There's some ideas about improving battle performance, reducing micro-managing and making NPR more challenging.
What's the problem?
1.NPR don't know how to make "effective" missile design. Their missile tend to have fast fire rate (which means no alpha strike) and very long range (which means slow speed). So their ASM can't penetrate our defence, their AAM are only good at anti-ship work. And sometimes player will make beehive-like missile ship and launch thousands of missile, that do cause performance problem.
2.Beam weapon is crap. Their short range and uselessness against atmosphere made them almost completely useless, unless you both run out of missile.
3.Too much micro-managing in design, build and battle. It's annoying to arrange hundreds of missile launchers and magazines on big ships. It's even worse when you have to calculate how many components you should build in factory. It's terrible to arrange target in battle when you want to see the firework.
What's my solution? My idea is somehow WWII-like.
1. Make missile bigger and force NPR to use alpha strike. Think about WWII torpedo, a typical DD carries 4-8 launch tubes that can launch only once or twice (need half an hour to reload), a torpedo bomber carries one, and one torpedo is enough to sink CL or break DD into half. To make fewer and bigger missile effective, we have to remake point-defence mechanic, but I have no idea how.
2. I may prefer Legend of the Galactic Heroes style battle. Beam weapon could have much longer range (100-200m), lock on and fire at a battlegroup rather than a single ship , like what happens when you shoot bird flock with shotgun. Steve could introduce random distribution to decide which ship is hit. However, to avoid kiting with long range weapon, beam weapon range should not differ too much, and huge cannon need a long charge time. New tech could improve damage distribution or atmosphere penetration.
With random distribution of hit, shield will be very valuable, as we can't simply focusing all firepower on one ship to overcome it. But to avoid impenetratable shield, shield may not recharge in battle, or only recharge when turned off.
I thought Steve once said some problem in simulating beam more than 5-second. I can accept missile mechanic.
3. If Steve can't improve weapon system now, please at least do this. We do need a "weapon array" mechanic to pack fire control, launcher and magazine as one, and to pack all ship components as one. One weapon array will be like "1 missile fire control, 50 missile launchers, 5 missiles for each launcher" or "1 beam fire control, 6 laser cannon, 2 reactor". It will greatly benefit designers. Component package would have similar effect.
