I short it's a Newtonian space trading game with large scale ships.

The use of an A.I. to pilot the ship can also be argued as the use of an NPC to pilot the ship. The use of the player to do everything by themselves on the ship belies the idea of a "large scale ship" unless it was automated to a large degree. In approaching the idea that this would be done under Newtownian physics i.e. towards realism... why can't automated systems also be accepted as applying to all aspects of the ship. Does anyone honestly expect a player to run down to the lower hold to change an O ring of the number 2 waste disposal system?. Lets not forget being set in space, already makes that game reality technologically ahead of our own reality so the use of advanced technologies to make jobs easier is by all reasonability not without merit. Admittedly in any game that endeavours to match with reality there will always be a compromise between the enjoyability of gameplay Vs the fundamental sameness of repetitive tasks required to make a large scale set of systems operate, the trick is in finding it.

With today technology I could probably fire a bullet to a spaceship in orbit around mars from earth orbit and hit it without them even knowing somebody shoot at them.

Technically yes you could...good luck trying to do it though. Space combat for the most part is boring because at the end of the day until we get our asses out there...there is little incentive to design and implement new technologies that would make space combat a little more exciting by way of new things being thought up. Yes you might even argue that the science right now disproves that claim. My reply to that is "the development of technology and science driven by conventional war on Earth", if we take the same presssure out into space I have no doubt (based on the exceedingly large body of evidence existing) that war in outer space would develop new technologies faster than we would ever expect. Perhaps the most interesting part about boring though is going back to era of galleons and knowing that some battles lasted days merely due to both ships constantly repositioning themselves against each other, trying to obtain the advantage. There is enough literature that talks about the hours of boredom versus the minutes of terror in such circumstances.

Kunos, the points that you've mentioned don't make space combat easy. The tricky part is (a) distance (b) time for missiles to reach (c) sensor issues (d) manoeuvring limitations due to fuel and gravity, (e) ammunition limits and potentially (f) relativity issues.

The key question is whether those limitations are manageable for a player to understand and can actually make a fun game.

There are approaches for combat in space to minimise these issues. For example, mines to prevent others following, or mining common trajectories. For non-spherical vessels maximising their broadside while minimising yours. Aiming where they're likely to be based on minimising fuel consumption. Maybe make huge carbon fibre nets with explosives attached to the edge... if someone plows through it the net will wrap around them, bringing the explosives closer.

I have played with the idea of a realistic space combat game but am still working on how to get fun gameplay out of it.


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Combat basics:

-Combat takes place in orbit around planets

-Effectively limits speed objects can travel at and remain in orbit

-Provides a obstacle for weapons fire

Ships:

-Heat capacity is a ships primary resource

-Firing weapons or using thrusters generate heat

-Radiators restore heat capacity over time.

-Being in a planets shadow (Black area) gives a heat regen bonus.

-Overheating a ship forces a reactor shutdown disabling it until heat can be brought under control.

Weapons:

-Laser, short range point defense system
+100% hit chance
-limited range

-Rail Gun, medium range kinetic projectile
+Unlimited range against target with no acceleration
-Difficult to hit agile targets at long range

-Missile, Long range kinetic kill vehicle
+Unlimited effective range
-Can be shot down with lasers
-Limited supply
-Evading will force missile to spend fuel on course corrections instead of accelerating to kill speed

Elite 2 it did well, though dog fights came down to circle of death and trying to aim as accurately as you could.

I think you may have a point Acharis. For right now, however, this is more of a mental exercise for me. As I'll lack the experience and resources to make it for quite a while.

As for maximum ranges, if you look at the numbers it makes sense for space weapons to have maximum ranges. More properly they would have maximum effective ranges. Lasers don't stay focused forever, they have a focal length determined by the focusing lens (or mirror), and beyond that the intensity rapidly dissipates.

Kinetic weapons have an effective range too. Any kinetic weapon powerful enough to deal a lot of damage will be quite hot when it fires. It's very easy to see any sort of heat against the background 3 K of space, so the shot will be detected the moment it leaves the barrel. The target ship can then proceed to change it's acceleration to dodge. If the ship can move out of the way in the time that it takes the projectile to reach the ship, then that's past the effective range of the weapon. You could define the effective maximum range as: the range at which the shot will hit the target before the target has a chance to move out of the way.

For 100% realism, I expect space combat to be similar to how Stormynature described galleons fighting, instead of days maneuvering though, years.

