I had another idea on this front about how to make it something of a more offensive weapon too. By taking advantage of missiles with sensors I can effectively do away with a needed active sensor which is often a primary give away of your position (assuming you have already taken steps to reduce TH and the like). After seeing in another thread that you can just fire a missile at a way point I figured why not combine it with missile sensors. A quick play about gave me this concept for a bomber.
Hunt class Fighter-bomber 1 000 tons 3 Crew 554.9 BP TCS 20 TH 34.56 EM 0
14400 km/s Armour 1-8 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 1 PPV 11.25
Maint Life 11.9 Years MSP 347 AFR 8% IFR 0.1% 1YR 5 5YR 68 Max Repair 180 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 0.1 months Spare Berths 1
Magazine 75
Powedll Class 3 Fusion Drive (2) Power 144 Fuel Use 106.92% Signature 17.28 Exp 15%
Fuel Capacity 30 000 Litres Range 5.1 billion km (4 days at full power)
Law Foundation Size 15 Box Launcher (5) Missile Size 15 Hangar Reload 112.5 minutes MF Reload 18.7 hours
Hellmann Missile Targeting R-100 (1) Range 172.8m km Resolution 100
Size 15 Spacial AST (4) Speed: 24 600 km/s End: 93.1m Range: 137.5m km WH: 13 Size: 14.967 TH: 90/54/27
Each bomber is armed with 5 of the following missiles in box launchers.
Missile Size: 14.967 MSP (0.74835 HS) Warhead: 13 Armour: 1 Manoeuvre Rating: 11
Laser Heads: 3
Speed: 24600 km/s Engine Endurance: 93 minutes Range: 137.5m km
Active Sensor Strength: 2.4 Sensitivity Modifier: 240%
Resolution: 50 Maximum Range vs 2500 ton object (or larger): 4 070 000 km
ECM Level: 4
Cost Per Missile: 14.14
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 270.6% 3k km/s 88% 5k km/s 54.1% 10k km/s 27.1%
My thinking is that a wing of these can launch from around 1bkm away from a potential target, then make their way instantly off to one side for a couple of 100mkm before then turning to the target. While the missile ranges are not that great the bombers themselves do not give out that large of a TH signature and so should be able to get within maximum firing range without detection. A single missile can then be launched at a way point located near the target vessel, while the missile is in motion the bomber wing then moves away and off to a second firing position, they repeat this for all five missiles before finally moving off in a random pattern before finally coming back to their home carrier. The bombers themselves have enough range to ensure they can enact a nice little dance around half of Sol before needing to come home and so the carrier should be able to always remain hidden.
The second part of the concept is in the missiles and their sensors package, once they reach a way point the missile activates it's own on board sensor and locates a target nearby (4mkm in this case). Since they do not move terribly fast by missile standards and the fact there is only a small salvo size, a careless captain could be fooled into letting their short range and CIWS defences deal with the threat. But then the laser warheads kick in meaning such defences are rendered useless and a vessel is left venting atmosphere unless it has a large amount of armour. Since there was no active sensor ping to locate, then all a ship captain has to look at is a number of small missile salvos coming at them from various directions that also happen to keep putting small holes in their ship.
Now granted unless I was to field a large or multiple wings of these bombers then they are not going to be bringing down battleships and the like all by themselves. But my main thinking is that they will turn smaller forces into a soft target that will likely have lost many of their internal systems, or in the case of larger ships a lucky hit may just cause secondary explosions. But most importantly of all is that with careful flying all of this can be accomplished without the enemy having an idea of my location. Thus my own ships can maintain the initiative in combat.
I am also toying with the idea of putting reduced size launchers instead of box launchers onto a stealth boat equipped with sensor buoys and cloaking abilities. This way it can simply act like a lone wolf in a system being able to both spy on the general forces, and make occasional strikes on high value targets. However I think this will need some work for both very high deployment times, along with large magazines which in turn will mean a bigger ship and so perhaps be limited with much weaker engines to keep the TH down.