Why do the capital ship have to be so bad

[Haste]

Who would ever conceive that the weak spots would ever be the reactor & engine exhaust in a space ship?

Uh, Freelancer. The game from 2003. There's (a) voice line(s) -- which is a lie, as the vanilla game gives all collision groups the same health -- telling the player to target capital ships' engines to destroy them quicker, taking advantage of a weak point. It also kind of makes sense. You can slap heavy armor plating all across a ship but an exposed engine exhaust port, by definition, is exposed. It makes what I would call intuitive game sense for engines to be weak spots. This does not necessarily have to correlate to reality, as Freelancer in no way, shape or form is a realistic space game.

Like bro, all the literature that uses space ships, they have the same weak spot: the front of the ship!

Lucky for you, I agree with this, though primarily for gameplay reasons. Almost all capital ships are much longer than they are tall or wide. Their most advantageous profile, for that reason, is the front/back profile. In addition, the front profile is what any capital ship shows to enemy capital ships if it is charging at them, or gap-closing with said enemy. Similarly, engines are shown when you are attempting to increase distance against an enemy, or kiting. Both of these are things you are naturally incentivized to do in the game, because ships move far quicker forwards (and sometimes even backwards) than they do sideways.

If you want players to have to make choices during PvP, therefore, you want to incentivize them to sometimes do something else, like provide a nice fat broadside target. You can do this by making it so you cannot do nearly as much damage to enemies in front of-, or behind your ship, for example, but that requires significantly restricting arcs. Another way you could do this is by making it so that a ship's nose or tail is a weak spot, while the majority of a ship's side profile is not. Meaning that while you are more likely to get hit, you are less likely to get dealt significant/critical damage.

I can see two main reasons for players to be opposed to the above:

• They do not want to have to make choices mid-combat, preferring if the correct course of action is obvious at all times and mistakes (or "unusually good plays") are nearly impossible to make.
  
• They have a better way to increase player choice, skill expression and combat depth than arc restrictions and weak/armored spots.
  

I'm happy to hear the latter, and I will respectfully disagree with the former.

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