Maybe it is time to start discussing missiles versus beams or something like that again. Or maybe Steve will spoil us with some new feature for future versions.
I've been thinking of doing a campaign/AAR in 1.13 where with multiple player factions so that I control all ship designs I will try some different missile rules and test some mechanics I have in mind. It seems like most complaints about missiles boil down to two things: box launchers being blatantly OP, and AMM storms being disproportionately effective. Additionally I have observed, mainly from fighting NPRs, that full size ASM launchers tend to be quite weak compared to either of these things as it's very difficult to bring sufficient salvo mass to bear particularly in a mixed fleet with AMM and PD ships. My thought is to instead treat box/reduced size launchers as an expected norm for ASMs, but house rule that missile boost is capped at the racial tech level rather than double, i.e., at max tech missiles have 3x boost rather than 6x. This would make beam PD more efficient, AMM PD should not be affected, but would balance box/reduced size launchers as they cannot overwhelm PD so efficiently. I am interested to see how this would work. Slower missiles would also add a better chance of outrunning at long ranges, akin to WW-era torpedoes, which could be an interesting tactical twist although the flip side is with much better fuel efficiency (roughly 28x range for the same E:F ratio) combat ranges become a question of interest.
There, I have contributed, if the forum is still too quiet that is on the rest of your heads now.