>>6196093I like a balancing system where:
1. Lasers are good at short range and excellent as PD, since spot size increases with distance and they take no reaction mass.
2. Kinetics are good at mid-range, where you can saturate relatively efficiently without travel time being a major factor.
3. Missiles are good at long range to make the most out of reaction mass limitations and take advantage of light-lag.
But ultimately how you run your setting is entirely up to you. The most important thing IMO is the appearance of internal consistency. If you think kinetics are too strong then just say that all your ships have extremely efficient Whipple shielding that makes kinetics below a certain momentum threshold very inefficient, or that you coat all your ships with a layer of ablative ice.
I think realism should be applied as a selective constraint to make a setting interesting and unique, rather than for its own sake. Talking about how all your ships vent streamers of liquid metal for heat dissipation might make for a nice mechanic, but getting destroyed by a random micrometeorite for no reason probably isn't even if it's very realistic.
