Picard85: Picard85: Why would some ships not be set so by default? Why would there be a mixing of these systems, on a per ship basis, in the first place?

Asymmetrical ship designs of HW2, primarily. HW2 weapon placement (see: Hig vs Vay Battlecruisers) and even fleet makeup (see: non dedicated repair ships unless you cut into your resourcing) were designed around the miss cone system. There is a certain speed threshold (right around the slowest frigate speed, probably) where you have to really think about your ship design and weapon placement because dumbfire ballistics are going to hit you every single time barring these factors:

speed of attacker

turret speed of attacker

bullet speed

target acceleration

target speed

target profile

engagement range/weapon range (an intertwined concept due to AttackStyles)

Again, at a certain threshold, all of those factors are guaranteed to align against you if your ship is huge, slow, has to be pointed at a target (looking at you, Vaygr BC) and presents the largest profile (again, Vaygr BC). The smart thing to do is give it enough health to survive a pounding (done) and provide dedicated repair units (HW1 knew this, HW2 never anticipated because again, the fleets were designed around the system they had).

To wit, ships that deal primarily with fighters or corvettes are going to be on the ballistic scale, where the above factors I mentioned make the biggest difference. That said, HW2’s miss cone system did not escape unscathed and is more sophisticated and has been upgraded to support accuracy ranges. Both ships and weapons can be made role-aware based on speed of attacker and speed of target so even ships where it was unpractical to alter their profile/weapon layout, coverage or weapon type/shift health of all units up or down/erase or soften their intended “hard counter” role don’t play the same and are hopefully perceived as an improvement because regardless of what is going on under the hood there are a lot more strategies and tactics available for you to utilize.