Starfighter, Inc. - it talks the talk, but does it deliver?

[DDE]

They label themselves a hard sci-fi, non-open-world starfighter sim a la Star Citizen. Their dev team profiles have notable names on them. They namedrop big things.

But am I the only one who fails to see a connection between rather ordinary starfighter sim gameplay that goes on on the screen, and the hard sci-fi fluff they push on the side? Visible lasers, extremely close-range dogfighting, some of the ships noticeably lack radiators, one of the ships has pronounced atmospheric features... hell, it seems there aren’t any SC-style gimballed weapon moints!

Edited December 13, 2017 by DDE

[NSEP]

 I think 'hard-scifi' makes it sound more 'hardcore' and 'supercool'.

it got an Atomicrockets Seal of Approval sooo....

Edited December 13, 2017 by NSEP

[rudi1291]

Its still a game, so... They probably had to make some compromises to increase playability. Or to make it a game at all

[DDE]

51 minutes ago, NSEP said:

it got an Atomicrockets Seal of Approval sooo....

@nyrath is not infallible - he brought me to them, but I don’t think he’s seen anything beyond their promotional material.

[KSK]

48 minutes ago, rudi1291 said:

Its still a game, so... They probably had to make some compromises to increase playability. Or to make it a game at all

This. Personally, I wouldn't count any 'dogfights in space' kind of game as particularly hard sci-fi. At best you might get a Star Citizen / Elite: Dangerous style hand-waving away of some of the issues (well it's all proper physics beneath the surface but your fly-by-wire system makes your ship handle like this.)

Elite II: Frontier was somewhat hardcore space combat, at least in the sense that it used a 6 degrees of freedom, Newtonian flight model. In my limited experience and skill, most combat turned into high speed Space Jousting. Possibly somewhat realistic but a bit lacking in visceral, exciting gameplay.  

[Nibb31]

I'd really love to see a game based on The Expanse.

[Spaceception]

1 hour ago, Nibb31 said:

I'd really love to see a game based on The Expanse.

Same. That would be great.

[PB666]

6 hours ago, DDE said:

They label themselves a hard sci-fi, non-open-world starfighter sim a la Star Citizen. Their dev team profiles have notable names on them. They namedrop big things.

But am I the only one who fails to see a connection between rather ordinary starfighter sim gameplay that goes on on the screen, and the hard sci-fi fluff they push on the side? Visible lasers, extremely close-range dogfighting, some of the ships noticeably lack radiators, one of the ships has pronounced atmospheric features... hell, it seems there aren’t any SC-style gimballed weapon moints!

Im still seeing space craft dodging and darting around asteroids that are way to close in space. Its millenium falcon stuff, Star Wars kiddie fodder. 

In terms of the physics, I see mother ships that have to have been assembled in orbit, I have a space factory, do they? lol.

Any game that sees frequent and large-scale destruction of space property is unrealistic, IMHO, space property is hard to regenerate. Any war of destruction, the race that salvages wins. These guys start fighting, I just pull out a well defended ION drive system and start picking up all the pieces and shove them in a basket of chain-link. After it is all over I declare victory.

There is one critique below that is relevant.

To travel around space with excessive freedom according to physics you need to have infinite power (like  a fusion reactor or a pulse fusion rocket), and the ability to accelerate that to high ISP.

The problem is that there is no power system that humans have created that does not waste heat, thus the more power you transform the more heat you have to radiate.

There is no known way, yet,  to get around the physics. If your spacecraft is of the Orion type, then it ability to manuever is limited. If it is of the starfighter the your ability to deal with waste heat is limited. BTW if you are an Orion type ships you would not be in a group of ships, your thruster will kill your companions.

I wish I am wrong, I have my own fusion based designs, but the problem is that someone needs to come up with a technology that proves the observation wrong. Until that technology appear, consider it impossible.

 

 

 

[regex]

Quote

They label themselves a hard sci-fi, non-open-world starfighter sim a la Star Citizen. Their dev team profiles have notable names on them. They namedrop big things.

But am I the only one who fails to see a connection between rather ordinary starfighter sim gameplay that goes on on the screen, and the hard sci-fi fluff they push on the side? Visible lasers, extremely close-range dogfighting, some of the ships noticeably lack radiators, one of the ships has pronounced atmospheric features... hell, it seems there aren’t any SC-style gimballed weapon moints!

You seem to have answered your own question.

E: And just for the personal touch, I checked this out a few months ago, IIRC, and immediately walked away because they were making a false claim.

