Point Defense

Point Defense

Point Defense is the defense of a small area or object, and it is used to counter missiles, small ships, fighters that come into firing range.

Layers of point defense

A effective point defense system requires 3 layers to defend a fleet properly from the inevitable missile's attacks.

PD Missiles:

These are Missiles to counter Missiles, your first screening of incoming Missiles is made with these.

Generally these are missiles with alot of Speed and Agility to increase to hit chance and low damage and low fuel.(unless required for some odd reason)

Example below.

Point Defense Missile Designs

Mid range PD Missile	Short Range PD Missile	V. Short Range PD Missile
.2 Warhead	.2 Warhead	.2 Warhead
.4 Engine	.4 Engine	.44 Engine
.1 Fuel	.05 Fuel	.01 Fuel
.3 Agility	.35 Agility	.35 Agility

Warheads

The warhead size can vary depending on your tech level and the missiles the enemy is using against you so dont blindly follow my design decision with warheads, 1-2 dmg seems to work well afaik.

Engine and Agility

Engine and Agility are going to help the most to actually hit a fast incoming missile. While range doesnt need to be long to get to enemy missiles before they close with your ship unless you are short on ships, then more range would help you intercept more before they get into close range.

Fuel

The lower the Fuel the missile has the better its performance capabilities become and the higher to hit chance it gets due to redistribution of points. Things to always think about!

Ship Mounted Turrets:

With small rail guns, lasers, Gauss Cannons, and meson cannons mounted you can have a high tracking speed short-mid ranged weapon for Missile Interception. They can be dual use as well at short range against enemy fighters or ships that dare close in with your Point Defense mounting ships.

Ship Mounted Turrets can actually provide an inner 3 layers or more of PD fire if you so choose for the fleet by staggering weapon ranges.

You can have a mix of lasers, gauss, railgun and meson to destroy missiles at 3 distinct layers in the defense of the fleet.

Basic Examples below of fleet defensive turrets for use against missiles, Tracking speed can increase or decrease depending on what you require of course.

Twin 10cm C3 Near Ultraviolet Laser Turret
Damage Output 3x2      Rate of Fire: 5 seconds     Range Modifier: 3
Max Range 90,000 km    Turret Size: 8    Armour: 0    Turret HTK: 2
Power Requirement: 6    Power Recharge per 5 Secs: 6
Cost: 50    Crew: 60
Maximum Tracking Speed: 10000km/s

Twin Gauss Cannon R4-100 Turret
Damage Output 1x6      Rate of Fire: 5 seconds     Range Modifier: 4
Max Range 40,000 km    Turret Size: 15    Armour: 0    Turret HTK: 4
Cost: 87    Crew: 48
Maximum Tracking Speed: 10000km/s

Twin R3/C3 Meson Cannon Turret
Damage Output 1x2      Rate of Fire: 5 seconds     Range Modifier: 3
Max Range 30,000 km    Turret Size: 8    Armour: 0    Turret HTK: 2
Power Requirement: 6    Power Recharge per 5 Secs: 6
Cost: 18    Crew: 60
Maximum Tracking Speed: 10000km/s

If you increases the size of the laser focal size to 12cm you gain another 30,000 range, so you can have multiple laser hit ranges and stratify your Point Defense layers even more.

Point Defense Modes

You can select a fire control and put it on a automated Point defense firing mode.

Area Defense

Area defense occurs during the normal weapons fire segment. If the missile can cross the engagement range of a PD beam during a single movement then it will not be engaged.

Final Fire

Final defense occurs during the movement segment when the missile's should intercept their target.

So the instant before the missile hits, Final Fire mode activates and begins firing at the missiles point blank.

CIWS:

Close In Weapon System's are your final firing system against missiles. By the time that Missiles reach this point you should have very few missiles left to intercept, hence this layer of your defenses may see very little use or be overwhelmed.

These fire from 1,000 km and into your ship, a very short period of time.

Examples of a Complete Point Defense setup on a fleet

My fleets generally are very specialized into their job.

So I have a PD missile ship(long ranged), (mid Range) Area Defense PD ship and a (short ranged) Final Fire Laser PD ship

What you are wanting to do here is have your PD missiles to hit the incoming missiles multiple times before Ship Strike. Then have Area Defense ship with long range Lasers hit atliest twice before Ship Strike, then your Final Fire (and most accurate) will hit one last time before your ship is hit by a single missile.

(example ship) (example ship) (example ship)

Comments

Ideally, any PD weapon would have a rate of fire of 5 seconds. Missile PD can get away with 10 or even 15 seconds, but most likely not more than that. However if you happen to know that this particular enemy fire salvoes of very fast missiles every 40 sec you may want to have some burst Final Fire capability every 30-40 sec rather than wasting short ranged turret RoF when there are no missiles in range 80% of time.