>Played Gankerlancer when it first came out >Did a clientside .ini edit so that asteroids shat out credit chips instead of rocks >Went off out of the way to secretly grind out an insane amount of money >Looked up where I could buy an aesthetic capital ship >Some 30 system trek away >Journey out there was tricky >Bought the Persephone >Getting it back I had to get it through a fricking asteroid field >So big it constantly got stuck >2 hours of banging the thing through >Got it back to the starting sector >Parked it outside the red desert planet where everyone was hanging out >Didn't even get banned
I was having a rough time IRL back then and Gankerlancer genuinely brought a smile to my face when little else did. To anyone who was there, thanks for the memories.
I'm pretty sure the closest we've officially gotten to having a warship in space was the russians strapping a modified machine gun to a Salyut station. If course, if you go into "never built, but probably works" designs the sky is the limit, no pun intended. Orion battleships, Polyus battleships, bomb-pumped X-ray lasers...
Children of a dead earth. Fully stimulated orbital mechanics (hope you've got a good CPU) plus diamond hard modern science. Made by actual nerds from NASA. The problem is it's so difficult and obtuse whilst also having high system requirements that it filters basically everybody.
it's just marketing. the game doesn't have any characters at all. you could barely say it has a campaign or career mode. it's just a dozen set piece missions with text block briefings you click through.
I liked battlestar galactica stuff. Shitton of missiles and flaks, nothing under the nukes, fighters dogfights, big ships strategies done with pen and ruler with zero visual contact. Love that.
Having flak cannons on a spacecraft would be considered a war crime. Especially if it's an enforcement or peacekeeping platform and isn't some desperate measure in the middle of a war.
>flak cannons
They use it because all the space warfare is swarm of missiles and it's the only valid tactical choice.
Having flak cannons on a spacecraft would be considered a war crime. Especially if it's an enforcement or peacekeeping platform and isn't some desperate measure in the middle of a war.
The issue is more one of filling space, and particularly the orbit of a planet, with projectiles that will never, ever stop. You can fire off a flak cannon, and then in 2,000 years some civilian shuttle gets shredded by your flak. The concept could probably be salvaged, though. Instead of just firing off flak you might be able to get away with some short-lived and self-degrading amalgam that only remains a threat for a short period before breaking down on its own.
Not a problem. If it's at the same speed as regular micro meteorites, then a space worthy ship will have ways to deal with that. If you fire it at extremely high speeds, it will quickly leave the orbit of both the planet, the sun, and probably the whole galaxy, drifting endlessly into the vastness of space, never to be seen again.
I want a complete remake of Elite Dangerous but with 2023 graphics, human designed missions and objectives, and stuff to do which doesn't involve endlessly looking at a warp loading screen or paying capture the flag on foot fps
How do i get good at this game, it seems dope but I get shredded instantly out of tutorial.
I think the most difficult thing about realistic space battles is the control scheme
Trying to position things in 3d on a 2d screen with a mouse and keyboard quickly becomes difficult make fun and intuitive
Homeworld was in a pretty good spot, but even that wasnt super realistic
I think there is potential for a vr game about space strategy and tactics for the control scheme alone. Intuitive manipulation of fleets and flight paths in a 3d space.
This specifically is my problem. I've been looking for a game that is basically
but vidya for awhile, and Homeworld and Nebulous are the closest i've found but they just control very weirdly. Being able to just grab a fleet on a display with my hands and send it somewhere would be really cool.
>omg the formulas this is so scientific
Dude the second panel is not so different from the usual don't shoot your opponent shoot where you think your opponent will be crap
Honestly the least realistic part of this image is the idea that the UK could fund a space program or would be at all able to field its own separate vessels to the rest of the EU
Neither the UK or the EU combined would be able to build anything remotely like a manned space program.
They are too busy trying to feed large unproductive subsets of their own populations.
Neither the UK or the EU combined would be able to build anything remotely like a manned space program.
They are too busy trying to feed large unproductive subsets of their own populations.
lore wise for The Lunar War they have a joint program with the commonwealth, mainly the Canadians and Australians
I believe they and the EU got a decent economy boost after the "Artemis Accords" that carved up the moon leading to a booming space industry
It's sad that settings like this never account for the near-term problems that just glossed over.
The EU can't even afford to easily hand enough weapons to Ukrain to defeat an invader with the GDP of Italy.
And, demographically speaking, they will be completely replaced within a century anyway. The EU will cease to exist in any meaningful way long before then.
currently exclusively on the "tough sci-fi" discord under the "world's" section, outside of renders and ship details there's not much documentation outside of a 3 year old timeline and a q&a
still nice renders so I've parked myself there to scrape them, next one is an Indian ship it seems
currently exclusively on the "tough sci-fi" discord under the "world's" section, outside of renders and ship details there's not much documentation outside of a 3 year old timeline and a q&a
still nice renders so I've parked myself there to scrape them, next one is an Indian ship it seems
gimme this timeline
9 months ago
Anonymous
it is from 2020 but here you go;
>2021-2022: Development of Fully Reusable HLV is complete, launch Prices drop and massive Private investment into Space ventures follows >2022: ULA announces it will invest in and develop its CIS-Lunar 1000 initiative to grow the space economy >2024: Crewed Lunar landing on lunar South Pole as part of Artemis Missions. US tests first LEU NTR in orbit >2025: First International Artimis mission, US, JP, and EU Astronauts participate. ISRU infrastructure begins construction along with a US base at South Pole >2026: US/JP/EU ratify Artemis Accords establishing norms of property/resource rights. Mad dash for significant ice/resource deposits occurs >2028: Following the LEU NTR flown 4 years US development efforts quietly begin on higher performance NTR's >2029: First Crewed PRC lunar landing >2029: Most lunar Territory has resource claims by US/JP/EU leaving out the PRC >2030: After realizing most of the Significant water Ice deposits have been claimed on the Moon, PRC sends off missions to water rich NEO's/comets >2033: PRC retrieves water rich comet and begins construction of a massive propellant depot orbital platform at EML 3 >2035: Rouge spacecraft nearly crashes into US/Japan base in apparent terrorist attack. PRC suddenly announces formation of spaceguard in response >2036: China/Russia along with developing nations form a Global Space block claiming the Artimis accords have allowed the moon to be "stolen" >2036: US moves NEO into EML 5 for use in construction of O'Neill Colonies >2037: PRC launches first Armed spaceguard units, another Spacecraft terrorist nearly whipes out a ISRU base >2038: US, Japan, and EU Launch their own Spacegaurds >2042: China/Global space block declares that the Artemis accords have no force of law and that unless all Parties can have universal access to lunar resources >2044: After a surprise attack on propellant transports by PRC proxy forces. The Lunar War begins
9 months ago
Anonymous
>COVID took this from is
I'll never forgive the Chinese
9 months ago
Anonymous
also I should add that it appears the new cause/additional conflict of the war is an invasion of taiwan
Everyone knows about the Teutoburg forest ambush when Varus lost several legions.
No one knows about hubdreds of failed ambushes that were like >we will ambush the imperial legion >our impecable strategy will surely lead us to victory
And then they get wrecked by the legion and their villages burnt and tribes enslaved.
I think it'll be closer to submarines
Just everyone trying to stay quiet and the second someone makes too much noise and heat they get blasted by 500 lasers instantly across the galaxy
lasers are only effective at (relatively) close range and do disperse even in space. also you must figure out where to dump all the waste heat in space.
I think the most difficult thing about realistic space battles is the control scheme
Trying to position things in 3d on a 2d screen with a mouse and keyboard quickly becomes difficult make fun and intuitive
Homeworld was in a pretty good spot, but even that wasnt super realistic
I think there is potential for a vr game about space strategy and tactics for the control scheme alone. Intuitive manipulation of fleets and flight paths in a 3d space.
I think X3: Terran Conflict has the perfect control scheme for space movement >WASD for strafe thrusters >Q and E for roll >hold left mouse button to control pitch and yaw: the ship angles itself towards the mouse cursor as long as you're holding LMB
It's intuitive as frick and feels great to use, but it exposes the other issue with space combat: speeds are so high that it's really hard to hit anyone with anything that isn't either guided or hitscan, and guided missiles are easy to intercept.
How do i get good at this game, it seems dope but I get shredded instantly out of tutorial.
[...]
This specifically is my problem. I've been looking for a game that is basically [...] but vidya for awhile, and Homeworld and Nebulous are the closest i've found but they just control very weirdly. Being able to just grab a fleet on a display with my hands and send it somewhere would be really cool.
>i like the games but oh the clunky controls, I just can't stand the clunky controls!
Skill issue
inertia dampeners = gay
no strafing engines. wanna stafe? move foward and turn sideways
no backing up, only forward. RCS thrusters are only good for smallest shittiest course-correctons and not applicable in combat.
Idk man it depends on the game.
Too much in some kinds of space games makes it so you have to micromanage 20 ships shit and have to pause to issue orders every fricking 4 seconds for an hour to win.
Too little in some kinds of space games and it feels like you are just going around and parking your ship while it destroys everything on its own.
Buoys. Basically sensor drones with minimal to no mobility, hard to spot, with good passive sensors and a minimal line back to mothership to relay their sensor data. This data doesn't automatically reveal shit, you have to interpret a grainy green scribbles on black background graph, and use data from multiple buoys to triangulate your target.
Also dense asteroid belts and debris fields, so it's easy to break line of sight, meaning there's a reason to use the buoys. I want my submarines in space damnit.
Your thermal radiation would light up like a christmas tree unless you're hiding behind a planetoid, in which case you're orbiting it and you "hiding" will last like 2 days
Any chance the field you're hiding in has its own thermal radiation that could mask your ship's bleed? Debris field probably has had enough time to cool down after whatever caused the debris, and any active machinery left there leaking heat sound like prime targets for scavengers. What about asteroids, any chance there's radioactive rocks hot enough to mask a ship?
