Thanks. i have taken some of the advice- Unfortunately, the only missile fire control I could build with a decent resolution was massive.
it sounds like you're fundamentally limited by tech level, and then there's little you can do without some hard-core research.
The final numbers are not as important as the balance between them, if that makes sense.
You're not making a "mistake" unless these numbers don't line up:
- the range of the missile
- the range of the fire control for the missile
- the range of the active scanner/sensor that detects targets the missile will hit.
"newbie mistakes" usually aren't pitifully short ranged missiles or whatever, it's typically that someone has, say, a missile fire control that can lob missiles 20 million km, but missiles that only have a range of 5 million km, or ships that lack an active sensor and therefore can't see anything at all.
Basically, if 5 million kilometers is all you can do, then it's all you can do. the important thing is whether the ship itself has a missile that goes about that far, and has an active sensor or a support ship with an active sensor that goes at least that far.
This is why some earlier posters were saying it might be a good idea to post the design for the whole ship in the bureau of ship design. it's tough to critique a single weapon system in a vacuum. Posting the whole design will let us say things like "sure this thing has missiles but it also has no armor so its going to be torn to pieces before it does anything" or "your ship has very short range so it's not going to be able to fly out and engage targets without running out of fuel."