If the enemy wants to stay at range and come around the asteroid, then they have to make a FAR larger orbit around that same asteroid. Whereas a ships that kissing the steroid surface has to make only minor manouvers to move and stay concealed by the asteroid.Rosen_Ritter_1 wrote:How? They're still perfectly capable of staying out of range.TrashMan wrote: Flying around that rock and keeping distance kinda nullifes the speed/acceleration advantage, doesn't it?
To put it simply, all the speed advantage of the enemy is made null and void, because they need to cover a far greater distance to expose the same 2-3° of fire.
Of course, if the enemy outnumbers you too, that's another kettle of fish. You'd need more asteroids
Why would the humans even try to chase?You may only have to turn a little bit, but you've got a massive and unwieldy piece of dead weight to move around. Miles thick asteroid? That's a really big weight. I'm not sure Human starship drives are going to keep up with Umiak ones with that kind of handicap at long range.TrashMan wrote: Sicne the human vessel needs to move only a little comparatively, to be behind cover again. And it wastes more fuel.
With really big rocks and several such ships, you can practicyl force the Umiak to close - everything else is a collosal waste of ammo and fuel.
I there's nothing else in the system?You also miss out on an important fact. Nothing about this engagement dictates that the Umiak have to charge at the human ships. The Umiak could simply ignore the human ships, and start accelerating towards an inhabitable planet. That dictates that the human ships will either have to make a beeline for the Umiak in pursuit (suicidal), or offer to surrender in exchange for earth/Mars/Alpha.
Of course, this is a rather static/slow type of tactics, so it's not suitable for intercept. IT's very defensive in nature.