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Capital ship combat

Galdred

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
It is actually, because there is no range or positionning whatsoever.
Well, range and positioning play relative little role, probably because the relative movement capabilties of ships are almost wholly irrelevant compared to the potential range of weapons. When your acceleration is measured in maybe ones of gravities at the high end and your ranges are in in the tens to hundreds of kilometers, how much are you able to change your range in the timespan of the shootout? The only way you're leaving (or entering) the fight is through your magic warp drive.
I don't agree about this:
It is exactly the same situation since WW2: Carrier speed is laughable compared to plane and missile range and speed, but positionning is still crucial. However, what matters is pre-battle positionning more than in battle movement.
We still have some cool Carrier and fleet games (Carrier command, Harpoon, Command Ops).
Also, using energy weapons at long ranges could considerably decrease their power (and energy efficiency) because of difraction, even in space, while missiles would still take time to reach their targets before getting point defensed out.

I think using orbital mechanisms, and have the battles be more about chosing when to engage
That's the CoaDE style approach to it.
Yes! I would like more CoaDE kind of games centering around a task force.

when to save fuel and ammunition (ie, more about resource conservation) could both capture the scale without making space like sea.
The resource management angle is similarly very FTL. Although if you push it into a logistics game, it starts to move away from the capital ship aspect.

So the question is: Do you want a more hyper-realism angle, which tends to lead to the conclusion that Space Combat Sucks, or a more classic SF feel?[/QUOTE][/QUOTE]
I think I would like to see a mix between CoaDE and FTL actually. That said, some games managed to combine both:
Pulsar: Lost Colony(granted, this one really features low range space magic gameplay), Artemis Bridge Simulator, and Carrier Command 2 (but not in space). However, they all require friends to play with. I'd rather have a similar game where you can order your crew to do so like in FTL.
Starshatter may be the only one that played well solo (but you kind of hoped from fighter pilot to task force commander, as the big ship UI felt similar to fighter UI).

Just downloading that now. I wish the X space games had more mods.

You could also try Void Destroyer 2. It feels like combat focused X4.
 
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Norfleet

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It is exactly the same situation since WW2: Carrier speed is laughable compared to plane and missile range and speed, but positionning is still crucial. However, what matters is pre-battle positionning more than in battle movement.
Yeah, but the difference is: An ocean environment has very limited detectability. Radar is still limited by horizon distance. Aerial reconnaissance is imprecise and cannot cover all of the ocean.

Space, on the other hand, has little in the way of terrain obstacles, and your thermal signature gives you away from the other side of the system. If your movement speed is limited to realistic levels of movement, with anything close to realistic ranges, you are effectively functionally not going anywhere from where you spawn.

Also, using energy weapons at long ranges could considerably decrease their power (and energy efficiency) because of difraction, even in space, while missiles would still take time to reach their targets before getting point defensed out.
All this is true, but these effectively become constants of where you spawned.

Yes! I would like more CoaDE kind of games centering around a task force.
I think they already have that.

Pulsar: Lost Colony(granted, this one really features low range space magic gameplay), Artemis Bridge Simulator, and Carrier Command 2 (but not in space). However, they all require friends to play with. I'd rather have a similar game where you can order your crew to do so like in FTL.
Starshatter may be the only one that played well solo (but you kind of hoped from fighter pilot to task force commander, as the big ship UI felt similar to fighter UI).
And I imagine that Starshatter is similarly low-range, low-speed gameplay. Space Fighters probably are firing at each other using manually fired cannons like WW2 dogfights and ships are fighting each other from ranges of maybe 10 kilometers or so at best, making their range short even by WW2 standards. Because otherwise, you can't see shit.

