I would like to know more about ship speed and how it relates to surviving enemy fire.
Certainly faster ships are hit less in general, but why?
If a high speed untouched ship is moving slowly(I.E. Formation/Escort or with a slow ship), is it just as easy to hit as the slow ship or is there an innate bonus for being capable of high speeds? Is it just as easy to track both ships?
It appears to be a straight function of velocity and direction vs tracking speed, but is that true? If a ship is moving directly towards enemy guns is it easier to hit than if it where moving at the same speed perpendicular to the enemy guns? I think this is why keep moving is so useful for fast ships, it gives them more time moving NOT directly at the enemy, but it’s still a very weird order. It totally changes the way your ship deals with engage ranges for enemy ships. I would like to know more about how engage range affects keep moving.
Keep moving seems to be the only real way to get survivability out of ship speed. Fighters, who are automatically ordered to keep moving are the best example of this, but you can also make some very fast larger ships who are very hard to kill when given the keep moving order.
Tactically, ship speed is used to rush enemy fleets and get into the dead zone of missiles or close the gap to use short range weapons. If ship speed was influencing combat more, there would be fewer “wall” style fleets that sometimes don’t even have engines! Unless you’re using terrible weapons, tracking effects killing fighters and plasma weapons and very little else because investing in speed is rarely worthwhile.
I would like to see more mobile battles and that’s why I want to know more! The average fleet is a very slow one and typically battles are napoleon style marches. Not sure why, but in my opinion GSB1 had a much healthier mix of fast and slow fleets.