I was working on something similar to this as well. I was able to get pretty good moving battles by playing around with the acceleration settings but I never could solve the ships smacking into one another when you've got many bunched up. Still it looks cool. See here at about 1:10 into the video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMFt4XjTeH8

I thought about changing the deceleration rates to make the battles "moving" but had no idea how!  Does the AI do alright with it? I imagined telling ships to go somehwere and they would constantly travel in circles trying to get there and never stopping. 

How bad do they bump into each other? Is it constant? Is it aesthetic only or does it change gameplay significantly?

EDIT

Blair mensioned that everyone wants moving frigates. What about capital ships? Would they still function with a low deceleration?

With 1.1 (1.096 as of now) are ships able to fire while moving?

Well, its not just frigates.  Everyone wants to be able to mod ship AI, PERIOD.  So if someone (like Major Stress) wants to make a fighter-like capital (like the Defiant) he can.  Plus I'm sure DANMAN could use it too.  Well, basically every Sins modder would find a use for it.

i just thought about something cause Kiedjor way seem defiant and smaller ship like

but SteelFin way seem more likely for larger ships

a mix betwen both would look awsome

i'm just trhowing an idea i have no idea on how the ai work in sins is it possible to change the way the A.I behave or write a new one or we are stuck with those we have?

if we could get the A.I. to have a "battle speed" insead of the classic get in range stop and fire?

for the ships smacking into each other my idea may seem stupid but it simplicity make it the closer to reality cause a ship will inevitably smack into an other in a battle so if there is a way to make collision deal dmg to ships then just let them take dmg until they die

It seems the v1.1 seems to make the method i was working a lot more worse and i'm not sure whats causing it.

The thing about large ships they collide way too easily. Which screws up the flight. Smaller ships seems to work way better cause well they are smaller.

It's been requested for Entrenchment that we allow frigates to optionally use fighter physics and attack pattern logic. I'll be looking into seeing how feasible it is and do my best to hook it up. Hopefully before beta 1.

How did you solve the problem of ships stuttering violently back and forth in place when they are moving slowly, or stopped? That has been the issue i have been having in trying to implement fighter type movement.

The ships stuttering has only started for me post 1.05 and I haven't yet figured out why or how to fix it. I am using the same acceleration values as I did with 1.05.

Ideally I wanted to create a ship ability like the scout explore that allows one to go into evasive manuver mode which would essentially set the acceleration/deceleration settings so they move in battle. The AI would then turn it on automatically only in battle too rather then how I have it now where its always on. I can't do it that way though because changing deceleration is not possible through an ability as far as I can tell. Only some of the acceleration parameters like linear speed can be changed.

Just make them negative values.  It LinearAcceleration is a negative, then it means it obviously must have less acceleration.

I'd like to know if the dev's have looked into moving ships yet. Mr. Fraser said he'd look into it, I'd love to know what progress has been made. I am trying to make a pds style mod and that requires lots of things soase doesn't support yet without masive juryrigging:

1. targetable ship sections on capitals

2. Ships that can spawn other ships

3. Tracking turrets

4. of course ship motion during combat, any naval commander will tell you "a stationary ship is a dead ship."

1) is not possible for now so I agree fully with your idea.

2) 100% POSSIBLE...(I have 4 different spawning abilities used at elast 500 times each in battle )

3) By nature...turrets (if were talking static defense) are tracking..but if your talkiing actually seeing the weapons turn to face target..then not yet and once again I fully agree with you.

4) ALL SHIPS CAN MOVE!! Ask kiedjor..just adding that ability to ever single ship makes the game so much more fluid!

yeah, I like the idea of spawning ships as a special ability, I just read up on that from one of yer earlier posts just now. Just gotta find a way to make it more balanced. Increasing the cost of the ability is really only a stopgap measure. It is exploitable and there are munchkins out there who will exploit it in multiplayer The turrets really do need to move and track. I have an idea of how to do it,I just got to fiddle around with the babylon5 particle physics idea. The ships using kielor's idea is cool at first, then they start clustering and sticking to cap ships, and looking like a frigate demolition derby...lol...

Why can't we just change deceleration values from 0 to something else?  It's not strikecraft movement, but it should simulate a moving battle fairly well.

I think that idea was already tested and failed! Ask Kiedjor..hes the expert in mouvement!

In the thread where someone said they got it to work, it did seem like for some reason it fell apart. I asked why but no one really responded.