I think I would like to see a mix between CoaDE and FTL actually.
So, detailed internal ship simulation combined with more engaging ship combat than click-to-pew? I'm sort of wrestling with this concept, actually. The last time I attempted it, though, I was hitting this kind of wall where full 6DOF 3D flight without the ability to meaningfully SEE anything (because your enemies are tens to hundreds of thousands of kilometers away so you can't see shit), resulted in the basic mechanics of even flying the ship disorienting basically all of the players. Most of them failed even the most basic practice simulations, crashing 90% of the time. Only like one or two players were able to actually cope, and we managed to get only a few incidents of combat, which ALL hilariously ended in CFIT for one side: Players would undock from their base to fight off one of the previously mentioned players, then, become disoriented and slam their ships into their home planets. All the opposing player basically had to do was show up and go OOGA BOOGA intimidatingly and players would smash themselves into the nearest terrain obstacle (moon or planetary body), either completely ignoring the GPWS alarm, or unable to figure out how to actually pull away from the ground in an environment where "up" is not defined.

This made me think perhaps 2D presentation would be more playable, as otherwise very few people could manage to operate the ship outside of autopilot. Thoughts?
 

Magitex

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So, detailed internal ship simulation combined with more engaging ship combat than click-to-pew? I'm sort of wrestling with this concept, actually. The last time I attempted it, though, I was hitting this kind of wall where full 6DOF 3D flight without the ability to meaningfully SEE anything (because your enemies are tens to hundreds of thousands of kilometers away so you can't see shit), resulted in the basic mechanics of even flying the ship disorienting basically all of the players. Most of them failed even the most basic practice simulations, crashing 90% of the time. Only like one or two players were able to actually cope, and we managed to get only a few incidents of combat, which ALL hilariously ended in CFIT for one side: Players would undock from their base to fight off one of the previously mentioned players, then, become disoriented and slam their ships into their home planets. All the opposing player basically had to do was show up and go OOGA BOOGA intimidatingly and players would smash themselves into the nearest terrain obstacle (moon or planetary body), either completely ignoring the GPWS alarm, or unable to figure out how to actually pull away from the ground in an environment where "up" is not defined.

This made me think perhaps 2D presentation would be more playable, as otherwise very few people could manage to operate the ship outside of autopilot. Thoughts?
Ordinary military combat is not visual anyway, so the difference between modern fighter combat and space combat isn't all that different, at least from the pilots perspective. You see a contact on radar, adjust your sensors to sweep tightly over potential contact, adjust missile ripple and plot an indirect or direct trajectory, fire all ordnance at target and then leave if you don't want to be rapidly destroyed. Your missile either hits/fails, gets shot down, is decoyed by IR flare or jammed by ECM.

If you want realistic space 6DOF combat, you need to have realistic instrumentation and control - nobody is piloting a ship that smashes into planets or other ships, flight and gunnery have to be fully assisted and I'm not talking about lead target markers, but navigational authority that will guide the ship to valid flight paths gracefully based on stick movements and is also able to perform pre-determined attack techniques that can work at ridiculous speeds just by holding the trigger.. because you're not going to have time to get creative in the heat of combat. Air engagements today already leave most of the work to AI with pilots mostly dictating strategy and providing kill authorization.

Every space game is still using world war 2 mechanics and often not even 1980s technology. It gets worse if you want to put the player behind a gun, you're given a century old crosshair hoping to hit something with a rate of fire approaching that of a potato gun, when in reality you should be unleashing 100 guided atomic bombs with just the touch of the trigger which have absolutely zero margin for error, regardless of what you point at, even if it has to automatically fly an orbit around an obstructing planet and hit something on the other side - you point the nose at the target and pull the trigger and the computer works out the rest.

The same goes for flying, if you're in formation and you want to flip your ship upside down while still maintaining formation whilst dogfighting backwards, that should not be a problem. Press a button to hold formation, then the stick will move you around the formation/rotate your ship and it should never smash into anything or put a friendly within the line of fire, you need to be able to respond instantly to potential threats without thinking about anything else.
If you want to shoot a target while attacking at the speed of light, it should be as simple as selecting the target on radar, studying its characteristics, looking at potential threats and weaknesses of the attack corridor, tweaking the automatically generated flight plan to fly past their weaker side and perhaps slip between the target and their own defenses, selecting optimal defensive plans and bail out vectors and then engaging the throttle. Your flight team and ship fly the plan while you maintain basic vector control over the ship, for instance you could rotate the ship to reduce your signature on radar on approach, or prepare for particular/possible threats on entry (mines, debris, counter-attack) etc. The pilot merely holds the trigger down while on approach to authorize fire, the AI firing with a priority that has been predetermined either earlier by the pilot, or completely automatically.

