MT missile (3 fake bogies, 1 real total) for group B
- assuming spreading out the shots evenly and the defending player
guessing to the real target (no insider knowledge) * group A delivers more
hits up to and including 3 defending PDS. * group A & B are equal at 4
defending PDS. * group B delivers more hits at 5 or more defending PDS. * the
top and bottom examples of the chart have the most divergence in expected hits
with the ECM group having more no end to it's getting better, however since I
doubt there's going to be many situations where the player using the PDS is
going to have the luxury of firing more than
a 4:1 ratio of PDS to missiles I don't find this a big concern at the moment.
Since each of the sample missile groups comprises 2 MT missile (since both are
equal in cost and mass) when confronted by a ratio of PDS to
pre-fire missiles of less than 2:1 the regular missiles are better,
while at better than 2:1 the ECM missiles are better and exactly 2:1 means
it's a toss up.
Interesting...I'll have to think on this some more. ;-)
> Kevin Walker wrote:
> My calculations came to the following conclusions:
That is the worst case senario for PDS hits. Where I agree that shows that
they're not over balanced don't forget to look at the average stats where you
hit real targets in the ratio that they apear on table. I'm going to put some
stats for best case senario out for food for thought.
> Kevin Walker wrote:
> Here's my quick probability runs (not using completely proper
I just noticed this while working on some more calcs that you have your base
line at 50% ECM where my calculations were at 25%. I did some numbers at 50%
with the same calcs as the ones I posed and the ECMs loose efficiency at that
point. It's better to use them at 25% of your shot and not 50%.
Ok so here's the calcs for best, worst, and average attacks under these
assumptions: 1) All PDS fire will hit real warheads first in worst case 2) All
PDS fire will hit dummy missiles first in best case
3) PDS fire will be allocated by ratio (1/2) to both real warheads and
dummy missiles in average case 4) When there is PDS superiority PDS will hit
all targets once and double up on real warheads first in worst case 5) When
there is PDS superiority PDS will hit all targets once and double up on dummy
missiles first in best case 6) When there is PDS superiority PDS will hit all
targets once and double up by ratio on both real warheads and dummy missiles
7) PDS will hit with statistical average: 50% 1PDS/1Missile; 75%
2PDS/1Missile
PDS to All war Best Avg. Worst Miss. shots Case Case Case Ratio with with with
25% 25% 25% ECM ECM ECM
1/2 1.5 1.5 1.25 1
2/2 1 1.25 1 0.75
3/2 0.75 0.75 0.75 0.75
4/2 0.5 0.625 0.625 0.625
> On Thursday, December 20, 2001, at 07:05 PM, Jaime Tiampo wrote:
> I just noticed this while working on some more calcs that you have
Forgive me for my statistics training was years ago. Why should the
calculations base line at 25% instead of 50%. Each PDS has a 50/50
chance of killing it's target.
> Kevin Walker wrote:
No no. I didn't make that clear, sorry.
PDS should be 50% effective for 1 PDS and 75% for 2 PDS.
The number of ECM missiles in a salvo should be 25% and not 50% of total
missiles fired. If you use more then 25% ECM you hit the point of diminishing
returns where increasing the number of ECM misssiles decreases the number of
actual missiles that hit the target. For my calculations I used a base of 20
missiles (to make numbers easier) and did my calculations where 5 missiles
(25% of the salvo) were ECM and 15 were regular missiles. This makes 15
warheads and 15 ECM dummies.
> On Friday, December 21, 2001, at 02:21 AM, Jaime Tiampo wrote:
> No no. I didn't make that clear, sorry.
Alright! Now I'm seeing things correctly. I was wondering a little because
some of my stats were indicating that using a 1:1 mix of regular
to ECM missiles was only productive when the PDS ratio was at least 2:1.
Thanks,
> Kevin Walker wrote:
> Alright! Now I'm seeing things correctly. I was wondering a little
Well that's true:) 50% ECM missiles is way past the diminishing returns point.
@ 25% load out they decrease have a worse average effectiveness when there are
less PDS then missiles, equal average effectiveness when
there are equal-2/1 PDS to missiles, and better when PDS outnumber
missiles 2/1.
This seems pretty balanced to me.