Re: ECM MT 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
> 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

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
Horizon Concepts, Inc.
Macintosh & Windows Development
Miniature Painting & Sculpting