Haha, I am doing a no-missile game right now as well (or I was, before the infinite error messages I posted in the bug thread killed my game. I'm not sure what I'll do now).

My rational was that after a devastating World War III that humanity barely survived (happening at the opening of the Trans-Newtonian period) All nuclear weapons have been banned and scrapped, and military vessels can not arm missiles, since they can attack inhabited planets. (Meson weapons are something known as a theoretical possibility among the scientific community, but since they have never been implemented outside of a lab or fired in anger there was no political will to ban them. Even if they did exist they probably wouldn't have been banned since they aren't exactly able to wipe out cities and kill millions at a time.

At the start of the game all previous military vessels had been scrapped, the only military force left was the new four large orbital point defense bases constructed with starting laser tech in order to defend any populations against space or land fired missiles that had survived the purge. (I had put all of the military portion of my starting tech into missiles, to fit with the back story, each 8000 ton Shield PDB would struggle to keep up with a missile attack from a single 5000 ton "Archer"--the ship I designed at the beginning of the game to represent the best of the last-generation missile ships that was scrapped).

An amusing sidenote is that 25 years into my game my two Energy Weapons scientists had died, leaving me with 4 or 5 really nice Missile/Kinetic scientists.

Lol well, tell you one thing - my first combat did NOT go well. 

Its not that my ships were designed poorly, as they did last a while, its that 2 things:

We were only slightly faster than our enemy, so we couldn't catch up to him fast enough. 

And the big one: Our turrets were NOT meant for 40k km/s missiles.    They were meant for 1/4th of that. 

--

Found out the enemy (Who is either you-know-what, or just an advanced NPR who is impossible to communicate with) is based on a venus-like planet that has too high of gravity for human life.   Named it Valaksjalf, and I shall eventually colonize it with a group of genetically modified humans known as the Aesir! Once I get around to conquering it, of course.

Well, it can certainly work. I look forward to hearing about your experiences with them. 

The thing about those CIWS is that they can only target missiles fired against the ship mounting them, so they're essentially wasted space most of the time in a fleet. With more fire controls and turrets you'll actually have better overall defense.

The thing I discovered very quickly was that if you're building a fleet don't use any CIWS. You want gauss cannons with lots of fire controls. I lost a couple ships to missiles because even though I had the accuracy and number of shots to destroy every oncoming missile, I didn't have the fire controls to target more than a few of the salvos at once. So when 20 salvos came in I had loads of wasted shots and most of them got through.

On the other hand I have several big 100kt battleships designed for solo work, and they use CIWS exclusively since there's no point using normal gauss if you don't have multiple ships supporting each other on PD.

Hope that made sense, it's 6am.  

Well, I'm aiming for mainly using gauss cannons for my primary weapon, especially since I have a kinetics weapon researcher with 40% bonus that can use 40 labs at a time (which I have).   

All of these are rather short range too, I don't expect to fight anyone more than 2-3 systems from any maintenance/fuel stations for now.  I'm playing it nice and slow.

I'm doing exactly this in my current game, it's great.   =D

Can you show me a few ship designs? I want to see if I'm designing my ships so that they'll survive  I'll post my three current designs:

First ship is the main assault ship, meant to simply shoot everything at its target.   Second ship is the escort and helps protect the other destroyers.  Third ship is the leader, and has a set of good sensors.   Fourth ship isn't designed yet, but will be a combat troop transport.

Sif class Destroyer    3,000 tons     189 Crew     459.  2 BP      TCS 60  TH 180  EM 0
3000 km/s     Armour 3-18     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 12
Maint Life 2.  51 Years     MSP 96    AFR 72%    IFR 1%    1YR 21    5YR 317    Max Repair 48 MSP

Military Ion Engine E8 (3)    Power 60    Fuel Use 80%    Signature 60    Armour 0    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 150,000 Litres    Range 112.  5 billion km   (434 days at full power)

Gauss Cannon R3-33 (3x4)    Range 30,000km     TS: 4000 km/s     Accuracy Modifier 33%     RM 3    ROF 5        1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Gauss Cannon R3-100 (1x4)    Range 30,000km     TS: 4000 km/s     Accuracy Modifier 100%     RM 3    ROF 5        1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
CIWS-160 (2x8)    Range 1000 km     TS: 16000 km/s     ROF 5       Base 50% To Hit
Fire Control S02 48-4000 H70 (1)    Max Range: 96,000 km   TS: 4000 km/s     90 79 69 58 48 38 27 17 6 0

Active Search Sensor MR1-R1 (70%) (1)     GPS 24     Range 1.  9m km    Resolution 1

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

Uller class Destroyer Escort    3,000 tons     190 Crew     485.  4 BP      TCS 60  TH 180  EM 0
3000 km/s     Armour 4-18     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 15
Maint Life 2.  98 Years     MSP 101    AFR 72%    IFR 1%    1YR 17    5YR 255    Max Repair 41 MSP

Military Ion Engine E8 (3)    Power 60    Fuel Use 80%    Signature 60    Armour 0    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 150,000 Litres    Range 112.  5 billion km   (434 days at full power)

Single Gauss Cannon R3-33 Turret (6x4)    Range 30,000km     TS: 10000 km/s     Power 0-0     RM 3    ROF 5        1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
CIWS-160 (1x8)    Range 1000 km     TS: 16000 km/s     ROF 5       Base 50% To Hit
Fire Control S02 24-8000 H70 (2)    Max Range: 48,000 km   TS: 8000 km/s     79 58 38 17 0 0 0 0 0 0

Active Search Sensor MR1-R1 (70%) (1)     GPS 24     Range 1.  9m km    Resolution 1

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

Odur class Destroyer Leader    3,000 tons     166 Crew     464.  2 BP      TCS 60  TH 180  EM 0
3000 km/s     Armour 6-18     Shields 0-0     Sensors 16/16/0/0     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 0
Maint Life 2.  4 Years     MSP 97    AFR 72%    IFR 1%    1YR 23    5YR 346    Max Repair 75 MSP

Military Ion Engine E8 (3)    Power 60    Fuel Use 80%    Signature 60    Armour 0    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 150,000 Litres    Range 112.  5 billion km   (434 days at full power)

CIWS-160 (2x8)    Range 1000 km     TS: 16000 km/s     ROF 5       Base 50% To Hit
Active Search Sensor MR4-R1 (70%) (1)     GPS 60     Range 4.  8m km    Resolution 1
Thermal Sensor TH2-16 (1)     Sensitivity 16     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  16m km
EM Detection Sensor EM2-16 (70%) (1)     Sensitivity 16     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  16m km

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes