Quote:
Originally Posted by ericthered
That's the thing that makes me wonder if thrust aligning with gravity is that big of a deal. It seems that absolute speed doesn't matter, but altering course and changing facing does. I
|
It's the other way around in my experience. Absolute speed determines whether you can force engagement but once you're in range changing direction is largely pointless. You should have entered range with all your weapons bearing and your opponets would ahve to be scattered over a _very_ large area of space for much effort to be required to change point of aim.
If you are going to maneuver this is exactly where naval orientation does not work. A crew can not operate with 1 G towards their feet and even 0.1 Gs behind or to the side of them. You could perhaps strap everyone in and turn off the artifical gravity but you'd still have problems for anyone not strapped in like damage control parties.
Naval orinetation requires virtually all of any accelration forces to be completely neutralized which is how things work in Star Wars and Star Trek. If you're not doing that you'll only see "naval" orientation in immobile space stations.