9 months ago
Anonymous
>Any chance the field you're hiding in has its own thermal radiation that could mask your ship's bleed?
No >What about asteroids, any chance there's radioactive rocks hot enough to mask a ship?
No
9 months ago
Anonymous
Fair. Hey, thanks for taking my dumb questions seriously.
9 months ago
Anonymous
Sure, there's a lot of misconceptions about space. But there's really nowhere to hide, combat would be extremely boring and technical, and probably left to an advanced AI to figure out if we ever get to that stage IRL. Too many variables that can all be number crunched to wring out the fun and mystery from it, for example as
Also, the moment you made an effort to get into position, you threw out a hot plume of exhaust from which I can calculate your mass and velocity from both quite a distance away and from quite some time into the future.
says.
9 months ago
Anonymous
Also, the moment you made an effort to get into position, you threw out a hot plume of exhaust from which I can calculate your mass and velocity from both quite a distance away and from quite some time into the future.
Something far denser than that. Like, having to dodge multiple rocks per minute kind of dense. Which I've today learned is not the case and I shouldn't be basing my knowledge on a single scene in Gundam 0096
This. There's nowhere to fricking hide in space. If you have people on board or are doing anything remotely interesting (thinking, accelerating, firing weapons, etc.) you are a hot object on the -270C background of space. You can't hide like a stealth airplane because you're not responding to active scans (like radar), you're literally emitting radiation by virtue of being above absolute zero.
>hey captain, there's this weird thing on our sensors, it's the size of a space ship but with the heat and EM signature of a brown dwarf >nah it's probably nothing, ignore it
Space barnacles
I don't care that it doesn't make sense. Hull fouling due to barnacles was a major issue for wet navy ships, I want to see something similar in space
more specifically, stuff that you already have in real life military - mobility kills, firepower kills, etc, but expanded.
for example, a large frigate gets it's power core (reactor?) blown up. the ship is essentially eviscerated, loses most of it's power, propulsion, the crew is abandoning the ship or dead. however, some localized power sources and backup reactors keep a few weaponclusters online, and so the ship is adrift, slowly rotating helplessly, but one of the main batteries is still firing as long as it can turn towards any enemy - final spasms of a dying creature, heroic feat of the turret crew doomed to their fate.
No drag. That was the worst part about EVE. I want my ships to be able to accelerate to unmanageable speeds. Also, time dilation. If someone is moving fast enough, they perceive the outside world to be "sped up"
>If someone is moving fast enough, they perceive the outside world to be "sped up"
how do you even simulate this? it would work in a first person game but not in multiplayer; it's like how every MP game with slo-mo or bullet time makes it a global effect.
An HQ super weapon (think Death Star) that is a giant Nicoll-Dyson Sphere (giant laser cannon which utilizes a sun). It utilizes a deep space telescope along with intel and deployed sensors to locate targets, before taking aim and firing into deep space. You could be light years away and suddenly find your ship getting turned to ash.
Also, general pressure mechanics. If your hull suffers even the smallest of breaches- hell even a wider saturation of weakened armor- your entire ship will simply decompress and kill everyone inside unless you properly seal all your doors in anticipation.
>you could be light years away and suffenly find your ship get turned to ash
Wouldn't that require the people firing it to be able to predict where you are in a few years? Useful for planets but not so much shit I feel.
>Indepth orbital mechanics that effect ships, missiles and, to an extent, lasers. >space magic drives that let you accelerate to relativistic speeds and take advantage of relativistic effects >also warp the spacetime around you allowing you to dodge in the most bullshit of ways
Somewhere between those two. Complex enough that it makes me feel smart, but not so complex I can't follow it. Also not realistically slow because that is very slow.
>pd railgun
For me it's guided artillery with proximity fuse.
Some day science fiction will find out about alien and impossibly technologically advanced concept of shell guidance
But not today
Top is more realistic than bottom. Space combat wouldn't be dogfighting. It would mostly be massive range artillery trying to hit their targets while trying to shoot down or redirect incoming fire. (Think of shit like missiles and flares).
Closing in on a hostile entity in the vastness of space just means you have less time to react to anything that entity does and is the dumbest shit you could possibly do.
This shit wouldn't be fun, because almost all of it would realistically be controlled by computers, but that's what realistic space battles would look like.
The bottom part of your picture is just WW1 dogfighting but in space. It's for lazy fiction that values action over realism.
Are you seeing the same pic as the rest of us?
Top pic is long ranged combat while the bottom pic is close ranged broadside combat. What about the top pic is dog fighting?
>dogeguy
don't listen to this guy he is actually a well known moron from wtg on vg. he spent an entire week crying that the challenger 2 turret was impenetrable from a BVM's top shell and posted a clip of him being completely unable to aim as proof
I'm interested to know why you think DCS is less autistic, particularly since something like War Thunder is more likely to fulfil that Top Gun-esque thrill than a sim where you're probably going to engage targets at BVR.
9 months ago
Anonymous
>you're probably going to engage targets at BVR
Oh not at all. The most active pvp communities are very much guns only BFM guys and the degree of autism is high.
But there's less of the highly competitive 12-year-old xbox kid kind of player who rages when he gets shot down and much more team gameplay between people of all ages, in some cases even with people who actually have flown those very same aircraft.
It's generally a much friendlier community with much more patience for newbies and the gameplay is usually mission based, not match based.
Much less time between the shooty bits. Sometimes you just want to take air spawns to lob missiles at jackasses, instead of doing a pre-flight check so long the only other player got bored and left the server. There's a time and place for both kinds of 'tism
an obvious answer!
or actually >starsector overworld >multiple races and ship types, you can assemble/build your fleet >homeworld-type lore and aesthetics. massive structures in the background. unexplained mysteriess as the backdrop. >ww2 battleship-style gameplay - big ships of the line blasting at a distance with small vessels whizzing about
now let me wallow in my own misery, for it willl never be done.
a little bit of both. I know fighters are irrelevant in the void but I just like piloting, dogfighting to synthwave is one of the funnest things I've ever done in video games, especially with a HOTAS.
>STEMcels wanting to predict how space warfare would actually work rather than using the fantastical as a white board for an imagined new system with its own rules
This is why you were delegated to purely technical tasks, you're all spiritually indian
from reading this thread it appears that "realistic space combat" is meant to be >we detect each other from a lightyear away and ponderously glide towards one another until whichever of us is willing to push the range on our weapons the furthest annihilates the other uncontested
In which case, of course people don't make that. That doesn't sound very engaging to play or to watch.
i mean yeah
air combat IRL nowadays is literally just BVRing each other
>STEMcels wanting to predict how space warfare would actually work rather than using the fantastical as a white board for an imagined new system with its own rules
This is why you were delegated to purely technical tasks, you're all spiritually indian
every fantastical implementation boils down to
WW2 DOGFIGHTING BUT WITH SPESS BACKGROUND
which is great but not original
>people think this is something desirable
I... just can't begin to understand why. It's so goddamn boring. What's there to do? >WW2 DOGFIGHTING BUT WITH SPESS BACKGROUND
It turns out that WW2 dogfighting is a very happy medium of offense and defense in a scenario where you have three axes of freedom to move on. Coming up with various tweaks to it to really "sell" that you're in space is the best you can do.
Yes, the reality is boring. It involves a lot of trust in your engineering and computers. It's not a game fit for meat because meat never thought it'd be playing on that scale, and meat is exceedingly poorly equipped to handle that scale.
It's not a sin that space fiction tends to portray space as either a big ocean (with "battleships") or as a big dogfight (with "fighters") or as a Pacific War inspired paradigm. These are things that make some degree of sense to people, and I think its fine that even science fiction should be both 1) relatable to the reader and 2) say something about the world the reader lives in. Getting on Star Wars' case for unrealistic stealth combat is meaningless distraction from the point that Star Wars is attempting to convey about a space empire with clear parallels in real world history.
>Yes, the reality is boring
Then who's actually demanding games based on it? morons who want "clout" for being into harder sci-fi than the other people they know?
being able to competently fight BVR is a skill that even I don't have
taking into account positions of enemies you cant see
the limitations of your radar and theirs
energy maneuverability theory for dodging missiles while keeping your track steady
notching and radar types
>morons who want "clout" for being into harder sci-fi than the other people they know?
Probably? The crunchiest of grognard scifi has long been the realm of masturbatory essays (a la Atomic Rockets) and niche novels. I think its fine for it to mostly stay there.
Same thing with something like Revolutionary War or civil war reenactment. Sure, you COULD make an FPS out of it, but it turns out that infantry square formations are boring as shit and the technology is in an awkward spot for what we expect from the genre. But people still like to engage with the concept, even if its not in the form of a game.
As you said about WW2 dogfighting, the games gravitate around a happy medium of offense and defense, because that's what we want out of a game (but not necessarily how history or science works). That's why we have endless WW2 shooters and modern shooters, and not a lot of Civil War shooters or Napoleonic War shooters.
Yes, the reality is boring. It involves a lot of trust in your engineering and computers. It's not a game fit for meat because meat never thought it'd be playing on that scale, and meat is exceedingly poorly equipped to handle that scale.
It's not a sin that space fiction tends to portray space as either a big ocean (with "battleships") or as a big dogfight (with "fighters") or as a Pacific War inspired paradigm. These are things that make some degree of sense to people, and I think its fine that even science fiction should be both 1) relatable to the reader and 2) say something about the world the reader lives in. Getting on Star Wars' case for unrealistic stealth combat is meaningless distraction from the point that Star Wars is attempting to convey about a space empire with clear parallels in real world history.
