Queen Catherine
The only reason I can see for big ships to move, however, is to get closer to Fighter Launch, or get side shots on a hard target..
You hit the 'nail on the head *QC. Its like 'tank' warfare.
Your main, best armor is Fwd, the sides 2nd and the rear your weakest. So Why would you want to even move?
Granted as you pointed out, as in 'real' history, a ships side provides more space for more weapons, but then you expose a weaker defense to the enemy.
A cpl of changes I made to my "Clone Wars' collection for example:
Start w/ a ship that has "shield rates as.." Fwd, Side & Aft were say.. 13, 10, 7 respectively.
Once the ship had taken its max. "External Armor", for Ex. 7 pts, then damage was done to the 'Internal SS' Ex 8 pts.
Once both of these had been reached, it became "Heavily Damaged".
Shield rates were reduced by 3 pts. In the above ex. that ships 'emergency'/2ndry shields would have become 10, 7, 4.
Also it would have an "Internal Armor" which now would be 4 pts.and Internal SS of 5pts.
Plus the amount of Damage the weapons could 'deliver' was reduced, some wpn sys. were 'shut down' all together.
The ships "targeting bonus", "Ftr launch", "Ftr def." & speed were all reduced. All to reflect the 'accumulated' damage of a pitched battle.
This kept the game playing longer, as the Dmg pts were not that high to start with.