But when you factor in large missile swarms that outnumber your number of shots [...] smaller guns can be much more effective.
Consider it analytically, and you can see that this strategy must be suboptimal.
If there are more missiles that you have shots to engage them, then invariably some missiles will get through. This means that you must have
another method of defence lets assume you use shields for the moment) to deal with these leakers. So the question is: Could we get to a better situation if we reduced the beam-defence arrangement and added shields (or vice versa)?
To that end one can compare the
marginal utilities (i.e. the effect of adding a bit of tonnage to either category). If one marginal utility is larger than the other, than it would be sensible to increase the size of that component at the expense of the other.
Beam defenses have a constant marginal utility, as long as there are fewer shots than incoming missiles. Each "extra" shot would still be able to engage a target and be able to hit it with the same chance. (The situation would be different if there were more shots than incoming missiles, because that would leave the possibility that the previous shots had already destroyed all targets thus leaving the extra shots increasingly less likely to be able to contribute anything at all. But you explicitly stated that was not the case we are considering, so the marginal utility of beams is constant). So let's say an extra beam-weapon would avoid X damage to our ships.
Shields also have a constant marginal utility, as long as they are constantly recharging. Every shield allows to regenerate Y hitpoints between enemy salvos (in the case of a prolonged attack), or just offers Z hitpoints to begin with (in case of an aplha strike).
Thus we are comparing two fixed numbers. Very likely one of these is larger than the other.
Which means that we should either use only use shields, or only beam guns in this scenario - but not both. "Mixing" is just not an optimal strategy as long as you have less shots than incoming missiles. The story is very different though when you have more shots than incoming missiles. Efficiency of extra beam defences quickly falls of, and at some points it makes more sense to add extra shields.
Of course there are other viable options besides shields and beam-defences, notably traditional armour and speed, but similar arguments apply.
Is there any point in saving some on the size of a control to reduce the tracking speed and gaining more range or should I just put maximum range and tracking speed on area PD fire controls such as with 12cm lasers. Both range and tracking speed will increase my chances to hit missiles considerably in most cases, but it is always a decision about number of fire controls versus the accuracy I get from them and the number of beams.
As long as the tracking speed of the FC is lower than the missile it is supposed to engage, you are better off by keeping it large.
Suppose the weapons have a weight of X, and the firecontroll has the weight Y, so the whole system has the weight Z=X+Y. With this you can score a hit with probability P, stemming from various modifiers (tracking speed, distance, crew training, ECM...) . Thus the efficiency of your system could be measures as P/Z=P/(X+Y).
Say we reduce the tracking speed of the FC by a factor of 1/2. The weight of the weapon stays constant at X, while the weight of the FC changes to Y/2, so the weight of the overall system changes to X+0.5*Y. The proability to hit also gets halved to 0.5*P. Thus the Efficiency changes to (0.5*P)/(X+0.5*Y)=P/(2X+Y), which is lower than for the larger system.
On my larger cruisers I was going to have three gauss FC and enough cannons to cover them (these are ships of about 32k-38k tones). For them I reasoned that I wanted to have two FC with minimal range and one with double range for better accuracy if I get to fire before the missile strikes and also to tie them against large alpha like strikes.
Also, is there really much idea to spend lots of effort onto the range of your gauss cannons?
The chances of a cannon being able to catch missiles within their range before they strike (another ship, not talking about final fire here) are almost impossible unless you put them on an escort ship that stands at a reasonable distance away from the primary target. Many anti-ship missiles have a speed of between 20k-40k and will pass through the diameter of a 40k gauss equipped escort in more than 50% of the cases in the 5 second rounds. You might be lucky and have your escort driving in the same direction as the missile and increase the chances to fire, but that require allot of effort to attain.
yeah, gaussguns have a pitiful range. Stationing them before as and advance point before the fleet is entirely pointless. They are guranteed to get a shot in final-fire, while there is a less-than-100%-chance that enemy missiles end their 5s turn in range of an advance picket.
On the other hand i believe a lot of this applies to laser defences at well. Its incredibly costly to get lasers to shot at and advance range (16HS firecontroll plus large-diameter turreted laser...), while the hitchances drop down rather steeply. For the same costs it is usually possible to buy multiple shots against incoming missiles closed to the fleet.
to the fleet means tha