@samuel the biggest remaining handwave is getting around the fact that AI is still better. I'm claiming that AI technology simply hasn't kept the rapid rate of development and isn't significantly better then today. That's not realistic but...Hey I want my space fighters darn it! Surely you get a little poetic license for the sake of plot eventually lol. I've made a few other changes to make missiles less viable, or at least a far smaller hand-wave, but AI is hard to get around.

@samuel yes, that was sort of implicitly intended in the above statement, as the lack of handling unpredictable humans is what limits current AIs. A missile flying at a target is easy, a missile avoiding dozen's of enemy fighters trying to shoot it down isn't, that's the part where the AI suffers...supposedly. Though honestly there would be so many fighters pact together that it's hard to claim a human is all that much better at knowing where to fly without crossing someone's flight path... Firing missiles through shields is also difficult, justifying per-launching of fighters somewhat

"Obstacles don't exist in space" --> What about debries? Screws and pieces of other fighters/satelies? What about meteors or other rocky bodies? And planets?

@millimoose a good point, though I'm not certain if it applies. You can only minimize angular dimensions if you know exactly what angle you expect to be attacked from. In space we would have TRUE 3 dimensions, planes have limitations preventing full use of all 3 dimensions. IF a space fighter can move in all dimensions, and propel itself in multiple direction without inertia, there really is no way to know what angle of attack your enemy will come from. The optimal way to minimize angular diameter from any potential angle is also a sphere. obligatory "the enemy gate is down" reference.

@IsmaelMiguel meteors tend to be MASSIVELY far apart, as do all natural land bodies. Your likely have, at most, one large body (meteor, planet, or moon) close enough to be relevant, and it's pretty trivial even today to have an AI handle avoiding a single curving body. Likewise debris would be spread out enough to not get in the way because capital ships would be so far apart that it's rare one's debris will have time to mess up line of sight with the other. in short SPACE. IS. BIG!!

@schwern that is true, but that is still in keeping with what I said. The main hull will be a sphere, because you will want your 'guts', the computer, life support, and passenger, to be inside the armored protection (think micro meteors and electormagnetic radiation as hazards to protect against). Anything of any real size juts out, the engines and the weapons.

@dsollen But there's still debries floating around the planet. One bean floating at 3.4m/s can be enough to set off a bomb. Something as small as 1mm can be enough to block/reflect part of a laserbeam. Even taking in consideration that space is big, the smallest things can cause MASSIVE damage.

@IsmaelMiguel If your combat is happening anywhere near a planet's atmosphere I feel really really sorry for anyone on the planet! More to the point the missiles would have to handle micro meter and such collisions. They will be armored and capable of moving through such collisions without incident, possible correcting path if thrown off course by it. The point is nothing large enough that a human would have the response time to see and avoid would exists. Besides which, an AI will be much better at avoiding these things then the human.

@dsollen If you send a missile at the speed of sound and make it smart enough to avoid colisions with something with a 1m^2 of area, sell your idea and settle for a life of eternally flowing money. If a missile in space moves any slower than this, it's useless. (speed of sound, on earth's surface is around 340m/s)

@IsmaelMiguel honestly the AI challenges here are not that drastic. We have systems that are quite responsive now, and "avoid that one object" is actually a very simple AI challenge. We aren't quite there yet, but by the time that we have large scale space battles that sort of AI challenge should be quite possible. Besides, the point is that a human wouldn't be able to avoid that either. Compared to AI were slow. Our responsiveness is measured in seconds, where as a nanosecond is an eternity to modern computers. Besides, we wouldn't avoid it, we would punch through it.

@dsollen If a butter knife can cut a bullet, I'm expecting that something small at high speeds might do it's own damage. Yes, AIs can be 'trained' to avoid those, but if something damages it by a bit, you can say goodbye to your high-tech missile. Yes, they may avoid plenty of things, but you still have to consider the smallest 'debries'.

@IsmaelMiguel Honestly, I don't think you would. Small debris in space is very uncommon, and the odds that it is moving at high enough speeds to destroy a missile relative to your initial frame smaller still (debris from your ship moves relative to your speed, enemy ships, missiles etc also likely close to your velocity. Missiles, even with advanced AI, are relatively cheap. It is quite possible that it will be considered optimal to have good armor to handle anything of low relative velocity, and just let the rest be destroyed. What's one missile lost when you fire 500?

@dsollen It's simple: it may be the difference between taking a ship down and the ship you didn't hit will destroy yours

@IsmaelMiguel Designs, even warfare designs, are an optimization challenge. You can build a missile capable of handling all outcomes, for twice the expense; or you can build the ability to fire twice the missiles and accept that you will lose one out of every thousand (I think it will be even rarer then that considering how unlikely random space debris is). Twice the missiles is more likely to save you then avoiding losing one to bad luck.

The comments from the post, im going to delete them there :)

@dsollen That also depends on your fire power. I actually think that shooting and hitting 100% of the time is more important than shooting many and pray that one hits something. 99% isn't acceptable. Are you trying to pet the enemy or to take him down with epic explosions*? (*I know, space doesn't have oxygen to cause explosions)

you can still get explosions

just not shockwaves

@IsmaelMiguel @IsmaelMiguel I'm sorry to sound like a broken record, but I still stand by the last statement. 99% of 1000 missiles will do more damage then 100% of 500 missiles. Remember your firing from many many MANY miles away, your already expect some, perhaps many, to miss due to enemy counter measure deployed in the 20 minutes it took to reach them. All you care is enough make it. Also, I still think your over estimating the likelihood of foreign debris existing in space to strike.

I wasn't aware we could get explosions. Yes, shockwaves is expected since there is nothing around it to "move".

@dsollen I have no idea what a mile is. But if it is to attack someone, something quick and sneaky is a good idea against something bulky. Only on that case I wouldn't worry about explosions close to you. Otherwise, I would worry a lot. the 20 minutes they took to reach there and exploded on their way will reveal your position.

@IsmaelMiguel This is space, sneaky isn't really possible, or at least hiding isn't. You can minimize your emissions so they don't notice you from very far away, but you can do that while firing missiles depending on their propulsion system.. In any case if your close enough for it to only take 20 minutes then your too close to be sneaky. Getting close enough that the enemy only has time to fire one missile without their noticing is practically impossible.

@dsollen You disarmed me with your good arguments. I wouldn't want to fight against you.

one sci-fi novel basically mounted a mass driver inside their ship

used electromagnets to accelerate huge chunks of iron

and then they fired them in a random pattern towards the enemy fleet

really hard to spot