This is getting a bit complex to respond to.
Overkill and re-targeting matter for box launchers more than for other launchers because box launchers are "one & done" type of weapon. Unless you're using carriers of course.
When you don't know the details of enemy defences - AMM / PD / shields / armour - you can't estimate how many missiles are needed to wipe them out. With "big" launchers, you can test things out, knowing that your "alpha strike" capability isn't degraded. With box launchers, if you do the same, you're reducing the size of the salvo you can throw out. So, with box launchers you're far more committed since you can't reload them during the battle. Unless you're certain of enemy capabilities, it's better to throw all your missiles at the enemy as a big alpha strike rather than parcel them out.
Which means that box launcher salvoes are more likely to be wasted due to overkill.
I agree that this is a factor, but it will diminish as you get more intel. The process of incrementally determining the necessary size of a missile strike over the course of a war doesn't change whether you are using box launchers or larger launchers.
And at each engagement, the extra launchers gives you the opportunity to make complete kills that you wouldn't otherwise be able to make.
Alpha strike only matters vs. beam PD. Against AMMs total magazine depth is more important than alpha strike (assuming good sensor coverage).
I disagree.
If you fire a single massed volley, the missiles pass through the AMM interception window once.
The target can only fire AMMs for roughly (AMM range / (Missile speed - Target speed)).
If the missiles come in multiple smaller volleys then the duration is extended by roughly (number of volleys * reload time).
Peer and near-peer adversaries with proper sensor coverage can empty their AMM magazines inside that window. Even if they have to compromise a bit on their launcher:magazine ratio to do it, they still get greater weight of fire per incoming missile than if you use standard cycle launchers.
Spitballing a little here: AMMs with a range of 1.5m km, fleet speed 5k km/s, ASM speed 35k km/s.
This gives roughly an 50 second engagement window for the AMMs. That's 10 5 second game increments.
Does that seem reasonable?
Using your previous example, 300 MSP of missiles with 15 HS of magazine and 15 HS of launcher, if you launch 15 MSP every 10s for 20 volleys, you increase the engagement time by about 200 seconds. This is 4 times longer than the 50 second window against a single volley. I would also say that 10s seems quick for ASMs so it could be much longer.
Does that seem reasonable?
Switching to AMMs, to launch 300 MSP of AMMs in 10 increments, you need to fire 30 MSP per increment, but you only have enough launchers for 15 MSP. (I note again that 300 MSP total seems high, but reducing it to 250 MSP doesn't make the situation dramatically different).
So based on your example (which may not be representative of your actual designs) I'm not sure that your assumption about emptying AMM magazines against a single wave is valid, unless you specifically design it with that in mind.
Do you have any designs to share? Having thought about it, I don't think I've designed any AMM ships in C#.
Against shields DPS is more important than either.
I disagree. If you let the target survive the first strike then you give them time to recharge some or all of their shields, which means you must spend warhead strength bringing them down again. This is sub-optimal.
A missile strike should account for shield strength when calculating volley size. The objective is to reduce the shields to 0 _and_ do enough damage to the hull to destroy the target or render it mission killed.
If you are bringing that kind of superior firepower to the fight, then it almost doesn't matter what your ship designs are. Against a properly layered anti-missile defense, being able to mission-kill the entire enemy fleet with missiles means you've arranged for a massive imbalance in technology or tonnage. If you consistently pull off that kind of engagements, good on you for your strategic and operational planning, but any half-decent missile boat design will work for it.
This is not about superior firepower, this is about target selection with the aim of doing as much permanent damage as possible. If there are multiple ships in the target fleet, you need to judge how many you can destroy with your available missiles. If you can't destroy all the targets (which in an _even_ fight seems likely) then you might lose all your ships in the process, but by removing ships from the enemy fleet you put yourself in a better position for the next engagement. If you only inflict armour damage on the enemy fleet, they then have the option of continuing, or returning (after repairs) with reinforcements.
