The game is often quite boring, but I joke with people that it makes an amazing space station docking simulator. I actually can't wait to try that with an Oculus.
[1]http://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/224726/does-elite-...
Realistically a space battle would be, does the evader want to evade and has more thrust? => they evade, else, the attacker approaches and both get to shoot until one is dead. There would be no real combat other than weapon size and armour plating. I don't think there would be space dogfights as the onboard computers would just be able to track each other too accurately / apply optimal game theoretic evasions given the constraints. Boring ... might as well play spreadsheets.
See, point, shoot.
Pioneer also exists as an open source Frontier remake, with the same sort of flight model and universe: http://pioneerspacesim.net/