Which SW D20 system? The first go around had a pretty simple, abstract space combat system and everybody complained. The revised rules have a more traditional grid-based system, that kind of sucks the fun out of it.
I had the OCR space rules, and the problem wasn't that they were abstract. The problem was that they were retarded. Okay, so instead of a grid we'll use what looks like a ship's radar screen. Cool idea, but how is that going to work? I mean it would work okay for 1 vs 1, or even a PC ship against swarms of TIEs or something. But what if two PCs are in different ships in the same fight? How do actions on one ship's 'screen' affect the other? For that matter what if the PCs go at it? Could happen. I didn't see any way around this and trying to figure it out made my brain melt.
Maybe without the little 'radar screen' it would have worked better, but it just confused the heck out of everyone involved. Opposed rolls for a dogfight like you're talking about sound a lot better.
To be honest, I've never seen a sci fi rules set I really liked. I mean Star Wars is serviceable, for Star Wars, but there are still things about it that bug me. And it's fairly setting specific. Yanking droids and X-wings and jedis and droids out to make a generic system would be a fair bit of work.