Alternatively, just fire bigger and bigger rocks at each other from the comfort of your own home, because space combat is crazy and I don't know what a realistic rendition of it would actually look like.
 

Norfleet

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If you want realistic space 6DOF combat, you need to have realistic instrumentation and control
Yeah, and that's the rub, isn't it? We don't have such a thing in the real world, so there's no analogue for it.

- nobody is piloting a ship that smashes into planets or other ships, flight and gunnery have to be fully assisted and I'm not talking about lead target markers, but navigational authority that will guide the ship to valid flight paths gracefully based on stick movements and is also able to perform pre-determined attack techniques that can work at ridiculous speeds just by holding the trigger.. because you're not going to have time to get creative in the heat of combat. Air engagements today already leave most of the work to AI with pilots mostly dictating strategy and providing kill authorization.
The question is, do we have a game at this point? If you don't and can't control any of those things, do they need be in the game? That seems to be what FTL has done, you don't fly or aim any of the weapons, you just designate the target and tell it to fire the lazor.

So the question is: For purposes of having a GAME, what should be in it? Do we give up and dispense with the pretense of realism entirely and just go with the arcadey SHMUP combat, or what?
 

Cael

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Aside from some older story-focused Star Trek games like Bridge Commander, I can't think of many games that put the player in the captain's seat of a capital ship.

Most games that could potentially fall into this category suffer from these common pitfalls:
  • The games are actually about fleet combat instead of capital ship combat. Controlling a dozen ships does not have the same feel and doesn't allow for details like power or officer allocation.
  • There's an impedance mismatch between the theme and the combat. Commonly seen in the board game space as well, sadly sci-fi capital ship combat is presented as basically windless Age of Sail combat with broadside laser cannons.
    • (Essentially, combat boils down to trying to line up a shot while keeping your ship turned such that the side with the strongest shields faces the enemy.)
Why aren't there more games that provide this fantasy? Or am I just unaware of them?
Starfleet Command 3?
 

Magitex

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Yeah, and that's the rub, isn't it? We don't have such a thing in the real world, so there's no analogue for it.
I don't think we need an actual analogue for it, just some thought into the matter, similar to how COADE tried to push the envelope instead of using the daft idea of using ww2 planes in space.

The question is, do we have a game at this point? If you don't and can't control any of those things, do they need be in the game? That seems to be what FTL has done, you don't fly or aim any of the weapons, you just designate the target and tell it to fire the lazor.

So the question is: For purposes of having a GAME, what should be in it? Do we give up and dispense with the pretense of realism entirely and just go with the arcadey SHMUP combat, or what?
It's not like you don't have control, only that your 'space ship' should not be dumber than a brick, thereby allowing you to focus on the actual conflict and critical threats and not if you are too close to another ship or star. Even cars today can do this much. The pilot decides the relative position and orientation of the ship, but the craft is one doing the major inputs to prevent collisions and friendly fire incidents. That's one of the minimums for space combat in my opinion - you can't have ships that don't understand and respond to threats properly.

the deep end
If an autopilot decides something should be evaded, it should immediately display the path on the screen and take control at minimum, but the pilot should still be able to fly/rotate along said path and never lose complete control.
If you want a real example of this, it can be seen as far back as the 1980s where russian KA-50 helicopters can be flown along a path using autopilot but always remains under some level of control by the pilot using the stick.
You adjust the authority level of the autopilot in real-time while it follows waypoints but you still control the orientation of the helicopter and even attack targets while it does all the hard shit for you temporarily. This was 40 years ago.

It's still nothing like pressing a button and telling it to fire, because there are so many decisions around getting to that point to be made in combat, so many that decisions that you NEED these systems to help you. If you can't think of many of these factors in a space scenario, then there's no chance of the game even obtaining a passable grade as realistic.

