[Serephucus]

Hello all,

I've actually been meaning to join these forums for a while. I'm a big FS2 fan (Descent was the first PC game I ever played, and to this day, it's still one of my favourites) but I never actually managed to, for some reason. Anyway, I'm here now, that's what counts!

I'm looking for a bit of insight from what is probably the biggest and most enthusiastic space sim community around these days. I'm currently working through a games development masters, and we're at the point where we must present our ideas for our final projects, to be ok'd by the lecturing staff. The idea I've had in my head - something I've been toying with long before this masters, truth be told - is something that plays similarly to FS2, but with a little more focus on physics, and piloting, rather than out-and-out dogfighting madness.

I have about a year from initial concept to final deployment for this, and it'll be developed through Unity. By the end of it, I hope to have the first mission or two of what would be a full game, were it seen through to the end. I'd love to get your thoughts on this though. If someone came to you and said they were making a space sim, what would you want to see in it? What areas would you want focused on? What's important to you?

If you've read all this, thank you very much, and thanks in advance to anyone leaving feedback. Everything helps.

[Grizzly]

For me, probably the most important thing is good mission design that promotes tactical thinking (one has to quickly figure out who to shoot first, that sorta thing), and a lot of variance. The flight model has to be tuned as such that there are extremely wide variations possible between different craft, so that even identical missions feel entirely different when you use a different fighter.

As for the flight model, I personally liked the feel of the first Wing Commanders (and Prophecy). Planes sort of went were you pointed them, untill you applied the afterburner, at which point the airframe went a lot faster then the avionics could compensate for, allowing you to perform some nice manouvres. It also had damage modeling which allowed a very heavily damaged fighter to still continue the fight at reduced capabilities, which for me was a lot more interesting then FS2's auto repair systems.

A model often used for space sims is that they are loosely modeled after the battles US pilots went trough when fighting in the pacific, with the opponents using more fragile but rather agile craft, and having superior numbers but inferior tactics. I find this model to be very satisfying and highly recommend it. It can be tuned to be rather forgiving at first (as you have more armor then  your opponents, you can correct for mistakes at the cost of taking some (But not fatal) damage.

[Akalabeth Angel]

Well the most impressive thing about Freespace 2 is the capital ships bar none. The huge beam weapons and other such weapons of destruction. They're really the thing which sets it apart from the other games of the time.
I don't know if you're just going to have fighters but ships as well but that's something I'd say.

[z64555]

You might want to take a look at Independance War, I've heard that it had an exceptional physics simulation and most of its playable ships had a crew greater than 2.

[Familiar]

You might want to take a look at Independance War, I've heard that it had an exceptional physics simulation and most of its playable ships had a crew greater than 2.

Yeah, IW2 Edge of Chaos will be nice example.
And Evochron Mercenary...
And Elite: Dangerous

[Ace]

I'd also take a look at other recent game and what makes them work or not.

For instance Strike Suit Zero is quite pretty, but its mission design is very repetitive.

If I were to design a game not constrained by issues like Diaspora was (due to BSG's setting) some of the things I'd really emphasize are:

1) Simple flight controls
2) Simple HUD (more simple than FS, more Wing Commander 1 or 2 level)
3) Simple but in depth loadout system (something like Mechwarrior 4's modules)

Where the complexity of the game would come in is every weapon and ship would have very specific roles.

No low level and high level lasers. Every single type of weapon has a specific role or trade off. You might have a plasma cannon that envelops a ship hitting all shield and armor but has a huge energy drain and low fire rate while not being as effective against armor. It might be best to combine it with a rapid fire ballistic weapon that is good against armor but weak against shields.

The starter simple pulse weapon might be low damage and high fire rate, but it should still be good in the end game as a balanced weapon.

Complexity in the game would come from not the controls but how various systems interact.

For instance you might have a fully modeled damage system where individual parts of ships can be destroyed and it impacts systems (think Klingon Academy). You might have trade-offs with special modules like cloaking devices, extra missile capacity, sensor modules, shield capacitors, or extra gun energy capacity.

Capital ships may have shield generators that cover segments, beam cannons, flak, and pulse weapons that are all tailored to different types of targets. So fighters might need to take out shield generators so an outclassed destroyer can take down a cruiser. Bombers may have special weapons that aren't good against fighters but penetrate capital ship shields.

Giant capital ships are fine, but you need to have them fun for the player to interact with. So imagine a 12km juggernaut that you can cripple by nailing its shield generators, turrets, flying inside of it and blowing up it's bomber wings. Instead of outright having to tape down a fire button for 30 minutes the mission design acknowledges what you did and either reinforcements arrive or they begin to evac their crippled ship.

Overall things that you learn quickly from gameplay but aren't tied to having a complex UI. ...and are all things that ensure that missions can be flexible and interesting.

It's easy to get bogged down with physics systems. I-War although excellent isn't approachable. B5: I've Found Her has great graphics and is a good adaptation of Babylon 5 but isn't really a fun game to sit down with for a few minutes.

Real Newtonian physics tends to turn space combat into jousting matches if trying to do conventional fighter sim type gameplay.

I'd either go completely arcade like Wing Commander or FreeSpace and capture a World War I or II type of feel. Or go completely hard scifi and make missile warfare with torchships and indirect engagements fun. (i.e. I-War but no particle cannon jousting)

[Grizzly]

For instance you might have a fully modeled damage system where individual parts of ships can be destroyed and it impacts systems (think Klingon Academy).

Wing Commander 1 and 2 also had this, atleast for the fighters, which made things very interesting.

[Colonol Dekker]

Concept -
Fighter v Fighter?
Fighter v waves?
Fighter v caps?
Cap v Fighter?
Cap v Cap?
Cap v waves?

Setting-
Small mission map
Big mission map?
Linked map (like X)
Open world (like elite)

Weaponry-
Kinetic
Beams
Missiles


Then filler-
NPC
Asteroids
Starbases etc

[Serephucus]

Thanks all for the feedback, I'll be evaluating over the next few days/weeks. Keep it coming in the meantime though!

To clear a few things up: While this project may or may not be expanded on in the future, or commercialised, for the moment I'm only focusing on it as a masters assignment. This means that by its nature it's going to be relatively small. At minimum, I hope to have a player fighter, enemy fighter, and hopefully some sort of larger ship - A cruiser or corvette type thing, most-likely. A larger ship does mean quite a bit more work (lots of other things than just the size) but as some of you have said, capital ships were a big part of FS2's gameplay.

[Akalabeth Angel]

Thanks all for the feedback, I'll be evaluating over the next few days/weeks. Keep it coming in the meantime though!

To clear a few things up: While this project may or may not be expanded on in the future, or commercialised, for the moment I'm only focusing on it as a masters assignment. This means that by its nature it's going to be relatively small. At minimum, I hope to have a player fighter, enemy fighter, and hopefully some sort of larger ship - A cruiser or corvette type thing, most-likely. A larger ship does mean quite a bit more work (lots of other things than just the size) but as some of you have said, capital ships were a big part of FS2's gameplay.

You could always copy Volition and have that one larger ship represent different vessels, in the same way that the Leviathan and Fenris are both the same hull. That would help achieve some simpler variety for far less resources.

You can recolour or reuse fighters to the same effect as well in the same way that older NES games for example maybe had a green snake, red snake, blue snake etcetera. All snakes but different levels of power. Take more hits, deal more damage, faster, etcetera. It's cheap but it works.