Optimal Engines for Torpedo Divebombers

[Koizuki]

I haven't mucked with missiles too much because resupplying them is a bit of a pain, but have been thinking about outfitting a Torpedo squad to try out.
However, I'm sort of stumped as to what kind of engines are best for them.

As I understand it, torpedoes (or missiles in general?) inherit the speed of the craft at launch, so boosting and/or being in travel mode massively increases their speed towards their target.
However, I'm unsure what the AI does during combat with respect to this.

The obvious choices are either the SPL or TER combat engines.

The TER combat engines would be able to near-instantly reach maximum travel speed, thus allowing their torpedoes to be launched at such speeds reliably (all other combat drives would ostensibly still be "ramping up" by the time the ship gets too close to the target and needs to drop out of travel mode in order to maneuver away.) The problem here is that I am unsure how reliably AI-controlled fighters utilize travel mode like this during combat, or if it even does at all.

If the AI is not able to use travel mode in that way, and instead rely simply on raw speed or boosting, then it gets a bit trickier. The SPL combat drives would likely be superior given their high base speed, but its boost speed is still slightly lower than the TER combat drives.

Does anyone know, or is able to check any code to see, how the AI uses travel and boost during attack runs with torpedoes?
Depending on how often (or not) they boost/toggle travel mode in their attack patterns, it would change which engine would work best on them.

[BitByte]

Based on my own experience so far AI does not use travel mode in combat as operation radius is approx 6-7km from the target. They can boost away but that's it.
And this is in sector fights. In out of sector it's hard to say how they behave as that's more calculated than real fighting.

In that perspective I would say go with SPL combat engine Mk4 so bombership gets higher cruise speed.

[Koizuki]

Thanks for the input, and yes I am talking about in-sector/high-attention combat for these bombers.

I'm aware that they do attack runs repeatedly within about 6-10km or so and simply loop back and forth, and can boost away from the target.
That said, I did watch a couple of Ragnos' videos before (as they seem to really love their torpedo bombers) and I do think I remember seeing some of them either boosting or travel-driving prior to launching torpedoes, but it was just the first volley on initial approach, and I'm unsure if they do it again afterward. They always switch view to watch the K or I being blown up pretty quickly, so I haven't really been able to tell what the fighters were doing. I was mostly hoping someone else had observed them already and figured out the best engine type to use here, because I think ships using missiles might behave a bit differently than, say, ships that have Plasma/Mortars and such.

Otherwise, the SPL Mk4's are a fair bit too expensive to mass produce for fighters, but they're not significantly faster than the Mk3's anyway, which is my currently preferred engine for Carrier-based fighters since they shouldn't ever be too far from their mothership. For standalone patrol craft I'll usually prefer the TER drives for quicker repositioning.

[geldonyetich]

One thing you could try is a Katana that mounts one mass driver and three torpedo launchers.

I don't know if it applies to the current version, but something that worked well in the previous version was pairing a long range weapon with the launchers. It would seem to assure they used the launchers earlier.

And Katanas love to boost away. Maybe overkill when their boosts take them 20km away from the target. But all the better for their continued safety!

[Koizuki]

I feel like Katanas are a bit excessive for just carrying torpedoes; Although they are faster, they're also much easier to be shot down by K/I turrets, I think. Not to mention being far more expensive to boot! They're also going to be much more of a pain to rearm because most carriers only have 4 M docking pads at most, on top of M ships seeming to often have trouble landing on them properly when in high-attention.

My current divebomber setup is a squad of 24 Chimeras with 4 Torpedo Launchers and 1 Blast Mortar each. I considered giving them the Mass Driver based on some research that said that'd cause them to launch the Torpedoes at that weapon's range, but it'd take those torpedoes a decent amount of time to reach the target. I figure with the Blast Mortar, the torpedoes should land a few seconds after launch even if they were going at regular speed.

Part of the reason I brought up this thread is that if they do utilize travel and boost speeds properly, that'd mean the torpedoes would on average be going much faster, and then switching out to the Mass Driver launch range would be more palatable to me (torpedoes going at 4 km/s would still only take about 2-3 seconds to reach the target at that range.) If that is not reliable, then we'd be looking at just around 478 m/s, meaning upwards of a whopping 25 seconds to impact from Mass Driver range, vs. about 7 seconds at Blast Mortar range. The attack pattern is going to make a pretty huge difference here in terms of engagement ranges between the SPL and TER engines.

