This is a reply to Alan's wall of comments
I agree detection is way too simple. I'm toying with both decreasing hull signature by an amount and decreasing sensor resolution.
I did add a bit on movement. Each engine provides innate compensation up to its Thrust, i.e. 4 Thrust = 4 Compensation without additional IC. IC adds to the maximum speed a ship may go in one turn. 4 Thrust + 8 IC = max speed 12. Of course it would take 3 turns to get to that speed.
Engines will now require an additional 100 tons per Thrust.
A Basic Nuke Torch requires a base 350 tons. If it is to provide 4 Thrust, it requires an additional 400 tons for 750 tons total. It consumes 60 power per 1000 tons of ship per Thrust. So your 1500 ton ship requires 120 x 4 or 480 power.
An Improved Plasma Torch requires a base of 300 tons. 4 Thrust moves that to 700 tons. It consumes 24 power per 1000 tons per Thrust. The 1500 ton ship requires 48 x 4 or 192 power.
Looking at the power plants, you've got a Primitive Fission 20 tons, 20 power. So for the 480 power you need 24 plants at 480 tons. This gives your ship 270 tons for weapons/armor/shields/additional power.
The Improved AM plant generates 180 power for 14 tons. Your advanced ship requires 2 plants at 28 tons, leaving 772 tons for extras.
Regarding the missile launchers. Base launchers are now 200 tons, Dual are 350, Rocket Pods are 500.
Missile signatures won't change (for now). Missiles should be hard to lock on to. And hit. A 4cp Basic missile with a Nuke Torch drive =60m. With Basic sensors, the formula would be (60
signature- 40
resolution +40
acquisition) for a net of 60% lock. With a Class 5 sensor, the formula would be 60-5+80 for 135% lock.
ECM has been modified slightly to also reduce the to hit chances of indirect fire weapons including missiles. So a ship with 4th Gen ECM reduces its Signature by 40m, and the To-Hit of seeking weapons by 25%. I'm also toying with the idea of the Stealth generation of the ECM be directly coupled to the reduced resolution of the Sensors. Right now Stealth is a blanket 3x reduction in resolution. With the changes I have in mind, lower tech ECM in stealth mode degrades resolution more than 3x, while higher tech ECM degrades it less (but not below 2x).
Now on to some numbers I've been crunching. A 15,000 ton hull currently has a Signature of 750...
Thought derail. There are technologies that reduce the cost of hull on a per ton basis. I'm thinking of utilizing that same tech line to reduce the hull signature. The current baseline would remain Hull/20. There are 9 levels of Hull cost tech. I'm flipping between each level improving that by 3 or 4. So at top end hull tech you have a cost of 1MCr/ton and Signature is Hull/44 or Hull/52. This puts a 1500 ton hull at 75m at the low end of the tech, and either 34m or 29m at the high end. Using Class 1 sensors, you've got 75m - 40 +40 for 75% lock, to 29m -5+80 for 104% lock. Of course the low end sensor against the high-end hull will result in 29-34% lock chance.
One thing about the PD weapons. They have a +10 to hit, not lock on missiles. Lock on only affects to hits in the fact that no lock = no possible chance to hit. So your basic sensors have 60% lock. Lasers are Class VI, so at max PD range, they have a 68% chance to hit a missile. Point Blank PD would have an 85% chance to hit a missile (Class VI 0 range = 95 - 10 for PB PD). So 6 missile launchers vs 10 PD turrets, I'd say you've got fairly decent odds of stopping the salvo.
Maybe I also just need to declare that a roll of 95+ is a failure on target locks.