Realistic space-warfare in science fiction

I have read quite a few science fiction novels, and while most of them are very exciting and interesting, I find that even the "hard" end of the science fiction spectrum features space combat in a very unrealistic manner. We're used to shields, forcefields and small manouverable craft able to dodge most munitions fired at them.
I find that the most likely form of space combat-scenario would be huge lumbering craft firing swarms of missiles and counter-missiles at eachother from a great distance, and then hope for the best. The only viable strategy would be to have more missiles than the other guy, and having a lot of lasers/particle beams to take out incoming missiles before impact. A single hit to your ship would mean instant annihilation with nuclear warheads. The only thing you could viably shield your ship against would be the lasers and particle beams. Evasive manouvers wouldn't work, a ship would be much to slow to dodge any missiles.
The distances involved would probably be huge, since you'd want to be able to detonate your warheads as far away from the target as possible, while still inflicting damage. This would also mean that you'd want as great a distance between yourself and your warheads as possible before detonation. Thusly; huge distances between combatants.
A space battle would thus boil down to;
*Speed of missiles
*Power of warheads
*Amount of missiles
*Amount of lasers/particle beams
With so few factors to a battle, a ship AI would probably be able to calculate who would win with near perfect certainty before the battle was fought, or at least concluded. This would leave time for the personel of the losing ship to evacuate before the conclusion of the battle. Thus the only thing lost in space warfare would be ships.

Fuck you science fiction.

If a ship's AI is talented enough to accurately predict the outcome of a battle through simulation, we can probably assume that it would be more competent at commanding the ship or ships than any human could ever be. In that case, why would you even need humans aboard the ship? Remove the humans from the factor and you're essentially turning war into a matter of two idiots throwing money at each other from across the universe.

The more intelligent the AIs become, of course, the more war wraps back around to becoming a matter of life and death. Why should an intelligent being far more marvelous than any human could dare to be called be forced into near certain death over something that it's not concerned in the slightest with?

Depending on how "human" these AIs may be, it might even come to that same conclusion and decide not to fight at all. You can make machines that can grow your food and manufacture your goods without any intelligence, but combat is one of those fields that would require a much higher level of thinking, to the point of abstract thought being a requirement. Just look at the AI of any video game for an example of this; sure, it may have access to more information than the player has, along with better reaction times and excellent strategy, but if it's all preprogrammed then it can't take advantage of things like different level structures, gameplay changes, unforeseen engine quirks, etc. If it can't adapt, it'll become obsolete and useless the second anyone figures out how it reacts to situations. Thus, you'd have to give your AIs the capacity to learn, think, and apply reasoning, which are indeed human characteristics, to be effective.

Not that any of this matters. Wars are fought over territorial squabbles and lust for resources, nothing else (and don't let anyone ever try to delude you into thinking that that isn't true). With the statement that with space warfare is possible in this hypothetical situation, we can assume that humans can colonize other planets and live self-sufficiently; that is, without support from Earth. If we can assume this, then these civilizations already have all of the resources they'd ever need to live, thus making war over material useless. If we assume (contrary to reality) that finding a new planet or (more feasibly) building a new space station is practical, territory stops being a matter as well, since you've already got all the land you could need. Take the matters of the amount of time necessary for a space ship to even reach an enemy along with the fact that at long distances, even communication at the speed of light would have huge latencies, and the possibility of "intergalactic war for the glory of an empire" becomes remote. It is my firm and well-reasoned belief, then, that conflict in the space age would be limited to squabbles within neighboring colonies/space stations and wars fought on ground amongst local political factions.