On a semi-unrelated note, what about "Police" craft?
Do player-assigned Police ships stay in travel drive often and command NPCs to stop for inspection (TER drive preference, as flight speed doesn't matter once they're stopped,) or do they have to catch up to a target before they will stop for the scanning (SPL drive preference because they need to catch up to the ship they want to scan?) Does anyone happen to know?

[gorgofdoom]

Ships will boost more if they have the capacity to do so. If you want your ships to deliver more boost-assisted missiles it would logically follow to use the lowest time-to-recharge shield along side terran engines for their boost efficiency. For S ships i believe the most efficient shields are paranid in design.

I've done a bit of testing of torpedo usage with frigates in several game versions. For high skill pilots many heavy torpedoes that are fired at railgun range will explode before they hit their target due to NPC pilots firing them while looking in the wrong direction. I suppose this behavior is the same as frigates firing smart missiles at near enemies whom they have little or no hope of bearing their guns at.

Anyway you may want to consider other types of ammo. Torpedoes are very slow to supply in quantities compared to others, because of trade ware quantities held on aux ships-- at least till version 7 comes out and allows station based equipment docks to auto-resupply.

By assembling a fleet that consists of a number of surface-target oriented fighters and a frigate that has many dumbfires or clusters paired with a railgun, we can pin down enemy capitals then hit them from significantly outside their weapon ranges. They will still miss a fair proportion of their shots-- it is just easier to replace dumbfire/cluster ammo since these only need to cost energy.

[Koizuki]

Ah, I usually just default to the TER shields since they tend to have high shield strength and recharge rate for greater eHP. There are probably some differences in extended battles with regard to recharge delays between them for S and M ships, but for divebombing I don't think that's really an issue to worry about, because the important thing is they have enough raw eHP to survive an attack run.

After that, it's basically just how to optimize delivering the payload to the target the quickest, because if they take too long I believe the K/I turrets actively try to shoot them down, explaining some of them exploding before reaching the target. This gets worse the slower they are, which is why I really wanted to figure out if the AI uses boost/travel reliably to increase the speed of the torpedoes. Even setting aside the passive recharge rate of shields, the TER combat engines I believe are almost twice as efficient with boost/shield consumption compared to the SPL engines, allowing almost 20 seconds of boost time compared to just 10 seconds of nearly everyone else before shields are completely drained. But again, these benefits will be pointless if the fighter AI doesn't actually utilize this reliably when firing the torpedoes.

As for other types of ammo, I have a fairly diversified fleet currently, so I'm not totally reliant on making torpedoes work. I'm mainly trying to add a wing of these to my "Rapid Response" fleet (Erlking, Zeus E, Oddy-E, and Rattlesnakes,) that generally will follow me around the galaxy and support if anything ends up under attack.
I've got a wing of Moreyas configured for Interception with 4x TER Pulse on the Zeus E to establish aerial superiority ASAP. This divebomber wing I am planning will be on the Colossus E when 7.0 exits beta, which will arrive a bit behind the Zeus E. It can hold 36 fighters, so 24 will be these Chimeras, and supported by another squadron of 12 Moreyas with 4x Burst Rays to rapidly strip capital ship turrets ahead of the Chimeras.

I've also got a squadron of Interceptors on my Aux ships (since they can be resupplied from my factories/trade network) with 2x Thermal Disintegrators and 2x Launchers with Interceptor missiles, and my sector patrols have either 4x Blast Mortars or 2x TER Pulse+2x Blast Mortars depending on whether they are my gate defense Ares, or my sector reinforcement Moreyas. Finally, setting aside the patrol Katana+Kuraokamis, each Aux ship also has a squadron of Gladiuses with 4x TER Proton Barrages set to defend against anything silly enough to poke it.

I've basically tried to have a little bit of everything available to play with, but I'm just trying to work in some torpedoes into the mix. Because explosions.