Ijuin said:
On the other hand, if you had a duplicate set of engines in front for deceleration, then you would have (gasp) two sets of engines! The extra engines take up space in your fighter, and add weight to it as well. That is why it is usually better to have just the one set of engines (unless you are trying to slow down while somebody is shooting you from in front of you).
Don't forget that WC's fighters tend to use atmospheric-style maneuvering because of the scoop fields that extend in front of each spacecraft - fighter and starship - that feed the engines. As a result of this, the classic inertial-style flight model no longer applies well; a ship not under constant thrust, when scoops are deployed, will eventually come to a stop due to the 'friction' of the scoops and the fact that each collision with hydrogen or other particles in space will cut its velocity down just a bit.
The computer also seems to compensate for this - using thrusters to help bring the speed down to 'zero' relative to some target in the system (system's primary, your home carrier, the target NAV point, etc). Notice that, after you use afterburners while at a zero velocity, that your ship comes to a halt? Part of this is scoops, and part of this is probably the computer helping you maintain that zero speed.
Between these two systems, you really don't NEED the extra weight for the engines or fuel, or the extra vulnerability you've introduced - inertial flight is not a factor in WC unless the scoop fields are shut down, which is only done when you're trying to get somewhere quickly and need to be moving at 10000 kps. Even then, the scoops are deployed to slow you down once you get to the destination.
Ijuin said:
Within the WC universe it is pretty much established that human controllers are smarter than AI controllers. For example, in the WC4 novel, Blair is forced to use automatic systems to control the rear turret of his Thunderbolt specifically because there were not enough human gunners available. The attitude of the tech telling Blair that he had to "make do" with automatics and Blair's reaction definitely imply that the automatics don't perform as well as a human.
I suspect that humans are also cheaper than a really good AI - at least, they don't seem to have really effective AI technology deployed anywhere - not in the ship, not in their missiles, and not in things like comm stations where you'd expect them to have something like that set up. Remember the Comm Station in WC4? The computer seemed to be as dumb as a post, almost. Granted, we didn't see them talking with it or dealing with it much (it could be they hacked the AI to get the records they needed), but that's one place where I'd have put an AI to do the day-to-day tasks of managing comms... and they didn't seem to have one. Either they're too expensive, or else AIs have fallen out of favor... or the technology just isn't up to that level, and their grasp of AI isn't much better than ours.