Good point.
Due to the way sensors scale with resolution, my AMM fire-control is some 30mkm range or something (10mkm targeting on size 6 missiles is what I generally aim for). At some points, I actually considered dual-roling my fire-controls but it turns out that isn't too cost efficient unless I use my 6000 ton offensive/defensive missile ships.
That is a decent range, although getting a 10m km range to fire at missiles must require very advanced technology or huge fire-controls. Should be pretty expensive with such huge fire-controls for each five launchers you have.
I don't think that your ships are bad or anything like that. I just feel that you are talking from a perspective of being the most superior power in the area to begin with who has the means and resources to build luxury ships with advanced sensor systems and in enough quantities to simply overwhelm the opponent.
I'm talking from the perspective of actually going up against an opponent that is often bigger and have better technology or in best of circumstances slightly weaker. If I attack I would have to fight hard for every inch of space I would like to conquer. Every mining colony I take would need more resources than it would produce for at least 20 years or so...
As an example, in my last campaign where I tried just these different tactics against each other it simply did not work. The standardization if ships/engines and large sensors are just too resource inefficient to an enemy that quickly adapt and will outperform resource wise in a very short time given the same amount of R&D, factories and such from the start.
When you are at war with an equal empire you don't have the luxury of conducting large expensive research on luxury equipment, you just need what is good enough to get them out quickly on new ships or refit some of the old ships that you have.
Ah, another difference. My actives literally never turn off unless I'm being sneaky.
You know when I said scout sensor? I meant that. I use my active sensors to find things... >.>
Again, we are talking from vastly different positions. This strategy only works if you know you are superior to the enemy. Doing this against an enemy that you think or fear have equal or even greater power than you can be a bit foolish. It feels for me that you like to put all your eggs in one basket, which can become quite a gamble.
From the standpoint that I know (I'm 99% sure) that my forces is way too much for the enemy then going in hot is still a somewhat unnecessary risk, why take it?
What would you do if you were the opponent against such a fleet and you had the means to both combat it and the technology to match it, but be a little sneakier and resource efficient?
In my opinion your fleet are seriously vulnerable to two quite common strategies.
1. Carrier based heavy fighters/FAC. Fighters/FAC have a range way beyond your size 50 sensors (and can launch before your resolution 1 fire-control can lock on to them) and since you broadcast your position you can be simply smothered to death by someone with deep pockets and eventually you lose the whole fleet.
2. Since you broadcast your position you can simply be charged by a faster anti-missile and beam armed fleet of appropriate size.
If the enemy don't have the means to combat you the point is moot anyway. But I claim that any fleet composition either you or I make have a counter that is both cheaper and/or more efficient against just that type of fleet configuration.
That is why I have started to look at creating fleets that are highly adaptable and who easily can change from one tactic to another with small measure of time and resources.
If I find a new hostile race the first thing I do is to probe them with recon element, these include surveillance, scouts and smaller cruiser squadrons. This is basically to get a feel for their defences. Once I'm confident that I have the upper hand I would assemble some form of strike force and raid some poorly defended system, this would hopefully entice the enemy to send a larger defensive force to meet me. This would obviously only be a rouse to see my enemies full potential and I would be ready to withdraw if that is the best option.
In general I don't keep more combat ships than I absolutely need to have to defend myself and my colonies. This is mainly to spare my economy... I rather invest most of my resources into industry and developing technology if I can. This generally means that when I meet a hostile race I'm usually the underdog in terms of military technology but a powerhouse in production and overall research capacity. I usually keep enough defensive forces to defend against enemies that are way more advanced in tech than I am. I usually use lots of missile boats and scoot and shoot tactics and massive quantities of missiles on habitable worlds as well as point defence stations kept in ground hangars that I can deploy in space when the enemy knock on the door.
Depending on the circumstance when I meet a hostile race ships may be in various stages of completeness and readiness. But in general most of my capital warships use older engine technology while fighters, missile boats and scouts are updated much much quicker. I often find myself to skip engine techs on my capital warships altogether, most of the time to conserve resources. So when a war breaks out many ships can often have very outdated engines but state of the art missiles, defences, weapons and sensors. As long as they manage to stay outside enemy’s active sensor net they usually perform remarkably well.
Technology that I find important to excel at to have a good defence is missile tech and I also favour lasers for point defences early on. They are highly efficient against armoured missiles. But Gauss guns is a priority as well. Engine techs are of course also important and I usually like to keep lots of research into fuel efficiency and new engines, even if I don't equip my ships with new engines as fast as I research it my missiles sure like new engines.
All in all I usually actually have at least as good missile tech as I have advanced engines if not even better missile tech at times. It is certainly not uncommon for me to have missile yields of 6 at ION tech engine as an example. But my research and construction tech are always miles ahead of my military techs.
In my opinion the changes to missile construction in 6.0 has made the balance between larger and smaller missiles quite interesting. I could even see myself using extremely heavy missiles now such as size 12. When you have high enough engine power levels factors you could strap 5 MSP x5 power on a size 12 engine. You would get optimal range for your fuel and brutal yields and lots of armour. And this missile would actually be very cost efficient.
A missile like this at Magneto Plasma tech with x5 engine power. The missile are designed against ships with a ship speed of approximately 4500-5000km/s. Most of my firing platforms have a crew grade after fleet training is done 20-30.
Capital armoured size 12 missileMissile Size: 12 MSP (0.6 HS) Warhead: 9 Armour: 4 Manoeuvre Rating: 10
Speed: 33300 km/s Engine Endurance: 67 minutes Range: 134.0m km
Cost Per Missile: 8.25
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 333% 3k km/s 110% 5k km/s 66.6% 10k km/s 33.3%
Materials Required: 3.25x Tritanium 5x Gallicite Fuel x3750
Capital high yield size 12 missileMissile Size: 12 MSP (0.6 HS) Warhead: 21 Armour: 2 Manoeuvre Rating: 10
Speed: 33300 km/s Engine Endurance: 67 minutes Range: 134.0m km
Cost Per Missile: 10.75
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 333% 3k km/s 110% 5k km/s 66.6% 10k km/s 33.3%
Materials Required: 5.75x Tritanium 5x Gallicite Fuel x3750
Typical AMM at the same tech levelMissile Size: 1 MSP (0.05 HS) Warhead: 1 Armour: 0 Manoeuvre Rating: 24
Speed: 48000 km/s Engine Endurance: 1 minutes Range: 3.3m km
Cost Per Missile: 1.1316
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 1152% 3k km/s 384% 5k km/s 230.4% 10k km/s 115.2%
Materials Required: 0.25x Tritanium 0.8816x Gallicite Fuel x32.5
It will require 14 AMM to intercept the armoured missile at a cost efficiency at around 2:1.
It will require 9 AMM to intercept the high yield missile at a cost efficiency at around 1:1.
The armoured missile still pack a pretty decent punch, but the high yield one will be very efficient once AMM defences is saturated by armoured missiles. AMM with a yield higher than one are not really feasible at this level of technology for the price you pay in speed reduction on the AMM.
You r could of course use a faster size four missile with comparative yield, but then you over engineering speed versus target speed it will be way more costly to produce in comparison with the end result. This is if industrial wealth and resources is a concern of course.
I could see dedicated torpedo boats armed with these giant size 12 missiles and deliver them at even shorter distances with even more yields.