Posted by: Jorgen_CAB
« on: May 17, 2020, 07:21:52 PM »I guess that explains your low opinion of missiles.
No, my low opinion of missiles comes from how incredibly boring I find the paradigm of "see the enemy first, fire a huge swarm of missiles, watch the enemy blow up, retreat & repeat as necessary" to be.
And also from the complete lack of Aurora-style missile mechanics in the kinds of fiction (and history) I want to roleplay. Massive missile swarsm and rank upon rank of massed point defense guns are fine in BattleStar Galactica, but not in Star Wars or Black Fleet or Battle Beyond the Stars or Firefly/Serenity or Age of Sail or Space:1889 or Spelljammer. Sometimes I want no missiles, and sometimes I want great war "torpedoes in the water!"
But then again you tell the story you want to tell in the game... NPR rarely use mass launched box launched missile swarms from huge fleets anyway so from that point if view it does not really matter.
Also... using glasshammer fleets certainly works against NPRs but is VERY dangerous against a more dynamic smart enemy as such a fleet could be destroyed with but a fraction of their strength if their missiles happen to be slower or less range. So when you see people who bring these kinds of weapons you need to take it for what it is... pure theory in a very limited set of environments. You can even build a very good beam fleet to defeat that if you anticipate it for some reason... but it will not happen against the NPR anyway. If you are playing several factions yourself then you also guide what doctrines are used in the game too.
You are the storyteller of your game so you decide how it will be played.
people can show what is their preferred play-style in their campaigns. Personally I like to balance the fleets and if I play multiple factions try out a few different doctrines based on their needs, Intel and capabilities. Missiles for example is hugely expensive... even in peace you need to constantly produce missiles and replace them and you need a healthy ordnance industry and logistics organisation ready to provide if there is a need for it. In general I have found that missiles are best for space domination when you can outnumber the enemy in firepower in some form. But planets and jump point are far easier to take and hold using powerful beam fleets because a point in space can't escape and missiles are almost useless from a resource perspective as anti-missile defences always are cheaper than offensive missiles by quite the margin.