Welcome, welcome! 

This is a good idea.  I have never thought about the ships moving during combat.  This would be a cool addition, but you must think about the devs, and whether it would mess up the rest of the gameplay.

Would the devs be able to do something like this, and can our computers even handle it?

It sounds to me like it would mess with micro-managing the fleet as it battles.

While it would be chaos for managing, it would truly emphasize the use of the empire/fleet management pane on the left of the screen. It would also make use of the hotkeys more frequently. 

An optional game-setting would be awesome. 

If you have played SimCity, having such actions would be a form of pathfinding. Pathfinding is intensive on the CPU. With the majority of the people out there now sporting i5 2500k's, that would not be an issue because, lets face it, those CPU's are beasts! 

By all means though, SimCity games continue to stress modern CPU cores still. They have to concurrently process the movements of MILLIONS of individuals at any one second. Having ships as one big entity, and a fleet of 100+, well, that'd only be 100+ things to process rather than millions. 

AOE's is an issue as well, yes. There should be a button or two in the ships panel to tell them to follow a certain group of targets. Or, if a ship passes into the AOE and out of it, the effects could linger for a few seconds after the run and they'd slowly get weaker and weaker the further away the get from the AoE. That way, there wouldn't be a strict AOE limitation where its you are either in it or out of it. The further away you are from it, the weaker it is. 

Indeed having the devs implement something like this would be challenging, but for people who love realism and eyecandies... It'd be greatness! The programming required for ships to dodge things like asteroids and planets would add additional bulk, while ships pass one another in gravity wells. 

I think it is quite possible. If you have played Sword of the Stars, something similar goes on in that game... But those battles are limited to 5 ships at most on each side. 

As a personal note, I should add though that I am a micromanagement wh0re. Anything relating with it... It will consume me until I master the techniques (or economy). 

You do have a point. 

I was thinking the research to dodge shots should actually reduce damage, like adding armour or shields. The enemy can counter that by having targeting tech of their own and it'll correct all the loss of damage up to but maybe a 1 - 3% basis. 

In a sense, there would be 3 damage reducing things. Shields, armour and "dodging tech."  

And with tech there to boost damage, it could still remain balanced, albeit with said management issues of actively moving fleets. It would defs add more challenges to the game! I for one am down for challenges. Playing World in Conflict a lot makes anyone transferring from that game to any other RTS/RTT, etc... wanting a challenge. 

I think they adhere to a thing where the percentage "to hit" is actually additional damage added.

If it turns out that it is on a per-chance basis, then either that completely shatters this wish, or makes it even more possible! 

Maybe you could test it out with corvettes, make it so moving targets are harder to hit.  If it works, move to bigger ships.

You could almost think of it like Star Wars battles.  The Star Destroyers kinda sit still, while the TIE fighters move around and are much harder to hit.  Something like that.

Yup. At first Sins was a lot more realistic. Orbiting planets for example sound good on paper, until you realize its a pain to keep track of everything and isn't very fun. And its resource intensify to boot!

An older RTS game - star trek armada had both it had an option called directors cut which would make ships stay in motion the whole time or like sins where the ships would stay stationary. 

I can see ships-of-the-line standing still to slug it out, but certainly smaller ships should be moving around more to dodge incoming fire. The problem is that all that movement adds performance penalties and makes clicking on units difficult, not to mention it would be time-consuming to implement. The gameplay benefits, if there even are any, probably don't outweigh the costs involved and because Sins aims to be fun, and not realistic, it probably won't occur for realism's sake either.

Anyone played Sword of the Stars?

Battles in that game too, the ships move nonstop unless you tell them to stop... However, the battles there are limited to 5 ships each side. But with that noted, you can do A LOT more with those 5 ships in battle. 

With respect, as some have said, it has been done before. But it could be down to a limitation of the games engine itself. Only Stardock/Ironclad truly know. But as the looks of things, the in-game setting to allow that would be best. With that said too, the game setting should also list positives and drawbacks once you enable it. 

And EmpReb, you say you have your own universe? You a writer? If so, I am too and I have my own universe. PM me if you wish to discuss it all! 

Forever War had some realistic space-battles, but wouldn't translate well to a game.