ThinksMarkedly wrote:cthia wrote:Interesting post. I always wondered why missiles would not be a part of energy battles. It seems that an enemy should find it difficult to maneuver against energy fire while maneuvering against incoming missiles. I don't think we have ever seen missiles used in energy duels, but I see no reason they can't be used even in a single ship-to-ship duel.
Ships mount more CM tubes than anti-ship missile tubes and can cycle them faster, so the defender can spit out more counter-missiles than the attacker can anti-ship ones. And while that's true for any range, at short ranges, the biggest difference is that the anti-ship missiles are still moving much, much slower, while the CMs are still in their regular range. Additionally, the ship is tracking those slow-moving missiles and is ready for them with PDLCs as soon as they cross the lip of the wedge.
As a result, I expect that at short range, the effectiveness of the defence is disproportionately higher, making the attack with missiles useless.
Of course, if you can tow pods of missiles and fire them at that time, then you could overwhelm the defence. But two problems with this: first, if you're this close, the enemy can likely see your pods and you can't hold on to them for too long due to proximity kills. The enemy could force you to expend them (use-or-lose case).
And second, by the time pod tactics came about, the battles were decided with missile duels. No one reached energy range any more.
Good point. But it seems that an enemy's ECM at energy range would be a beast. Because at that range active ECM from an enemy ship itself should also be a beast. Even bracketing the fact that the RMN has now realized that "Ghost Rider ECM" can be used against an incoming salvo.
But a ship at that range should have an inherently powerful ECM against incoming missile fire.
It is like the tactic in chess where you use your King as a piece to attack. Getting the ship close enough to affect ECM.