On Wed, Jul 8, 2015 at 7:33 AM, Grimmund <grimmund@gmail.com> wrote:
Yes.  If you can get both ships visible in the TV frame, and neither
appears to be moving relative to the other, you are apparently doing
WW2 naval engagements in space.

It's not *quite* that bad. They use pseudo handheld perspective a lot. You see a shaky, medium close shot of the Enemy, then the view draws back very rapidly until the Enemy is only a tiny blurred dot and then the edge of the Galactica's hull appears in the frame.
 
The ships themselves teleport with relative ease. They have very
little need for maneuver drives.  If you wanted to get closer to the
target, it would appear to be easier to just plot an FTL microjump and
pop up "over there".

IIRC, ships only engage in combat when they can't jump out of a fight for some reason. Getting a target to hold still while you hammer it seems to be the real trick.
 
Most of the large ship engagements appear to happen at a fairly low
relative velocity.

I suspect that's because if the relative velocities are substantially different then you wouldn't emerge from jump anywhere near each other. We only see the ones where the opposing ships guess the correct vectors closely enough to be able to engage in combat.
 
The maneuver element is the fighter wing.

I mean, the whole space combat premise appears to be based on ww2
aircraft carrier operations in space.    Ship movement seems to be
based on car chase mechanics.

(Enemy ship appears "way out there" and closes "at the speed of plot"
for long enough to add some dramatic tension, then gets "in range" and
spends 15 minutes "in range" for plot purposes rather than just
blasting on past at whatever speed they closed at.


Presumably, the Galactica is moving at it's best speed AWAY from the incoming vessel. Also, a vessel that's compelled to pursue the Galactica or some other capital ship may not WANT to get too close. The phrase "jump the shark" comes to mind . . . 

--
Richard Aiken

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