The question comes from a few scenes for stories and games.
In one, a non-jump capable old Merchant Marine ship was tasked to move to where a belter distress call came from. No data besides "belter called for help, and then got cut off." How fast could the ship get to within scanning range?
Ship gets there and there's a huge warship ship of unknown origin. The system defense fleet is enroute, but they have no data to plan around. They stay in realspace while the merchant scans and sends back data. The fleet wouldn't want to jump close because they don't know what weapons and defenses the warship has, and they lose comms during jump so can't plan their attack.
A small pirate fleet attacks a merchant. The first pirate or two does a fly-by and engages quickly, trying to disable and dishearten the merchant. The rest of the pirate fleet comes in controlled, and takes the merchant ship while the fly-bys decelerate and return.
Taking that a step further, you could do a fly-by and likely engage with long range weapons multiple times as you flew by. You could also dump guided missiles and be out of the danger zone before they hit. Even if the enemy did hit your ship, velocity would soon take you out of range.
Different scenario when a ship is crossing your path and you need to accelerate to match velocities as you try to follow them.
So, the assumption that you need zero velocity at the destination is an assumption.![Smile :) :)](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)
In one, a non-jump capable old Merchant Marine ship was tasked to move to where a belter distress call came from. No data besides "belter called for help, and then got cut off." How fast could the ship get to within scanning range?
Ship gets there and there's a huge warship ship of unknown origin. The system defense fleet is enroute, but they have no data to plan around. They stay in realspace while the merchant scans and sends back data. The fleet wouldn't want to jump close because they don't know what weapons and defenses the warship has, and they lose comms during jump so can't plan their attack.
A small pirate fleet attacks a merchant. The first pirate or two does a fly-by and engages quickly, trying to disable and dishearten the merchant. The rest of the pirate fleet comes in controlled, and takes the merchant ship while the fly-bys decelerate and return.
Taking that a step further, you could do a fly-by and likely engage with long range weapons multiple times as you flew by. You could also dump guided missiles and be out of the danger zone before they hit. Even if the enemy did hit your ship, velocity would soon take you out of range.
Different scenario when a ship is crossing your path and you need to accelerate to match velocities as you try to follow them.
So, the assumption that you need zero velocity at the destination is an assumption.