Loren Pechtel wrote:The real issue is that energy weapons aren't seeking at all, they can't compensate at all. They have to lead their targets by twice the time light takes to cover the distance. Thus long range energy shots will have abysmal hit rates.
That's true, but that's not what I meant. An energy weapon can only fire if it gets within energy range and can only have a sufficient probability of hit if it gets very close (how close will depend on its ECM).
I meant that it can't even get into range. If a ship dedicates a third of its 600 G acceleration on a perpendicular vector, it will have 50 gravity advantage on what a torpedo is expected to produce, with the torpedo changing its acceleration vector completely. In 13 minutes, that 50 gravity advantage adds a full light-second.
Or, alternatively, we can use exactly what you said, but for the longer range: the torpedo must lead the target to where the target will be, so it will reach firing range. But it has a huge error bar on where the target will be at more than 10 minutes out.
Loren Pechtel wrote:The ship has to be detected by lightspeed sensors. Only the wedge detection is FTL. Thus all your lagtimes must be doubled.
Not really. We're not talking about radar or lidar, meaning it's a round-trip for the signal. Passive sensors can see the photons that were already on the way from the ship and simply got intercepted by the torpedo.
Using an active scan would be more accurate, but it would also tell the ship where exactly the torpedo is, with much better accuracy than the lidar which had to go through the sidewall twice. The ship can swing a laser point-defence on that direction and fire within 50 ms, meaning the lidar return is tailed by a powerful laser by 50 ms.