Is spaceship armor useless?

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Well, maybe. But the manner in which those missiles/torpedoes/bombs are a threat also differs. In GURPS, it's mostly 'oh ****, they deployed 256 fighters who ran at us at 20mps, launched 1024 missiles each, and turned back! Can we shoot them all down in time?', while much of the fictional sources seem to focus on 'oh ****, their dozen aces launched in a wing of fighters and bombers! We need to launch our own fighters and take them down to make sure they do not set us up the bomb!'.
G:SS seems fitting for settings like Transhuman Space, where space combats are largely won and lost long before they begin, but take some while to actually perform. For anything else - not so much.

That's not about GURPS Spaceships in particular so much as it is simulation as opposed to heroic narrative. You could make the missile run into a heroic narrative by picking out the heroes, and assuming that everyone else's missiles will accomplish nothing except to tie up a share of the point defense, so it's all up to the heroes...and maybe give them some kind of 'deceptive shot' option so they can leverage awesomeness to get hits through better.

(Forcing the bombers to run a gauntlet through a dogfight before launching, well, there you do have a Spaceships-related problem where flying through the weapon envelope of the fighters is going to be too long for you to just endure.)