The whole shields thing: Ludonarrative dissonance. Shields stops things that are weapons. It doesn't even have to make sense as long as you know what shields actually do. 😃
Anyways;
When flying around, it seems the planet always is beneath me. This would suggest that the 2D space is actually the entirety of one particular orbit around the planet. Does it wrap around? If so, kiters can be stopped by following them, shooting down their missiles while sending another ship in the opposite direction, so it will eventually meet the running kiter again.
Right now, there seem to be two kind of tactics a ship can use; Close combat brawlers and kiting. Somehow adding a 3rd option would create a rock/papper/scissors kinda balance. I think the "3rd option" type ships could be tractor beam related. This would require tractor beams to have a couple of properties:
- Only fire directly forward, so they have to be centered to work properly.
- Tractor Beam emmiters have to be somewhat wide (maybe 6 blocks) so it take space normally taken by weapons.
This means that if you're using tractor beams, it lowers your potential DPS and defense, so proper brawlers have the advantage, but it beats kiters.
I also wonder if there is a property of weapons to have a minimum range? This would allow weapons to work only at extreme range (for example, if there are area of effect EMPs or other weapons with a long warm-up time, encouraging to fight them at closer ranges.)
Also, if tractor beams are used, maybe the tractor beam is narrow and long, but the repulsar beam is more a field/arc that has a much shorter range?