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[forsaken1111]

Your colonists get spacesuits?

Well I do want them to live for a little while. How else are they supposed to build grand monuments to my greatness?

[Rince Wind]

Colonists are a renewable resource, spacesuits aren't.
And they can build while they are alive, I even throw some infrastructure from orbit. Wouldn't want my loyal troops standing in the acid rain.

[EuchreJack]

Colonists are a renewable resource, spacesuits aren't.
And they can build while they are alive, I even throw some infrastructure from orbit. Wouldn't want my loyal troops standing in the acid rain.

I dump them in infrastructure and ban birth control.

[EuchreJack]

If you pay attention, the doctrine that follows Aurora tech advancement is pretty much spot-on for real-world wet navy history. You start out with slow, inefficient brawlers that have to get up close and slap at each other, then follow a long climb to the point where carrier-based "air"craft ops and extreme-range strikes from missile boats have pretty much totally supplanted direct combat. It was different before the big drive rework, but ever since then you can't even really get stuff moving fast enough to close the gap with a carrier or missile platform before they tear you to shreds, barring a massive tonnage/tech advantage.

Even if there wasn't the 5 light-second hard cap on E/KW range they still would be tools for PD and fringe applications, given that Aurora ships have FTL sensors and can thus reliably avoid anything short of total saturation fire as long as they have a couple seconds to see it coming and shift their vector.

But yeah. The big blob of armor, guns, and drives used to be viable against equal TL and tonnage of carrier/missile boats, but not any more, I think. Slow, shitty new drives make it difficult to close. Shock damage makes super-thick armoring less effective. Shields are still eh, but even more so now that fuel is more precious (again thanks to the drive rework).

So, based on what you're saying, the only way to fight is to either out-range the enemy with missiles or overload the targeting with fighters.  Basically throwing away minerals to win space battles.  Yikes, makes me go back to the "why don't I just try a different system" approach to alien empires.

I haven't fiddled around with fighter or missile ship design lately, but it used to be possible to create both fairly early on.

[Flying Dice]

In the same hypothetical where both sides have equal tech and tonnage? Yeah, under those conditions the victory would probably go to whichever force was better-optimized for missile combat.

Do take all of that with a grain of salt, though, because that situation is actually fairly rare in practice. Most of the time tech and tonnage won't be equal, so you might end up in a situation where your fighters can't deploy, return, rearm, and redeploy enough to kill more advanced ships closing with your carriers, or where your missile ships are forced to retreat because they can't break through the enemy PD reliably.

Also worth noting that a lot of this orients around the idea of fighting against another human player who is aware of all this meta-stuff. Against NPRs and the three threats you can get away with just about anything, since they don't optimize intensely.

I've probably argued this point before, but in my experience hyper-optimizing everything gets pretty old after a while. It's much more fun, IMO, to throw together ships that seem fun and look like they were actually designed by committee and built by the lowest bidder. Beyond real basic shit like square warheads and matching jump drives to ship tonnage, anyways.

You can still make early-ish fighters and missiles, but the drive rework hit both hard (particularly fighters, IMO), so they're a lot less dangerous in the TL1-3 range. That's where E/KWs can really shine, since everything is already fat and slow & missiles are both markedly less effective and more dangerous to rely on (both because fewer are generally carried and because magazines are more likely to pop when hit).

[Alastar]

The most efficient approach against typical AI opponents I can think of is lots of cheap point defence (base-tech railguns, commercial engines... may be cheaper to build than to shoot down with missiles even if the PD is less than effective) and a few no-expenses-spared beam attackers (usually 15cm lasers. Those work nicely at extreme range and double as efficient area defence). Weather the missile storm, then dictate the range and hopefully pick them off unopposed... safe, cheap, unexciting victories.

But those bottom-of-the-barrel PD ships wouldn't work well against laser warheads or synchronised volleys of 1-missile salvos. Those fast long-ranged attackers would struggle against even faster ships with microwaves. Defeating a known opponent is quite easy.

There are many other approaches I find halfway practical:
Tiny missile fighters that hope to sneak in undetected and launch a single missile.
Fast missile fighters matching speed with their missiles, for dozens of simultaneous salvos.
Missile pods hauled by commercial tugboats (who needs glorious warships, delivery trucks and ordnance will do).
Heavy slow-firing beam artillery with the hope of ending a fight instantly (mostly good for nebulae or JP defence).
Ultra-fast beam interceptors that can fly alongside slower missiles and destroy a huge number of them... or protect our own.
Ridiculously bulky ships consisting mostly of engines that cost 5BP and have 25HTK... good luck, missile boys.

And sometimes... reasonable-looking but not ruthlessly optimised warships are more fun. Maybe involving some roleplay about demands made by politicians that do not align with known military realities, that happened often enough in real life.

[EuchreJack]

I think it is also important to consider that both missiles and swarms of fighters demand a large expenditure of resources.

[Flying Dice]

Not relative to the cost of sending in E/KW ships to get shot up in every engagement. You'll rarely/never lose missile fighters, and the cost of a few salvos of missiles and/or flights of beam fighters is trivial compared to losing even one or two mid-weight combatants.

You can churn fighters and missiles out by the thousands for as long as you have resources. Lost ships take more time, resources, and crew to replace. And then on top of that you have to pull them back for repairs (more cost in time and resources) every time they take meaningful damage without being destroyed.

[coleslaw35]

Just curious, but why would one put missile launchers onto fighters that are then carried in a carrier rather than just having a missile ship?

Is it mostly because of what Flying Dice states?

You'll rarely/never lose missile fighters, and the cost of a few salvos of missiles and/or flights of beam fighters is trivial compared to losing even one or two mid-weight combatants.

You can churn fighters and missiles out by the thousands for as long as you have resources. Lost ships take more time, resources, and crew to replace. And then on top of that you have to pull them back for repairs (more cost in time and resources) every time they take meaningful damage without being destroyed.

[Azated]

A fighter is pretty much always faster and cheaper than a full sized missile frigate/cruiser/whatever. You can also have a much better firepower to weight ratio and a significant alpha strike advantage, since you don't need individual sensors on the fighters themselves and you need very little fuel.

Pack a bunch of small fighters with cheaper box launchers on a carrier group with all the necessary sensors and you can obliterate anything in the first volley, and your main ship won't need weapons of its own.

It's a different story in longer battles or against an enemy with significant point defense, but it's a good strategy nontheless.

[Flying Dice]

Additionally, because fighters can safely close to within 15-20 million kilometers without being shot, you can shift a bunch of tonnage from fuel to warhead strength. Usually my fighter missiles are the same size as my standard ASMs (for emergency interchangeability) but have a WH anywhere from two to four times as large (depending on what I move around and my TL at the time).

A PDF full of missile fighters and magazine space paired with a system-wide sensor PDF is also a fairly cheap way to defend a colony.

[RAM]

because fighters can safely close to within 15-20 million kilometers without being shot, you can shift a bunch of tonnage from fuel to warhead strength.

Can you do the same thing with multi-stage missiles?

[Sirus]

I believe that those missiles would be
A) massive

and

B) single use

A single fighter can launch dozens of salvos in its life as long as it stays away from the enemy. A multi-stage missile can launch just once.

[Mini]

Fighter can be re-targeted far more easily as well.

[forsaken1111]

If you're going to make a missile with that range, why bother with multi-staging? Just make a missile with the range you intend. Is it somehow more efficient?