Is spaceship armor useless?

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Mirtai

The encounter actually started with TWO SM+5 fighters with Missile Launchers at 50,000 miles, stopping a SM+9 Cargo vessel from entering the atmosphere of the planet they were based at.

They fired a single missile at the Cargo ship and told it to surrender, and they'd detonate the missile prematurely.

The Captain of the Cargo vessel "surrendered" and let the two fighters close in. One fighter docked with the Cargo ship while the other stayed well away at 2000 miles, watching for tricks.

The captain shot the first fighter pilot in the airlock, then ran to his bridge and started shooting his point defence lasers at the second fighter.

Natrually, the smart play would have been for the fighters to simply fire a large number of missiles from long range to try and overwhelm the point defense lasers while outside of their range... but they underestimated the Cargo ship and it's crew.

Missiles and no armor do make a very poor choice for police work. (Also, one-man craft, because a lone pilot is not a sensible boarding force.)

I would say the fighters chose about the worst tactics possible, though. Standing off to watch for trouble from inside your enemy's kill zone...well, it really earns that Darwin award.

Originally Posted by Mirtai

However, that doesn't mean that you can ignore armor if you stay at long range! Beams can have pretty long ranges as well, and they hit a target 50,000 miles away in 1/3rd of a second after you fire them... (assuming you can hit something that far off, anyway). And if you're in an engagement with beams VS ballistics, you'll be dead long before your missiles reach their target if you ignore armor. Unless you always have better range then all your opponents, and never start a fight inside of their range.

It kind of does, because with missiles you do have better range than all your beam-armed opponents, and in space it's hard to have any reason to not start the fight from outside their range.