Missiles ruin everything

Missiles ruin everything In CoaDE, missiles lock onto the greatest heat source. This makes radiators a vulnerability (although I don't know if occlusion is considered by the game). In CoaDE, this is basically completely countered with flares. In real life, missiles won't be anywhere near so dumb. First, countermeasures are not 100% effective. Vietnam-era "Sidewinder" missiles had a kill probability of 18%, which is already terrifying. Modern missiles are around 90%. Pure-infrared systems are imager-based these days, making them basically immune to countermeasures. But these are being phased out--today, we have multispectral guidance systems that are essentially unstoppable, operating on radio, visual, and thermal frequencies. And that's not factoring in literal centuries of technological development before the first space battle of the future. Ships are also much bigger and (as before) less-agile targets than fighter jets. But the real difference between a k-slug and a missile isn't payload, but maneuverability. Unlike a ship, missiles have an enormous delta-v budget, and they are cheap and small enough to be nigh-vulnerable to weapons fire. This means they can outflank enemies, shooting them from essentially any direction. In addition to striking the more vulnerable sides of a ship, it makes slewing a point-defense cannon around more difficult. And even if you can disable a missile at distance, its debris is still going to slam into you at several km/s relative velocity. Missiles are massive enough that this is probably a mission-kill anyway. Indeed, the ideal tactic is to shoot many small missiles and have them converge from different directions. There is no realistic defense against this. Missiles are even less dodge-able than k-slugs and they're much heavier. Shoot it down with point defense or blind it with lasers, and you still have a gaping hole through your hull. Fail to disable even a single one, and you have a nuclear warhead going off point blank. In case you don't believe me, think about reality. Fact: a modern warship (the boat kind) has trouble shooting down a single missile with point defense. If you have dozens of missiles with sci-fi armor, all traveling at quadruple the speed (no air resistance), approaching in three dimensions, and you have maybe 1/10th the armor (mass, delta-v limits). . . well, it's just not going to work out very well for you.