[quote=@catchamber]I'm talking about spacecraft constantly firing their thrusters, regardless of whether they're populated.

My opinion is that it'd make battles more entertaining, given units can constantly course correct. If they're just slowly drifting, conflict resolution takes much longer. Not saying vehicles will always fire their thrusters, but that doing so isn't necessarily a big deal in areas with relatively nearby fuel depots.[/quote]Not firing their thrusters through the whole trip is not being slow, it's about not being wasteful with fuel. 200km/s is a pretty decent velocity.
Also having a few times the equivalent of their travel speed in terms of delta-V is more than enough to do fancy maneuvers during battles.

The problem is again that you cannot catch up to a ship that accelerated for a week with a missile which has only a few hours to do that. Without that the idea of hitting the enemy is very minimal. Nigh-unlimited fuel would be again very nasty in terms of exploits.


[quote]Spinning missiles that randomly change direction and release submunitions can overwhelm a target's limited defenses.[/quote]???
This is one weird idea which might work in a truly hard sci-fi setting where any impact is catastrophic but not here.
spinning and spraying submunitions is not a very good idea since you need spinal gun kind of velocities and mass to considerably hurt a ship here.
That and space is vast so randomly spraying submunitions would have a surprisingly poor chance to hit anything you'd think of as a target.

If you want a standoff range warhead using bomb-pumped lasers or nuclear shaped charges are both a better idea.You can try using a KE torpedo which splits into multiple penetrators to reduce the chance of evasion near the end of its terminal phase. It might work but only at very close ranges and it'd still be a bit up to luck.

[quote]Fair enough. I'm no material engineer, so I can't refute your claims about resistance to acceleration stresses.[/quote]Let me put it this way. The kind of methods you suggest are generally utilized for far slower events with perhaps not even thousandth of the G strain.
Also using lighter projectile just doesn't work unless the material has higher structural strength per unit weight than the previous one. Otherwise it's not relevant.

[quote]As far as I know, torpedoes are self-propelled missiles launched by vehicle-based systems, and guided projectiles are weapons that hone in on their targets. These aren't mutually exclusive, and space torpedoes would do well to have guidance systems.[/quote]That's just schemantics. Yes, torpedoes can be guided and preferably are. Not the point.
The important part is that torpedoes and spinal guns are different. They use different steps and own different strengths/drawbacks. Making a spinal gun's projectile self-propelled is a redundant effort which might compromise its ability to do well in its primary role.


[quote]The "cryoshell" wouldn't necessarily be for stealth, but to prevent the heated rounds from causing the launcher to fail, [b]and to provide the round with simple propulsion and defense systems.[/b][/quote]Care to elaborate on this part?
[quote]
If leaders and diplomats are using it, I'd expect officers and businesses to do the same. I guess strapping them onto inactive stealthed units that are remote controlled does seem a bit excessive, from a roleplaying perspective.[/quote]I feel any usage other than the plot contrived one would be way too abusable for FTL comms.
It's better if all players agree on a few things where quantum entanglement communication can be used and maybe even mention the most definite taboo uses.