What's the Ideal Missile Launcher/Factory Ratio?

[TwoTonTuna]

HE Factory produces 0.83 missiles/sec. HE launcher fires one off every 0.5 seconds, with one HE missile assembled from 4 parts.

Does this mean one HE factory with no adjacency bonuses produces 0.83 WHOLE missiles per second, or does it produce 0.83 missile parts per second?

[TwoTonTuna]

Never mind:
https://cosmoteer.wiki.gg/wiki/High-Explosive_Missile_Factory

Production Rate
0.83x H.E. Missiles/sec
(0.3 H.E. Parts/sec)

[Daunmi]

It might not matter. Ultimately, you only need as many factories as it takes to resupply you between fights, and not even completely resupply you if you don't fire off every bit of ammo you've got every fight. If you play slow and carefully, you might only need one.

[lalelunatic]

2 adjectend HE factories + 4 HE launchers = pretty much exactly 2 produce/2 use per second.

[Nox]

If you have a fight where your factory output matters you're probably losing badly.

[CptnRedstone]

Originally posted by Nox:

If you have a fight where your factory output matters you're probably losing badly.

Perhaps in a casual singleplayer environment, but in competitive multiplayer ships are far more durable; you'll need to fire hundreds, possibly thousands of missiles to cripple an opponent, so any issues with factory output/reload *will* impact the fight.

[ammonj]

Originally posted by Daunmi:

It might not matter. Ultimately, you only need as many factories as it takes to resupply you between fights, and not even completely resupply you if you don't fire off every bit of ammo you've got every fight. If you play slow and carefully, you might only need one.

It's a strategy decision. Some prefer not to waste space on storing a huge stockpile of missile parts in order to minimize build-size and instead focus on a sustained fire, supply-on-demand build type. This means a smaller overall ship and less overall crew, in many/most cases. It's a viable strategy, and if you haven't tried it, you might want to give it a go.

The fact is that having crew that take the missile parts from the factories to storage, then other that take the parts from the storage to the launchers, is more crew than if you only need enough to carry parts straight from the factory to the launchers. Not having the storage space spent on missile parts means a smaller ship, which may also take less engines to achieve the same, or better, manoeuvring ability, saving crew there too.