Active Sensor Range is important
As is resolution. It doesn't matter if your sensor has a nominal range of 2b km if it can't pick up anything smaller than a Death Star at 100m km. An AMM sensor that isn't R1 is practically useless.
Missiles are almost a must have due to their Sheogorath-insane range, though you can get around this with really fast attack ships if done right
Can't just be fast. You've got to have some combination of high speed, thick armor, effective PD, and large quantities of ships to break through to a decent missile-armed TG. 'course, it helps that most AI isn't actually that good about massing fire in the most effective manner.
Railguns are useful for Point Defense due to their multishot
It's been so long since I used railguns that I don't remember for certain whether this is wrong, but my gut says that it is. As far as I'm aware the fact that railguns are multi-projectile only matters because it explains their damage profile against ship armor. PD fire is one hit = one dead missile, and all of the railgun projectiles are counted as a single attack.
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On an unrelated note, I got back to my budding curbstomped-by-Invaders campaign. One of my survey ships discovered an unexpected loop connecting Alpha Centauri to Proxima Centauri. It also found a trio of Invader cruisers which merrily blasted it with STR-18 ASMs. So yeah,
there's another reason to be glad I went for FACs instead of PDCs as my ramshackle defense force. On the bright side, that means that if there aren't any
plasma torp equipped cruiser classes in the local outbreak, I might survive a defeat with Earth merely heavily depopulated and irradiated, since they have no way to rearm.
A bit later I popped a survey vessel in Sol with my little defense TG. I've got nine of the original trash-tier
Shrike and three of the updated and upgunned
Shrike II-L in my OOB, and those still took 45 seconds to kill it
after they managed to start firing (yeah, they're new enough to not be named, never mind have trained crews).
Shrike class Fast Attack Craft 1000 tons 32 Crew 131 BP TCS 20 TH 120 EM 0
6000 km/s Armour 3-8 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control 1 PPV 3
Annual Failure Rate: 727% IFR: 10.1% Maintenance Capacity 0 MSP
Spare Berths 1
Séguier-Plucknet Aerospace 120 EP Ion Drive (1) Power 120 Fuel Use 54% Armour 0 Exp 10%
Fuel Capacity 20,000 Litres Range 6.7 billion km (12 days at full power)
Somneri & Sauvigni R1.5/C1 Meson Cannon (1) Range 15,000km TS: 6000 km/s Power 3-1 RM 1.5 ROF 15 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Berners Design Bureau Fire Control S01.5 15-6000 (1) Max Range: 30,000 km TS: 6000 km/s 67 33 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Montfort & Perroy Techsystems Stellarator Fusion Reactor Technology PB-1 (1) Total Power Output 3 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Shrike II-L class FAC Leader 1000 tons 52 Crew 201 BP TCS 20 TH 120 EM 0
6000 km/s Armour 1-8 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control 1 PPV 6
Annual Failure Rate: 0% IFR: 0% Maintenance Capacity 126 MSP
Spare Berths 4
Ceauce Drive Systems 120 EP Magneto-plasma Drive (1) Power 120 Fuel Use 130.9% Armour 0 Exp 15%
Fuel Capacity 50,000 Litres Range 6.9 billion km (13 days at full power)
Somneri & Sauvigni R3/C2 Meson Cannon (2) Range 30,000km TS: 6000 km/s Power 3-2 RM 3 ROF 10 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Mandeville Dynamics Fire Control S01 32-4000 (1) Max Range: 64,000 km TS: 4000 km/s 84 69 53 37 22 6 0 0 0 0
Montfort & Perroy Techsystems Stellarator Fusion Reactor Technology PB-1 (2) Total Power Output 6 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Mandeville Dynamics Active Search Sensor MR10-R16 (1) GPS 672 Range 10.1m km Resolution 16
I halted for the night when a new trio of Invader ships transited from Proxima Centauri. Different class than before; they're moving at a bit over 8k km/s and have thermal signatures in excess of 8k as well. It's been so long since I played with Invaders on that I genuinely don't remember how big their cruisers get. With the 600m-odd km AS range they're not JGCs, but they might be the good ol'
ramming ship. If it's the latter I might be able to do something effective, but for now I'm going to sit back as long as I can and hope another round of FACs makes it out of the shipyards.
Full AAR up when it's resolved for good, one way or the other.