[Growltigga]

YOu have raised some good points. I think the secret is like any other weapon tactic in SEIV, use them until your enemy has an effective counter and then retrofit to something else

IMO, missiles and fighters are useful only early on in the game - sometimes working them in combination can be effective where you use missiles to attempt to swamp point defence batteries and then fighters for the kill, but generally when you get to this stage, I find the best tactic is to build some beam heavy close assault ships, stick a couple of escort cruisers with them to keep off the fighters and missiles, get to point blank range and them use PPB's/APB's on large mounts to disembowel your missile/fighter loving enemy

All that being said, everything has its place and a combined arms fleet of assualt, escort, missile and fighter armed vessels is currently working well in my current game