You guys are doing an amazing job!!!
That being said, I would imagine any real space battle to be short. Real short. And I'm talking about any completely non-atmospheric battles.
Consider: even with hardened shields, flares, lasers to destroy projectiles, or anything else you might think of, if a ship is hit it's probably going to be done for.
Being in orbit (or in space) is sort of like being out in the middle of an unimaginably large ocean. In this ocean, death is guaranteed without working spacesuits or life support systems. I cant imagine small ships confronting each other in space unless there are larger ones to defend. In real life, you'd probably be using drones anyway. In an air dogfight, a plane can still fight with a little damage, but for a spacecraft, that's a different story. There's no air to cool off the hot damaged parts of a ship, or to slow down the really fast rotation after a missile hit. All that damage stays with your ship, one hit and you're as good as dead.
The only actual space battles I could really believe are ones between very large ships. If small spacecraft are involved, their probably going to be drones, as no sane human being is going to get out there and dogfight or intercept other ships amidst a vacuum, and why would we if we can use drones? Thus, it would mostly be between large spacecraft from opposing sides. I'm talking about big, freighter-sized ships, with drone ships. Yet, now we are basically looking at an almost Star Wars-ish battle with real physics (It's called inertia, George Lucas!), or a Star Trek-type confrontation between two ships. Why do you think that so many sci-fi battles have huge vessels? It's cause that will be the only place you can possibly go for millions of miles if you actually make it out alive. You can't have a battle without a fall-back area. We don't just send out planes, we bring them on carriers.
Of course, those two shows feature equally absurd technologies. Star Wars battles are not really "space battles" because all the blunt violations of inertia suggests atmospheric flight. Star Trek has better examples of confrontations between large ships. If such confrontations turn violent, the ship with the best technology usually ends up just plain destroying the other opponent. Often, they don't become fights, because the weaker ship knows it's outmatched- why fight if you can negotiate?
All right. Before you disregard my fictional examples, remember that those short Star-Trek confrontations involve technology that uses methods so advanced they aren't even scientifically possible, yet they are still short. Anything we could build or even theorize doesn't come close to that stuff. If those battles are short, than our battles are going to be much quicker.
In Orbiter, the battles that you plan to simulate are going to be as realistic as possible- right? The damage that ships will cause each other with near-future technologies is going to be huge. What about the rotation from a the impact of a projectile? Your ship will be correcting it's rotation while the other side takes it's next shot. Lasers are the other choice, and if effective enough will still cause a large amount of damage. Space battles might not even be worth fighting. No doubt we would build ships, each side constantly improving, but these weapons aren't going to be used; kind of like the cold war except the fear isn't our annihilation but the weapons annihilating themselves.
I'm not trying to be a negative person here, but I just think that in reality, it probably wouldn't come to this, and as we are striving for realism, then if you ask me I would not choose to implement space battles into Orbiter. Of course, I am curious to see how this turns out. No hard feelings, this isn't a war* after all!!! :lol:
P.S. Also, you could do it this way: Have a huge spaceship with a number of smaller craft which orbit and head towards a ground target, and then that base sends up its own fighters- battles ensue in the air, etc. This would be very difficult to program, but would be awesome. Orbiter doesn't support multiple players (does it?) or a split-screen mode, but maybe that would be the key to good combat, or even for other things, like one person launching another plane into orbit with a TX and then flying it back to a base, while the other player flies into orbit, or something like that. This probably isn't coming anytime soon, but would be pretty cool.
*This applies to Star Wars/Star Trek flame wars. Obviously.
Hope this post wasn't too long.