japridemor wrote:My gaming group has come to Starmada after a very brief flirt with Full Thrust. When we began to play Starmada we used the vector movement as it seemed more “realistic”. After several battles, involving just such quick fly-bys as you mentioned, we switched to Stamada's intrinsic “cinematic” system. The vector movement reduced maneuvers in combat and all ships tended to have AB arc weapons as you were always turning to thrust at your opponent. With the regular Starmada movement, there is more maneuvering and it makes for a more challenging game as ships need side and rear mounted weapons.
I recently purchased Starmada X after playing Full Thrust for a while, primarily to see if SX's ship design system would be a better fit with my group's custom setting. For my personal taste, if it's in space, it has to be vector, and I think FT's implementation is better, subject to the caveat that our house-rules do not permit manoeuvring thrusters to do anything but turn or roll the ship (FT's "thruster push" rule is ridiculous IMHO; I just don't believe in manoeuvring thrusters capable of delivering half the acceleration of the main drive!).
Our experience is that vector movement does not inhibit manoeuvre, but it does make it very different from what we're all used to in the way wet-navy ships, aircraft etc. behave. Of course it's exactly the audience's unfamiliarity that leads the makers of most TV and movie SF to ignore physics and have spaceships banking into turns, whooshing as they pass by etc. I don't think there's much point using anything but "cinematic" movement if you're playing in the Star W*rs or Star Tr*k universes. B5 is a bit better, but still has apparently reaction-engined Earth Alliance ships decelerating into orbit etc. while still flying "bows forward" as it were.
The "put all your weapons in the front arc and charge" mutual fly-by scenario is encouraged by "line 'em up and send 'em in" encounter-battle scenarios, but it's not the only approach. For example long-range weapons covering the broadside arcs offer interesting tactical options for holding the range open and circling the enemy's flanks as he charges. Think Saracen horse-archers rather than charging knights...
An issue our group has discussed a fair bit is the "sit and spin" problem. FT's vector rules allow a ship to turn from any heading to any other by burning one Thrust Point (TP). As a result, even the most sluggish armoured behemoth can spin as nimbly on its axis as the speediest frigate, and bring even single arc weapons to bear on any chosen bearing. That doesn't really feel right, and we've experimented with adopting the Turn-a-TP-for-each-arc-turned approach. That means, for example, that Thrust 2 dreadnaughts take two turns to reverse their heading, and gives an incentive to fit them with multi-arc weapons to counter nimbler opponents.