[Ed Kolis]

Yes, ships will have more than one speed attribute:

1. Jump speed - used for interstellar travel. Restricted to jump lanes (think warp points that take time to traverse; ships cannot be intercepted or commanded while jumping).

2. Acceleration - used for in-system travel, and (slow) interstellar travel apart from jump lanes. Movement will be newtonian (no fuel cost to coast, no speed limits, takes time and fuel to slow down).

We haven't quite worked out the combat mechanics yet, but combat will either use the newtonian mechanics from in-system travel, OR it will use a combination of that and a "maneuverability" system. Depends on whether we have tactical combat or not (tactical combat in multiplayer is looking rather unfeasible, but in single player it would be doable, just not a top priority at the moment), as well as how the newtonian mechanics work out in practice!

The way this maneuverability system would work is, combat would be turn-based, and fleets would be stuck on little "plates" - regions of space that they're confined to, with the size determined by their acceleration attribute. Each round of combat, the plates would shift in space based on their current strategic speed, acceleration, and orders from the previous game turn ("pursue other fleet" or "maintain course to Rigel" or whatever). Then the ships in turn could maneuver on the fleet-plates in a non-newtonian fashion (e.g. "move 3 km forward" or whatever); each ship would be confined to its fleet-plate, though, to avoid breaking the strategic movement calculations. Then ships would fire weapons if possible, and you go back to the plate-shifting phase, until the fleets are out of weapons range or all but one side is wiped out.

It would be interesting in this system, actually, if capital ships had little or even zero maneuverability, while fighters could zip around like crazy... would put more emphasis on the fleet formations and strategies, since you couldn't tweak those to any significant degree in combat if the maneuverability was so poor!