Regardless of what happens, in this thread you can really see the rift between "the poeple who like missiles and would make them better" and "the people who like beams and would make them better"
Jokes aside. I still do think that missiles are in a much better position that beams. Inordinately so, especially against some enemies. PDCs are particularly unbalanced with missiles. Missiles PDCs are cheap, don't require much tech, use no maintenace currently, are fast to build. And can provide a huge amount of firepower.
Say, I can make a pretty cheap early defense based on missile PDCs against
invaders. And it will work, if I shoot enough missiles at them to surpass their PD and have some basic engine speed technology. In my experience, I simply cannot achieve the same with beam weapons. If I want to use beam weapons against
invaders, I really need a LOT of tech research, and espensive stations/ships. PDCs with fighters are a possibility, but still much lower efficiency than missile PDCs.
Since tech research is costly and takes time, if I have to choose between research for missiles and research for beams, I won't reasonably go for beams if I know
invaders can show up.
This could be mitigated by making planet based missile PDCs less efficient, and all in a realistic way. Since escaping gravity is a costly thing, planet-based missiles could require a 2-stage design, in which the first stage is just something to escape gravity, and the second stage is the normal TN missile. This would make sense and would make planet-based missile PDCs less unbalanced.
3) I like the idea of removing the link between missile size and reload time, or at least significantly reducing the impact, as this will negate some of the advantages of smaller missiles.
This never made sense to me, so I will look forward to seeing it gone. If the launcher is big, and the missile is big, the loading mechanism will be equally big and thus the reload speed will be the same. There's no real reason for small missiles to reload faster, it's all fully automated. You don't have cabin boys manually carrying ordnance.
4) Also like the idea of some type of missile frame that would favour larger missiles (more frame overhead for smaller missiles), although this might impact the effectiveness of AMMs in the anti-missile mode. I guess one option would be to allow fractional missile launcher sizes so you could use missiles of size 1.2 for example.
Small missiles should have more overhead, so I'm in favour of this. Miniaturization does have a cost.
5) I am happy to remove the distinction in the power curve between missiles and normal engines. From a consistency POV, there really is no reason why a missile engine could be boosted more than a normal engine. However, I will probably just allow normal engines to be boosted more, rather than reducing missile boost. If missiles are reduced in speed too much, they become too easy for point defence to destroy (some may argue that is already too easy).
I am ok with this but... I think there's a problem with the fuel model because higher speed engines for ships won't be usable if range becomes too short. Specifically to solve this, I think that bigger engines should have a more pronounced reduction in fuel consumption. Right now the difference in fuel usage between a size 1 and size 50 engine is pretty low. I think it would make sense to increase the fuel consumption reduction. The tradeoff is ALREADY there, because it's so much more risky to use fewer, bigger engines.
The simplest change is to base the sensor range on the area (or volume) covered rather than the linear range. In essence, divide the result of the above calculation by the area or volume. This will shorten ranges considerably and is much more realistic. This would require some increase in base sensor strength though or the ranges would be reduced dramatically. I will run some numbers and post on this separately.
Yes please, post this in a different thread with some numerical example. It will be a long and complicated discussion