[I understand the reasoning behind thin thrusters, but still]

I hate to break it to you but other building games have proven time and time again the biggest ship does win regardless of what mechanics the devs put in place to deter their use.  Since, AI controlled support ships are pretty unreliable I think it would be a bad Idea to make large ships too hard to use because they are the player's best option for progression.

 

That being said what you can do now is pretty crazy town.  The thruster mechanics are clearly in need of a reworking.

 

It's only a matter of balancing. Look at EVE Online. Not a building game, but still. The biggest ship does not always win. With a bit of luck, a skilled frigate or destroyer pilot will be able to destroy a battleship 20 times their size.

[I understand the reasoning behind thin thrusters, but still]

Why, because probably this is a game and nobody wants to stare at the ship by breaking 20km before the target area and turning/rotating like a turtle. And to have capital class ships fast, agile and effective in breaking and maneuvering, we are more or less forced to spam these thin sheets.

 

Probably an unpopular opinion, but capital ships aren't meant to be fast and agile. They're meant to be able to both deal and take insane amounts of damage. I mean, we're talking about ships that weigh tens of thousands of tons and are hundreds of meters or even kilometers long (1 block unit = 10 meters according to koonschi), they shouldn't be able to stop and turn on a dime.

 

IMO removing the thruster spamming exploit would be a very good thing because it would force you to rethink your ship choice. You could no longer just build a single massive battleship that does all the things. You would actually need an entire fleet and the composition of the fleet would determine its strengths and weaknesses. This would also bring a ton of depth to multiplayer PvP because it wouldn't be "the guy with the biggest ship wins" anymore.

 

Tl;dr: I, for one, want capital ships to be slow, lumbering giants, ideal for destroying stations or other capital ships, but useless against targets that are significantly smaller and/or faster.