It's different because you don't have the ability to make a choice. As you just said, "Only in situation where...there's something good which will come out of it." Why you can't see the difference between having a choice and none at all is beyond me.
Ray will sort it all out from here I'm sure,
Russ
How would you not have the ability to make a choice in this case of no overlapping whether bet friendly or enemy ships? The bases are big enough that they cannot obscure another base behind it unless a large base of a BB or GC is blocking the small bases. Even then, smart manuevering will get you onto the bases at the back if you really want to shoot at them.
Even with boarding, if the intended target of boarding has a few friends nearby because the owning player wants to protect it from such tactic, then by George, he should be rewarded. If the boarder still wants to try his hand at boarding a ship which has a friend nearby which can help the target in boarding resolution, then by golly, that's the boarder's choice if he wants to risk it.
If a big battleship or grand cruiser base blocked the way to the heavily damaged target of boarding, then again, kudos to the player for wanting to protect his damaged ship. In any case, you can still get to within 10 cm of the damaged ship, knockdown the shields and do a teleport attack against it. Won't destroy it unless you're one of those races with the bonus to H&R but it's going to be further hurt for sure.