Against an enemy that can take 10 MSP worth of your missiles on his beam PD + shields per launch cycle, yes, box launchers mean you put 190 MSP on target vs. 100 MSP for magazine launchers. But against an enemy that has sufficient magazine depth and sensor coverage to kill 150 MSP with AMMs, you get 50 MSP on target with box launchers and 150 on target with magazine launchers.
If I've understood your scenario correctly (and it's late so forgive me if I missed something), if you fire 15 MSP per volley at a target which can destroy 10 MSP with beam PD, the target only needs to use AMMs to destroy 5 MSP per volley.
After 20 volleys the target has destroyed 100 MSP with AMMs and 200 with beam PD, taking no damage. It still has AMMs to counter another 50 MSP of missiles.
In this example, the enemy picked either beam PD or AMMs, not both. If they mix and match 50:50 by tonnage but retain the same total capability, the box launchers put 120 MSP on target and the magazine launchers put 125 MSP on target.
If you double the amount of defensive hull space available, then box launchers perform better against the 50:50 tonnage split configuration. But if you double the amount of defensive hull space, there are configurations that would hard counter any combination of box and magazine launchers from the attacker (in fact any configuration between 100 % AMMs and about 2:1 AMM:beamPD will render the defender invulnerable in that scenario).
In your example you're relying on the 50% more MSP available to the standard launchers vs box launchers, which I've noted seems more favourable to standard launchers than I think is reasonable.
It also relies on the target being able to fire all AMMs against a single wave of ASMs which I don't think is reasonably supported given your initial example.
I'm not really sure what to make of your example where you double the defensive capability without similarly increasing the offensive capability.
This does show that box launchers have a role as a way to impose costs on superior adversaries - they can be the difference between being hard countered by enemy defenses or being able to gradually attrition them (if you have sufficiently superior speed and strategic depth that you can run away between engagements to reload). They are also great for picket forces, whose job is to detect baddies and impose some costs on them for advancing while you scramble an actual battle fleet, not to actually kill them. But those are strategic and operational considerations.
Now you're making my arguments for me.
Imposing costs and avoiding being hard countered is part of the point I've been trying to make. And using box launchers is the best way to do this.
To expand a little, being able to remove 1 or more enemy ship from their invasion fleet per battle, even if you lose in the process, means you can eventually stalemate them, if you have enough strategic depth to do so. It won't work if you run out of missiles, space, or launch platforms.
The AMM defenses of a fleet (Beam and missile) will on average kill X missiles from a salvo based on the number of shots and the chance to kill. This number will be the same for one large salvo or 20 small salvo's (With AMM's there may be a decrease in X if your multiple salvo's are both in range to be engaged at the same time, this almost never happens in my experience ).
So if you fire 30 salvo's of missiles you will lose 30X of them without hits, if yoy fire the equivlant of 20 salvos of missiles in 1 salvo you will lose X. A single large salvo is always better at penetrating defenses. You can easily waste missiles overkilling targets but this is often less than you would have lost by letting the enemy defenses get multiple go's at your missiles.
In both cases if X is larger than your salvo then there was no point firing your missiles. With reloadable launchers you discover that before firing multiple salvo's but X can be lower.
I cannot think of a case except were the enemy has no anti-missile defenses were multiple salvo's will not lose more missiles to the defenses than one one salvo would using identical missiles.
Example
Enemy fleet with 2 laser escorts with 20 10cm lasers with a 60 % intercept chance and 2 AMM escorts which will get to fire 5 salvo's of 20 missiles with a 50% kill chance against each of your salvos this fleet will expect to shoot down at least 72 missiles , So if you fire 20 salvo's of 60 missiles at them you get 0 hits, one salvo of 800 missiles you will get about 700 hits. One of those two methods was a complete waste of missiles
I'll add that with reloadable launchers, you are less likely to discover how big X is, because your salvo size is smaller. If the enemy shoots down all the missiles in your salvo, your only intel is that X is bigger than that salvo, not how much bigger. If your salvo is twice as big (or 6.6 times as big for standard launchers) then you have a better chance of overcoming X, even though you risk wasting missiles on overkill.
(People are replying while I'm still in the middle of my reply so I'll leave things here)
