The game mechanics of strafing and afterburners #35
Description
You can currently go at afterburner speed for free with strafing. Such a speed increase should come at a price, if such a strafing speed boost is allowed at all.
One of the interesting things about no strafing is the reliance of movement on orientation. When strafing is introduced with acceleration power equivalent to forward and back thrusting, it eliminates the link between those two game mechanics since you can move in any direction equally well by combining forward, back, and strafing, without needing to turn.
If strafing is introduced, a link between orientation and movement can still be preserved to some degree by only allowing afterburners to affect forward and back thrusting, and/or by making strafing less powerful than forward and back thrust. This would keep open the balancing aspect of play between orienting for (fast) movement and orienting for attacking, rather than simplify it to two simultaneous but separate tasks.
Another issue with adding both strafing and afterburners is that it adds to the number of regularly pressed-in keys, which is a problem for many keyboards because of simultaneous key press limits. It is already a minor issue in subspace (without using either strafing or afterburners), since some keyboards have a limit of 3-4 pressed-in keys, and subspace often requires simultaneous thrusting, turning, and bulleting/bombing. The issue can be mostly avoided in subspace by a player taking care to release unused keys as they press in new ones, but with an extra three main gameplay keys (L/R strafe and afterburners), the average needed simultaneous keys would be as high or higher than the key limit.
My vote: strafing should be less powerful than forward and back thrust and unaffected by afterburners. Perhaps have strafing at half the acceleration power of forward/back thrust.