Is spaceship armor useless?

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Armour is indeed very low, but the effect is made worse by just how much damage kinetic weapons do.

This is unavoidable given realistic assumptions. Very high velocity missiles (even if small) would destroy even very large ships. evena t abse 1 mile per second you're looking at a regime where solid matter doesn't really stay solid. At 10 miles per second you're looking at solid matter exploding with a force of many times (c. 40x) its' own weight in TNT.

If want to duplicate the battles seen in some fiction you need unrealsitic assumptions and rules because those battles are unrealistic. This means looking for high TLs and most especially the ^ sign and optional/cinematic rules.