Who cares? Those be the rules. They don't have to make sense.

its a 3d game played in 2d space.

Alright, I'll try my hand at this as well.

Take what you see and throw it in the garbage. If we are going to simulate the game properly, you have to start from the pilots perspective.

First off, narrow your point of view to one from a cockpit. All you can see is infront of you. You remember your pilot training, you know how to bump your ship around (evade), predict your opponents flight paths to anticipate his movements and firing arcs (focus), and any other techniques you learned in the academy. Now you are cozy in your TIE and it is time to hunt some rebels!

Now you have the X-wing in sight, he is at range 2 and you give him a what for with your lasers. However, keep in mind that to shoot him, you have to point your fighter in the direction he is travelling. This means you aren't just doing a drive by but pushing your fighter into a collision trajectory. You make the shot and his shields flash as a reward but they hold strong. His return fire passes on either side of you harmlesly.

However, this is space combat. You are more or less strapped to a giant rocket with guns and so are they and you are both flying towards one another. Hitting him may cripple his fighter but it means your death, and that is something you just happen to value. So you slam your flight stick hard into your chest and pull a steep climb to avoid a collision with the rebel scum.

STOP. Now think about that, did you really have time to focus on him or preform any other actions while you broke hard to avoid hitting him? Not really. It was a life and death maneuver, and if you didn't do it, you were dead. Something you would like to avoid. This is represented in-game with the fact that you stop short of your current maneuver, and you can't do anything extra. You are breaking hard to avoid a mid-space collision and you are very vulnerable for the moment. No juking the stick, to foil targeting software, you are going in a steep, predictable maneuver.

As for asteroids, that is easier to explain. Don't think of them as a line of asteroids, flat and predictable, but a cloud of asteroids that the fighters are weaving through. when you try to skip over one, you literally roll the dice that there isn't a jut-out, debris, or even unexpected movement either from the asteroid, or an impact that pushes it from its original course, or even two asteroids impacting and rebounding. Needless to say, it is a stressful situation, and you aren't going to be trying any fancy flying while skimming as close as you can to one and trying to surprise your enemy on the other side.

"landing" on an asteroid is akin to flying straight at it by accident (or on purpose?) and when you realize your compromised position, you again break as hard as you can (your next move) to avoid the hurtling ball of death you may or may not have just clipped, and trust me, getting a bead on any enemy fighters is the last thing that is going through your mind.

When you are commanding people around, it is easy to go "why aren't you doing X,Y and Z!!!" but when you yourself are the pilot, the only thing that is going through your head is probably a star-wars PG-13 curse. but thats my take on the situation. If you want a visual representation of what happens when you point your plane at someone elses, but don't break at the last second, watch the first 20 seconds of this video, and tell me he had the option to preform an action just before the collission.

Now yes, he did fire, but that's because he didn't break like he should have, which would have saved his life, aka, what our pilots do in this game.

You know, I can remember there being several times when I'd "finish off" a TIE in X-Wing by just crashing through it.

Try playing Vector then you want complain of FFG liberties in their 2D game. You get to hand calculate your true 3D spatial movement and firing.

You will find that when designing any kind of wargame, be it land based, air based, sea based or space based, there's compromises that have to be made in order to keep a balance of realism versus playability. If you wanted to accurately incorporate a 3D environment to this game, expect the pace to be much, much slower.

The ship's arcs of fire are oversized, but if you narrowed it down to directly ahead (as it technically should be), you'd never hit anything, and the game would last for ages.

I've played quite a few games over the last 35 years that have sacrificed playability for technical accuracy, and they've taken so long to play that often they didn't end with a clear result. There were too many " could have gone this way if we had a few more turns... "

What FFG have created, may not be the most accurate way to portray starfighter combat, but it plays fast and flows easily. Sure, it's got a few quirks that make you wonder, but I don't think they take anything away from the game.

Game mecanic.

Asteroids are stationary, you know where they are and where they will be when its your turn to move. So, if you fly over one or worst end on one, it is entirely your fault. The game can punish someone for that. Might get a damage, lose your action and if you end on top, you lose your attack. Conclusion, avoid asteroids.

Now, other ships also move. You know where they are, but can't be sure of where they will be. Since it's not entirely the fault of the player if there is an overlap at the end of the turn, you can't punish the move too hard, but you don't want to encourage it either. No attack between them and action loss if you're the one bumping seems fair. You can block the other if you move before, but if you move after, you will want to avoid this situation.

Asteroids are more of an abstract, representing fields of celestial debris, many large asteroids, etc. Therefore occupying much more of a 3d footprint than a single contiguous body, such as a ships hull, which is very small in the celestial scheme of things.

Man, the level of effort some people will go through to find a tie to realism with a particular rule is astounding. It's a game. The rules exist to make it fun.

Kind of reminds me of the people who play Axis & Allies and get upset if a rule allows for something to happen that wasn't historically accurate. I don't want historical accuracy. I want a game. I want to be able to affect the outcome rather than just play out what actually happened. If I wanted historical accuracy, I'd just read Wikipedia.

Man, the level of effort some people will go through to find a tie to realism with a particular rule is astounding. It's a game. The rules exist to make it fun.

Kind of reminds me of the people who play Axis & Allies and get upset if a rule allows for something to happen that wasn't historically accurate. I don't want historical accuracy. I want a game. I want to be able to affect the outcome rather than just play out what actually happened. If I wanted historical accuracy, I'd just read Wikipedia.

If one demands a "historically accurate" game of A&A how do you determine who has to play the losers? Granted the last time I played that game it actually was relatively accurate historically. Russia stopped Germany and American technology and production pushed the Axis into defeat.

You know, I can remember there being several times when I'd "finish off" a TIE in X-Wing by just crashing through it.

I use to do that a lot too! Problem was that I kept doing that when I started playing Tie Fighter.

Had to quickly unlearn some things...

You know, I can remember there being several times when I'd "finish off" a TIE in X-Wing by just crashing through it.

I use to do that a lot too! Problem was that I kept doing that when I started playing Tie Fighter.

Had to quickly unlearn some things...

I guess you would. Flying a TIE Fighter was never my thing.

I know one other "trick" I used when I didn't quite finish of a TIE on my opening pass was to pop a flare on it as it screamed past. When it came to missiles fired AT me I had better luck just shooting them down myself (especially with an A or Y) but that flare made a nice little "shoot behind me" trick. I'd almost like to see the flare in X-Wing as some R1 missile option that could be fired WITHOUT a TL and at any target, even one not inside your firing arc.