Is spaceship armor useless?

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Mirtai

Also, missiles are pretty terrible for disabling a ship without destroying it.

That depends on how you use them. Firing a barrage of missiles and demanding surrender can work - if your target powers down their weapons and power plants, you redirect the missiles elsewhere (or blow them up prematurely, if that's an option), then board and take the ship (either taking the crew for ransom or letting them go on lifeboats). If they don't, you sell the ship's remains for scrap (10,000 tons of scrap is worth $1,000,000 according to SS2, and any cargo hold that wasn't hit directly should still contain around 50% of its cargo intact). If you get lucky and they manage to take out most - but not all - of your missiles with PD, you may find the ship merely disabled rather than destroyed, in which case you'll be able to tow it back to base and repair it.