Based on the following assumptions:
a) There is no stealth in space. Anything of any power worth noticing puts out far more heat than any chunk of rock.
b) Weapons have an effective maximum range (as argued above).
c) Newtonian (or Einsteinian if you go fast enough) physics apply.
d) Orbits around the sun take months - decades to complete.
e) Weapons are powerful enough to be 1-hit kills to anything (even cities).

It follows that
I) Everyone can see everyone else (a) and will able to easily avoid confrontation by making a slight orbit change months in advance (d).
II) Everyone's flight path is predictable (a, c, d)
III) You have to get close (on an astronomical scale) to hit a target (b) but once you hit something it's dead (e).

I would predict that space combat will be more in common with chess, with sides maneuvering ships (most likely unmanned ships) around the solar system trying to bring a strong force against an enemy's weak force, but not really accomplishing anything.


I don't know about you, but that sounds really boring to me. Unless you turned it into some form of space chess... That might be fun.

Based on the following assumptions:
a) There is no stealth in space. Anything of any power worth noticing puts out far more heat than any chunk of rock.
b) Weapons have an effective maximum range (as argued above).
c) Newtonian (or Einsteinian if you go fast enough) physics apply.
d) Orbits around the sun take months - decades to complete.
e) Weapons are powerful enough to be 1-hit kills to anything (even cities).

It follows that
I) Everyone can see everyone else (a) and will able to easily avoid confrontation by making a slight orbit change months in advance (d).
II) Everyone's flight path is predictable (a, c, d)
III) You have to get close (on an astronomical scale) to hit a target (b) but once you hit something it's dead (e).

Regarding (I), if a ship can dodge with a slight orbit change, a guided projectile can do a slight change too. If ships have plenty of energy, so have the projectiles. It might be possible to drain ship's energy by forcing him to keep dodging. Much like a dogfight I might add.

I don't see why (e) has to be true. Sure a projectile might be guaranteed to go straight through whatever it hits, but what if the ship is massively redundant? So what if the engine got taken out, we got another twenty. If it's an explosive projectile the warhead can be destroyed by counter fire. Energy beams are very dependent on your tech level, but you could easily say that whatever defensive measures you have (disruptive gas emissions, mirrors, whatever) takes less energy than it does to keep the beam firign.

(I) You might avoid confrontation in open space if you want, but what about protection of planets? This would become similar to medieval wars where most battles where sieges and pitched battles only occured when both sides thought they could win.

Regarding (I), if a ship can dodge with a slight orbit change, a guided projectile can do a slight change too. If ships have plenty of energy, so have the projectiles. It might be possible to drain ship's energy by forcing him to keep dodging. Much like a dogfight I might add.

I don't see why (e) has to be true. Sure a projectile might be guaranteed to go straight through whatever it hits, but what if the ship is massively redundant? So what if the engine got taken out, we got another twenty. If it's an explosive projectile the warhead can be destroyed by counter fire. Energy beams are very dependent on your tech level, but you could easily say that whatever defensive measures you have (disruptive gas emissions, mirrors, whatever) takes less energy than it does to keep the beam firign.

(I) You might avoid confrontation in open space if you want, but what about protection of planets? This would become similar to medieval wars where most battles where sieges and pitched battles only occured when both sides thought they could win.

Missiles can typically devote more of their mass to propellant than a space ship however, and could potentially cross the entire system. If they do that they would have performance on the scale of a space ship (i.e. not that fast) and so could be considered (strategically) as just another space ship. A fast missile would have much shorter range (burning through it's propellant faster). I see it as either missiles are short ranged weapons or they are space ships in themselves.

Space ships tend to be fragile things, as mass is very expensive (in terms of propellant) to accelerate. Even the most high performance rocket will tend to burn 2 (or more) kilograms of propellant for each kilogram of payload. Conversely, any weapon that can be effective over a thousand miles is going to be very powerful. Railgun shots will be flying a many kilometers per second, lasers will be measured in the megawatts, and there's no reason not to tip every missile with a nuclear warhead. (no environment to mess up). Put those two things together and (in my opinion) the first few shots will most likely disable the enemy, at least for their mission.

Propellant tanks are good targets. They're very large proportionally to the rest of the ship and destroying one will rid the enemy of a significant portion of the propellant they need for their mission.

As to your last point, I think that's exactly how it will go.