Realistic ground and air combat has become the same. Just lob drones, rockets and artillery at each other from a hundred miles away, satellites from both sides track every move of the participants, troop movements can be predicted weeks ahead. Technology makes things less fun, and space combat is the highest form of technology most people can imagine, so of course it will be 100% boring and unimaginative.
I imagine that if it's not going to be FTL or other gimmicks like space warp, then you would utilize lagrange points for faster movement for surprise attacks or changing impediment in a space battle situation. Crossing them or going against them would damage your ships as space debris would be flying at you at dangerous speeds when you're not traveling with the gravitational wells of planets. A battle would either take place in inert areas or would have to be constantly moving with gravitation. The fights could be rail shooting in such areas, impossible near heavy gravitational wells or just dogfighting in stable areas that change with the movement of planets.
This would also solve the "vast empty space" problem by making everyone want to travel via lanes of changing flux, you would inevitably end up crossing paths with enemies or other people utilizing the same movement benefits.
in a current all out war most the planet could be pwned if everyone shot all da nukes
in space however there'd be nothing left
killing a planet/space station/anything stationary is fricking trivial
load a single ship with a big lead/tungsten slug, accelerate towards your target and dump the cargobay
if you do it from outside detection range and cover the slug in some EM absorber it's undetectable and will frick shit up
all you need is a single ship
>outside detection range
No such thing. >load a single ship with a big lead/tungsten slug, accelerate towards your target and dump the cargobay
So just like any ol' asteroid on collision course. What makes you think someone would build a station that couldn't deal with that?
>detects your big lead ball against the emptiness of space 5 months before impact >accelerates the station by 0.000001m/s in any direction >avoids collision by 3 quadrillion miles
Nothing personnel kid
Just like you'd detect any other object in space. >passive detection of thermal radiation >passive detection of gravitational waves >active detection radar, lidar etc. >by looking at it with a fricking telescope
>passive detection of gravitational waves
ligo needed 2km of laser tracks to detect black holes colliding. no way you're gonna detect a 100 ton vessel a million miles away
Ligo needed 2 km of lasers to do the very first detection of gravitational waves, built on earth. There's no physical law that requires this length. A space station is almost perfectly still, depending on location, so the apparatus can be very finely tuned. And it's extremely likely that this technology will be miniaturized in the very near future. You also didn't address the other ways of how your lead ball would be detected.
>thermal
cool the ball before undocking >active
cover with radar absorber >telescope
paint it black (you end up with a b-2 bomber looking slug) >grav waves
you have me here i have no idea what that shit is
>see black spot approaching
mount a small antenna transmitting the cosmic microwave background
>cool the ball before undocking
The station would see a space ship maneuver to a direct collision course, heating up considerably before instantly losing a lot of mass, and then changing course again. Draw your own conclusions on their further actions. Not even considering that you'd have to predict the exact location of the station months in advance, which is impossible if the station does even one single unplanned orbital correction. >cover with radar absorber >paint it black
You can't make it absorb all possible electromagnetic wavelengths. At some wavelength it will light up like a disco ball with the sun shining on it.
Again, there's nothing you can hide in space. Every action you take equals an opposite reaction, everything that happens outside a spaceships hull is easily visible in one way or another from across the solar system.
Yes a space station that houses more than a dozen people would absolutely have passive and active sensors covering almost all EM frequencies. It would be pants on head moronic not to have those sensors.
Keep it simple for me, and no more complex than NMS. I quited games because navigation is too complicated. If I wanted a sim I buy a sim,
Then there's EVE, which is not as complex, but as fun as watching paint dry.
>Then there's EVE, which is not as complex, but as fun as watching paint dry.
thing with Eve is it plays like an MMO that came out in 2003 >extremely social, need to make friends with your corp to enjoy it >boring 95% of the time >shitting your heart out and unable to sleep from adrenaline 5% of the time >punishes you hard for "frick around, find out"
i mean yeah there are some turbonerds on Eve
i just enjoy shooting c**ts and watching my money go up
the size/scale of everything, market and variety of content cant really be beaten and likely never will be
>i just enjoy shooting c**ts and watching my money go up
When I tried EVE it seemed like the only way to do either of these things was to join some huge corporation full of random gays
> it seemed like the only way to do either of these things was to join some huge corporation full of random gays
yeah it was pretty bad for that back in the day
check out the new FW, its pretty gud
Absolute best part about EVE is the stupid monument. There's something special about having your character name there and knowing some future archaeologist is going to have a headache trying to figure out what the hell Dickbutt McButtdick means.
>archaeologist finds thing they don't understand >checks rolodex >It must be a fertility symbol and/or proto-religious icon made possible by the rise of the middle-class equivalent
Every time without fail.
Give me one reason why realistic space warfare wouldn't just be hurling massive rocks at your enemy so that their planets get turned into hellholes. "Realistic" space combat in all manners is boring as frick, it's all drones and missiles doing attacks you cannot defend against.
>burn all your fuel and spend god knows how much money accelerating a planet killing rock at your enemy >they just blow it up or even easier they just intercept the rock and push it in a different direction so it misses the target
It's thousands of small rocks hurled at them at near light speeds. Good luck intercepting that.
>hurling massive rocks at your enemy so that their planets get turned into hellholes
you want to occupy those planets
the general public isn't comfortable with outright genocide
genocide over some border dispute is a bit overkill
rocks aren't free
>you want to occupy those planets
Time will fix that. >the general public isn't comfortable with outright genocide
But they're alright with getting our men killed in an intensive war for control of the planet? This is much easier than waging guerilla warfare for decades. >genocide over some border dispute is a bit overkill
It's just one planet. They'll learn their lesson. >rocks aren't free
My brother on christ, space is full of rocks.
1. you literally just describes FTL bullets
2. mass is needed to do damage, tiny rocks will still get shredded by the atmosphere and if they hit the planet it wont do shit
9 months ago
Anonymous
Accelerating a bullet to relativistic speeds and letting it hit a planet would release energy comparable to nuclear bombs.
9 months ago
Anonymous
Not if it vaporises in atmosphere. Friction gets pretty mighty at relativistic speeds.
9 months ago
Anonymous
Vaporizing in atmosphere still releases the energy on the planet. Target it correctly and a few dozen bullets like this could EMP the whole planet.
9 months ago
Anonymous
Do you know what a meteor shower is?
9 months ago
Anonymous
Yes. Do you know what relativistic speeds are?
9 months ago
Anonymous
Let's try again. Do you know what a cosmic ray is?
9 months ago
Anonymous
I'm just going to stop answering stupid questions and tell you that a projectile with a weight of 50 grams accelerated to 0.99c has the energy of 6.5MT of TNT. Consider that the Tunguska event was at 10 - 30 MT of TNT.
9 months ago
Anonymous
Accelerating a bullet to relativistic speeds and letting it hit a planet would release energy comparable to nuclear bombs.
Bonus fun points for weapons moving at relativistic speeds have comparatively little warning about their arrival. If you're moving at 0.9c, then the wave of photons announcing your existence to the target is only marginally faster than you are, and it may arrive too late for them to do anything about it. Of course, if they're a planet then there's not much you can do besides evacuate, but still.
If there's a civilization with the energy capacity to casually accelerate weapons to relativistic speeds, everyone in their range is pretty much just fricked. You lost the moment you showed up with a stick to the impossibly large gunfight. Lament your biology for being comparatively slow to evolve and cherish the time you have left because you really don't stand a chance.
9 months ago
Anonymous
Plot summary for convenience. >In the late 21st century Earth is at peace. Humans now command self-replicating machines that create engineering marvels on enormous scales. Artificial habitats dot the Solar System. Anti-matter driven Valkyrie rockets carry explorers to the stars at nearly the speed of light. >Then, swarms of missiles travelling at close to the speed of light hit Earth. Though they are merely boulder-sized chunks of metal, they move fast enough to hit with the force of many nuclear arsenals. They are impossible to track and to stop. Humanity is almost wiped out by the bombardment. >A handful of survivors desperately struggle to escape the alien mop-up fleet. They hide close to the Sun, inside asteroids, beneath the crusts of moons, within ice rings, and in interstellar space. Most are however hunted down and slaughtered. >The last man and woman on Earth are captured as zoo specimens. In the belly of an alien starship, a squid-like being relates to them the pitiless logic behind humankind's execution: the moment humans learned to travel at relativistic speeds was the moment mankind simply became too dangerous a neighbor to have around. The final revelation is that the alien is itself subservient to a powerful artificial intelligence.
>Time will fix that.
What if you do not have the time? You cant do something like that counting on that in 200 years the planet will be habitable again, what if you need to occupy the planet now to intercept the enemy? >But they're alright with getting our men killed in an intensive war for control of the planet?
Yes, just like how it happens in real life since the public thinks that soldiers killing soldiers is better and more justifiable than soldiers killing civilians. Tough on a setting like warhammer that would not be the case since the civilians are objectively evil and no act against them is wrong, at least that is what you are told. >My brother on christ, space is full of rocks.
You are right that anon was moronic in this one.
>hurling massive rocks at your enemy so that their planets get turned into hellholes
you want to occupy those planets
the general public isn't comfortable with outright genocide
genocide over some border dispute is a bit overkill
rocks aren't free
>Give me one reason why realistic space warfare wouldn't just be hurling massive rocks at your enemy so that their planets get turned into hellholes
that's exactly what will happen
essentially there's a 99.9999% chancve every first contact will be "we strapped multiple engines on a huge mass to genocide your planet" kinda event, but i'm too drunk to explain why.
Anyone advanced enough to wipe out a planet from another solar system has nothing to gain by actually doing it. You can get rocks and shit anywhere, and in higher quantities than your entire civilisation will know how to use.
