Originally posted by Turnsky
a "slide" key ala Tachyon would be cool... press it, and travel in the same direction at a constant speed.. so you can turn around, fire at your opponent.. then turn in a different direction would be cool, too. 
That sounds pretty much like a Newtonian hack - not that it wouldn't be a darn good thing. If we could make the speed/area limits high enough to allow a more flexible N-ish movement it could work out.
To keep the player from going out of the "map" or zoom around too fast, a safety "navigation" limit should be made.
The explanation is that, whenever you jump into a system or in a system, you were doing careful acceleration in subspace to exit with a velocity that would put you in a stable orbit.
Since gravity fields help subspace travel going around a planet or coming out near one is cheaper (ever wondered why there are so lot of planets in missions?
)
To do so safely (ergo not plumetting into it like a meteor or getting singleshot into the galaxy) you must arrive at Lagrange points where the pull of the stellar bodies are constant providing a well known parameters for the jump. (The most stabile L-point between stars are probably the place where stable jumpnodes may reside).
When in orbit the relativly small thrust of a fighter can't make it go off orbit or the alteration will be so small during a mission that it can be disregarded. - HOWEVER there are limits.
So the player can accelerate as fas as his ship may go, in any direction. He can zoom around like in I-War. However the sum of his speed can't exeed the preset Navigation limit.
To prevent mishaps and since the limit varies from orbit to orbit, the onboard computer automatically handles the limit and shuts down the thrust when the ship has reached it.
The simple implementation could work with an isotropic limit - so the limit is the same in all directions.
A later variation could let the FREDER set for all directions, creating a limiter shape. This would be usefull where the mission takes place close to the planet, so going away from it won't be as dangerous as toward it.
Beside the limite itself, the pilot should have another restriction - separation from the fleet. Leaving behind key assets (the place where the mission takes place) is desertion.
This is already in the game, but beside the edge of the box, it should be made availible to the FREDER as a box of his own inside the current one (which could be broadened by one or two magnitude, that's out to be big enough for any single mission).
The final and most hard to code version could be a fully customisable limiter system - beside setting isotropic and direction specific limits, the FREDER could make the limits depend on the ship's position.
This last system would enable complicated mission where going into lower orbit would put a greater limit on the ships' speed since unless the pursuers comply they can't stay near the targets and the reversal of the situation as well.
I also had another idea - setting the throttle to an axis, and allowing you to kill the throttle (not the nav-speed!) limiter. (Yeah, I now I've been watching way too much Macross Pluss). Doing so will result in great acceleration, but will start to damage your hull with a rate depending on the over-limit thrust.
