Yeah some thing like in Space Empires where there are Kamikaze Ships and Drone Ships that can be anti-ship or anti-planet. That would be nice for Galactic Civilizations also.

Cool idea there mate, something like the cardassian 'dreadnought' from Star Trek Voyager? Now theres a thought, the dreadnought had AI capabilities, imagine hooking up some advanced sensors to it...would make a great hunter-killer all you'd need to do is set its mission parameters to search and then attack.

I was thinking much in those term. But you could also have defensive missile-pack (for when a fleet is blockading a planet, destroying ships 1 by 1), it would be possible to build about 2-3 missiles each turn, weakening any blockading planet..

And would be a great defence against Transport-Rushers...

I don't know about ICBM... Planet-to-Planet missile would never be approved by Frogboy. I was more thinking something more like sol-air missile (ground-air?) and air-air missiles...

I would imput it that way:

2 Kinds of missile.

Anti-Personnal (kinda) ones, can only damage a single ship. Too high velocity for any counter-measure to work, except the classic ECM-Chaff-Whatever.

Anti-Fleet ship. Larger one, slower, but one that do collateral damage on all ships in a fleet (oh god, would be a killer against a fleet of transports!), however, the target fleet gets 1-2 shot at it/them.

But that's still an idea on the ice, and the devs has the final say.

regular missiles are in the tech tree. i assumed they would cover all forms of missile tech. then again, the ecm part of the defense tree would counter all forms of missiles too. dont need a bunch of robotic ships/flying bombs/giant ship missile in game , could cause too much of a headache for balancing i think. I do like the ideal of a interplanetary missile. could be multi warhead for anti fleet even. could use the tiny ship design. So basically it would be a tiny ship with a explosive module attachment. that could be exploded by the owner during his turn. But if it were to be attacked during someone elses turn. it would probly have minimial wpn defenses. Im thinking something similar to the smart bombs from a Voyager episode. just my 2 cents...

Heres another thing, the missiles have to act like missiles. Sure we could use the ship design to design our missiles (or more specific, a missile designer). I don't want to see a missile just sitting in space waiting for a command like any other ship. I was thinking missiles could be deployed from launch pads either from your planet's surface a one of your military starbases. These special launch pads could only load one missile at a time, so you have to build multiple pads for an effective multi-strike.

In order to use the missile, you click on the planet or starbase and there should be an option to launch missile, then you aquire a target (planet, fleet) and the missile will auto-pilot itself to the target. The limitations being its speed depending on the engines equiped to the rocket. If the missile is chasing a fleet of ships, and the missile is faster it should eventually catch them. If the fleet is faster the missile will chase the fleet for a certain amount of turns before self-dustructing, simulating a range limitation. Thats another thing, range. The missile should only be able to move so many parsecs before self-destructing.

A form of your ICBM would most likely be ISBM. Though they should only be able to be equiped in military starbases. As some did mention that it can be launched. Though the distance should only be limited to the sphere of influence of the starbase. Also the speed should be limited to twice the researched speed. No shielding, and extending the missile tech tree with another branch for long range attack. The explosives should be large yield from conventional explosive like solid state nitro and continued to other exotic elements. some ideas would be: fission, fusion, quantum, and point singularity or zero-point. We should also consider adding long range capacity for mass drivers maybe even energy based projectiles.

Hmm,
Some type of planet to planet missle as a stragetic weapon would be interesting.

You could build a launch base on your planet, or use the starport, and build a single missile at a time. Once the missile built you have to launch it, no keeping extras in reserve. Target would be planets only.
The missile would show as a tiny ship on the main screen and move at a pace of 5pc/turn or something like that. You would have the chance to intercept and shoot it down, if you see it coming in time. If not, and the missile hits the target planet it lands on one random tile. If nothing is built on the tile, nothing happens, but it something is there, it will be destroyed.

Later tech might allow the missile to move faster, adjust it's flight to avoid hostiles, better chance of hitting improvement rather than an empty tile, etc.

Would make for some interesting gameplay.