microwaves can help a lot if you reach into beam range thoug, being able to start disabling enemies without needing to go through their armor is very good.
Literally zero microwave research in this part of the galaxy, I'm afraid.
An option under consideration is a group of armoured meson fighters or FACs to put onto the carriers in place of the bombers. With Meson Armour Retardation now researched down to 28%, I hope it might have a smaller, but similar effect. They wouldn't need to be fast as they wouldn't stand a chance on their own, just a point-blank firepower supplement to the fleet. Or maybe even engine-less mini-stations?
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Athena Garden (discarded timeline)Athena Garden had its first incarnation:
1. was easy. I soon left the SV behind to work alone.
But I messed up 2. by forging ahead too early with the main Home Fleet which then attracted the welcoming committee immediately. By inadvertently lucky increment choice, they came close enough for a salvo or two to go both ways, so missiles were exchanged: nothing our PD couldn't handle, they caught a few craters in the armour (a few more if I hadn't forgotten to replace ordnance to the new standard in the replacement bombers after Manassas 3). Then, they retreated.
The first part of multi-stage 3. unrolled successfully. As a result, there is a tiny colony on dwarf planet Athena-I with a multi-weapons platform in orbit.
(After this save/backup point, I broke something in my experiment at the other end of the galaxy. Once I had noticed (actually some time later to test the OP question), I had to throw the following events away and go back to backup. But I'll report as far as it touches the challenge:)
TF Watchman remains in the inner system, it includes something between a third and half of the beam-only ships from the Home Fleet. The main fleet was ordered back towards the Sol JP in order to replenish some missiles and then return with the second wave of freighters/tugs.
I thought the mega-blob would now sit happily on Athena IV forever. So, I stationed TF Watchman at Athena II for some robofishing. And after a while, the welcoming committee indeed came out for several waste/reload missile runs – no challenge, usually a dozen missiles per salvo.
(Here, I did something stupid. I still need some getting used to looking at two event logs. I advanced time by a large increment.) As a result, I presume many actually separate salvoes of their missiles struck at once in one increment, only, not the Watchman, but the platform (which also had its active sensors off by negligence). Its ten armour levels took it, but it weakened the plan. So, I sent TF Watchman back to Athena-I. There came another harmless waste/reload missile run.
Here comes the interesting part:
- After wasting another load of long-range missiles, they closed in and started shooting AMMs. PD still fine.
- And finally, they came in right at the planet for a fistfight. (Here I made more increment/looking at the wrong log mistakes and lost five ships before I knew that there was a fight. Those beam ships are nasty.)
Essential partial answer: the welcoming committee at least can be lured into point-blank combat by a fleet that is small enough and too slow to make it happen itself.
I'll make another test (and hopefully fewer increment mistakes) in the "real" timeline A. with slightly more even distribution between Watchman and main fleet to test if it works with a somewhat larger and safer bait and, if I succeed, B. to eventually see if the other thermal signatures might be ships and can be tempted, too.