Hmm... If I'm not mistaken, it looks a lot like the combat system from Master of Orion II - well more detailed, because we have more ship systems, but also limited to several ships at most. Yeah, it could work.
I hadn't thought about it, but yes, it's kind of like that.
Or we can make a real-time arena, like in one of those old shooting games Or in X-Com: Apocalypse, if you think about it.
yeah, apoc... that's exactly the point, apoc had all craft (UFOs and XCOM craft) as hover-capable VTOLs, no chasing involved, just cruising through the city and lazily shooting at each other. I can see that kind of battle between a UFO and a Lightning, but not with an interceptor...