>There are no proper modern wars, it's al proxy wars and guerillas >The one country in an actual war gave away their nukes which is why they're being attacked now
Throw the realism away, accept it as fantasy in space, and focus more on developing a battle dynamic that isn't tedious. A space game should focus on the relationship between macro and micro, on having the fast-paced individual dogfights of Star Wars but with a wider strategic arrangement that gives those skirmishes meaning and consequence, and reverse engineer the rest of the game and universe from that interplay. Everything else is just distracting from what's really appealing about the genre.
Because thermodynamics says that moving energy "productively" costs energy. The same reason why leaving your fridge door open heats your house instead of cools it.
Generating a laser beam is one thing. Trying to dump waste heat with one is completely different. Ain't no laser designed to do that and I'm not sure it's even possible, but it is an intriguing idea.
You might like Nebulous: Fleet Command. It's also topical for the thread, because that's where I draw the line as for how "realistic" and autistic space combat should be at the maximum.
Literally was not topped by any sci fi show in like 10 years. Some of the battles in The Expanse are on par. Maybe even a bit better depending on what you like.
Hey bud, if you were the camera guy responsible for filming a fleet operation that close your hands would be shaking too
I can’t lie I have always been a sucker for their pseudo documentary style filming
Two rockets traveling at 0.03c detect each other 5 light years away. The 'game' then tanks your CPU with idle processes to simulate the two ships AIs both calculating the optimal firing path and then the likely evasive maneuvers necessary as well as the most probable evasive maneuvers. The game then selects a random ballistic calculation as the simulation. The time is greatly accelerated but it still takes 1 month of running the game in the background to get results. Occasionally the game tanks your CPU to simulate evasive maneuver calculations by the AI. On day 20 your ships AI states that there is no mathematically possible chance of survival, and it has insufficient data to know if you hit your enemy. The game then turns on your printer and prints the 500 pages of pregenersted "calculations." If you do not have a printer or stop the printing the game wipes your hard drive. After the pages have been printed out you spread them out on the floor. You jerk off with a copy of "The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress" covering your face to immerse you in old book smell. You cum so hard you pass out.
Fully realistic.
I want a week-long engagement with lasers at multiple light-minute ranges so the enemy is never where I see when I see it. I also want to spent realtime weeks seeding the expected paths they will take for given delta-v budgets I expect the enemy to operate with.
How realistic do you want your space combat? >super realistic!
Okay. Realistic space combat, here we go: >war were declared >China and/or the US launch anti-satellite rockets from ground sites >rockets explode in popular satellite orbits, initiating a Kessler syndrome and wiping out all artificial tracking, communication & reconnaissance satellites >battle continues on the ground for a short period >ICBMS launch and spend a short period of time outside of the Earth's atmosphere (ie. in space!) before they re-enter and destroy a mix of military and civilian targets, causing the breakdown of society and ruining the industrial capacity of most of the civilised world >nobody goes to space any more
SPACE >pic related: Multiple Independently Targetable Reentry Vehicle (MIRV) hitting their targets during a ICBM test as seen from a P-3 Orion
Answer: play DEFCON.
>Hard sci fi space battles >Not hurling mass accelerated objects at FTL into planets >Not teleporting bombs of mass destruction into your enemy >Not avoiding "space battle" entirely
same
only thing i dont like is how in the campaign the amount of ships the AI has is based on how many you finished with in the last mission, so you're forced into selling your entire fleet every level.
at least the remaster added as "salvage/mine everything" button to save every mission being 3 hours long.
Complex mod does some cool shit but wish it was more chill, trying to play an AI skirmish mode on that gets you rushed in the first 5min like a game of Starcraft.
pity the Eve total conversion mod got C&D'd. that was looking good.
I might be wrong, but Im pretty sure the issue you’re talking about is exclusive to homeworld 2 and the remaster versions of both
If you can stand to play the very original unremastered version of homeworld the it doesn’t have that problem
>best space combat game is on life support >it would be dead if 100 laggy russians still didnt play it
feels bad man
we used to have a Ganker corp in it back in the day too, was good times
My favorite space game is Rebel Galaxt that has a battle that is basically naval battle. You can't even move your capital ship out of the plane that would be the "ocean".
>no mention of Terra Invicta
Granted, the space combat is the most boring part of the game, but it's EXACTLY like the bottom half of OP's pic (which is why it sucks)
Anon, the space combat is far from the most boring part of the game when you have to literally hear "we moved the needle" so many fricking times. Hell most people don't even get to the space combat because the early game is so awful. The best way to describe Terra Inivcta is: great ideas, absolute dogshit execution.
Shadow Government simulator was fun, as was nuking Israel. I enjoy the agent actions a hell of a lot more than space economy simulator or literally just auto resolve because frick trying to control your fleets in 3D space combat (not that the controls are bad, it's just too much for my map-painting brain)
You click and drag the markers to adjust the speed and heading for that section. You point the arrow to adjust the ships facing orientation. You can also lock your ships to auto orient themselves to specific enemy ships. You order your ships to retract their radiators when the shooting starts to avoid them getting damaged. Order them to pop them back out when they start to overheat. Design your ships at first to have heavy forward armor and point them toward the enemy during battles because you just won't have the tech to fully armor a warship early on w/o it being too heavy. You basically win or lose most space battles in the ship design menu. Point defense saves your ass from projectile and missile weapons. You can effectively shut down tons of enemy damage with good PD. Btw, normal laser guns can also be ordered to do PD. Beeline to plasma guns and torchdrives and your space fleets will be wrecking ayy's in no time. The space battles and ship designer are basically the only good(ish) parts oft he game. Problem is that the devs bloated the frick out of the tech tree so you have an absolutely absurd amount of useless crap in the ships parts list that you can research. Pic is a chart someone compiled of all the drives you can research in the game. Notice how so many of them are just redundant because of how close they are in specs.
>that >hard sci-fi
Hard sci-fi would be realizing that space battles are completely useless. If you're ever at war with a spacefaring nation/civilization, it's like being at war with a nuclear power, you've already lost, and they've already lost.
You sneak ships to their home planet, and you frick it up. And they do the same to you. A fleet of ships isn't going to stop that.
As realistic as Todd makes them to be. No more, no less.
Yes
vade retro satana
This is the best answer. I love Aurora
>WW2 style naval engagements, but in space
So not at all?
>2d
I'd love to love the bottom image, but I know it'll be too in depth for my microscopic brain
It'd require zero input from you, you'd just sit in the wienerpit and win or die. Not very fun, which is why the above version exists.
nebulous fleet command
Freelancer perfected it for fighters, Freespace 2 perfected it for capital ships. You can't really improve on that, you can only refine.
>star citizen will replace this
>it will never be as kino
>we will be 80 when it releases
>Star Citizen
Underspace you mean
Star Citizen is never going to release.
>when it releases
you're going to be 80 before you realize that it never will.
Does anyone even play Disco anymore?
Its been like 12 years for me since I last cruised around in my Sarissa
That's Gankerlancer.
Is a disco server or a mod?
Those ships are definitely from the Discovery mod
It's a mod. You missed out on something wonderful if you know Freelancer but don't know Gankerlancer.
I don't doubt it.
>Played Gankerlancer when it first came out
>Did a clientside .ini edit so that asteroids shat out credit chips instead of rocks
>Went off out of the way to secretly grind out an insane amount of money
>Looked up where I could buy an aesthetic capital ship
>Some 30 system trek away
>Journey out there was tricky
>Bought the Persephone
>Getting it back I had to get it through a fricking asteroid field
>So big it constantly got stuck
>2 hours of banging the thing through
>Got it back to the starting sector
>Parked it outside the red desert planet where everyone was hanging out
>Didn't even get banned
I was having a rough time IRL back then and Gankerlancer genuinely brought a smile to my face when little else did. To anyone who was there, thanks for the memories.
>I had a shitty life so passing the misery on and cheating to make other people feel bad gave me pleasure
The only one he ended up making miserable was himself, ironic, isn't it?
>Freespace 2
thanks for reminding me to replay that again
came out 25 years ago and yet it's still the best space combat game on the market
Space dog-fighting is pretty fun
I want it to be realistic with current age space technology
Kerbal Space Program it is then
Where do you find cracked versions of those games?
>tfw no space RtW
would probably be a nightmare to make though
wish Children of a Dead Earth had a proper campaign mode
best strategy for space combat right now is NOOOOOOKS
I'm pretty sure the closest we've officially gotten to having a warship in space was the russians strapping a modified machine gun to a Salyut station. If course, if you go into "never built, but probably works" designs the sky is the limit, no pun intended. Orion battleships, Polyus battleships, bomb-pumped X-ray lasers...
Children of a dead earth. Fully stimulated orbital mechanics (hope you've got a good CPU) plus diamond hard modern science. Made by actual nerds from NASA. The problem is it's so difficult and obtuse whilst also having high system requirements that it filters basically everybody.
So close...
it's just marketing. the game doesn't have any characters at all. you could barely say it has a campaign or career mode. it's just a dozen set piece missions with text block briefings you click through.
I liked battlestar galactica stuff. Shitton of missiles and flaks, nothing under the nukes, fighters dogfights, big ships strategies done with pen and ruler with zero visual contact. Love that.
guess you like deadlock then?
You can bet your ass i do.
>flak cannons
They use it because all the space warfare is swarm of missiles and it's the only valid tactical choice.
Having flak cannons on a spacecraft would be considered a war crime. Especially if it's an enforcement or peacekeeping platform and isn't some desperate measure in the middle of a war.
>That's against the rules!
don't care, I'm firing all the flaks and nukes at your gaylord ship and there's nothing you can do to stop me
The issue is more one of filling space, and particularly the orbit of a planet, with projectiles that will never, ever stop. You can fire off a flak cannon, and then in 2,000 years some civilian shuttle gets shredded by your flak. The concept could probably be salvaged, though. Instead of just firing off flak you might be able to get away with some short-lived and self-degrading amalgam that only remains a threat for a short period before breaking down on its own.
