I actually had a bright idea to put the missile strategy to use by including some support ships in my fleet - those supports putting heavy emphasis on missile use. That strategy however did nothing but cost me money, as those missile ships were usually the first to die, usually by rushing at the enemy for no apparent reason and promptly getting torn to shreds, all the while my gun-only units and carriers were delivering a carnage.
I don't usually have a problem with this, probably because every ship in my fleet has an Officer on board with the relevant personality type - Missile Boats tend to end up being Cautious (or even Timid, should they be LRM Boats, but Pilums suck too much to ever have this see use). That being said, I have not played a true vanilla game in a long while, the filled-with-mods runs I do see missiles being used a lot, from the common Hornet to the Voidspear to the absolutely *** Clarent.
And no, upping the damage (or other stats) on missiles is not going to solve anything. It's the fact that they are ammo-limited weapons that have to compete over ordnance points with ammo-unlimited weapons. No matter how much you buff the damage, using missiles is still going to be a gamble.
I think it does. The Atrophos is a good example of this, back in the day at least. You used to get more mileage out of the dirt-cheap dual rack than from your increased, what, 4 vents?
The Templar Clarent is the other extreme. Impossible to shoot down, flies at the speed of light, cannot miss. Torpedo-level damage. I would not want something like that to be 0 (or cheaper, anyway) OP.
So perhaps all missiles should simply be unavoidable/invulnerable, but then they'd just be different versions of the original Ballistic weapons. Doesn't seem very fun to me.
It's not like I don't agree to an extent, I'd rather have sustained firepower than ammo-limited ones that I have to manage and choose when to fire. But I see the point of missiles. Lowering their costs in terms of OP would force a significant rebalancing between every ship (again, not that I am against this), as well as the missiles themselves.