It's basically showing how turning would realistically work via the use of RCS. I'm not saying this should be a *thing* on larger ships, even though they'll certainly have auxiliary thrusters to serve the same function, but as far as dogfighting...I think that it would be really nice to veer away from the traditional Star Wars style of doing things and putting a focus on basically how the above picture puts it.
So if I were a starfighter pilot, the conventional hangar would slingshot me into space so as to get some momentum going, then I would use my RCS to orient my craft and activate my main thrusters when facing the combat zone to enter the fight. Of course, we technically don't need to even have them on afterward unless executing a maneuver...my explanation for this would be that 'SMART' drives are a thing in our setting. Basically the engine is always on to automatically compensate for passing inertial fields, gravitational pull, and whatnot. To 'accelerate' really means to overdrive this function to give a boost of speed when needed.
I guess the same could be said for larger vessels, who typically have less *proportionate* RCS the larger they are since it's more costly and are thus more cumbersome. Except in bigger ships it's a question of balancing out forward facing thrusters with the rear - of course our directions are created by imbalances in the system. IE 'Ahead Full' would be 25% forward-facing drives and 75% backward drives. The reason for even having forward facing is primarily for safety reasons. Those forward facers must be present, on and at a certain power to compensate for the backward thrusters in time to make a stop in order to avoid obstacles and such. So while objects in space don't stop, every ship is going to have their backward drives on as per the traditional sci fi cliche to ensure forward movement against these 'safety' thrusters, so to speak.
When your safety thrusters aren't on the assumption is the ship gets flung into space at extremely high velocity if the primaries are active on full. I'd say this would either be a crippling blow to a ship in battle (they'd basically have to turn off their drives and rely solely on RCS and some tricky drive manipulation to get around, kinda like a fighter except without the SMART factor to help out because size) or an actual tactic to achieve maximum ramming speed.
idklol I want to write something with work. Honestly dunno how you guys did engines in the thread(s) (sublight, hardlight, gaylight?) but I mean if this could be the standard to deviate from that'd be pretty cool. This is how I'm probably going to do and interpret it regardless.
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