Well, see, this is why I don't do anything like hard military SF (or, really, hard anything SF). This is why starship fights in UF tend to come off like World War I battleship slugfests in outer space, or at the most modern, WWII fleet engagements. Because that right there, that you just described? Even if it could be made interesting to read, it's be dead boring to write.

At around the time that the early Wing Commander games were hugely popular, there was another PC space combat game out that tried to be much more of a hard spaceflight sim. (I can't remember the title now, which should give you some indication of what's to come in this little description.) The box made much of the fact that Real Space Scientists had been consulted in an effort to extrapolate and model the most realistic possible prediction of how combat in outer space would be fought.

And here's the thing: It was unfathomable. Combat happened by remote control, with hypervelocity weapons, at colossal (by comparison with aerial combat, anyway) distances, way beyond visual range. You'd basically sit around in the dark looking at a radar screen, unable to figure out what anything it was telling you meant, and then, for no reason you would ever know, you would die. When it wasn't being impossible to play, it was the dullest game ever made. Imagine Missile Command with the missiles modeled as realistic ICBM-launched multi-megaton MIRVs.

I don't want my space battle scenes to be like that to read or to write, and that's why - and I don't mind admitting it - I deliberately eschew realism in that area. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Admin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.