The easiest way to break down what is necessary is to go through each and every threat to a spaceship and her pilot and decide which of these the pilot cares about most, and which the pilot doesn't or cannot, and then design game systems around those.
I would recommend playing titles like:
Falcon 4 (Threat management, Attack planning, Radar systems)
Reentry - An Orbital Simulator (Reality of space flight)
Kerbal Space Program (Glorious rockets and mission planning)
COADE (Unrestrained combat and material design)
if you really want to get a glimpse into some of the requirements for a realistic space scenario, all of these games have something to bring.
Between all of these games, what exactly does the player care about at any given moment, what makes for interesting gameplay, what are things that the pilot should not be worrying about.

Designing simulator systems that don't exist is every bit as hard as designing real military systems, only you don't get paid for it and nobody has to die to test them. An interesting space example to look at, Rogue System, was neat. Although again the developer made the mistake of basing his systems on obsolete tech from the 80s.

Ultimately its up to you what your vision of space combat is about. You could just as easily have a future where AI acquisition and complex guidance systems are banned, like in Battlestar Galactica. Or completely unmanned drone wars possible like in COADE, no one has a concrete idea on space combat yet so there's still some leeway for fantasy or gameplay elements.

Myself, I'm more interested in realistic, if overly dramatic versions of space combat, still using pilots, deciding flight paths and loadouts, flying at insane speeds in suicidal tin buckets, but with AI assistance amped to 11, beyond that of a simple aimbot. You'd spend more time managing the situation and setting up complex eccentric attack trajectories than actual trigger time. I always felt like the ships in sci-fi games are just far too dumb to be ships from the future, particularly in the information they present to the player and how they respond to threats. I'm not sure I've even seen a sci-fi space ship that can do something as basic as thermal imaging, let alone perform active avoidance and use LOAL missile systems.

TLDR: Space simulation is complicated, combat simulation is complicated, mixing the two is endlessly complicated. Only good for bankruptcy.
 

Galdred

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
It is exactly the same situation since WW2: Carrier speed is laughable compared to plane and missile range and speed, but positionning is still crucial. However, what matters is pre-battle positionning more than in battle movement.
Yeah, but the difference is: An ocean environment has very limited detectability. Radar is still limited by horizon distance. Aerial reconnaissance is imprecise and cannot cover all of the ocean.

Space, on the other hand, has little in the way of terrain obstacles, and your thermal signature gives you away from the other side of the system. If your movement speed is limited to realistic levels of movement, with anything close to realistic ranges, you are effectively functionally not going anywhere from where you spawn.
That is very true. There might be some ways around it, though: if FTL travel is possible, you could time warp jumps at some time and positions during a battle.
As for therman signatures, decoys or anchoring yourself to qn existing derelict might still work. I think the deciy approach would be best.

Also, using energy weapons at long ranges could considerably decrease their power (and energy efficiency) because of difraction, even in space, while missiles would still take time to reach their targets before getting point defensed out.
All this is true, but these effectively become constants of where you spawned.

Yes! I would like more CoaDE kind of games centering around a task force.
I think they already have that.
Oh, I thought it was mostly separate mission. I'll need to give it another shot.

Pulsar: Lost Colony(granted, this one really features low range space magic gameplay), Artemis Bridge Simulator, and Carrier Command 2 (but not in space). However, they all require friends to play with. I'd rather have a similar game where you can order your crew to do so like in FTL.
Starshatter may be the only one that played well solo (but you kind of hoped from fighter pilot to task force commander, as the big ship UI felt similar to fighter UI).
And I imagine that Starshatter is similarly low-range, low-speed gameplay. Space Fighters probably are firing at each other using manually fired cannons like WW2 dogfights and ships are fighting each other from ranges of maybe 10 kilometers or so at best, making their range short even by WW2 standards. Because otherwise, you can't see shit.

