Rethinking Missiles in the Later Game

[Slick]

Some cheap missile tricks I have seen:

- Like you said, use missiles with fighters to overwhelm enemy PD. If missiles are the fodder, use the ones with the fastest reload time and try to make sure your missile ships keep up with fighters. Fighters should not be faster than missiles for this case. If fighters are the fodder, then reverse strategy.

- If you want to spread out missile fire, using different levels of the same missle, say CSM I, II, III, IV and V, can make your ship fire missiles more frequently; possibly every turn as targets move in and out of range of the various missles variants. This is because the different levels of CSM have different ranges. CSM I thru V have ranges 8, 10, 12, 14 and 16 respectively. This gets away from the flood every 3rd turn which can waste missiles. Normally the flood is what you want, though.

- Designing carriers with missile fodder launchers. Carrier speed and fighter speed tweaked such that the missiles are always in front of the fighters to soak up PD. Need a beam weapon on the carrier to keep it from retreating in between launches.

- Making drones which launch missiles. That's right. A large drone can fit 3 missile launchers. Give it "max range" strategy and you can quickly fill space with seekers.