This is especially useful when facing a massed clump of foes. Their efforts to hit you will often break up their formation, enabling you to deal with them individually instead of as a group. Speed is also critical in many of the story missions, which require you to intercept enemies before they can escape or before they destroy or capture important objectives. Distances between jump gates and ships in Terminus can be huge, and a leisurely pace will lead to a quick loss. Of course, high speed has its drawbacks too.
Collisions are a very real threat in Terminus .
Another obvious disadvantage to high speed is your inability to turn effectively. If you fail to kill your target during the initial firing pass, it can take a long time to line up another shot. The solution is to slam on the brakes, turn, and then accelerate towards the enemy again. Now that you're relatively close to one another, max speed probably won't be necessary. Once you're in dogfighting range, keep your speed around five to seven thousand meters per second.