Was reminded of Neo Scavanger's combat system and an RPS article on it when was reading this. The game limits the combat to text without telling the player the hard numbers of what actions do, and the lethality makes it better to avoid often. I like your approach of focusing on visual indicators and player intuition over number crunch.
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/best-combat-2014-neo-scavenger
Do the ships turn over time when changing course, like have a curved arc or is it straight forward for simplification?