The "problem" is that Aurora don't care about ships being anywhere near decent in terms of space and what it is used for in terms of volume versus surface area and overall integrity of the ship hull etc..
That is why it is up to you as a player to judge what is a fair and "realistic" ship design. In general I have no problem with using box launchers on a ship as long as the proportion of the ships mission tonnage versus armour, engine, crew etc is reasonable.
A ship that us basically just box launchers and a missile control is not really realistic from a physical perspective even if the game allows it as it don't care about proportions, internal integrity, shape of the hull to support it and any potential damage, need for crew to access all parts of a ship etc..
All of these things have to be role-played and why some things seems gamey... in some sense the game allow you a bit crazy designs as they might sometimes come up as sensible in some situations. In reality it is quite difficult to just put something together in blocks without technical or engineering compromises as you can in Aurora ship design. This is generally why ships and vehicles tend to all look the same with the same limitations in reality.
In terms of a real missile destroyer or frigate the space where missile goes are hard contested by other equipment and can't be placed just anywhere.
That is close to what i am RPing my nation. They are based on a book that i am writing and their spacefare doctrine is bullsmeg for anyone but them. Why? Because they have a huge ass territory with a fragmented divided leadership, so squadrons of 4-6 BIG ASS ships that carry smaller crafts are the norm. They just overdrive the @#$! out of their systems to pretty much hyperdrive at insane velocities while carrying everything they need with them. It makes for faster raction time, tonnage efficiency, since not everyship has a huge hyperdrive or a hyperdrive at all and the bigger ships are well protected enough by the sheer amount of hulls and armor they carry. Are the ships cheap? Heck no. But are they effective? Yes to an extent. If the enemy has better tech and/or bigger fleets, they will need time to gather enough capital ships to counter that, however they have more mobility. And the thing is, Aurora has the niciest mechanics for this and actually makes sense with how a Jump Drive works.
