Played almost all of the SP scenarios. The 2nd last one beat me, and the last one is just waaaaay too many baddies. Great fun though.
It seems odd that there's an ideal engine speed for turning. Why is that?:S
Welcome to the alpha
Re the too many baddies, the trick is really to just keep calm and be methodical, using the systems to best advantage, i.e. power bias to guns when a shot is on, power bias to shields when being shot at. You'll get it.
The ideal speed for turning is, as others have noted for gameplay reasons, so it can be a 'space dogfighter' in the manner of Star Wars etc. It is based on the principal of how an aeroplane turns, since they want 'aeroplane-like' dogfighting.
Here's the science behind that: Contrary to popular belief, unlike a boat, an aeroplane turns with its wings and not with its rudder. It does so by banking over so that the wing's lift vector is directed to the side (instead of upwards to keep it in the air), but doing that alone leads to a sideways skid rather than a beautifully arced turn - an 'uncoordinated skidding turn' in pilot parlance - which risks a spin, so the rudder is then used to kick the tail out to the outside edge of the turn so that you get a nice curving flight path. Doing that means both wings get the same amount of airflow, negating the risk of one wing stalling and causing a spin.
Note that since when you are banked over in an aeroplane, with not all of the lift vector pointing upwards counteracting gravity, you will lose height unless you either increase speed to create excess lift, or increase the angle of attack to achieve that. This means you can increase the turn rate of an aeroplane by pulling back on the stick when banked over, but there is a limit to how much you can do this before the aircraft is at too high an angle of attack, which will cause the wings to stall regardless of speed. Increasing the angle of attack increases lift, but you don't get something for nothing in aerodynamics, so increased lift also means increased drag, thus you have to add power to overcome the drag. At some point on every aircraft, there is a sweet spot where you'll be able to apply enough power to sustain the speed, overcome the drag and have a the best angle of attack for the greatest amount of lift vector causing a turn without anything bleeding off, this is the 'best sustained cornering speed'.
Of course in fictional space dogfighting, you can't actually stall since you are not flying aerodynamically but instead changing course with engine thrusters, so where the flight model in Elite Dangerous is concerned, this is actually total b*llsh*t. But it was done for gameplay reasons to make it more like a WW2 dogfighter and thus more fun.
