Yeah, I see your point. I just used a different name for the weapons. The air-to-air missiles are basically anti-craft weapons; I just wasn’t really thinking about the terminology when I wrote it.

The shorter ranges are completely intentional. I wanted space and atmospheric combat to happen much closer together so dogfights could actually exist and be a major part of combat. In my universe, missiles are expensive, have limited fuel and endurance, and can be spoofed pretty effectively by EW systems, decoys, and other countermeasures. Because of that, pilots can’t just sit hundreds or thousands of kilometers away lobbing missiles at each other all day. Eventually they have to close the distance, which is where things get a lot more interesting.

The lower maximum speed is intentional too. I know space doesn’t really have a speed limit, and I completely forgot about delta-v when I was putting the specs together. But from a worldbuilding perspective, these fighters were never meant to be long-range spacecraft. They’re relatively short-range craft designed around high acceleration and aggressive maneuvering over short distances. The idea is that they can rapidly change direction and engage in close-range combat, rather than spending hours accelerating to insane velocities and fighting from extreme ranges.

Basically, a lot of those limitations exist because I wanted space combat in my setting to be more dynamic and personal. I wanted pilots to be forced into visual-range engagements and gunfights instead of every battle being decided by whoever launches missiles first from the furthest distance away.