Author Topic: Revisiting an old topic - Next Gen Space Sims  (Read 5289 times)

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Offline RoachKoach

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Revisiting an old topic - Next Gen Space Sims
I think capital ships need to be a lot bigger - they got to be bristling with turrets - of all sizes - like the massive ship in the intro vid to Quake2 - now that looks awesome - all those turrets locking onto the target (Strogg Planet i think). And when i say big , i mean big - should be able to fly a fighter around skimming along the surface - winding through turrets and antenae and other projections. U should also be able to fly into them like enter the fighter bay, etc.

As for the fighters - i think the FS style is perfect - but there should be area sensitive damage - and most importantly - the fighters n other ships shouldnt just blow up allways when hull drops to zero (btw - the hull dropping to zero concept also makes no sense), they should for example have their engines flicker off and stop - now dark or if they do explode - should have the debris all over. Same with capital ships - infact capital ships shouldnt ever blow up totally - should be like the cutscenes in FS2 Intro or if they do blow up cos of something really bad like getting rammed or something - they should blow up slowly - like the ships in Independance day or the Lucifer for that matter.  
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Revisiting an old topic - Next Gen Space Sims
Hehe... my dream sim, or MERELY nex-gen?   Too bad, you get mostly the former.

Capships, methinks, have gotten plenty big for most things lately. The trick isn't the actual SIZE of the ship... it's much more important to make them feel big. This can be improved in a couple of ways- adjusting camera perspective, and high-res textures and modeling. It's easier to believe something is huge when you fly by individual windows and hatches, but only if the objects in question are the right size. Half the laser turrets in FS2 are bigger than the fighters they're shooting at!

Physics- at least MOSTLY newtonian. Full Newtonian, IMO, gets pretty annoying when it comes to dogfighting. If you go full Newtonian, you better have an extremely good "helper" system that makes it SEEM like you're flying something else, but it must be a system that won't restrict your ability to fight too far below full manual control. And of course, you must be able to turn it on or off in flight. Or better yet, you could dynamically adjust the amount of automatic compensation. I have to admit, I'm a bit at a loss for exactly how to pull this off, but I want dogfights as visceral and close as they are in FS2 and WWII sims, with as much Newtonian physics working as possible.   I'm not interested in something where realism takes away from the fun factor. I want realism that adds as much complexity to the dogfight as possible without stopping it from being fun.

FS2 is quite good at this, but falls short in a physics engine that is just too simple. Remove the upper speed limit and make turning rate decrease in proportion to forward speed and I would be very satisfied indeed. I would love to see what would happen if you could dynamically adjust the amount of "slide" allowed in a turn during the fight, so that in a given turn you could only rotate at the rate your ship requires to keep the ship and velocity vector within a specified range. A high range would allow for huge, skidding turns, and would be most truly Newtonian, with an infinite range being pretty much purely Newtonian and allowing you to fly one way, whip the nose around, and fire backwards without changing your velocity or flight vector at all. Low values would be like XWvsTF where tight turns require low speed, and you're always flying the direction you're facing. I've done the latter- I like it, it's fun. Admittedly, I haven't really tried the former- it seems to me though that it would reduce dogfighting to an aiming contest, since nearly every situation would allow a shot of some sort. Right now, I'm leaning towards an adjustable slide tolerance- but the tolerance has an upper limit that varies ship to ship. All ships would also be able to apply thrust in any of the 3 axis of movement... but compared to the Z axis, it would be very weak.

Fighters- lots of em. As you may have picked up, I'm mostly interested in flying these, and I want fighters to have weapons that can destroy each other with only a few hits- difficult to obtain ones. See above for the physics to do that, weapons would be very similar to the ones currently in FS2 in fire rate and damage. Shields would be standard on all fighters, once again, I think FS2 has the fighter shielding and hull damage system down pretty much perfect.

More on weapons- NOT fully modular, I haven't played MW4 but I'd like to see something common to most current fighter jet sims, where you have so many hardpoints per fighter/bomber, but they are not all the same in what they can carry. Each hardpoint would have it's own specified Weapons Allowed, as well as a number for each specified weapon that indicated how many could be carried on that hardpoint- think clusters of small missiles or one or two large ones. There would be no restrictions on primaries/secondaries: the engine would be able to handle a ship that carried only primaries, a ship that carried only secondaries, or a ship that could do something in between. Or either. Some ships would be more flexible than others, obviously. What Mik proposed is pretty much what I'm thinking, only somewhat less flexible in the combinations of armaments you could come up with. It would do nicely also.  

