4000 missiles?!

[Erik L]

Hmm. If they don't even attempt to intercept your missiles, maybe fool them into expending their AMM against a large slow heavy missile. Scale a missile to be interceptable by them, load it up with armor and fire it. That should soak up their AMMs enough to give you a break in the missile curtain to get ships through.

[Narmio]

It sounds like you could probably design a fighter against which their missiles have an effectively 0% hit chance.  Build a bunch of crazyfast decoy fighters with 2-3 armour and no weapons, and just park them in orbit around their planet until they're out.  If the hit chance is low enough you may not even have to proceed at 5 second intervals.

[Aloriel (OP)]

That's crazy brilliant. Seriously. Especially since I have a carrier as the flag ship of the task force. The catch is trying to figure out how ineffectual their missiles are. I may have to think about that one for a while, and do some in game research.

[MarcAFK]

Maybe you should just use your current fighters as decoys, they're almost 4 times the AMM's speed and you can't really reload them because of the bug you're experiencing.

[Aloriel (OP)]

I've already designed and built one of these:

Code: [Select]

ADC Leucotis class Decoy    1,000 tons     4 Crew     192.8 BP      TCS 20  TH 360  EM 0
18000 km/s     Armour 1-8     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 0
Maint Life 1.37 Years     MSP 12    AFR 80%    IFR 1.1%    1YR 7    5YR 103    Max Repair 10 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 0.1 months    Spare Berths 6    

20 EP Magneto-plasma Drive (18)    Power 20    Fuel Use 69.18%    Signature 20    Exp 12%
Fuel Capacity 5,000 Litres    Range 1.3 billion km   (20 hours at full power)
I've also SM'ed my fighters to have just one 25% size reduction missile launcher instead of the box launchers. They can reload those. So, they're useful again, even if they only have 1 launcher instead of 2.

EDIT:
An additional factor is that my line ships are now MUCH better designs. This war has taught me a number of lessons, and I have compensated for those with refits of my entire fleet (although the carrier won't get the upgrade before I go back in).

My Diadem cruisers should be able to eliminate the threat completely from 150 million km away (well outside their range). They have enough missiles for 70+ salvos of 10 missiles each. If they run out of missiles, I have a collier to reload them periodically. It carries a complete reload for 1 cruiser. I'll also have the missiles on the carrier, and all the bombers (which can now fire again).

This should, ideally, be enough to take out all of their launchers.

[MarcAFK]

Of course once your missiles get into the PDC's sensor range you'll be stuck with 5 second ticks till they land, On the bright side the detection range of your missiles will be well short of the range your ships would be detected at, which significantly reduces the time you'll spend in 5 second tick purgatory.
This is the main reason why i favor long range missile combat myself.

[Narmio]

One of the things that I like to do with mid-game missile combat is design a series of "First strike" missiles with absurdly long range and onboard sensors. I make them to fit my normal missile platforms, but give them a massive range that far exceeds my MFCs, instead firing them at a waypoint en mass and hoping they hit something valuable -- usually with a small scout parked nearby enough to watch the damage. 

I usually like up-close missile combat, but this way I can drop a ridiculous number of warheads on particularly irritating aliens from the other side of a system and not have to significantly redesign my fleets.