Laser range and ship speed

[smoelf (OP)]

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?

[TheDeadlyShoe]

well the first principle is that missile warships are just better   

beams are useful, but you can't get around the twin problems that missiles will always strike first and that beam warships are uhhh very limited if they are slower than the enemy.   These are Tru Facts even in the ideal Beam scenario of a jump point assault.

On the other hand, it is not uncommon for both sides to run out of missiles without destroying the other, and if someone didn't bring beams they have no choice but to withdraw.

I'd advise looking at beam designs put up by other players, like Steve's latest game.  The Brazilian kinetic frigates were uncompromisingly equipped with beam weapons with a strong bias towards point defense, enabling them to destroy the entire missile salvos of another faction.  However, if it wernt for that other factions poor training, the Brazilians would have suffered very heavy casualties from un-interdictable salvos.  (Missiles that can reach their target within 5 seconds of launch cannot be detected before impact, and therefore cannot be fired on by point defense.)

Meanwhile, the Canadian ships are equipped with a primary missile armament and a secondary long-range laser armament, making them flexible and difficult to discount in any battle.

On that note, Task Force Training is really, really, really important for beam warships - you really can't compete in beam combat without it maxed.

Range is King[b/]. Speed lets you choose Range, therefore Speed is King.

[Iranon]

Missiles being better is the conventional wisdom, but I've had excellent results for beam fleets split between many cheap escorts and a few high-performance attackers.
In my last major encounter, more than 99% of 6000 enemy Anti-ship missiles were shot down by beam corvettes that literally cost less than 6000 AMMs, never mind the ships to launch them.
If you can become impervious to realistic missile attacks and outrun/outrange enemy beam war ships, cleanup is a turkey shoot.