Turrets on fighters- only if you make them dumb enough. FS2 turrets are just plain lame. They almost never miss. Simulate a human-controlled turret, not a Perfect Shot AI turret, and it could work. Same goes for capships- not turrets that aim well but fire slow, easily-dodged blobs, and not turrets that rapidly fire faster shots that are a royal pain to avoid. Howabout turrets that fire lots of medium fast shots, dangerous enough that you have to sweat to avoid them, but that will act like a human gunner, starting out innacurate but getting more so as you fly in a straight line? Give the turret guy a machine-gun style laser- but one with fairly high spread, so even accurate shots will mostly miss at long range.

Other capship weapons- for antifighter use, keep the beams and the flak, but modify them slightly... IMO aaafs should be slashers, where you actually have a slight chance to get out of the way. The flak should be more powerful, but with a slower fire rate. Missiles- just the way they are in FS2... almost. More on that below. FS2-style beams MUST stay. However, they must also have longer range and more built-in innacuracy. Slasher beams can stay just the same style they are. Focused beams would start out fine, but lose focus as the beam continued, and start to drift at an accelerating rate until it was too far off and automatically deactivated. Other capship weapons- cruise missile-style torpedoes, large cap-to-cap warheards.


 
Revisiting an old topic - Next Gen Space Sims
Wow- so long it made me put it in two messages!  

Cockpit- Virtual cockpit, DEFINITELY. Nothing has a greater improvement on the fun of a dogfight, IMO. With the virtual cockpit, of course, a full 3D cockpit, preferably one that varied by ship type.

More on missiles/weapons: These should also be newtonian in nature. Missiles especially. They should accelerate throughout their flight, with their initial speed being the same as the firing ship. Primaries also should add the velocity of the ship firing them, and damage should vary depending on impact speed as well as type of weapon.

Systems and hull should DEFINITELY be seperated- it should be possible to attack a subsystem or turret without even touching the hull. Or even do nothing more than superficial damage that doesn't affect hull integrity OR any systems.

Beams should NOT be able to simply ignore shields. That would only be allowed for specially designed and extremely rare torpedoes, that in the context of the game would either have to be preprogrammed with the proper frequency or would only be able to work after the proper frequency was obtained through a long scanning process.

Full, to-scale stellar systems with seperate methods for inter-system and intra-system travel, a la IW2.

NegspectahDek's description of critical hits. Right on.   Let's get away from just hitpoints, if it's possible.

More complex radar systems: I don't think this is really necessary. OK, maybe a bit more interesting than it is in FS, put a range limit on it that varies with the size of the ship being tracked.

AI: How could I almost forget? Need much better. Not sure how, but it has to happen! FS2 AI, for example, is quite good at doing what it is told- and nothing else. Give them some Situational Awareness, for crying out loud! Let them see that the guy moving onto their tail deserves a response BEFORE he is putting missiles through them! Easier said than done, though.

Being able to get out of your ship: I don't think it's worth the extra effort. Being able to dock and switch ships? Maybe.


Voice comms: Not worth my processor power, IMO. Even less so my bandwidth!  
HIGH MODDABILITY! Whatever the sim, there will be things to improve about it. Always. By making the game easy to add on to, gamers can make it into whatever they want. Best example in existence: Half life. People are STILL coding mods for that engine!

Multiplayer: In addition to the below, a good Coop system is imperative. Flying on the same ship could also prove a ton of fun.

And probably the most ambitious of all:

Instead of just a single player campaign and token multiplayer, support for massive Internet team warfare a la Warbirds. Two, three, or ten teams to an Arena, and multiple styles of play, including CTF and other games in addition to standard force-on-force play. This, of course, would also be mod-extendable. The force-on-force would be kind of the core game- each team in an arena(size limited, of course, just to keep the action fairly tight) with a full spread of fighters, bombers, and capships. Players could choose to be any of these, including gunners on someone else's corvette or bomber. Once they died, they would respawn, although larger ships would probably have extended respawn times, or at least a transit to the battle arena long enough to prevent them from dominating the game. Various variations would balance the game differently- one mode would have so many "points" per ship type and would require each team's points to be approximately even. Another would have pilots who do well in fighters, turrets, etc earn the option to command larger ones, if a slot is open on that team to allow such a ship.

There are virtually infinite possible ways to arrange such a thing, I have to admit, I haven't really thought through it completely myself. The hardest part would be attracting a player base. But hey, I can dream, can't I?  

I think I'm done now.  

 

Offline Shrike

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Revisiting an old topic - Next Gen Space Sims
 
Quote
Originally posted by Sushi mk. 2:
Shields would be standard on all fighters, once again, I think FS2 has the fighter shielding and hull damage system down pretty much perfect.