>biodegradable bullets
this sounds like it's from a parody movie
I think some settings use big chunks of ice.
EVERYTIME YOU PULL THAT TRIGGER YOU ARE RUINING SOMEONE'S DAY SOMEWHERE AT SOME TIME
SIR ISAAC NEWTON IS THE DEADLIEST SON-OF-A-b***h IN SPACE!
Not a problem. If it's at the same speed as regular micro meteorites, then a space worthy ship will have ways to deal with that. If you fire it at extremely high speeds, it will quickly leave the orbit of both the planet, the sun, and probably the whole galaxy, drifting endlessly into the vastness of space, never to be seen again.
I want a complete remake of Elite Dangerous but with 2023 graphics, human designed missions and objectives, and stuff to do which doesn't involve endlessly looking at a warp loading screen or paying capture the flag on foot fps
Elite Dangerous is such a downer. Like fricking hell such a great idea for a game but it's so undercooked.
Bottom is basically nebulous fleet command
How do i get good at this game, it seems dope but I get shredded instantly out of tutorial.
This specifically is my problem. I've been looking for a game that is basically
but vidya for awhile, and Homeworld and Nebulous are the closest i've found but they just control very weirdly. Being able to just grab a fleet on a display with my hands and send it somewhere would be really cool.
I was quite happy with the complexity of Star Fox 64.
>Top
for action games
>Bottom
for strategy games
>omg the formulas this is so scientific
Dude the second panel is not so different from the usual don't shoot your opponent shoot where you think your opponent will be crap
entirely depends on the aesthetic
Honestly the least realistic part of this image is the idea that the UK could fund a space program or would be at all able to field its own separate vessels to the rest of the EU
Neither the UK or the EU combined would be able to build anything remotely like a manned space program.
They are too busy trying to feed large unproductive subsets of their own populations.
lore wise for The Lunar War they have a joint program with the commonwealth, mainly the Canadians and Australians
I believe they and the EU got a decent economy boost after the "Artemis Accords" that carved up the moon leading to a booming space industry
It's sad that settings like this never account for the near-term problems that just glossed over.
The EU can't even afford to easily hand enough weapons to Ukrain to defeat an invader with the GDP of Italy.
And, demographically speaking, they will be completely replaced within a century anyway. The EU will cease to exist in any meaningful way long before then.
timeline has the war starting in 2044, with the Chinese launching the first armed craft in 2037, might be out of date though, does seem pretty quick
The EU launching anything larger than a breadbox by then ion their own s laughable. Arianespace doesn't count.
where can I read more of this?
currently exclusively on the "tough sci-fi" discord under the "world's" section, outside of renders and ship details there's not much documentation outside of a 3 year old timeline and a q&a
still nice renders so I've parked myself there to scrape them, next one is an Indian ship it seems
gimme this timeline
it is from 2020 but here you go;
>2021-2022: Development of Fully Reusable HLV is complete, launch Prices drop and massive Private investment into Space ventures follows
>2022: ULA announces it will invest in and develop its CIS-Lunar 1000 initiative to grow the space economy
>2024: Crewed Lunar landing on lunar South Pole as part of Artemis Missions. US tests first LEU NTR in orbit
>2025: First International Artimis mission, US, JP, and EU Astronauts participate. ISRU infrastructure begins construction along with a US base at South Pole
>2026: US/JP/EU ratify Artemis Accords establishing norms of property/resource rights. Mad dash for significant ice/resource deposits occurs
>2028: Following the LEU NTR flown 4 years US development efforts quietly begin on higher performance NTR's
>2029: First Crewed PRC lunar landing
>2029: Most lunar Territory has resource claims by US/JP/EU leaving out the PRC
>2030: After realizing most of the Significant water Ice deposits have been claimed on the Moon, PRC sends off missions to water rich NEO's/comets
>2033: PRC retrieves water rich comet and begins construction of a massive propellant depot orbital platform at EML 3
>2035: Rouge spacecraft nearly crashes into US/Japan base in apparent terrorist attack. PRC suddenly announces formation of spaceguard in response
>2036: China/Russia along with developing nations form a Global Space block claiming the Artimis accords have allowed the moon to be "stolen"
>2036: US moves NEO into EML 5 for use in construction of O'Neill Colonies
>2037: PRC launches first Armed spaceguard units, another Spacecraft terrorist nearly whipes out a ISRU base
>2038: US, Japan, and EU Launch their own Spacegaurds
>2042: China/Global space block declares that the Artemis accords have no force of law and that unless all Parties can have universal access to lunar resources
>2044: After a surprise attack on propellant transports by PRC proxy forces. The Lunar War begins
>COVID took this from is
I'll never forgive the Chinese
also I should add that it appears the new cause/additional conflict of the war is an invasion of taiwan
Where does the EU launch its vessels from
france
they're assembled in orbit
Hard space battles would be gigakino, but I'm not aware of any game with them.
This is why we have EVE Online, to keep these autists busy elsewhere.
EVE ain't a game, it's a quarantine simulation.
Hard space battles would be avoiding space battles at all costs because it's a waste of ammo and just nuke the planets instead
I only care about radiators
>Torchship
>has absolute amazing ship design for the contact war
>just turns into star trek
sigh...
tell me more
commie hard sci-fi star trek TTRPG
dev has a tumblr;
https://torchship-rpg.tumblr.com/
whats the ring suppose to do?
warp nacelles
Keep order in the lands between.
Lame, don't post.
Deuteronony 23
I don't read sandisraelite bedtime stories.
Is that why you suck wieners and believe in every israelite space fairy tale?
>who would win
>semicircle or leeroy jenkins in space
When your offense is powerful enough, strategy doesn't matter. Bittenfeld is king
Everyone knows about the Teutoburg forest ambush when Varus lost several legions.
No one knows about hubdreds of failed ambushes that were like
>we will ambush the imperial legion
>our impecable strategy will surely lead us to victory
And then they get wrecked by the legion and their villages burnt and tribes enslaved.
I wish I had my warband edit with rhodoks and harlaus on it
I think it'll be closer to submarines
Just everyone trying to stay quiet and the second someone makes too much noise and heat they get blasted by 500 lasers instantly across the galaxy
lasers are only effective at (relatively) close range and do disperse even in space. also you must figure out where to dump all the waste heat in space.
If by quiet you mean limit emissions that can travel through vacuum sure. You have to be quiet on subs cuz of all the water
I think the most difficult thing about realistic space battles is the control scheme
Trying to position things in 3d on a 2d screen with a mouse and keyboard quickly becomes difficult make fun and intuitive
Homeworld was in a pretty good spot, but even that wasnt super realistic
I think there is potential for a vr game about space strategy and tactics for the control scheme alone. Intuitive manipulation of fleets and flight paths in a 3d space.
I think X3: Terran Conflict has the perfect control scheme for space movement
>WASD for strafe thrusters
>Q and E for roll
>hold left mouse button to control pitch and yaw: the ship angles itself towards the mouse cursor as long as you're holding LMB
It's intuitive as frick and feels great to use, but it exposes the other issue with space combat: speeds are so high that it's really hard to hit anyone with anything that isn't either guided or hitscan, and guided missiles are easy to intercept.
It's literally just Freelancer's controls with a worse third person camera.
>i like the games but oh the clunky controls, I just can't stand the clunky controls!
Skill issue
remember its all toobs in the future
>its all toobs in the future
inertia dampeners = gay
no strafing engines. wanna stafe? move foward and turn sideways
no backing up, only forward. RCS thrusters are only good for smallest shittiest course-correctons and not applicable in combat.
ok but can we atleast get thrust vectoring?
okay. but if press a or d without w and my ship starts moving - youre fired
can i play phonk while doing donuts around a "stationary" (to our mutual reference frame) target?
Terra Invicta space battles are pretty decent in this regard, but the rest of the game is butthole.
I love space but I'm not that interested in sci-fi. The top one is fine for me.
>get halfway to destination
>turn around
>slow down
Idk man it depends on the game.
Too much in some kinds of space games makes it so you have to micromanage 20 ships shit and have to pause to issue orders every fricking 4 seconds for an hour to win.
Too little in some kinds of space games and it feels like you are just going around and parking your ship while it destroys everything on its own.
You’ve just been put in charge of making the absolute most hardest sci fi space strategy game ever
What features do you add?
Buoys. Basically sensor drones with minimal to no mobility, hard to spot, with good passive sensors and a minimal line back to mothership to relay their sensor data. This data doesn't automatically reveal shit, you have to interpret a grainy green scribbles on black background graph, and use data from multiple buoys to triangulate your target.
Also dense asteroid belts and debris fields, so it's easy to break line of sight, meaning there's a reason to use the buoys. I want my submarines in space damnit.
There's no stealth in space battles. You'd detect enemy ships from beyond the solar system, years before your paths would intersect.
Unless you're hiding behind something. Hence the asteroid belts and debris fields. In open space, yeah ain't no hiding there
Your thermal radiation would light up like a christmas tree unless you're hiding behind a planetoid, in which case you're orbiting it and you "hiding" will last like 2 days
Any chance the field you're hiding in has its own thermal radiation that could mask your ship's bleed? Debris field probably has had enough time to cool down after whatever caused the debris, and any active machinery left there leaking heat sound like prime targets for scavengers. What about asteroids, any chance there's radioactive rocks hot enough to mask a ship?
>Any chance the field you're hiding in has its own thermal radiation that could mask your ship's bleed?
No
>What about asteroids, any chance there's radioactive rocks hot enough to mask a ship?
No
Fair. Hey, thanks for taking my dumb questions seriously.
