Laser warheads

Some of the information in this article is not guaranteed to be 100% accurate.

Laser warheads are single-use, bomb-pumped x-ray (or higher) warheads for missiles. Upon detonation they project multiple laser beams in a 360 degree sphere, and thus may strike multiple targets, some of them multiple times.

Mechanics

The number of laser beam created by the warhead's explosion is equal to the warhead value of the missile divided by the number of laser warheads in it. The damage inflicted depends on Laser warhead technology and warhead size. This needs to be specified some more.

Those multiple explosions can hit not only the targeted ship, but are spread throughout the targeted task group.

Against Missile salvos they are effective, destroying as many missiles as there are laser warheads in the missile.

They don't work well against fighters. Even if a fighter is destroyed entirely, the effect does not move to the next ship in the task group.

Effects on armour

Since lasers have a narrow, deep damage templates and standard missile warheads a triangular one, they are somewhat better at penetrating the target's armour. Some players report that damage templates are the standard form for a missile instead.

Use in bombardment

Laser warheads are pretty useless in planetary atmospheres (all weapons except mesons and regular missiles deal 0 damage if the atmospheric pressure is 1.0atm or greater, half damage in 0.5atm, one-third damage in 0.333atm, etc., always rounding down to whole points of damage).

Defenses vs. laser warheads

Laser warheads explode outside of the 10,000km CIWS/Final-Fire range, which means that a CIWS or other weapon set to Final Fire will never engage the missile, while weapons set to Area Defense mode will.

Note that currently (7.1), that feature is reported to be broken.

Research

Laser warhead technology has to be researched. The top tech level for laser warheads is Extreme X-Ray Laser Warhead.