So if you were re-noodling the FrontierSpace starship combat process in order to make it more of a tactical boardgame... like maybe something a bit more complex and rewarding than Star Frontiers Knight Hawks, but nowhere as complex as Star Fleet Battles, I'd think you'd come up with something like this...
Cycle: Starship combat occurs in rounds. Every ten combat rounds represents a Cycle. Cycles are important to a starship combat process, as a ship's movement is bound by the Cycle time frame as described below.
Thrust: Starship combat doesn't take place at nova speed or even pulse speeds, all too fast to effectively maneuver or target. Instead, their pulse drive operates in a micro-burst mode that produces an effect externally resembling a reaction thrust, but is internally inertia-less to occupants. To facilitate this, each ship has a Thrust score based mostly on its Pulse drive, commonly a number between 1-10.
Speed: Pilots keep track of their ship's current speed (in hexes per Cycle), movement is proportional across a Cycle according to the attached table. At combat round 1 (first round of each Cycle) pilots set their speeds by accelerating or decelerating within the limits of their starship's Thrust score. Then for the next 10 round Cycle the ship moves the amount shown in the table below each round. Speeds are only adjusted at the start of round 1 on the pilot's initiative turn.
Maneuvering: A ship normally moves only forward, in the direction it is facing a number of hexes determined by the attached table. During a combat round in which it does not move forward (a blank cell in the attached table), it may make a 1 hex face turn in place for free (a good reason to go slow in high traffic or debris-ridden regions). Otherwise, it may make a 1 hex face turn once per round at any point during its move but may do so only a number of times per 10 round Cycle equal to its Thrust. Pilots must keep track of how many thrust maneuvers they've taken each Cycle this because if they maneuver too much early in the Cycle while going fast they might find themselves hurling towards a star or other hazard, unable to prevent catastrophe.