 
Quote
Originally posted by Sushi mk. 2:
Systems and hull should DEFINITELY be seperated- it should be possible to attack a subsystem or turret without even touching the hull. Or even do nothing more than superficial damage that doesn't affect hull integrity OR any systems.

Hmmm..... Contradicting yourself?  
WE ARE HARD LIGHT PRODUCTIONS. YOU WILL LOWER YOUR FIREWALLS AND SURRENDER YOUR KEYBOARDS. WE WILL ADD YOUR INTELLECTUAL AND VERNACULAR DISTINCTIVENESS TO OUR OWN. YOUR FORUMS WILL ADAPT TO SERVICE US. RESISTANCE IS FUTILE.

 

Offline KillMeNow

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Revisiting an old topic - Next Gen Space Sims
what i was thinking was that would would have the choice you could play it purely as a space sim but could also  play the first person sections sometimes it makes it easier somtimes ahrder for example boarding a sathanus alone with only you side arm would not be a good plan but boarding a small cruiser might be entirely upto you giving yout he choice on how you fight the game
ARGHHH

 

Offline mikhael

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Revisiting an old topic - Next Gen Space Sims
Are we looking for 'ideal THIS gen' space sim or are we looking for a 'next-gen' space sim?

We seem to be continously rehashing old ideas. These ideas have already be implemented in one game or the other, with the exception of some of what NegspectahDek mentioned.  

Shrike mentioned that not everyone has voice-recognition gear on their computer. He's absolutely right, but I was trying to keep from thinking about what we have NOW and think what would be good to have or an improvement on what we have now.

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Offline Galemp

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Revisiting an old topic - Next Gen Space Sims
Two words: geo-mods.

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Offline Grey Wolf

Revisiting an old topic - Next Gen Space Sims
A modular system, where you have a set of base ships and a certain amount of credits, each with a certain base speed and a certain number of 'slots'. You could buy engine upgrades (or downgrade your engine to save money), and you could buy parts to go into the 'slots'. For instance, you could buy a afterburner cluster which would take up, say, 3 slots; a cargo bay/dockpoint which would take up 4; a turret which would take up 2; and a missile or primary bay that would take up 1. you'd gain more credits by acting as a mercenary (example: Kill all pirates in System ABC for 200 credits) or by transporting goods (example: transport foodstuffs to System 123 for 100 credits). You could also act as a pirate.
You see things; and you say "Why?" But I dream things that never were; and I say "Why not?" -George Bernard Shaw

 
Revisiting an old topic - Next Gen Space Sims
Two more things to add.  Damage Control and Tactics.

Damage control in FS2 is retarded.  The fighter repair way too fast and never run out of replacement parts, and the cap ships dont repair at all.  In fighters, damage control should be slowed down and all the sub systems should have a list of parts that that can be destroyed and replaced and a list of parts that if destroyed will cause the system to become inoperable.  For example, if you take a hit in your cooling fan, you replace it, but if destroy the engine mount, no amount of new parts will get it working again.  Same thing goes for caps.  If a bomb manages to take a scoop out of the hull where a subsystem was, then no more subsystem, and if there are no more backups, well too bad.

Tactics.  Fred2 lets us script postions of battle but not how battles are fought.  Say you have a small strike force, 2 corvettes and standoff missile frigate. And your target is another corvette.  FS2 will just have your ships come in and circle each other while firing.  The best way to set this battle up would be to have the corvettes close to firing range and have the frigate launch so that the missles hit at the same time the corvettes let loose, that way damage control has less time to compensate.  Needless to say, tactics would change based on the nature of the engagement and what the objectives are and the experience level of the captain and crew.  Also required is the ability for the cap ship AI to change tactics in mid battle to react to a change of orders or ship destruction.

Make that 3 things.

Caps ships have a set number of damage control teams. If they get hit, they die.  If they all die, no more damage control or very ineffective recruits trying to do whatever they can to help out.

 
Revisiting an old topic - Next Gen Space Sims
 
Quote
Originally posted by Shrike:
Hmmm..... Contradicting yourself?    

First one is about fighters, second about capships.  


 

Offline aldo_14

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Revisiting an old topic - Next Gen Space Sims
 
Quote
Originally posted by mikhael:


Negspectah's WW2 PacFleet carriers are the very model of how capships should be simulated (Aldo mentioned Exocets being used to take out British Ships of the line in the Falklands, but this rings of a fluke, or poor shipbuilding on the part of the British. I'm not knowledgeable enough about the situation to say for sure either way).