Starshatter has kind of WW2 dogfight, but if you want to live, it is much better to unload ordnance, and go back to rearm, so it is a bit closer to modern aircrafts (even though gunning opponents down is a bit easier than in a modern plane duel.
I think I would like to see a mix between CoaDE and FTL actually.
So, detailed internal ship simulation combined with more engaging ship combat than click-to-pew? I'm sort of wrestling with this concept, actually. The last time I attempted it, though, I was hitting this kind of wall where full 6DOF 3D flight without the ability to meaningfully SEE anything (because your enemies are tens to hundreds of thousands of kilometers away so you can't see shit), resulted in the basic mechanics of even flying the ship disorienting basically all of the players. Most of them failed even the most basic practice simulations, crashing 90% of the time. Only like one or two players were able to actually cope, and we managed to get only a few incidents of combat, which ALL hilariously ended in CFIT for one side: Players would undock from their base to fight off one of the previously mentioned players, then, become disoriented and slam their ships into their home planets. All the opposing player basically had to do was show up and go OOGA BOOGA intimidatingly and players would smash themselves into the nearest terrain obstacle (moon or planetary body), either completely ignoring the GPWS alarm, or unable to figure out how to actually pull away from the ground in an environment where "up" is not defined.

This made me think perhaps 2D presentation would be more playable, as otherwise very few people could manage to operate the ship outside of autopilot. Thoughts?

To be honest, one of the reasons Zodiac Legion is being made is that I could not make its "realistic FTL" competitor prototype work, so I am mostly theorycrafting :D
 

Norfleet

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Yeah, so am I, although I have pieces of an old engine dating back to the old text days that could be adapted into a functioning prototype with some work. Mostly, I'm thinking I can either go all-out on the hyper-3D, with the result that practically no one could effectively operate the system, greatly limiting my audience, unless I wrap it in so many layers of AI that most of the system has been buried out of view of the player anyway. Or I could opt for a 2D presentation that makes the information more visible and comprehensible on a 2D monitor, and save the 3D edition for the day when we get holographic displays.
 

Magitex

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Yeah, so am I, although I have pieces of an old engine dating back to the old text days that could be adapted into a functioning prototype with some work. Mostly, I'm thinking I can either go all-out on the hyper-3D, with the result that practically no one could effectively operate the system, greatly limiting my audience, unless I wrap it in so many layers of AI that most of the system has been buried out of view of the player anyway. Or I could opt for a 2D presentation that makes the information more visible and comprehensible on a 2D monitor, and save the 3D edition for the day when we get holographic displays.
I would save the 3D edition for when you are a millionaire, because it's so much quicker and easier to make an interesting abstract 2D game with lots of systems, than it is to try and make a realistic 3D game and spend your entire time on graphics and physics. I always debate with myself when it comes to starting a new project but usually end up in the 2D space, it's just a much faster road to go down.
 

Norfleet

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Yeah, the graphics are a natural weak spot here because this all derives from a text game, and thus there are no graphics. Of course, with combat at any kind of realistic range, you can't see shit anyway, so pretty much the only graphics are going to be status display icons, because what, exactly, do you expect to see at 80000km? That one pixel? Even if we gave each kilometer a single pixel, a 300 meter space battleship won't even fill one of those. Can't see SHIT.
 

Magitex

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Yeah, the graphics are a natural weak spot here because this all derives from a text game, and thus there are no graphics. Of course, with combat at any kind of realistic range, you can't see shit anyway, so pretty much the only graphics are going to be status display icons, because what, exactly, do you expect to see at 80000km? That one pixel? Even if we gave each kilometer a single pixel, a 300 meter space battleship won't even fill one of those. Can't see SHIT.
In most situations like this, I'd expect a 3d re-construction of the target in a viewbox (at least something where I can visually select target components), or a damn good telescopic viewfinder like on submarines. To be honest, it'd be kind of fun to have a really powerful viewfinder that simulates redshift and visual hazing of the target (not an actual clear view, simulating high magnification telescopes), so you can attempt to visually identify the target before you engage. It's something very much from the submarine age, but would likely still hold true for space warfare - you need to know exactly what you're up against, but seeing it (radar signature or visual) is incredibly difficult to do at massive distances. Identifying an iron rock from a silent defense battery is pretty critical.
 

