Dodging a laser would be impossible. They travel at the speed of light which means by the time you know they've fired the laser that it's already hit you. Impossible to dodge something that is almost instantaneous.

As I see it most capital ships that have more weapons on the sides turn to broadside an opponent and those that have more on the front stay positioned straight.

It seems to me that I'm the only person who realized that the ships in SoaSE do have turrets that can only fire within a certain field of view of the ship. Watch your capital ships, they do this the most of all ships (as they have front/rear/left/right turrets). I believe that the Akkan Battlecruiser (TEC Colony Capital Ship) typically tries to attack other ships by facing the left side of the ship towards the battle. The small turrets on the capital ships also move slightly when they are firing.

Maybe everyone else realizes this and I'm misinterpreting the posts, but I just thought I'd stop and say that.

(By the way, I do like the idea of ships moving in combat. If anyone has played Mass Effect and read the lore in-game about ship-to-ship combat, it explains pretty well how space combat would logically play out. But I understand that it'd be pretty difficult to program into the game post-release and that the turning arcs of ships can get troublesome when static defenses come into play.)

Instantaneous on a normal scale, yes. When you're talking about interplanetary scales, far from it. It takes 8 minutes for light to get from the sun to Earth, and we're pretty damn close to the Sun when you take into account the size of the solar system. I'm not saying that the ships in SoaSE are 93 million miles apart, I'm just saying that there'd still be enough of a time gap to maybe rotate the ship just enough so you can avoid the beam.

Now I understand... it already moves around to focus the MOST firepower it can on the specified enemy. Support battleships with their side mounted weapons simply can not spin fast enough to focus ALL their weapons on a single opponent.. so they turn their side to it at exactly 90 degrees and focus half their firepower on it while the other half covers the other side...
Combat capitals have MOST of their weapons fire forward... but you will still see a few weapons firing on targets to the side...
If they moved around any more then that then they will be focusing LESS firepower on the current target, as the main weapons will not longer be facing the enemy while the back turrets hit them.

So to your request, they already do so without moving around, moving around will only detract from it, making it harder for them to hit...

Have you tried manually moving your ships around? It cripples their effectiveness. The capital ship WILL go out of range and force enemy forces to remanuever, casing it to take less damage, but it will also be unable to fire most its weapons... I have noticed it reduces the enemy's damage by about 50% and my own damage by about 80%. (very rough estimates). and its not through dodging, its through firing arc manipulation and the AI not handling moving targets very well... which is rather cheap because if there were real people on those ships then they would... (or military grade AI). If the AI was to handle it better and more realistically (spin in place with maneuvering thrusters) then it would have resulted in the ship moving around taking the EXACT SAME amount of damage, while the ships standing still will take LESS...

I for one think that the concept that victory in capital ship combat is decided entirely by the type and level of ship is boring. I can, however, see your point that this game does not model the concept of ship maneuvers very well, if at all.

I would love if there were some way to level up the Crew and/or Commander of ships, rather than just the ship itself. So you could have a veteran crew and commander beat a higher level ship with a less experienced crew due to better tactical positioning.

Perhaps it's best if there was a toggle for this on a ship-by-ship basis? It might even have a tactical effect with ships who have the toggle to be stationary could do more damage but also take more damage (being stationary and whatnot...) whereas ships who have the toggle to strafe and fly around would do less damage but take less damage as well? It doesn't have to be an unbalancing amount either, perhaps from 5% to 15%.

That's the only way I could really see this appeasing both groups as well as adding another bit of a tactical element to the game and battles ("hmm should I let this ship stay stationary and deal out a bit more damage or just let it take less damage?").

Personally, I think arguing over semantics and bits of, "realistically, this would happen in spaaaaace!" is a bit of a time-waster. Sins has realistic ommisions done for the sake of making the game "fun" and I think that should take presidence over realism in a game. If a new feature adds another layer or depth to the gameplay then I say go for it, even if it breaks the laws of science or whatever you might have seen in sci-fi shows/movies.

Isn't it a given that none of this works in a gravity well?

Also the crew doesn't withstand hundreds of g (and I was talking millions not hundreds...) phasing moves the whole ship and its contents at once. Otherwise it would have torn it to shreds. (the crew AND the ship itself... metal doesn't withstand those kind of g force either)
Engines provide a thrust that is mechanically transmitted through the ship...

Phasing also is not physically accelerating to trans light speed. its more esotaric then that...

However you COULD theoretically have phase dodging... with the right FTL detection mechanism to detect the enemy shots, and timing them with micro phase jumps to dodge...
Except, phasing is a thing done from gravity well to gravity well... so its useless for combat within a gravity well... so the whole thing falls apart (they somehow have phasing missiles, but those are SMALL and only for the vasari, masters of phasing).

Anyways what all this means is that if they could dodge, they would do so by phasing, and that means no "moving ships".. it means stationary ships that will randomly phase around inside the gravity well to dodge lasers. phase, shoot at last known location of enemy, phase, shoot at last location, rinse and repeat.

So there is still absolutely no reason for ships to FLY around in sub light speeds... It only hurts them.

Oooh... guess what? I just found out the skirantra carrier (the carrier capital ship for the vasari) has an ability called "microphase aura" that performs micro phase jumps for fighters/bombers in its range, allowing them to evade fire... So apperantly I am not the only one to have done the math on that one ...

The vasari are masters of phase tech, they can get tolerance tech reducing the gravity well size of each planet by 6 and then 12%... and they can also microphase missles and fighters... because they are small enough to do so... larger ships cannot microphase jumps to evade fire, yet.

PS. In the real world, phasing is probably impossible... so you could never evade lasers... sorry.

Eh, they actually don't obey Newton's Laws, since they have both top speed and fire their thrusters continually while moving. Since there is no air friction in space, firing your thrusters will continually accellerate you untill you reach near relativistic speeds (might take you a long time though).

Anyway, I think Star Wars are more exciting to watch than Odyssey 2001, no? This is a game after all, so lets dispense with all that no-sound-in-space and need-a-flight-control-permission-to-fart nonsense and have really big ships fly around the battlefield with stately grace while ripping each other apart together with small craft zooming totally unrealistically but very excitingly around. Who's with me!?

And you sir, have a pretty big assumption in your argument as well. Having not played the game, I can't answer this, but I doubt that any ship can shoot the distance from the moon to Earth (please correct me if I'm wrong), which is about one second. So assume FTL detection and instant implementation of avoidance procedures - you have 1 second to move the entire ship out of the way. I don't know about you, but I don't very much like soupy crewmembers. I like it when they're nice and firm and still breathing. No?

So, in the end, are we going to be arguing in terms of the game or in terms of realism?

FFS this is a GAME. We just want stuff that LOOKS cool, who cares if it's realistic or not?! Some of the arguments in this thread are ridiculous!

I’m all for making things look less static in battles, so subtle camera movement would be a good idea worth considering but make it an adjustable setting, so people who don’t like it don’t have to use it.

I have noticed that based on weapons range, ship position and current target, ships DO move to position themselves appropriately in relation to the enemy. I have never witnessed a battle where all ships just sit there and don’t move AT ALL.