Edited December 13, 2017 by regex

[DAL59]

You know the game space engine?  Its like KSP, but with n-body physics, its free, has better graphics, and isn't limited to one solar system.  It is billions of light years across.  It is currently only single player, but will eventually become a MMORPG space combat game that spans billions of light years.  The only thing I'm concerned about, is that, with all that space, there wouldn't be much fighting.  In fact, each player could have an entire galaxy to themselves.    

[Canopus]

1 minute ago, DAL59 said:

You know the game space engine?  Its like KSP, but with n-body physics, its free, has better graphics, and isn't limited to one solar system.  It is billions of light years across.  It is currently only single player, but will eventually become a MMORPG space combat game that spans billions of light years.  The only thing I'm concerned about, is that, with all that space, there wouldn't be much fighting.  In fact, each player could have an entire galaxy to themselves.    

How exactly is Space engine anything like KSP? One is a Spaceflight Sim/Game with Construction and a little Management and the other is a Planetarium Software with procedural generated planets and a shallow spaceflight component. 

[DAL59]

Just now, Canopus said:

shallow spaceflight component. 

True, but the next two updates 9.8.1 and 9.9 will see significant improvement.  Also, the graphics are the most photorealistic of any game.  With max settings, it is very hard to determine if a planets is a real photo or space engine from a quick glance.  And there isn't even any lag despite the graphics!     

[insert_name]

11 hours ago, Nibb31 said:

I'd really love to see a game based on The Expanse.

According to Scott Manley that was the original idea for the universe

[DAL59]

5 hours ago, Canopus said:

How exactly is Space engine anything like KSP? One is a Spaceflight Sim/Game with Construction and a little Management and the other is a Planetarium Software with procedural generated planets and a shallow spaceflight component. 

Look at how much better the UI is!  

This is actual in game footage:

 

[DDE]

13 hours ago, PB666 said:

To travel around space with excessive freedom according to physics you need to have infinite power (like  a fusion reactor or a pulse fusion rocket), and the ability to accelerate that to high ISP.

The problem is that there is no power system that humans have created that does not waste heat, thus the more power you transform the more heat you have to radiate.

Those fins are supposed to be radiators. They are conspicuously missing on some of the craft.

The schematics I’ve seen all claim a Gas-Core Nuclear Thermal Rocket.

[Nibb31]

14 hours ago, DAL59 said:

You know the game space engine?  Its like KSP, but with n-body physics, its free, has better graphics, and isn't limited to one solar system.  It is billions of light years across.  It is currently only single player, but will eventually become a MMORPG space combat game that spans billions of light years.  The only thing I'm concerned about, is that, with all that space, there wouldn't be much fighting.  In fact, each player could have an entire galaxy to themselves.    

N-body physics and a playable MMORPG are mutually exclusive.

One of the strengths of The Expanse is that it is confined to a single solar system. Actual ground is rare and worth fighting for. There isn't much point in having multiple galaxies and billions of stars.

Edited December 14, 2017 by Nibb31

[DAL59]

1 hour ago, Nibb31 said:

N-body physics and a playable MMORPG are mutually exclusive.

One of the strengths of The Expanse

Like in the expanse, space travel is pretty fast in SE, you do the flip and burn brachisochrone.  

1 hour ago, Nibb31 said:

N-body physics and a playable MMORPG are mutually exclusive

Why?

[DDE]

1 hour ago, DAL59 said:

Like in the expanse, space travel is pretty fast in SE, you do the flip and burn brachisochrone.  

And then on top of that you have FTL.

[DAL59]

The unique thing about space engine is that it is seemless.  Yes, there's FTL, but if you want to go STL, you still can.  

Like, you don't jump between stars like in Eve or other games.  The space between stars exists in game, and it can be traversed STL.  

The game also will soon simulate relativity.  And FTL.  So with the right arrangement, you could violate causality.

 

[Nibb31]

2 hours ago, DAL59 said:

Why?

Because any semi-realistic space-sim is going to need time warp due to the distances, and N-body physics makes time-warp near impossible, and a time warp mechanism in an MMORPG is going to break the gameplay.

[mikegarrison]

On 12/13/2017 at 4:56 AM, KSK said:

This. Personally, I wouldn't count any 'dogfights in space' kind of game as particularly hard sci-fi. At best you might get a Star Citizen / Elite: Dangerous style hand-waving away of some of the issues (well it's all proper physics beneath the surface but your fly-by-wire system makes your ship handle like this.)

There was a game called Terminus that really tried to have realistic space physics. No orbital mechanics, as I recall, but other than that it seemed pretty good. It did have a SAS-type mode where you could indicate a direction you wanted to go in and the ship could try to thrust such that it killed velocity in all other vectors. But you could also turn that off and play it so that you were entirely responsible for your velocity vector.