Well, i can;t speak for modern day, but in 1982 the Exocet was letahl.... because it could hole a ship below the waterline, and sneak through the radar net.  The British tactics mainly consisted of putting rings of patrol ships around the 2 flagship carriers - basically acting as decoys.  Had an exocet hit one of the carriers, and not a helicopter transporting super-freighter, Argentina would probably have won the war.

That's one thing I'd like to see in space sims - even in the new generation of FS2 and I-War missions (etc) - the sheer brutality of war.  At the monet - possibly because of a lack of recognisable NPCs - you're far too distanced from the sheer hell of it all.... I'd like to see an aspect of that come in (not at the expense of fun)


 

Offline Nico

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Revisiting an old topic - Next Gen Space Sims
exocets (and any cruise missile of the same kind) are still very efficient. They just go throught the hull and explode inside. Any ship will be sink by a direct impact.
For the sliding thing, it's already in wing co   you should know your classics   You hold a key, and when you turn, the ship won't change it's trajectory, so you can do strafing runs on a capship, flying along it, and destroying all the turrets this way, pretty useful  
for the semi newtonian physics, try Dark Light Conflict  
As Mike said, about everything has already be done in a game or another. Anyway, it doesn't mean it's bad   Just need to put that together in a good way ( Think pod for racing games, they took the best parts of all arcade games and the game was a litle jewel of fun ). IMHO, some of the ideas here just can't go together. Some will fit with a Iwar style game, where you play as a private ( full stellar systems etc), but are not really usefull for a military orientated sim like FS2. You're told to go there, you don't have to fly free. going through multiple areas should be made thanks to mission editing, will save resources. Wel, there's lots of things to be said, and if I go on, I'll fill the whole thread with my posts  
SCREW CANON!

 

Offline mikhael

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Revisiting an old topic - Next Gen Space Sims
 
Quote
Originally posted by aldo_14:
[B...
That's one thing I'd like to see in space sims - even in the new generation of FS2 and I-War missions (etc) - the sheer brutality of war.  At the monet - possibly because of a lack of recognisable NPCs - you're far too distanced from the sheer hell of it all.... I'd like to see an aspect of that come in (not at the expense of fun)
[/B]
Indeed.

One thing that has lacked in most space combat games has been a solid, emotional story. Wing Commander tried hard to show this, but Roberts' always let the media overshadow the message. Freespace utterly failed at this. Starlancer had some of the feeling of being in an actual war, but it lacked the out-of-cockpit stuff that is so necessary for such things.

On another note, I guess we're discussing rehashing this-gen space games?


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Offline Nico

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Revisiting an old topic - Next Gen Space Sims
 
Quote
Originally posted by mikhael:
Quote
Originally posted by aldo_14:
[B...
That's one thing I'd like to see in space sims - even in the new generation of FS2 and I-War missions (etc) - the sheer brutality of war.  At the monet - possibly because of a lack of recognisable NPCs - you're far too distanced from the sheer hell of it all.... I'd like to see an aspect of that come in (not at the expense of fun)
[/b]
Indeed.

One thing that has lacked in most space combat games has been a solid, emotional story. Wing Commander tried hard to show this, but Roberts' always let the media overshadow the message. Freespace utterly failed at this. Starlancer had some of the feeling of being in an actual war, but it lacked the out-of-cockpit stuff that is so necessary for such things.

On another note, I guess we're discussing rehashing this-gen space games?


[/B]

I must temper that: FS2 failed, i agree, but FS1 really gave the right feeling, you were really into the war, with the ionstoppable lucifer and all, trying to save civilians, watching the lucifer destroying orions and arcadias...
The mood was great. FS2 emphasized only on some details( the ravana in the nebulae, the sathanas in the nebulae, when they appeared, were scary. Okok, it's all about the nebula   ) Those details apart, the mood was nowhere near as good as the FS1 one (the FS1 musics were more adapted, too).

SCREW CANON!

 

Offline Zeronet

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Revisiting an old topic - Next Gen Space Sims
 
Quote
Originally posted by aldo_14:
Well, i can;t speak for modern day, but in 1982 the Exocet was letahl.... because it could hole a ship below the waterline, and sneak through the radar net.  The British tactics mainly consisted of putting rings of patrol ships around the 2 flagship carriers - basically acting as decoys.  Had an exocet hit one of the carriers, and not a helicopter transporting super-freighter, Argentina would probably have won the war.

No that would seal there fate, it would of lead to a even bigger war.

Got Ether?

