So, after the obligatory "Hi, new player here after watching Quills Let's play," I wanted to drop by with a few questions, especially one dealing with lasers. Because of how I was introduced to the game, I have mostly been designing missile complexes, but wanted to try making a beam warship.
As a general problem I have a hard time designing military stuff, as I have no idea regarding benchmarks for what I can expect of the aliens (but that is another discussion in itself) and as I haven't really been in a battle yet, there is a lot of blind guessing, when putting a shop together. So when comparing my previous missile ships to this laser ship, the thing that strikes me is the range difference. While my ship missiles had a range of 15m km, the laser turrets I put together have a max range of 80. 000 km. That is a huge difference. Granted, my technology level i low, so it will improve, but so would missile range, so I am just wondering if there is a specific way that a laser ship should be put together to function properly. I can imagine that it would need a lot more speed than a missile ship, as it would need to get close, but how much more speed than what the aliens could expect to field, and wouldn't it also need more defenses than a missile ship because of the extra time taken to travel to the enemy while being fired upon without firing?
Maybe I should just make a test game and try getting a battle up and running, but I am also curious about the underlying principles for designing such ships.
Also, do moderators prefer that a new thread is started for new questions, or is it better to the questions in a single thread to avoid cluttering?