Is point-defense the only way to shoot down missiles?

[SadNova]

What I want to confirm is whether other weapons, like lasers, will ever target an incoming missile or strike-craft? It seems to me that point-defense weapons are just weapons with high frequency and short range, thus suitable to counter missiles. But I can't find any documents saying other weapons cannot shoot down missiles, even inefficiently. I don't know how to do the experiment, it's just impossible to verify my assumption by eye-tests.

There are two relative questions about this issue:
1. In the point-defense weapon category, there is point-defense and there is flak cannon. The descriptions saying one is for strike-crafts and the other is for missiles. I mean, really? Can't you just shoot down missiles with a flak cannon?
2. Because point-defense weapons are really bad in DPS, I'm always trying to find alternative. I'm currently looking into strike-crafts, which seem to be very funny to use. Since SC also has high frequency and tracking, will they ever be able to shoot-down missiles? Or is missile going to target a SC, so I can use them as lures?

Thank you. Have fun.

 

[MK1980]

PD has higher damage, flak has more tracking (which is kinda useful to counter the high-ish evasion of strike craft). afaik they will both shoot at missiles and strikecraft. it's just that flak will prioritize shooting at strikecraft and PD will prioritize torps/missiles in a battle where both missiles and strikecraft are present.

but if there are no strikecraft, flak should shoot at missiles just fine.

i think strike craft also used to be able to shoot missiles. at least the "fighter" type strikecraft used to be able to. but in some patch they merged bombers and fighters into one generic strikecraft and i don't for sure know if that generic craft can shoot missiles. i think it can.

regarding the bad "dps": that's wrong actually. raw dps of PD is comparable to the raw dps of most small slot weapons. the tier 3 PD for example has almost the same dps as a stormfire autocannon and higher dps than s-sized gauss cannons or gamma lasers. they aren't very good for actual damage dealing, though. flak is a bit weaker overall, but has better tracking, so it's not actually that bad at shooting corvettes for example (if there are no missiles or strikecraft to shoot at)