Anyway, the space combat was hard as hell to get right, because typically you would fly past your enemy and then spend a lot of time trying to just get back to them again, at which point you would fly past them again, etc. It turned out to be not terribly fun gameplay.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminus_(video_game)

On 12/13/2017 at 6:12 AM, Nibb31 said:

I'd really love to see a game based on The Expanse.

I don't know if you realize this, but the expanse started out as online, forum-based role-playing game. The authors built up so much backstory for their in-game universe that they ended up writing it up as a novel.

Edited December 14, 2017 by mikegarrison

[DAL59]

3 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

There was a game called Terminus that really tried to have realistic space physics. No orbital mechanics, as I recall, but other than that it seemed pretty good. It did have a SAS-type mode where you could indicate a direction you wanted to go in and the ship could try to thrust such that it killed velocity in all other vectors. But you could also turn that off and play it so that you were entirely responsible for your velocity vector.

Anyway, the space combat was hard as hell to get right, because typically you would fly past your enemy and then spend a lot of time trying to just get back to them again, at which point you would fly past them again, etc. It turned out to be not terribly fun gameplay.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminus_(video_game)

I don't know if you realize this, but the expanse started out as online, forum-based role-playing game. The authors built up so much backstory for their in-game universe that they ended up writing it up as a novel.

They're making a newtonian multiplayer game called infinity battlescape.  

4 hours ago, Nibb31 said:

Because any semi-realistic space-sim is going to need time warp due to the distances

The spaceships in SE are unmanned, so they can accelerate at 50 gees.  A 50 gee brachy will only take a few hours to travel a AU, and there are no restrictions about warping inside a system. 

 

[KSK]

On 12/13/2017 at 8:13 PM, DAL59 said:

You know the game space engine?  Its like KSP, but with n-body physics, its free, has better graphics, and isn't limited to one solar system.  It is billions of light years across.  It is currently only single player, but will eventually become a MMORPG space combat game that spans billions of light years.  The only thing I'm concerned about, is that, with all that space, there wouldn't be much fighting.  In fact, each player could have an entire galaxy to themselves.    

Count me out then. A marvellous, photorealistc galaxy to explore and the only gameplay they can work around it is space combat? And space combat where you actively have to comb through goodness knows how many star systems to deliberately rain on somebody's parade. How incredibly deep and inspiring.

A game based on exploration, the logistical challenge of building and maintaining the space infrastructure to support an interstellar empire, meaningful diplomatic and political interactions with either your own colonies or any alien worlds you come across, preferably skewed towards peacekeeping, cooperation and freedom rather than conquest. A game about the technical and scientific challenges of surviving on strange new worlds. Bonus points if any aliens you come across are more original than your standard, feline, reptilian and ethereal space elf tropes.

I would be all over that.

A tired old MMORPG where a significant percentage of the playerbase won't even regard it as a game unless they can go out and spoil somebody else's day for no reason at all (because only carebears don't like that stuff amirite)?  Blow that for a warp drive and a handful of space marines.

Edit:  For the avoidance of doubt, I'm not aiming this rant at DAL59 personally. His description of the planned gameplay for SE just provided a convenient jumping-off point for it.

 

Edited December 15, 2017 by KSK

[mikegarrison]

15 minutes ago, KSK said:

A game based on exploration, the logistical challenge of building and maintaining the space infrastructure to support an interstellar empire, meaningful diplomatic and political interactions with either your own colonies or any alien worlds you come across, preferably skewed towards peacekeeping, cooperation and freedom rather than conquest. A game about the technical and scientific challenges of surviving on strange new worlds. Bonus points if any aliens you come across are more original than your standard, feline, reptilian and ethereal space elf tropes.

Didn't they just try that with "No Man's Sky" and failed miserably?

[KSK]

40 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

Didn't they just try that with "No Man's Sky" and failed miserably?

Not as I understand it, although I'm saying this having never played the game. At least at launch, NMS seemed to be all about the exploration, with some personal crafting thrown in for good measure. Not so much about the infrastructure building, or meaningful interactions with other worlds. NMS actually looked quite fun to me, its just something I never got around to playing. And the miserable failure seemed to me to be a classic case of a hype train out of control with every gamer and his/her dog fondly imagining what the game was going to be despite having very little evidence to support those fond imaginings. Then, of course, when it turns out they were largely deluding themselves, the backlash began.

I'm not holding out any particular hope that the game I described will ever be a thing unless I do a HarvesteR someday and sit down to write it (which I blatantly lack the skills for and don't have anywhere near enough time to acquire those skills). Too niche and too difficult to do well.