Sure, there's a lot of misconceptions about space. But there's really nowhere to hide, combat would be extremely boring and technical, and probably left to an advanced AI to figure out if we ever get to that stage IRL. Too many variables that can all be number crunched to wring out the fun and mystery from it, for example as
says.
Also, the moment you made an effort to get into position, you threw out a hot plume of exhaust from which I can calculate your mass and velocity from both quite a distance away and from quite some time into the future.
what do you think an asteroid field looks like
hint: there's usually hundreds if not thousands of miles between rocks
Something far denser than that. Like, having to dodge multiple rocks per minute kind of dense. Which I've today learned is not the case and I shouldn't be basing my knowledge on a single scene in Gundam 0096
This. There's nowhere to fricking hide in space. If you have people on board or are doing anything remotely interesting (thinking, accelerating, firing weapons, etc.) you are a hot object on the -270C background of space. You can't hide like a stealth airplane because you're not responding to active scans (like radar), you're literally emitting radiation by virtue of being above absolute zero.
So generate more heat and pretend to be something huge
>hey captain, there's this weird thing on our sensors, it's the size of a space ship but with the heat and EM signature of a brown dwarf
>nah it's probably nothing, ignore it
Space barnacles
I don't care that it doesn't make sense. Hull fouling due to barnacles was a major issue for wet navy ships, I want to see something similar in space
Is there any game that does this, it kind of sounds fun
Underspace has them in the demo
That sounds fricking awesome to me dude, I also don't care if it doesn't make sense, space barnacles fricking up your ships is way too cool.
x-kills.
more specifically, stuff that you already have in real life military - mobility kills, firepower kills, etc, but expanded.
for example, a large frigate gets it's power core (reactor?) blown up. the ship is essentially eviscerated, loses most of it's power, propulsion, the crew is abandoning the ship or dead. however, some localized power sources and backup reactors keep a few weaponclusters online, and so the ship is adrift, slowly rotating helplessly, but one of the main batteries is still firing as long as it can turn towards any enemy - final spasms of a dying creature, heroic feat of the turret crew doomed to their fate.
yeah, i feel like it'd be pretty exciting
No drag. That was the worst part about EVE. I want my ships to be able to accelerate to unmanageable speeds. Also, time dilation. If someone is moving fast enough, they perceive the outside world to be "sped up"
>If someone is moving fast enough, they perceive the outside world to be "sped up"
how do you even simulate this? it would work in a first person game but not in multiplayer; it's like how every MP game with slo-mo or bullet time makes it a global effect.
err, singleplayer game, frick
Just give the fast guys a lower tick rate. Make everything laggy on their end.
orbiting space debris can damage your ship
you need to keep track of billions of particles in order to keep yourself alive
>he doesn't put a massive metal shield infront of the ship
lmao
If you go fast enough any particle of sand will basically become a nuke
An HQ super weapon (think Death Star) that is a giant Nicoll-Dyson Sphere (giant laser cannon which utilizes a sun). It utilizes a deep space telescope along with intel and deployed sensors to locate targets, before taking aim and firing into deep space. You could be light years away and suddenly find your ship getting turned to ash.
Also, general pressure mechanics. If your hull suffers even the smallest of breaches- hell even a wider saturation of weakened armor- your entire ship will simply decompress and kill everyone inside unless you properly seal all your doors in anticipation.
>you could be light years away and suffenly find your ship get turned to ash
Wouldn't that require the people firing it to be able to predict where you are in a few years? Useful for planets but not so much shit I feel.
I just think it's cool honestly 🙂
>Indepth orbital mechanics that effect ships, missiles and, to an extent, lasers.
>space magic drives that let you accelerate to relativistic speeds and take advantage of relativistic effects
>also warp the spacetime around you allowing you to dodge in the most bullshit of ways
elite dangerous but it's fun.
Somewhere between those two. Complex enough that it makes me feel smart, but not so complex I can't follow it. Also not realistically slow because that is very slow.
>pd railgun
For me it's guided artillery with proximity fuse.
Some day science fiction will find out about alien and impossibly technologically advanced concept of shell guidance
But not today
guided shells in space are just missiles
there's no air for fins to work with for maneuvers
No children of a dead earth? I'm sad
Top is more realistic than bottom. Space combat wouldn't be dogfighting. It would mostly be massive range artillery trying to hit their targets while trying to shoot down or redirect incoming fire. (Think of shit like missiles and flares).
Closing in on a hostile entity in the vastness of space just means you have less time to react to anything that entity does and is the dumbest shit you could possibly do.
This shit wouldn't be fun, because almost all of it would realistically be controlled by computers, but that's what realistic space battles would look like.
The bottom part of your picture is just WW1 dogfighting but in space. It's for lazy fiction that values action over realism.
uh think your misinterpreting things anon
How so?
Are you seeing the same pic as the rest of us?
Top pic is long ranged combat while the bottom pic is close ranged broadside combat. What about the top pic is dog fighting?
Other way around. Now i'm being dumb
>the point
>
>
>your head
The point is, in space, up and down are whatever you want them to be. The enemy gate is down.
>realistic space game
space isnt real
>itt midwits talking about advanced space combat when they cant even into air combat
Sigh, you guys need some time flying soviet aircraft
its shit
space combat is usually just air combat but with like ice physics so you just slide everywhere
>dogeguy
don't listen to this guy he is actually a well known moron from wtg on vg. he spent an entire week crying that the challenger 2 turret was impenetrable from a BVM's top shell and posted a clip of him being completely unable to aim as proof
I did not
i only spent an hour
of course you cant pen a chally's dummy thicc cheeks
and thats fricking CRINGE
High tier Air RB is probably the least fun experience I have ever had. Ultimate skinner box, I honestly can't comprehend how people enjoy it
>People play this shit when DCS is available
Why?
less autism needed to shoot someone
>less autism
I'd contest that but the reason would make me sound like an autist.
I'm interested to know why you think DCS is less autistic, particularly since something like War Thunder is more likely to fulfil that Top Gun-esque thrill than a sim where you're probably going to engage targets at BVR.
>you're probably going to engage targets at BVR
Oh not at all. The most active pvp communities are very much guns only BFM guys and the degree of autism is high.
But there's less of the highly competitive 12-year-old xbox kid kind of player who rages when he gets shot down and much more team gameplay between people of all ages, in some cases even with people who actually have flown those very same aircraft.
It's generally a much friendlier community with much more patience for newbies and the gameplay is usually mission based, not match based.
Much less time between the shooty bits. Sometimes you just want to take air spawns to lob missiles at jackasses, instead of doing a pre-flight check so long the only other player got bored and left the server. There's a time and place for both kinds of 'tism
an obvious answer!
or actually
>starsector overworld
>multiple races and ship types, you can assemble/build your fleet
>homeworld-type lore and aesthetics. massive structures in the background. unexplained mysteriess as the backdrop.
>ww2 battleship-style gameplay - big ships of the line blasting at a distance with small vessels whizzing about
now let me wallow in my own misery, for it willl never be done.
Hi Doge!
yes hello
Why would I want space combat
If anyone is looking for a game with some real, hard scifi spaceship combat, take a look at terra invicta.
What you tell others that you want.
>detailed, scientifically-accurate, hard simulationist.
What you ACTUALLY want but fear losing clout if you admitted it.
>Star Wars space dogfights pew pew
LAU
LAU
LAU
LAUN
LAUNCH FIGHTERS
>be eldritch being in a lower dimensions
>send *fingers* to *party* in spess mehreen armor and ships with a giant cannon
a little bit of both. I know fighters are irrelevant in the void but I just like piloting, dogfighting to synthwave is one of the funnest things I've ever done in video games, especially with a HOTAS.
>STEMcels wanting to predict how space warfare would actually work rather than using the fantastical as a white board for an imagined new system with its own rules
This is why you were delegated to purely technical tasks, you're all spiritually indian
from reading this thread it appears that "realistic space combat" is meant to be
>we detect each other from a lightyear away and ponderously glide towards one another until whichever of us is willing to push the range on our weapons the furthest annihilates the other uncontested
In which case, of course people don't make that. That doesn't sound very engaging to play or to watch.
i mean yeah
air combat IRL nowadays is literally just BVRing each other
every fantastical implementation boils down to
WW2 DOGFIGHTING BUT WITH SPESS BACKGROUND
which is great but not original
>people think this is something desirable
I... just can't begin to understand why. It's so goddamn boring. What's there to do?
>WW2 DOGFIGHTING BUT WITH SPESS BACKGROUND
It turns out that WW2 dogfighting is a very happy medium of offense and defense in a scenario where you have three axes of freedom to move on. Coming up with various tweaks to it to really "sell" that you're in space is the best you can do.
>Yes, the reality is boring
Then who's actually demanding games based on it? morons who want "clout" for being into harder sci-fi than the other people they know?
being able to competently fight BVR is a skill that even I don't have
taking into account positions of enemies you cant see
the limitations of your radar and theirs
energy maneuverability theory for dodging missiles while keeping your track steady
notching and radar types
>morons who want "clout" for being into harder sci-fi than the other people they know?
Probably? The crunchiest of grognard scifi has long been the realm of masturbatory essays (a la Atomic Rockets) and niche novels. I think its fine for it to mostly stay there.
Same thing with something like Revolutionary War or civil war reenactment. Sure, you COULD make an FPS out of it, but it turns out that infantry square formations are boring as shit and the technology is in an awkward spot for what we expect from the genre. But people still like to engage with the concept, even if its not in the form of a game.
As you said about WW2 dogfighting, the games gravitate around a happy medium of offense and defense, because that's what we want out of a game (but not necessarily how history or science works). That's why we have endless WW2 shooters and modern shooters, and not a lot of Civil War shooters or Napoleonic War shooters.
Yes, the reality is boring. It involves a lot of trust in your engineering and computers. It's not a game fit for meat because meat never thought it'd be playing on that scale, and meat is exceedingly poorly equipped to handle that scale.
