I’d like to see a feature added to GSB to automatically re-center the opposing force. Why? Because space is big. If I (the fleet commander) had intelligence on an enemy fleet, I wouldn’t jump my fleet in at some obscure angle to hinder the battle for my side. I’d jump right where I wanted to be. So, when some people put their fleet in the corner, nullify it by re-centering. Or, better yet, allow me to move their force to where I want them to be but not change their relative positions to each other. I need to jump my fleet in at whatever angle suits me best. As commander, I would not have sent my fleet into a bad position. So lets simulate that space is big and the enemy can’t hide in a corner.
Not only that, the game (it would be a game changer) to allow the challenger to re-center or move the opponent to any side of the map. Then he has to protect all sides. But I realize that may be asking too much. In a real sense, the size of the maps don’t make much sense either. Since as commander, I may decide to jump into the sector far away from the enemy, or behind him or on top of him.
But thinking that the intent is that we had to travel to the battle space, then maybe coming in on one side makes sense. But still I would not come in at some oblique angle.
I think the distances and speeds involved in a starship battles make it so that the only way to actually get into a fight is to want to be in the fight… in that way, fights would be arranged much like medieval conflicts were. Marching an army was so hard and crossing terrain so difficult that unless the defender was going to meet you somewhere, the two armies could elude each other forever. I think its the same with ships.
If you also assume the enemy has a similar method of maneuvering that you do, and that you both detect each other’s silhouettes quite early… well, the line vs line formations resembling medieval lines do make sense.
But if you want to assume that your ships “jump into” battle and ambush the enemy, then you’re correct. Both options would be cool… personally, I prefer more variety in deployment styles.
One presumes here that the defending fleet just sits and waits to be attacked. Seems unlikely.
However, you do open an interesting can of worms with this question of pre-battle maneuver, and I sense here a chance to make engines more useful. What if the attacker could manipulate the starting fleet position to some degree, based on the relative average speeds of the two fleets? (Fighters wouldn’t count in this calculation.) EDIT: Hmm, best use “slowest fleet element speed” as top fleet speed, not average.
That is to say, if my attacking fleet is 2X as fast, I can come in on the flanks of the defender; 3X I could even attack the defender’s rear; but less than 2X to 1X and I’m coming in from the front…and less than the defender’s speed means it gets the chance to use the “corner setup” mentioned above.
NOW engines are worth having. 
This would invalidate traditional challenges, though, so it might only be useful in the context of a future campaign game–which, I imagine, is already pretty coded up and too late for alterations even if Our Master of the Game loved this kind of idea. Basically what I’m saying here is: this is an interesting thought in whatever flavor it comes in, but I don’t see this being added to the basic game, even though the basic game does presume we attackers get a bit of a maneuvering advantage (attackers can pick a corner to attack out of and can otherwise adapt to whatever the defender has done in setup) no matter what the relative fleet speeds are.
Can you tell I’ve been re-reading some Weber books, in which speeds and relative position are always very important to battle outcomes?
RC