We will agree to disagree. It is not that I do not acknowledge that your admirably eloquent explanation covers the use for which meta has been hijacked - it is just that I still believe it to be the hijacking of a good Greek word for pretentious purposes some 23 centuries after it was first coined, to try to give a higher meaning to playing a computer game 
Nice to be able to have a grown up exchange here for a change! Thank you.
Don’t blame video gaming for muddling the classic use of the meta prefix - that started with war game strategies for training soldiers in the 60s, which referred to developing the most effective strategy to resolve a conflict based on observed behaviors (rather than inherent ‘rules’). in the 80s the ‘meta-’ prefix was adopted with ‘metagaming’ for tabletop gaming to refer to out-of-character knowledge being misapplied in-character without basis for the character having that knowledge. And then pop-culture stole it for self-referencing content somewhen, too.
As used in EVE, ‘meta’ is used stand-alone, not as a prefix, and is essentially using the ‘most effective tactics available’ acronym, rather than the Greek term.
this ^.
I am not saying that this is good or bad, just trying to provide @Vortigern_Vitalis with a comprehension of how we reached current state.
In the “good or bad” discussion, which is a different one, I personally don’t like that people use term they don’t understand, but I guess that’s a lack of culture that removed them from the curiosity to find out which term is actually correct for the situation.
You can’t do anything about that, they are just children who have no insight on the errors they are making. The only thing you can do, is educate your children so they don’t make that mistake (to talk about thing they don’t understand), by teaching them to accept one’s mistake and try to correct them, with a smile rather than with shame.
Everything important has already been said, but just let me re-iterate, the game already gives you tools to “down-fit” your weapons. You can add rigs and modules for more tracking, optimal range, or better application for missiles. And of course, most ships have at least enough drone space for a flight of light drones.
Worst case, you use your drones to remove rats your main weapons absolutely can not deal with. Just remember to recall them when the rats start targeting them. (Reduces a lot of unnecessary loss) 
When you’re doing this thing were you split up everything to target specific sizes, you divide so much DPS everything will take an eternity longer. Think about battleships in lvl. 4 missions, for example: With the rare exception of some hulls with extra high slots and some extra turrets/launchers, in most cases you’ll remove most of your DPS to target secondary targets. In this case, your worst case suddenly becomes “not being able to finish the mission at all”, if you somehow manage to drop below the tank of some of the nastier battleship NPCs.
Generally speaking, it’s like in real life: Amass and concentrate as much firepower as possible, avoid splitting your weapons among too many targets.
Speaking of your own example, a lot of battleship-sized rats would just laugh at a single cruise missile launcher firing at them. Whatever you shot with that kind of set-up either never died, or wasn’t a battleship.
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