It's not a sin that space fiction tends to portray space as either a big ocean (with "battleships") or as a big dogfight (with "fighters") or as a Pacific War inspired paradigm. These are things that make some degree of sense to people, and I think its fine that even science fiction should be both 1) relatable to the reader and 2) say something about the world the reader lives in. Getting on Star Wars' case for unrealistic stealth combat is meaningless distraction from the point that Star Wars is attempting to convey about a space empire with clear parallels in real world history.
Realistic ground and air combat has become the same. Just lob drones, rockets and artillery at each other from a hundred miles away, satellites from both sides track every move of the participants, troop movements can be predicted weeks ahead. Technology makes things less fun, and space combat is the highest form of technology most people can imagine, so of course it will be 100% boring and unimaginative.
Yet wars still drag on and reach stalemates, which is even worse. You'd think there'd be more decisive victories.
I imagine that if it's not going to be FTL or other gimmicks like space warp, then you would utilize lagrange points for faster movement for surprise attacks or changing impediment in a space battle situation. Crossing them or going against them would damage your ships as space debris would be flying at you at dangerous speeds when you're not traveling with the gravitational wells of planets. A battle would either take place in inert areas or would have to be constantly moving with gravitation. The fights could be rail shooting in such areas, impossible near heavy gravitational wells or just dogfighting in stable areas that change with the movement of planets.
This would also solve the "vast empty space" problem by making everyone want to travel via lanes of changing flux, you would inevitably end up crossing paths with enemies or other people utilizing the same movement benefits.
in a current all out war most the planet could be pwned if everyone shot all da nukes
in space however there'd be nothing left
killing a planet/space station/anything stationary is fricking trivial
load a single ship with a big lead/tungsten slug, accelerate towards your target and dump the cargobay
if you do it from outside detection range and cover the slug in some EM absorber it's undetectable and will frick shit up
all you need is a single ship
>outside detection range
No such thing.
>load a single ship with a big lead/tungsten slug, accelerate towards your target and dump the cargobay
So just like any ol' asteroid on collision course. What makes you think someone would build a station that couldn't deal with that?
>detects your big lead ball against the emptiness of space 5 months before impact
>accelerates the station by 0.000001m/s in any direction
>avoids collision by 3 quadrillion miles
Nothing personnel kid
okay but how do you detect the ball?
Just like you'd detect any other object in space.
>passive detection of thermal radiation
>passive detection of gravitational waves
>active detection radar, lidar etc.
>by looking at it with a fricking telescope
>passive detection of gravitational waves
ligo needed 2km of laser tracks to detect black holes colliding. no way you're gonna detect a 100 ton vessel a million miles away
Ligo needed 2 km of lasers to do the very first detection of gravitational waves, built on earth. There's no physical law that requires this length. A space station is almost perfectly still, depending on location, so the apparatus can be very finely tuned. And it's extremely likely that this technology will be miniaturized in the very near future. You also didn't address the other ways of how your lead ball would be detected.
i beg to differ, but as i said i'm a bit drunk so. a great topic to have though, maybe another time.
We can detect asteroids since decades by looking at them with a telescope from here. What makes you so sure that a lead ball wouldn't be detected?
>thermal
cool the ball before undocking
>active
cover with radar absorber
>telescope
paint it black (you end up with a b-2 bomber looking slug)
>grav waves
you have me here i have no idea what that shit is
>see black spot approaching
mount a small antenna transmitting the cosmic microwave background
>cool the ball before undocking
The station would see a space ship maneuver to a direct collision course, heating up considerably before instantly losing a lot of mass, and then changing course again. Draw your own conclusions on their further actions. Not even considering that you'd have to predict the exact location of the station months in advance, which is impossible if the station does even one single unplanned orbital correction.
>cover with radar absorber
>paint it black
You can't make it absorb all possible electromagnetic wavelengths. At some wavelength it will light up like a disco ball with the sun shining on it.
Again, there's nothing you can hide in space. Every action you take equals an opposite reaction, everything that happens outside a spaceships hull is easily visible in one way or another from across the solar system.
>stations have full sphere coverage of every EM frequency
Yes a space station that houses more than a dozen people would absolutely have passive and active sensors covering almost all EM frequencies. It would be pants on head moronic not to have those sensors.
Keep it simple for me, and no more complex than NMS. I quited games because navigation is too complicated. If I wanted a sim I buy a sim,
Then there's EVE, which is not as complex, but as fun as watching paint dry.
>Then there's EVE, which is not as complex, but as fun as watching paint dry.
thing with Eve is it plays like an MMO that came out in 2003
>extremely social, need to make friends with your corp to enjoy it
>boring 95% of the time
>shitting your heart out and unable to sleep from adrenaline 5% of the time
>punishes you hard for "frick around, find out"
It's also played by a bunch of petulant man-baby adults who have made it into a leper colony full of accelerationists who hate everything.
i mean yeah there are some turbonerds on Eve
i just enjoy shooting c**ts and watching my money go up
the size/scale of everything, market and variety of content cant really be beaten and likely never will be
>i just enjoy shooting c**ts and watching my money go up
When I tried EVE it seemed like the only way to do either of these things was to join some huge corporation full of random gays
> it seemed like the only way to do either of these things was to join some huge corporation full of random gays
yeah it was pretty bad for that back in the day
check out the new FW, its pretty gud
Absolute best part about EVE is the stupid monument. There's something special about having your character name there and knowing some future archaeologist is going to have a headache trying to figure out what the hell Dickbutt McButtdick means.
>archaeologist finds thing they don't understand
>checks rolodex
>It must be a fertility symbol and/or proto-religious icon made possible by the rise of the middle-class equivalent
Every time without fail.
Endless space 2 makes me so sad because if the combat was more in depth it would be 10x more fun.
Also are there any space games that do planetary invasions well?
outside of really experimental old stuff ground combat has always been an after thought
Give me one reason why realistic space warfare wouldn't just be hurling massive rocks at your enemy so that their planets get turned into hellholes. "Realistic" space combat in all manners is boring as frick, it's all drones and missiles doing attacks you cannot defend against.
>burn all your fuel and spend god knows how much money accelerating a planet killing rock at your enemy
>they just blow it up or even easier they just intercept the rock and push it in a different direction so it misses the target
It's thousands of small rocks hurled at them at near light speeds. Good luck intercepting that.
>you want to occupy those planets
Time will fix that.
>the general public isn't comfortable with outright genocide
But they're alright with getting our men killed in an intensive war for control of the planet? This is much easier than waging guerilla warfare for decades.
>genocide over some border dispute is a bit overkill
It's just one planet. They'll learn their lesson.
>rocks aren't free
My brother on christ, space is full of rocks.
>It's thousands of small rocks hurled at them at near light speeds. Good luck intercepting that.
anon are you moronic?
If you can't accelerate to near light speeds then you aren't going to be dealing with alien races/other planets anyways. It's all too far away.
1. you literally just describes FTL bullets
2. mass is needed to do damage, tiny rocks will still get shredded by the atmosphere and if they hit the planet it wont do shit
Accelerating a bullet to relativistic speeds and letting it hit a planet would release energy comparable to nuclear bombs.
Not if it vaporises in atmosphere. Friction gets pretty mighty at relativistic speeds.
Vaporizing in atmosphere still releases the energy on the planet. Target it correctly and a few dozen bullets like this could EMP the whole planet.
Do you know what a meteor shower is?
Yes. Do you know what relativistic speeds are?
Let's try again. Do you know what a cosmic ray is?
I'm just going to stop answering stupid questions and tell you that a projectile with a weight of 50 grams accelerated to 0.99c has the energy of 6.5MT of TNT. Consider that the Tunguska event was at 10 - 30 MT of TNT.
Bonus fun points for weapons moving at relativistic speeds have comparatively little warning about their arrival. If you're moving at 0.9c, then the wave of photons announcing your existence to the target is only marginally faster than you are, and it may arrive too late for them to do anything about it. Of course, if they're a planet then there's not much you can do besides evacuate, but still.
If there's a civilization with the energy capacity to casually accelerate weapons to relativistic speeds, everyone in their range is pretty much just fricked. You lost the moment you showed up with a stick to the impossibly large gunfight. Lament your biology for being comparatively slow to evolve and cherish the time you have left because you really don't stand a chance.
Plot summary for convenience.
>In the late 21st century Earth is at peace. Humans now command self-replicating machines that create engineering marvels on enormous scales. Artificial habitats dot the Solar System. Anti-matter driven Valkyrie rockets carry explorers to the stars at nearly the speed of light.
>Then, swarms of missiles travelling at close to the speed of light hit Earth. Though they are merely boulder-sized chunks of metal, they move fast enough to hit with the force of many nuclear arsenals. They are impossible to track and to stop. Humanity is almost wiped out by the bombardment.
>A handful of survivors desperately struggle to escape the alien mop-up fleet. They hide close to the Sun, inside asteroids, beneath the crusts of moons, within ice rings, and in interstellar space. Most are however hunted down and slaughtered.
>The last man and woman on Earth are captured as zoo specimens. In the belly of an alien starship, a squid-like being relates to them the pitiless logic behind humankind's execution: the moment humans learned to travel at relativistic speeds was the moment mankind simply became too dangerous a neighbor to have around. The final revelation is that the alien is itself subservient to a powerful artificial intelligence.
This was written in 1995.
>Time will fix that.
What if you do not have the time? You cant do something like that counting on that in 200 years the planet will be habitable again, what if you need to occupy the planet now to intercept the enemy?
>But they're alright with getting our men killed in an intensive war for control of the planet?
Yes, just like how it happens in real life since the public thinks that soldiers killing soldiers is better and more justifiable than soldiers killing civilians. Tough on a setting like warhammer that would not be the case since the civilians are objectively evil and no act against them is wrong, at least that is what you are told.
