I must say that I still disagree, but I like the way you think.
I'll focus my comments on point defense technology, since that's what it ultimately comes down to: what's the best way to deliver a warhead that won't get shot down?
First, a 50 KM beam weapon seems unlikely, especially one capable of tracking a small target. I'm to tired to do the math now, but modern weapons have a power range of a couple of hundred kW and a range of 5km. (Rather lame of me, especially after you did the math, but hey, it's 3AM.) Obviously that would increase in the future, but how many fast-tracking decent sized beam turrets can a ship afford to mount for point defense? Assuming the enemy doesn't fire shots one at a time, Beam dwell time would be an issue. Especially if the pilot isn't an idiot and doesn't fly in a straight line those 50 km. Presumably beam-reflective coatings, ablative coatings, and heat hardening would only increase the energy demands.
One specific response to your comments:
| The only reason fighters and bombers have an advantage over ships, is because they are traveling in a plane that ships can't. The Z plane is inherently closed to ships. Space ships won't have such an issue, and assuming Newtonian physics are in play, a fighter would have significant difficulties moving any faster than a large ship, and |
I think you had more to add, but I'll respond to what's there for now. The issue of planes seems largely irrelevent, since a small fighter will be able to maneuver in three dimensions much faster than a massive capital ship even in Newtonian physics. It takes much less energy to propel a fighter's smaller mass up to an arbitrary speed than it does a big ship. Thus we aren't likely to see a battleship dogfighting with a fighter. And I'd add that aircraft have many more advantages than the one you list---flexibility, precision, maneuverability, and the like. Yes, PD emplacements would mitigate their effectiveness, but it seems just as likely that they'd be able to take out missiles, too. The best case scenario is a furious arms race between missile AI and PD AI.
Which brings me to my next point. It's hard to imagine a laser that would be effective against regular mass drivers. Leaving aside entirely exotic crap like Quantum Drivers and their ilk, what kind of beam can quickly melt (at bare minimum) a large, dense slug of metal? If fighters close in and fire those--especially if they fire them at, say, the fire control radars--what can the PD turrets do?*
Misc:
Warhead size hardly seems like it would be an issue for either deployment method. Considering the distances we're talking about, nukes are the obvious choice. The question is whether a fighter launching a nuke or a missile carrying a nuke has a better probability of kill.
*Okay, I'll admit that fighters probably couldn't carry (and fire) guns big enough to punch through cap ship armor. But that doesn't mean they couldn't do what I originally suggested--hit various sensitive places on the cap ship. This would soften the enemy up for enemy cap ship guns.
