The main problem is not missile, it is the massive alpha strike authorized by box-launcher.
You can design a beam based deffense, or a layered defense against standard volley, but if your opponent is able to concentrate all his misile in one shot, you must have a technological and numerical superiority.
One example :
A standard missile fregate. It can have let's say 10 missile launchers and 100-150 missile in reserve. Or an estimated 80 box-launchers.
A standard AA fregate can defend against 10 missiles salvoes, but not against a 80 missile salvo.
Keep in mind that after its alpha strike, the missile fregate has to retreat and rearm, which is not good if you have to defend your homeworld. Your missile must have a sensor, if not you will overkill.
One solution to make beam armed ships more usefull will be to limit massive alpha strike.
Several possibilities come to mind:
- Limit box-launcher to fighters or FAC < 1000 tons
- Create a limit of simultaneous misisle firing per tons of launching ship (what effect on a 10.000 tons ship when launching 80 missiles ? Imagine the Iowa firing ten times its current main guns...)
- Limit the number of missiles who can be guided by a fire control, perhaps with a technology.
Without guidance, you can't fire, or you have a big malus.
You can also restrict the need for guidance in the last 5 or 10 seconds, allowing multiple salvoes, but not a big salvo.
I think that box launcher need to be that strong or missiles become so weak nobody would use them. A layered defence will work almost always, even against box launched attacks.
But I would say you have not don your job as an admiral if you allow an enemy to do that box launch in the first place, so proper scouting and make sure you strike first is key. But it if it does happen you need to be prepared to defend against them. You might take some losses, but it is just one attack and after that the opponent will have to retreat and rearm someplace then you chase them down and destroy them before they can rearm.
Box launched attacks is only good if you allow the enemy to do them continuously over and over... you should confidently be able to survive them with a combination of PD, AMM and SHIELDS I know you can as most of my campaigns see lots of Box launchers and reduced sized launchers as that is the ONLY way to effectively penetrate a decent defence at all. It is WAY to easy to build a perfect defence against standard launchers which make missiles completely worthless in that case.
So... no... you should not make box launchers less effective. Steve already neutered them in a good way that it now will take a loooong time to reload them, that in my opinion was the most important part of the equation that actually made them too good.
Using box launchers on standard ships is a BIG risk, especially of you are on the offensive... where are you going to rearm them. You will have to bring along a ton of maintenance ships to do that and that also come at a potential risk as the enemy can destroy them.
Box launchers is meant for system defence, fighters and FAC that can rearm in a hangar. But the mother ship needs to be hidden from enemy sensors as the reload times are really high now.
I do agree that fire controls and electronic warefare could be axpanded such as how many missile a fire-control can control (but that would be even harsher to fire many salvos as one big one).
In reality ships can't fire missiles from the vertical launchers simultanously as there are physical limitation for doing that. I believe that there need to be some certain distance between the cells in order for missiles in adjacent cells to fire at the same time. I think that you might restrict the volume of missiles fired in 5sek could be some function of shp size. So small ships could fire more missiles for its size than larger ships in relation to size. So you can't build a 10000t ship and fill it up with box launchers because ten 1000t FAC would be much more efficient.
... so I would "force" all ASM missile to have at least SOME sensors. So I would be even harsher then regular C# as I probably would force any missile over a certain range to have a minimum of 0.25 sensor equipment of some sort... say 10-50mkm is forced to have 0.25. 50-100mkm 0.5 and so on, just as an example. I did the same with armour in VB6.