>My brother on christ, space is full of rocks.
You are right that anon was moronic in this one.
>hurling massive rocks at your enemy so that their planets get turned into hellholes
you want to occupy those planets
the general public isn't comfortable with outright genocide
genocide over some border dispute is a bit overkill
rocks aren't free
>Give me one reason why realistic space warfare wouldn't just be hurling massive rocks at your enemy so that their planets get turned into hellholes
that's exactly what will happen
essentially there's a 99.9999% chancve every first contact will be "we strapped multiple engines on a huge mass to genocide your planet" kinda event, but i'm too drunk to explain why.
Dark forest theory?
Anyone advanced enough to wipe out a planet from another solar system has nothing to gain by actually doing it. You can get rocks and shit anywhere, and in higher quantities than your entire civilisation will know how to use.
Hedonism is eternal.
For an advancaded civilation
Killing all of the planet in the galaxy would rappressent at most a rounding error in their energy output
why isn't modern war just a nuclear slugfest?
>There are no proper modern wars, it's al proxy wars and guerillas
>The one country in an actual war gave away their nukes which is why they're being attacked now
And the country they're fighting let their nukes rot. Can't use 'em even if they want to.
it takes orders of magnitute less resources to deflect inert projectile than accelerate it
If you are advanced enough to do space travel then you are advanced enough to intercept a rock flying in a straight line at your planet.
If something travels at almost the speed of light, then you're only going to find out about it when it's too late.
Relativistic missile are faster less telegraphed deadlier
Unlikely to be seen as a gift of resource
Throw the realism away, accept it as fantasy in space, and focus more on developing a battle dynamic that isn't tedious. A space game should focus on the relationship between macro and micro, on having the fast-paced individual dogfights of Star Wars but with a wider strategic arrangement that gives those skirmishes meaning and consequence, and reverse engineer the rest of the game and universe from that interplay. Everything else is just distracting from what's really appealing about the genre.
every concept for realistic space warfare is the most boring shit imaginable
so give me 0 realism, give me cool shit instead
>ballistic trajectories
>in 0 G
>"hard sci fi"
ok here is your (You), triggered me with this midwit shit
pretty sure it's to show distance
>railgun
>literally linear acceleration
>intercepting
>on a curved track
where's the curves anon? it's talking about putting the ship in a better position for its PDCs to shot down the missiles
Why couldn’t you turn all your heat into a laser beam and shoot it off in a direction no one is looking?
lasers make heat
you could however dump it into a heatsink and throw it off the ship
Because thermodynamics says that moving energy "productively" costs energy. The same reason why leaving your fridge door open heats your house instead of cools it.
Generating a laser beam is one thing. Trying to dump waste heat with one is completely different. Ain't no laser designed to do that and I'm not sure it's even possible, but it is an intriguing idea.
Give me a mix of both with some kino flak
You might like Nebulous: Fleet Command. It's also topical for the thread, because that's where I draw the line as for how "realistic" and autistic space combat should be at the maximum.
>muh missiles
>muh nukes
>muh RKVs
"Hard" sci-fi fricking sucks
>shakey cam in space
This made us cum and shit our pants back in 2004
Literally was not topped by any sci fi show in like 10 years. Some of the battles in The Expanse are on par. Maybe even a bit better depending on what you like.
Hey bud, if you were the camera guy responsible for filming a fleet operation that close your hands would be shaking too
I can’t lie I have always been a sucker for their pseudo documentary style filming
Yes and I wish more games emulated that.
Two rockets traveling at 0.03c detect each other 5 light years away. The 'game' then tanks your CPU with idle processes to simulate the two ships AIs both calculating the optimal firing path and then the likely evasive maneuvers necessary as well as the most probable evasive maneuvers. The game then selects a random ballistic calculation as the simulation. The time is greatly accelerated but it still takes 1 month of running the game in the background to get results. Occasionally the game tanks your CPU to simulate evasive maneuver calculations by the AI. On day 20 your ships AI states that there is no mathematically possible chance of survival, and it has insufficient data to know if you hit your enemy. The game then turns on your printer and prints the 500 pages of pregenersted "calculations." If you do not have a printer or stop the printing the game wipes your hard drive. After the pages have been printed out you spread them out on the floor. You jerk off with a copy of "The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress" covering your face to immerse you in old book smell. You cum so hard you pass out.
Fully realistic.
I want a week-long engagement with lasers at multiple light-minute ranges so the enemy is never where I see when I see it. I also want to spent realtime weeks seeding the expected paths they will take for given delta-v budgets I expect the enemy to operate with.
The trend of realism in space games made them worse.
Both are good. Arcadey fast paced or cerebral and thinking a few steps ahead.
How realistic do you want your space combat?
>super realistic!
Okay. Realistic space combat, here we go:
>war were declared
>China and/or the US launch anti-satellite rockets from ground sites
>rockets explode in popular satellite orbits, initiating a Kessler syndrome and wiping out all artificial tracking, communication & reconnaissance satellites
>battle continues on the ground for a short period
>ICBMS launch and spend a short period of time outside of the Earth's atmosphere (ie. in space!) before they re-enter and destroy a mix of military and civilian targets, causing the breakdown of society and ruining the industrial capacity of most of the civilised world
>nobody goes to space any more
SPACE
>pic related: Multiple Independently Targetable Reentry Vehicle (MIRV) hitting their targets during a ICBM test as seen from a P-3 Orion
Answer: play DEFCON.
Dudes in the ships deal with that shit, I just tell them where to go and what to shoot at.
>get transported to the future
>frick yeah space kino
>it's this shit
>no mechs
>robo waifus and VR NPCs have rights
>kill myself
Imagine the disappointment going 200 years in the future and space travel is still not non-trivial.
Most games don't benefit from being realistic at all because real life sucks.
>Hard sci fi space battles
>Not hurling mass accelerated objects at FTL into planets
>Not teleporting bombs of mass destruction into your enemy
>Not avoiding "space battle" entirely
Homeworld series hit the spot for me.
same
only thing i dont like is how in the campaign the amount of ships the AI has is based on how many you finished with in the last mission, so you're forced into selling your entire fleet every level.
at least the remaster added as "salvage/mine everything" button to save every mission being 3 hours long.
Complex mod does some cool shit but wish it was more chill, trying to play an AI skirmish mode on that gets you rushed in the first 5min like a game of Starcraft.
pity the Eve total conversion mod got C&D'd. that was looking good.
I might be wrong, but Im pretty sure the issue you’re talking about is exclusive to homeworld 2 and the remaster versions of both
If you can stand to play the very original unremastered version of homeworld the it doesn’t have that problem
Space fighters are one of the most moronic concepts imaginable. That shit makes no sense whatsoever.
Don't tell the "hard sci fi" morons
I got filtered by missile paths in nebulous
Didn't some homosexual in /agdg/ make a really cool looking orbital based space combat game?
>space thread
>no red dwarf
both, i play more than 1 game
>best space combat game is on life support
>it would be dead if 100 laggy russians still didnt play it
feels bad man
we used to have a Ganker corp in it back in the day too, was good times
My favorite space game is Rebel Galaxt that has a battle that is basically naval battle. You can't even move your capital ship out of the plane that would be the "ocean".
I dropped it because of how grindy it was, but I did like the concept and its soundtrack.
>no mention of Terra Invicta
Granted, the space combat is the most boring part of the game, but it's EXACTLY like the bottom half of OP's pic (which is why it sucks)
Anon, the space combat is far from the most boring part of the game when you have to literally hear "we moved the needle" so many fricking times. Hell most people don't even get to the space combat because the early game is so awful. The best way to describe Terra Inivcta is: great ideas, absolute dogshit execution.
Shadow Government simulator was fun, as was nuking Israel. I enjoy the agent actions a hell of a lot more than space economy simulator or literally just auto resolve because frick trying to control your fleets in 3D space combat (not that the controls are bad, it's just too much for my map-painting brain)
You click and drag the markers to adjust the speed and heading for that section. You point the arrow to adjust the ships facing orientation. You can also lock your ships to auto orient themselves to specific enemy ships. You order your ships to retract their radiators when the shooting starts to avoid them getting damaged. Order them to pop them back out when they start to overheat. Design your ships at first to have heavy forward armor and point them toward the enemy during battles because you just won't have the tech to fully armor a warship early on w/o it being too heavy. You basically win or lose most space battles in the ship design menu. Point defense saves your ass from projectile and missile weapons. You can effectively shut down tons of enemy damage with good PD. Btw, normal laser guns can also be ordered to do PD. Beeline to plasma guns and torchdrives and your space fleets will be wrecking ayy's in no time. The space battles and ship designer are basically the only good(ish) parts oft he game. Problem is that the devs bloated the frick out of the tech tree so you have an absolutely absurd amount of useless crap in the ships parts list that you can research. Pic is a chart someone compiled of all the drives you can research in the game. Notice how so many of them are just redundant because of how close they are in specs.
For me, its the Amarr Empire
If it's anything like the picture, give me as soft as you can.
Not realistic at all. I want my space fights to feature furries in cool fighters.
Like, fukken, give me ship to ship banter. I want to hear my enemies shitting themselves as their fighters are exploding.
>that
>hard sci-fi
Hard sci-fi would be realizing that space battles are completely useless. If you're ever at war with a spacefaring nation/civilization, it's like being at war with a nuclear power, you've already lost, and they've already lost.
You sneak ships to their home planet, and you frick it up. And they do the same to you. A fleet of ships isn't going to stop that.
Oh, and give me hotshot b***hes who blow kisses.
As soft as you can make it. Give me single-man fighters engaging in space dogfights. Some real (Sp)Ace Combat shit.
I want my space combat to just be submarines in space