Galdred
Studio Draconis
Indeed, but 2D and 3D allow you to prevent your opponent from doing so:Positioning something between two points is still more or less a 1D line, so that hasn't changed.That is only true if all ships have the same range, but if they have very different ranges, and you need your picket/point defense ships to be between the enemy and your core ships, then positioning becomes very important.
It is about flanking your opponent so that he cannot intercept everything at once.
Granted, the lack of stealth doesn't help, but you can still use decoys in space (unarmed ships that have a lot of emission).
And see, this basically concedes my point: BECAUSE 3D combat in space tends to reduce into a 1D line, they've added dogfight simulator mechanics that depart from a pure space simulation to try to disrupt this. Typical hallmarks of this include short engagement ranges and magic mechanics.In Starshatter, larger ships also had a nerly impenetrable directional shield that would cover roughly 50% of the directions. I think it was similair in Edge of Chaos.
These also make positioning matter as you cannot afford to have everyone attack from the same direction
Indeed, most space games use space magic and/or dogfighting, but if it were pure space simumlations, ships would be orbiting stuff (stars or planets), and only use their precious fuel to engage evasive action/change orbit, and send ordnance from afar.
It is true that in this case, 3D would not be very important, but the distance would be mainly set by the relative positions on each orbit, so the 2D would still be important. There would be a relatively minor benefit of 3D: using an orbiting plane orthogonal to that of your opponent would make the range between you and your opponent change less.
But space shooters and strategy games are usually very far removed from what we could call a "realistic" space combat model (except for Children of a dead earth).