I decided to give a regular conventional start a go and try using nothing but meson weaponry. No missiles.
My first alien encounter happened one jump from Sol, 9 ships of 9050 tons flying nearly 4000 m/s melted my poor survey vessel. And a jumpgate was there leading back to Earth. Thankfully the enemy ships didn't decide to go through looking around because it was right by Earth.
So I spent a bit of time finishing up my FAC and ended up with this design:
Essex class Fast Attack Craft 1,000 tons 44 Crew 179 BP TCS 20 TH 120 EM 0
6000 km/s Armour 4-8 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 0 PPV 6
Maint Life 0.6 Years MSP 11 AFR 80% IFR 1.1% 1YR 18 5YR 277 Max Repair 60 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months Spare Berths 1
6-120 Magneto-plasma Drive (1) Power 120 Fuel Use 82.1% Signature 120 Exp 12%
Fuel Capacity 50,000 Litres Range 11.0 billion km (21 days at full power)
R6/C3 Meson Cannon (2) Range 60,000km TS: 6000 km/s Power 3-3 RM 6 ROF 5 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0
Fire Control S01 32-6000 (1) Max Range: 64,000 km TS: 6000 km/s 84 69 53 37 22 6 0 0 0 0
Stellarator Fusion Reactor Technology PB-1 (2) Total Power Output 6 Armour 0 Exp 5%
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
Along with these to go along with it:
Essex LS class Fast Scout Craft 1,000 tons 30 Crew 206 BP TCS 20 TH 120 EM 0
6000 km/s Armour 7-8 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 0 PPV 3
Maint Life 0.58 Years MSP 13 AFR 80% IFR 1.1% 1YR 22 5YR 337 Max Repair 60 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months Spare Berths 4
6-120 Magneto-plasma Drive (1) Power 120 Fuel Use 82.1% Signature 120 Exp 12%
Fuel Capacity 60,000 Litres Range 13.2 billion km (25 days at full power)
R6/C3 Meson Cannon (1) Range 60,000km TS: 6000 km/s Power 3-3 RM 6 ROF 5 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0
Fire Control S01 32-6000 (1) Max Range: 64,000 km TS: 6000 km/s 84 69 53 37 22 6 0 0 0 0
Stellarator Fusion Reactor Technology PB-1 (1) Total Power Output 3 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Active Search Sensor MR12-R100 (1) GPS 1600 Range 12.8m km Resolution 100
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
Essex MS class Fast Scout Craft 1,000 tons 30 Crew 206 BP TCS 20 TH 120 EM 0
6000 km/s Armour 7-8 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 0 PPV 3
Maint Life 0.58 Years MSP 13 AFR 80% IFR 1.1% 1YR 22 5YR 337 Max Repair 60 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months Spare Berths 4
6-120 Magneto-plasma Drive (1) Power 120 Fuel Use 82.1% Signature 120 Exp 12%
Fuel Capacity 60,000 Litres Range 13.2 billion km (25 days at full power)
R6/C3 Meson Cannon (1) Range 60,000km TS: 6000 km/s Power 3-3 RM 6 ROF 5 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0
Fire Control S01 32-6000 (1) Max Range: 64,000 km TS: 6000 km/s 84 69 53 37 22 6 0 0 0 0
Stellarator Fusion Reactor Technology PB-1 (1) Total Power Output 3 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Active Search Sensor MR1-R1 (1) GPS 16 Range 1.3m km MCR 139k km Resolution 1
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
I gave the sensor ones heavier armor assuming they would be targeted more due to active sensors, which wasn't the case at all, but I built 5 of each of the LS and MS variants, and 30 of the standard. So 40000 tons of ships, going up against 54300 tons of enemy ships. I sent them in and soon found myself facing of againstall 9 of them. It turned out 6 of the enemy ships were packing missiles, and the other 3 were armed with lasers. Setting my 40 ships to final defensive fire for the mesons wound up being an amazingly good PD system - out of the hundreds of missiles fired at me only a handful got through, and only 1 ship died on approach. The hit chance at point blank was only around 25%, but with 70 meson guns firing at them they didn't get far.
Three of the ships were chasing me the whole way, while the other 6 kept their distance - and I soon found out why. They closed and fired a large volley of strength 6 energy weapons, vaporizing three of my attack craft. I had my remaining 26 double meson ships target their first one, and the other 10 keep focusing on the missiles coming at us. Firing every 5 seconds, I took the first ship down in 20 seconds. The second was taking a beating at 30 seconds when they fired again - vaporizing another two FACs. Another 25 seconds later and the other two were destroyed. I lost two ships to missiles while most of my ships were focusing on taking down the enemy, but swapping everyone back to defensive fire held them off again as I approached the other ships - separated into two groups of 3, both fleeing from me now. The ships seemingly had endless missiles, but by the time I was on top of the first group the missile volleys had finally stopped. About a minute and that group was dead, then on to the next - again they all fell to the onslaught in about a minute.
Final losses ended up being 8 ships out of 40, and most of the crew and all officers were recovered from escape pods. I'm impressed with the results of meson FACs vs a fairly high tech missile armed group. The most expensive tech there was the engine tech since I had a great PP scientist and rushed engines, but most of the tech was on the low side of things. Almost every ship needed armor repairs from a missile or two getting through the PD and putting dents in the hull, but they were internally mostly intact.