My point is that it is a decision of game mechanics how the box launcher works so you can find a "technobabble" justification for limiting it to the speed you want without that much difficulty.
In starfire, where the box launcher comes from, the capacity of a single box launcher is not particularily large and so while it is good for small ships to push their broadside up to the point where it might do something it is otherwise not the best launcher choice. For ships that might not survive to launch twice (WP Assault ships) it would be an option.
In Aurora due to the fact that it allows huge launches of size 1 missiles, that simply can't be stopped by a reasonable level of point defence it breaks the game. But that is a symptom of the fact that a size 1 missile with a weak warhead is still viable for doing damage due to the ablative armour concept. Shock damage is not a factor. I can stop the larger missiles because the salvo density is lower...so the fact the odd one slips through is less of a danger than the fact the smaller missiles will just obliterate the ship targeted exactly as they do now. Why bother changing your set up? I don't see that shock damage does anything to fix the issue.
The cost of a fire control system? In money? I'd think that really doesn't play much of a role does it? I'd think that people will do what gives them the biggest advantage and cost be damned. Not being a min-maxer I have a hard time figuring out what is behind their thinking.
I would not discount the chock damage effect of the next version so easily, we will have to wait and see. I agree it is not enough to fix the ablative armour imbalance.
I would also say that the extra cost of fire-control is quite significant to the cost of missiles launchers and magazines. Since the cost directly translate into higher wealth, mineral and build cost/time it will matter. It will also impact quite severely on your upgrade time/cost when you replace those systems if you need more fire-controls on the ship when you want to replace them.
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I'm not a min-maxer when I play but I like to think in those terms anyway outside of the game. I always role-play and limit myself in many ways. Including forcing myself to launch a fixed number of missiles per salvo and fire-control etc..
Most of my missile ships will be similar to real modern ships with 25% reduction in size and no additional magazines except for AMM missile systems. I usually restrict each salvo to about five missiles fired per fire-control at any one time and I don't allow my ships to fire all missiles in one go either, usually a maximum of 1/5 if they are not fired with box launchers on a smaller platform with smaller missiles. I don't use a hard and fast rule, these are only my own guide lines to make it more interesting.
If we had all of the changes from chock damage, solve size and none ablative armour we would see a more interesting mix of missile types. At least I think we would.
