In regards to naval vs air, I have noticed that for equal cost in either mass or energy, torp bombers seem to win out in most cases against cruisers. This is not really what I want to address in this post, but rather how this difference in cost efficiency increases exponentially and not linearly when more of each unit is added into an engagement.
I know that exponential efficiency differences are basically expected when comparing most unit interactions, so I would like to discuss if this is desired or not in regards to cruisers vs air.
If not, I would like to make some observations and proposals.
The Problem
Depending on the faction, each cruiser is affected by this more or less than the others. Some of the reasons for this happening are different , but the main ones shared by them are different variations of overkill and wasted shots.
Wasted shots happen when a cruiser fires right before the target dies, either because other cruisers had the same target, or the target dies after another volley was fired.
I will break down how this happens for each cruiser below separately.
Seraphim Cruiser
This unit has the least problems in this area and may actually have the reverse happen. The flack projectiles have higher AOE than missiles and don't disappear when a target dies.
The close range gun has high projectile velocity, so they don't tend to be wasted.
Aeon Cruiser
The missiles will overkill targets.
If more than one cruiser fires at the same target, you will end up with a lot of wasted shots since the missiles cant redirect to a new target.
If the target is at max range, they can waste a third volley before the second one connects.
UEF Cruiser
They don't overkill torp bombers by much.
The volleys have a slightly longer reload time so they don't tend to waste volleys.
They do suffer badly when multiple cruisers target the same bomber.
Cybran Cruiser
The missiles overkill's the target.
They will almost always waste their third volley unless the bombers are directly above them.
They can waste a lot of shots when firing at the same bomber, same as with Aeon.
They take longer to start firing when a bomber first enters their range, about one second. This happens with all units that have a laser designator by the way, so I think it is a bug.
I made most of the observations while playing or watching replays.
Here is a replay where I mess around a bit to see what happens: #19276982
Proposed Solution
Depending on what is possible, I would suggest either letting missiles redirect when their target is dead, or have something similar to what was done with TMD.
If this is done, cruisers will no longer waste their shots and the scaling problem should be alleviated somewhat.