Nother couple of questions.
1st question is - on missile design, what happened to the 'reactor lifetime' for buoys? The wiki talks about geo survey buoys, which seem pretty cool, but I can't find out how to set their lifetime on the missile design screen.
2nd question is... does this work?
It seems like an 'unstoppable' missile strategy is to make some really fast ships, and then pack them with just a single launcher with a big magazine, an FC and engines. The missiles they fire are 2 stage, with the first stage also going exactly the same speed as the launch ship, which is why they launch ships should be fast (short legged fighters being ideal)
Basically, you make a launching ru', firing off missiles that are all in separate salvos. Now you have the full magazine flying in formation, and they can't be engaged as a group since they were all shot out singly.
I haven't tried this out yet, but this seems like no point defense on a similar-tonnage fleet would be able to stop such a giant salvo.
Example design: Early tech (can be done with initial allocation easily)
Launches 60x ~100m km 4pt damage missiles in 1 hour (closing against a stationary target from 100m km to 85m km)
SToT Bomber class Fast Attack Craft 1 400 tons 36 Crew 198.7 BP TCS 28 TH 112 EM 0
4000 km/s Armour 1-11 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 0 PPV 2.25
Maint Life 0 Years MSP 0 AFR 280% IFR 3.9% 1YR 87 5YR 1309 Max Repair 56 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months Spare Berths 2
Magazine 179
112 EP Nuclear Pulse Engine (1) Power 112 Fuel Use 298.18% Signature 112 Exp 17%
Fuel Capacity 50 000 Litres Range 2.2 billion km (6 days at full power)
Size 3 Missile Launcher (75% Reduction) (1) Missile Size 3 Rate of Fire 60
Missile Fire Control FC94-R80 (1) Range 94.4m km Resolution 80
Missile design
Missile Size: 2.99 MSP (0.1495 HS) Warhead: 0 Armour: 0 Manoeuvre Rating: 10
Speed: 4000 km/s Engine Endurance: 7.3 hours Range: 105.8m km
Cost Per Missile: 1.489
Second Stage: Size 1.99 Anti-ship Missile x1
Second Stage Separation Range: 8 000 000 km
Overall Endurance: 8 hours Overall Range: 115.2m km
Stage 2
Missile Size: 1.99 MSP (0.0995 HS) Warhead: 4 Armour: 0 Manoeuvre Rating: 11
Speed: 12700 km/s Engine Endurance: 12 minutes Range: 9.2m km
Cost Per Missile: 1.339
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 139.7% 3k km/s 44% 5k km/s 27.9% 10k km/s 14%
Materials Required: 1x Tritanium 0.339x Gallicite Fuel x75
Of course, you'd need a carrier and an active scanning ship. PDC's with hangars are also a good idea.