If you want to see realistic movement in a space environments done mostly right, check out the human Fighters in Babylon 5, Even the human Capital ships did a good job. (get an inertia less drive and all bets are off)
I would guess it would depend on the tech.
Armor on a large space ship I always found rather funny since the most effective armor typically is the most massive. If you don’t the most massive armor you have to fall back to shear volume or armor. (example high grade Steel, with a depleted uranium core. VERY tough armor, very hard to make, VERY massive. Normal high grade steel armor . . much more practical but still rather massive. Aluminum or composite Aluminum/ceramic Much less massive and much less effective at the same volume – so increase volume (thickness) and increase mass once again . . .
Regardless you just cannot make matter strong enough to resist modern weapons let alone near future weapons. Making armor less and less viable option. Also mass inhibits movement in space the more massive a craft the harder it is to accelerate (note top speed is not effected).
This means ships would be VERY vulnerable! (short of, force fields which are a great sci-fi answer to the armor/mass problem)
With this problem active/passive Defense, stand off weapons, sensors, and maneuverability/distance should play a big role.
We are seeing this with current naval developments now. Ships do not want to get close enough to see each other . . that is insane! One hit could cripple a ship. So the game of Hiding, and finding at max range . . keeping on the edge of the reliable kill range, getting the first shot off and getting the first kill. And if it comes to counter fire you must be too hard to hit, run, or stop it from hitting you. With just enough armor to get away if hit with a glancing shot.
Given even current tech ships could easily detect and start shooting 1000s of miles away.
At 7,926.41 miles (the diameter of the earth) a fighter/missile with a ~2 Meter kill zone would have to jink at >1g acceleration in constant random directions perpendicular to the direction of t he shooting ship to dodge a laser shot. (not too bad but it would have to be constant and this is ageist a weapon you can’t anticipate to see the incoming shots . . . luck will play a big role at even this distance)
At 500 miles you need >20g to miss by less then a meter. (splat if you are human, and unlikely if a missile since this dodging needs to be done totally randomly, constantly at a acceleration reaching the normal acceleration of the forward motion of the missile )
A fast gauss weapon only 0.0016g jink is needed do doge (matter is just too slow, even Fast matter
). . BUT a gauss weapon with current tech could hit an orbiting station/ship in a different Orbit! Just as long as it’s movement is consistent. And the effects devastating!
As you see weapons will be have totally differently in space ranges become extreme, get too close and it becomes impossible to miss. Energy weapons get crazy accuracy due to next to instant Time to target. Projectile weapons have effectively unlimited rage as long as the target follows a constant path. Missiles become deadly only if they can saturate the defenses or can deploy a stand off warhead before they get in guaranteed kill zone. Fighters and Bombers become (like today) just mobile weapons platforms and need to also fire stand off weapons.
Sorry for the long post . . .I get going . . as I have said before I have done all of the math in my own sim game. and it take a bit for Hollywood conventions to be unlearned . . . starwars = WWII, Star trek = we can do it because that black box says we can . .
“it just improves the chances of your ships colliding with each other”
Remember space is vary vary big “ships colliding with each other” is a rather minor possibility . . (changes are none of the ships in a battle group would be anything but small dots from a “porthole” ) Scale and the 3rd dimension tends to throw people.
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