So whats a good ASM for earlyish game?
So, I actually went and took a look at the missiles I've made. At ion drive level tech, I've got a size 4 that travels 112m km at 21,000 km/s, delivering a strength 4 WH and a size 12 PDC-launched missile with a 94m km range that travels at 27,000 km/s and carries a strength 16 WH. Yours isn't actually that slow relatively, and I've invested pretty heavily into the engine size/power modifier techs and the other missile techs. The main thing on yours is the short range. Precursors will launch missiles from hundreds of millions of kilometers away, so you should try to match that.
This is pretty standard. I tend to stick with strength-4 WH for a damned long time, focusing on improving chance to-hit, range, and speed. Once I've got around 200m km range with at least 50% CTH against targets moving at 10k km/s, I start increasing the MSP allocation to WH.
Also, the objectively best approach to missile warfare is smaller numbers of large volleys of missiles, thanks to the way point defense works. Basically, PD set to final defensive fire will attack each volley during the final 5-second tick before it impacts; the more missiles you have in each volley, the more will get through.
For example, assume that you are attacking an enemy ship capable of shooting down an average of 8 of your ASMs from each volley. If you fire volleys of 6 ASMs every thirty seconds, on average you will get no hits minute of firing. If you fire volleys of 12 ASMs every sixty seconds, you will average 4 hits per minute of firing. If you fire volleys of 24 ASMs every two minutes, you will average 8 hits per minute of firing.
Of course, there's room for variation within that. I typically break into four distinctive styles of ASM: Standard WH-4 ones with a range of 120-250m km; fighter missiles with large warheads, comparable speed, and short (~25m km) range, designed to be launched from fighters (which can get close to enemies without being detected); long range missiles (WH-4, similar speed, and a range of 800m km or more). These pay for their range with increased size, and I use them sparingly, but they're good for reaching out and touching things you don't want to get close to; and finally cluster missiles, which are basically long-range drones that launch swarms of small missiles within a shorter range, comparable to fighter missiles. These are basically novelty weapons, but they're fun to play with and are still effective at breaking through PD.
How strong are Star Swarm ships?
They take only a few hits to kill and have low firepower individually, but they're fast, hard to detect (with early technology) and numerous.
That's just the Soldiers, of course...
That said, Queens are actually easy to deal with if you know the trick to them and there aren't any NPRs feeding them streams of ships.