Is spaceship armor useless?

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

And which of those two outcomes is going to happen is very much the case of 'whoever has more pewpew, wins'.

That's not answering the question in the slightest, unless you're saying that it's a one shot to one shot exchange rate, which is obviously not right.

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

G:SS seems largely obsessed with KK missiles (nukes come a close second, while conventional explosive missiles are not talked about much, if at all).

Because, of course, conventional explosives make no sense.

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Yeah, that was why I started doubting their legitness.

But they're referred to in multiple other tables in Spaceships, and used on designs in Spaceships 3 and 4.

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

The -4 per multitasking, mostly. Or the need to have more operators, which, again, is a non-issue with AIs for both sides.
Also, with smaller salvoes, it becomes actually possible to dodge at least some of those that get past the beam screen and/or beam PD, since you no longer need huge MoSes to dodge the whole salvo. Which is of no use if there's a dozen or more (chance to dodge is likely too low to dodge them all), of course.

-4 for multitasking how? Launching one missile per turn is simply normal. And I don't see anything saying that resolving a ballistic attack counts as a task. (And I wasn't suggesting stacking up your salvos to hit with them all at the same time, though you obviously could and probably should.)

Anyway, multitasking multiple gunnery tasks is explicitly forbidden in Spaceships 1, so there's no way that penalty could apply.

You need huge MoSes to dodge, since single frag missiles have 10 potential hits at de facto rcl 1, and pretty heavy bonuses.

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

BTW, something I've seen people consider: using small missiles against enemy missiles; not sure how viable that is.

It could work, but against 1-missile salvos it's not going to compare favorably against beams (which can split fire) for area defense. It might be better for Wait (PD), but I'm not sure about that.