Thats maybe the wrong approach in thinking about it.
3 armor would reduce the enemy chance to kill the missile to 25%, yes, thats less base bonus for the missile, but instead of two, on average he needs 4 shots not to kill that missile.
Which while only double as much than 2, is still two more, so for every point of armor, the enemy needs one more shot with classical point defense weapons.
Sure, 1 point is mostly enough anyways, but still, armor doesn't really get inefficient if you apply more.
The missile, however, does.

For example: A size 6 missile has 2 sizes allocated to WH, being 10 (why anyone would have 10 WH is beyond me, but you never know).
Reducing that by one (5) allows for one point of armor.
If you always penetrate the enemies point defense (or at least more that 50% of the time), armor will probably be detrimental to the results.
If the enemy easily beats you back, you won't have an effect.
If, however, the enemy can barely beat back the great majority of your missiles, for easy of example 100%, and doesn't have time to fire again, one point of armor will make 50% of the missiles survive, thus greatly increasing the results.

As a matter of note, Armor is better than ECm at start, but becomes worse once you get some serious ecm tech.
If the enemy only has a low ecm level, say, 4 levels lower than you, which is indeed a technical advantage, you can reduce the enemies hitrate/missile range by roughly would your armor would do versus point defence, while also working versus stronger weapons.
An ECM advantage, and be it just 20%, will work fine versus mesons, Laser, allround Missiles, and might end up denying the enemy an extra salvo of Anti-Missiles.
Armor on Missiles does never improve with tech.

In any case, thanks, this is what I wanted to know. That an armored missile could bear the damages of a small anti-missile. Thanks for the rest anyway about armor 

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KillProb = (HitStrength)/(HitStrength + ArmorLevel).

You might want to search the board on this, though, since I might have the details of the formula wrong.

John

You have the formula correct.  A strength 3 laser hitting a missile with 1 point of armour has a 75% kill chance (1/(1+3)).  A guass cannon on the other hand only has a 50% kill chance (1/(1+1)).

Brian

ok... as with the rest, there is a lot of subtleties...

So about armor, Armor 2 means HTK 2?


slightly related, do I need a fire control aboard the ship that covers the range of the missile fired every time and until it reaches its target? Same for a drone fired? I would like to create a kind of long range probe, with a chassis (frame) either of missile or drone.

1.)  Armour is ablative.  You can vissualize it as having as many rows deep as the level of armour.  The number of columns is based on the size of the ship and you can find it on the ship design screen (F5) just under the armour level.  A 4 point missile warhead will remove 3 boxes of the top row of armour and 1 more from the second row in the middle.  This would mean that if you only have 1 point of armour then it would stop the first 3 points of damage and have one do an internal.  In addition a gap 3 wide would be left in the armour.  The next hit which has any overlap with this would get all of the overlap through causing internals, plus whatever it would normally do.  A 12 point laser does roughly 2 rows of damage that is 6 deep.  If you have 5 points of armour that would leave you with a hole 2 wide in your armour and 2 internal damage.  The next laser hitting 1 column over would get 6 points of damage through on the empty column of armour plus 1 more from the second column it had just blown through, there would also be a gap of 3 columns in the armour now.

2.)  As far as the fire control goes for normal combat your missile fire control needs to see what you are shooting at for the entire run, unless thre is a sensor on the missile.  For drone use however you can fire at a waypoint without having it in sensor range.

Brian

Yes, missiles have one hitpoint.
Armor and ECM can make it more survivable.
Big missiles mostly have an advantage on long range, because they can have that range and still deal damage.
Also, think about Armor penetration. good penetration values are WH strenght 1,4,9,16,25,36,49...

Actually, if you don't put armor or terminal homing etc. on the missile, then doubling the size of the missile by doubling all the components (fuel, engine, agility, warhead) results in a missile with the same performance characteristics (range, speed, to-hit probability) but double the warhead size.  The other thing to think about is that, for fixed mass devoted to launchers, the rate of fire (in terms of number of missiles) goes down like the square of the missile size.  If, for example, you go from size-2 to size-6, then you can fit in 3 times as many launchers and they fire 3 times as fast.  This can be important if you're trying to overwhelm anti-missile fire.  The trade-off is that you have to sand-paper through enemy armor due to small warhead size.

John

thanks...

totally unrelated 

are missiles all worth the same in regard to their resistance to damage? Meaning a big missile can be destroyed by a small size 1 anti missile with a single hit? This would mean that using big missile is risky in the end... better overwhelm the enemy with tons of medium sized missiles??

Are the NPRs able to change systems and expand? I never saw that right now, and it seems weird that such advanced aliens don't move outside their system eventually. Have you seen NPP empires having colonies over several systems?

They do expand.  I have seen colonies all over the place after 10-20 years.

It does.
It's just tedious, you have to create the size one missile first, and go on from there.
And redesign and develop them every time you change the tech.