Brainstorming: The Phalanx CIWS

Yes please. Back to topic.

We were brainstorming a capital XL missile defense system called Phalanx CIWS (“sea-wiz”).

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So did I but I was wondering how common the Caiman and Komodo would be since they are super expensive and I haven’t heard about massive Caiman drops or the dominance of Komodos.

Did you choose the 800mm autocannon because of it’s tracking and range, or you just want a large autocannon in general? If it is the former, then I think the 425mm autocannon would be a better choice, because you would want the best tracking available for a system like this.

Also a good question!

I chose the 800mm autocannon because it is a battleship sized turret and should have enough firepower to shoot down those XL missiles.

There would no specific reason not to use the 425mm autocannon, I chose it more as an example.
The 800mm autocannon does not have a clip size of 320 units of projectile ammo either, I just used it as an example.

If this is something that can have merit in game, the sea-wiz can be adjusted.

Is there some particular reason you think boosting the travel time wouldn’t be enough on it’s own, given the notes on application I’ve shared here?

It could be. It would be something that needs to be tested.

For now this is just a mind experiment if something like a sea-wiz would be something viable for the game.

I can’t be entirely sure if XL cruise missiles would become popular even with a 200% missiles velocity increase, even though your graph showed that the application wasn’t as bad as I experienced it.

A few years back I was trying out XL cruise missiles on Singularity and I chose a spot still in range of a carrier but barely and the carrier pilot started moving and from the maximum volley damage of a Phoenix’ XL cruise missile volley, only 33-ish % did make it to that nidhogger at 243km away until he coasted out of range and the missiles took like 5 minutes to go there.

Then I tried to imagine that travel time in 10-20% tidi and deemed them very terrible.
When we were asked about ship balance, I spoke about XL cruise missiles but it also took 3 years to give command ships a tad more agility and mobility in general.
At the time I was happy that at least the Harbinger got the +200gj powergrid that I suggested made it into the patch notes.

At least try to do some real numbers. These are so obviously made numbers.
XL Cruise, Velocity 7,000m/s without skills or 10,500 with skills. Range of 243,000m. Travel time 23 seconds near enough. 7.6% of the time you claimed it took. Your claim of 5 minutes would be over how long it would take in maximum Tidi.

From the sound of it you may have been comparing the theoretical max damage to the damage after resists. Hard to say for sure though. It’s also possible that was before various tweaks or changes, given that it was a couple years ago.

This wouldn’t be the first time I’ve seen someone quote missile damage numbers that were lowballed significantly though. I think they have something of an image problem in PvP that causes people to underestimate them…

Anyways on the topic of the CIWS, I think I can say fairly definitively that it would cost more in CPU time every time someone fired one of these things off than it does to calculate every volley of missiles in a battle.

Also, interesting note, the Phoenix actually has the best KDR of all four primary Dread types on zKill by any metric, ships, ISK, or kill points, and they’re getting a very comparable number of kills compared to the other dreads on the Weekly chart.

Maybe they’re not actually that under-used?

It’s pretty clear they’re talking about how it felt, at least for the flight time. Lets keep this discussion civil and give others the benefit of the doubt please.

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Exactly that!

Whenever I engage in ship vs ship combat, even on Singularity adrenaline starts pumping and time is perceived differently.

Yup. Heck on Sisi it might not even be adrenaline, it can just be anticipation. “A watched pot never boils” and all that.

I’m not sure how much even doubling the flight speed of missiles would fix that though.

I am curious on your take on the Phoenix’s zKill record though.

I have no idea how to read zkill that way. Most of the killmails of Phoenixes have torpedoes fitted and my complaint wasn’t about torpedoes.

?? Say what?

The sea-wiz would be for both XL torpedoes and XL cruiser missiles but the last few posts were about XL cruise missiles.

When I look on zkill the most fits I saw used XL torpedoes and up close those XL torpedoes don’t need very long to go where they are supposed to go.

Ah, fair enough, the thread mentions both missile systems so I didn’t bother to differentiate.

You can get the rough KDR from a ship by looking at its page and checking the stats in the upper right. They’re not that useful as hard numbers, but they do make a decent relative comparison for different ships.

That said those numbers could simply be a case of a few Phoenix being used in large fleet fights, not being targeted, and therefore getting similar numbers of kills while dying less due to not being a primary target.

Also, regarding the Torps vs Cruise thing, most Dreads seem to fit close-range guns in general, and none of the three I linked to fitted long range guns or had them in cargo.

Ah thanks man, I always wondered what those values mean. I find zkill confusing most of the time.

Anyhow, I wonder if long range XL guns in general are less popular since you can warp to cuddle range.

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