Tobius, Your point of view might be wrong then.
Point by point.
I only have expertise from a shipbuilding perspective, but docking and collission avoidance are done in different waters, at different speeds, with different objectives and with different control systems. because of that, they are also (partially) done from different places on the ship:
The maneuver problem between objects is based on speed, time, and perspective. These factors are common to any maneuver deconfliction (pass through or pass by). How fast? How much time to react? Can one see it?
collision avoidance is done from your main control point, the pilothouse, where you have all information possible available to you: radars, watchkeepers, camera's and your ships actual behaviour information.
The maneuver deconfliction problem is best handled from main steer. Agreed. Warping in, is a different procedure altogether.
Docking is done (partially) from the bridge wing, as you only need information about 2 things in the final stage: the position of your ship relative to the quay and the movement of your ship (in waves, wind etc) which can only be accurately judged when you have eyes seeing those.
That is, I believe, a compendium modus as to the closing speeds between a moving and a stopped object, or
two objects traveling the same vector, same velocity in formation (Station keeping). Someone has to be positioned to see eyes on what the closing interval is to make the fine control adjustments and/or pass that information to main steerage control. As weird as it may sound, that is exactly what the guy lying down back there in an aerial tanker has to do while he is flying the boom to the trailing aircraft akin as to the deck officer making final adjustments to approaching his berth. Both have to control "slow approach" to make the "docking maneuver". Perspective.
If you have the possibility of colliding with something that is so close that you can only see it from the bridge wing, it might be already too close to do anything about it, depending on the speed and conditions. But thanks for making the point that when avoiding collision, it might be a good idea to have a good viewpoint towards where your ship is going: you are actually telling us about a great advantage of the forward conning position!
That US destroyer was rammed from astern. The point I made was that you need a high perch to see where the other fellow is relative to you. That goes for radar or human eyesight. I could cite the example of Sir George Tryon who goofed and was not corrected and/or Admiral Winfield Schley who also goofed but who had someone up in the pilot house to throw it even harder astarboard past rudder safeties when the Texas, turning to port to unmask her guns almost rammed the Brooklyn (According to Schley at his court martial. It was the Brooklyn that was the actual offender, she turning the wrong way to avoid the Maria Teresa's ramming attempt . Texas threw it hard astern and escaped collision by mere meters.) Pilothouse and port wing on Brooklyn and starboard wing and topmast lookout on Texas intervened. So no Camperdown/Victoria fiasco for the USN, which should have happened if sailors' wits and helms' eyes had been duller.
We have to keep in mind that many warships have a conning position quite far forward, as have many heavy lift ships and quite a few others. I go with Thiel's expertise here, the classic position offers advantages, but so does the forward one. In most cases the aft position is better, but there is no case whatsoever you can make for the bow conning position as terrible as you make it be. See
this post earlier in this thread.
All I can say is that actual history (two quite famous examples) is against that conclusion. I could add a third. MV Stockholm and MV Andrea Doria. No-one has explained that one completely, though the bridge watch on the Andrea Doria seemed to pull a Schley (turned the wrong way) when they noticed the Stockholm and the navigator of the Stockholm, too busy with the balky radar, either did not heed the helmsman's warning or just assumed when he looked up that the Andrea Doria would clear ahead. That's 48 people needlessly killed, loss of the Andrea Doria ($30,000,000 1958 dollars), legal troubles, aplenty, and confirmation that forward lookouts do not automatically work, because the Stockholm in a fog bank posted them. The accident was avoidable. The Andrea Doria saw the Stockholm and could have turned to STARBOARD as the Stockholm followed COLREGS late and also turned starboard. This would have resulted in a pass bay or survivable side scrape. Apparently the Andrea Doria's crew failed to understand
the exception to the rule which is to check aspect of the other guy's turn and counter turn away. Stockholm rammed the liner abeam starboard side, just about 2/5th forward.
Andrea Doria turned into the collision. The Andrea Doria apparently saw Stockholm in time.
Personally I think Stockholm's crew relied too much on their radar
which was mis-sited and which from admiralty court and US Congressional testimony none of them knew how to properly use.
For example; the Stockholm's third officer/navigator set the range ring PPI indicator wrong, so that he read the radar range gating at 5 miles (It was a US made set) instead of the 15 miles he thought and assumed it was set. It also had a blind arc, which while it did not affect the accident made the radar useless astern.