Norfleet

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Yeah, tactical reconstruction of target in viewbox is more or less what I was thinking. It's just that such a view doesn't really impart a sense of relative position.
 
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when in reality you should be unleashing 100 guided atomic bombs with just the touch of the trigger which have absolutely zero margin for error
common other side of the trope spectrum, i beg to strongly disagree.
just looking at how the third world war is beginning, where is all the magic technology? nowhere to be found. and that was supposed to be the second most feared, best equipped army in the world belonging to the single largest country. once you have to field 10, 100 times that amount, the resources you can spare are 10, 100 times fewer. it'd make sense instead to field the cheapest, most expendable solutions because they *are* going to be lost and capturing enemy weapons is pretty much out of question.
the moment you field "100 guided atomic bombs with absolutely zero margin of error" i'm going to field 1 single steam powered drone (only because i can't actually fit a hamster in it instead) and drain you dry in seconds.
only infantry wins wars.
 

Norfleet

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Somehow, I don't think Space Infantry works quite as well as it does on the ground. Space battles and space warfare would be much more analogous to naval warfare, which it commonly draws from, precisely because infantry plays practically no role in it. Presumably, your opponents then capitulate under threat of orbital annihilation, because there sure as hell isn't any way to effectively invade them on the ground: Even the typical gargantuan space warships don't seem capable of transporting the billions of troops needed to invade an entire fucking planet.

That, or space-polities have long since lost interest in planets because everything of importance happens in space and who is in charge on the dirtside is pretty irrelevant to them. Either way, space-politics seems to fall outside the scope of most games.
 

Magitex

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common other side of the trope spectrum, i beg to strongly disagree.
just looking at how the third world war is beginning, where is all the magic technology? nowhere to be found. and that was supposed to be the second most feared, best equipped army in the world belonging to the single largest country. once you have to field 10, 100 times that amount, the resources you can spare are 10, 100 times fewer. it'd make sense instead to field the cheapest, most expendable solutions because they *are* going to be lost and capturing enemy weapons is pretty much out of question.
the moment you field "100 guided atomic bombs with absolutely zero margin of error" i'm going to field 1 single steam powered drone (only because i can't actually fit a hamster in it instead) and drain you dry in seconds.
only infantry wins wars.
In the future these kind of capabilities will be cheap and numerous, borderline magical from our perspective (which was my point, they would be inexpensive in the future), in a similar way that war today isn't fought using horses and archery. There's always an economic and performance cost to factor in but unlike ground warfare, you can commit everything into making a single calculated strike in the same fashion that modern air warfare operate today and you have extremely expensive and complicated systems at work there. These make a massive difference in wars but certainly aren't the only factor.

To address the third world war point, Ukraine is absolutely making use of expensive high-tech weaponry and drones, some of the best systems we have on earth right now. It's only Russia that employ the doctrine you mention.. and that doesn't look too effective to me as of this moment. Sure everyone still uses lead bullets when it comes down to it, but it's only because they don't have an alternative in this situation. I can't imagine infantry being involved in any sort of space conflict (maybe robotics), just like I don't really believe that there will be any actual pilots for space combat anywhere. A small drone may be useful defensively and economically, but is just as easily destroyed by the hundreds by a more sophisticated vessel with superior capabilities which can detect and hit multiple targets at once, while outranging them (tank warfare all over again). If you intend to attack a hardened target, you must be able to actually inflict damage... combat has always been rotating between doctrines since the dawn of time and I really have no idea which doctrine will lead in the future because it's all dependent on social and scientific advancement.

My opinion, it could well end up being more like all-encompassing first strikes with AI categorically destroying every hostile within moments, followed by never allowing such a situation to develop ever again, because the economic benefit is negligible anyway.
Then again, this is human kind we are talking about here, we could still very well be beating each other up until the end of time regardless of cost benefits.
 
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Norfleet

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Apparently not so much, the page just straight up doesn't load, probably because it's dead, as you mentioned.
 

