"Anyone with half a brain knows that Problem is, until we actually have to deal with space combat, we have NO CLUE what tactics are going to end up effective. We can theorize... but without any real purpose / funding behind it, its not going to be very good."
But, really do they? Why do people latch onto Strangely romantic / Pop fiction WWII naval combat ?? people assume what is will be . . . the military is always relearning that one.
Tech at the time makes ALL of the difference and we can make guesses (for one 2d water is different from 3d space in size, viscosity, freedom of movement etc
). We could be quite sure space combat will have NO resemblance to naval combat. . Which my point was that most games (and movies after star wars) seem to model it after .. Heck they do not even model it after modern naval warfare . . which is all about Sensors, stealth, stand off weapons (planes, missiles). . Fleets would never get close though to use guns. It is like portraying Roman legion combat to modern armor and mobile cav combat of today there are some similarities but they are more in vague ground war concepts then real practice.
Also, in space size has nothing to do with top speed (unless some strange tech drive is used
) The biggest and smallest ships could easy hit the same speeds, Acceleration though . . that is the problem and that has more to do the mass then size. And ships will need to use energy to slow down also not something Naval ships would need to do . . Tactics then change even with these small differences. Battleships could match the speed of fighters if given an opportunity to build up speed A fleet with enough speed could blaze through a system too fast for even the fastest ship to catch (the main problems here is having fighting ships enter a similar relative vector “window” where they could get more then one snap shot off as they pass each other at crazy speeds) and so on . . . rather interesting stuff . .but all dropped for WWII.