 

Offline mikhael

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Revisiting an old topic - Next Gen Space Sims
 
Quote
Originally posted by venom2506:
I must temper that: FS2 failed, i agree, but FS1 really gave the right feeling, you were really into the war, with the ionstoppable lucifer and all, trying to save civilians, watching the lucifer destroying orions and arcadias...
The mood was great. FS2 emphasized only on some details( the ravana in the nebulae, the sathanas in the nebulae, when they appeared, were scary. Okok, it's all about the nebula   ) Those details apart, the mood was nowhere near as good as the FS1 one (the FS1 musics were more adapted, too).


I have to disagree, Venom. Freespace1 was, if anything, less interesting (storywise) than Freespace2. The mood didn't work any better there either. The one thing that Freespace1 had that Freespace2 lacks is a proper story arc, not the up and down sine-wave of Freespace2.


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Offline Nico

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Revisiting an old topic - Next Gen Space Sims
 
Quote
Originally posted by mikhael:
I have to disagree, Venom. Freespace1 was, if anything, less interesting (storywise) than Freespace2. The mood didn't work any better there either. The one thing that Freespace1 had that Freespace2 lacks is a proper story arc, not the up and down sine-wave of Freespace2.



FS1 story was not original, but it was well done, and I still think the mood was deep and great.
SCREW CANON!

 
Revisiting an old topic - Next Gen Space Sims
Fast firing, anti-capship pulse weapons.

Destroyable sections on ships (like KA) so you can see the fires raging on exposed decks.

I'll like to see that.

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'Honour the valiant who fall beneath your sword, but pity the warrior who slays all his foes' - G'trok, in the poem lu geng

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Offline Kitsune

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Revisiting an old topic - Next Gen Space Sims
Personally one of the reasons I bought the FS games was part of the description on the box was 'to engage in combat against massive capital ships with move, reacting gun turrets that not only fire at you but can be blow off creating new obstacles'.

How many obstacles do you get when you blow off a turret?  You MIGHT bump into it while flying in thta direction, but then the debris zooms off into space to be destroyed against the far wall of the game map.

In other words, MORE DEBRIS!
I don't care if destroyed cap turrets fly apart at the seams and slap me with a 10' laser barrell, DETAILS DETAILS.  

 
Quote
Zeronet:

The Horror! British ships are unmatched in the quality of their construction!!!

Except that british ships use steel for their armor belts only.  For the superstructure and other bodywork, the British use ALLUMINUM because it reduced ship costs by quite a bit.

The missle evaded the CIWS(Provided it was functioning, the jury's still out on whether or not the ship was properly defending herself), penetrated the belt (like it was designed to do) and exploded.  The heat generated from the explosion MELTED the hull of the ship nearby.

You can fight fires all day long, but if the deckplates molten slag, there's not a hell of alot that you can do to stop it.

Hopefully the RN is using stronger materials in their ship construction after this.

However on the other hand, the USS Stark was hit with TWO Exocets and managed to limp home.
But I'm not saying she didn't look too good... http://www.usswaddell.com/Memories/uss_stark.htm
I searched for awhile, but I couldn't find any images of the Sheffield.  The only ones I could find was her predasassor, a WWII cruiser who was scrapped in '69.

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Offline joek

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Revisiting an old topic - Next Gen Space Sims
 
Quote
Originally posted by venom2506:
IMHO, some of the ideas here just can't go together. Some will fit with a Iwar style game, where you play as a private ( full stellar systems etc), but are not really usefull for a military orientated sim like FS2. You're told to go there, you don't have to fly free.

What about a system that does combine those two qualities. A combination RPG & Space-sim. You start as a private citizen. You can join up with pirates, mercenaries, or the military. And even joining the military could be temporary, like you've joined with the reserves. All career choices you can take can involve single or multiplayer gaming. If you're in the reserves, you can download a campaign (company or fan made) as if you're being called into battle (only you don't have to create a new pilot or get those FS warnings when you're changing campaigns, you're pilot would grow in experience with each campaign). You could also play multiplayer like in military training exercises. You could quit the military life and join up with mercenaries or pirates, and have the same options of single or multiplayer gaming.


An idea I thought up yesterday... team vs. team capship flying. If you're playing a team vs. team game, your team can choose to pilot a capship, with each person on the team taking different roles aboard the capship. One person would operate the helm, one person the weapons system, maybe one person comm (to coordinate and give orders to fighers, bombers, and other capships), and even one person could be the captain, keeping a constant eye on the battle field and let the other players know where the enemy is and give commands and tactics.

Joe.
No, he's not back for real, just popping his head in to say "hello" while on break from classes.