Mangoose

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There are some fun ideas in sci-fi literature IMO.

In fact, in Rise of Endymion, Dan Simmons illustrates the nature of the space combat in setting... And actually relates it back to the Age of Sail. He took into account the travel time of missiles or even energy lances. In his narrative - the "speed" ratio between ships and armaments were as follows... If the gap between the ships were too far away - too many light years - then they'd both easily dodge those "slow" missiles. And perhaps that was no different back when ships swam in water.

Father Captain de Soya knew from his courses in military history at Pax Fleet Command School that almost all space engagements fought more than half an AU from a planet, moon, asteroid, or strategic point-source in space were entered into by mutual agreement. He remembered that the same had been true of primitive ocean navies on pre-Hegira Old Earth, where most great naval battles had been fought in sight of land... Aircraft carriers with their long-range attack planes had changed that forever—allowing armadas to strike at each other far out to sea and at great distances [...]

Space war had brought a return to such mutually agreed upon engagements. The great battles of the Hegemony days—whether the ancient internecine wars with Generai Horace Glennon-Height and his ilk, or the centuries of warfare between Web worlds and Ouster Swarms—had usually been waged close to a planet or spaceborne farcaster portal. And distances between the combatants were absurdly short—hundreds of thousands of klicks, often tens of thousands, frequently less than that—given the light-years and parsecs traveled by the warring parties.

But this closing on the enemy was necessary given the time it took a fusion-powered laser lance, a CPB, or ordinary attack missiles to cross even one AU—seven minutes for light to crawl the distance between would-be killer and target, much longer for even the highest-boost missile, where the hunt, chase, and kill could take days of seek and countermeasure, attack and parry.

Ships with C-plus capability had no incentive to hang around in enemy space waiting for these seeker missiles, and the Church-sponsored restriction on AIs in warheads made the effectiveness of these weapons problematic at best. So the shape of space battles over the centuries of the Hegemony had been simple—fleets translating into disputed space and finding other translating fleets or more static in-system defenses, a quick closing to more lethal distances, a brief but terrible exchange of energies, and the inevitable retreat of the more savaged forces—or total destruction if the defending forces had nowhere to retreat—followed by consolidation of gains by the winning fleet.

Dan Simmons. Rise of Endymion (Kindle Locations 2490-2509). Random House of Canada. Kindle Edition.

On that note: history is a good source of ideas that can be "adapted."

Also, check out what strategies people use/used in Eve Online. Huge fleet battles.
 

RobotSquirrel

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Adelaide
first online game (bar muds) i've ever played. or is it a different one with the same name?
it'd be the first one you played as its from 2001 it looks like this
DS_screen_028.jpg
 

Galdred

Studio Draconis
Patron
Developer
Joined
May 6, 2011
Messages
4,346
Location
Middle Empire
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Starfleet Command 3?
3 isn't great tbh. Better off with 2 and if you want TNG era just install a mod.

http://www.darkspace.net/
Darkspace is also another capital ship style game. Just a shame its dead, the server I think is still active but no one is playing.
2 is available here:
http://www.dynaverse.net/market/5-star-trek-starfleet-command-orion-pirates.html
But there are 3 versions:
Community Edition, Orion Pirates, and Empires at war. Which one should I pick? Orion Pirates?
 

RobotSquirrel

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Aug 9, 2020
Messages
1,947
Location
Adelaide
Community Edition, Orion Pirates, and Empires at war. Which one should I pick? Orion Pirates?
If you don't care about mods, get the community edition as its designed for modern operating systems.
Otherwise, I would install XP and run Orion Pirates with the TNG mod because its a really fun experience. OP is a nightmare to get working on modern systems its very prone to crashing.
Don't bother with EAW as the community edition is the same thing just updated to work with windows 7 and 10.
 

Norfleet

Moderator
Joined
Jun 3, 2005
Messages
12,250
You know, I've been kicking the Space problem around for awhile and I'm starting to think that "Space", "Multiplayer", and "Realistic Sense of Scale" are a pick-at-most-2 situation.
 

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