Not having missile launchers = not triggering the bug

It depends on the amount of them, so if its just a few, it might not matter for bigger fleets.

This is only painful for very large quantities, like 3k ML and 1k Battleships things...

Anything on the order of 10's is probably irrelevant at this stage.

In general if you go into the Simulator and you can see that it does not payoff to attack, that's basically what you need to do in order to achieve that path.

So if you simulate your planet against a big fleet that you saw exists... and they look like making a profit, then you need more defenses, or ships, or both... simulate that until it makes no sense anymore for that fleet to attack you, and then that's it, that's your sweet spot.