"What the People Want"

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Who knows what "realistic space combat" will be in 1300 years...

a) It could take days just to alter speed and engage with a target. You get within 10,000 km. You press the "fusion missile launch" button and, after 20 minutes, a blip disappears from your radar screen.

b) Superluminal accelerator cannons mean you can destroy a taget as soon as it is detected. The victor is whoever has the best sensors, ecm and eccm.

etc ad infinitum... Who knows.

It could even be that weapon and countermeasure technology means everyone engages WVR using Mk.1 eyeball and guns. Possibly, contemporary space ship design means the best fighters can tolerate extreme stresses in the pitch and roll axes at the expense of yaw ;)

tl;dr Nobody knows what realistic space combat is.
 
I can't help but be blunt - You guys are wasting your time.

The OP is very unlikely to come back to this thread and read all these fine arguments, I've read through it all myself, I like to stay clued up even though I am thoroughly enjoying this game.

I like to see why other people aren't even though I swear I lose brain cells every time. Their arguments and decisions are so completely uneducated.
 
Who knows what "realistic space combat" will be in 1300 years...

a) It could take days just to alter speed and engage with a target. You get within 10,000 km. You press the "fusion missile launch" button and, after 20 minutes, a blip disappears from your radar screen.

b) Superluminal accelerator cannons mean you can destroy a taget as soon as it is detected. The victor is whoever has the best sensors, ecm and eccm.

etc ad infinitum... Who knows.

It could even be that weapon and countermeasure technology means everyone engages WVR using Mk.1 eyeball and guns. Possibly, contemporary space ship design means the best fighters can tolerate extreme stresses in the pitch and roll axes at the expense of yaw ;)

tl;dr Nobody knows what realistic space combat is.

My bet is that it won't even involve a human element at all.
 
If you want realism in space games you can choose Kerbal Space Program...;)

Despite the cure appearance it's pretty hardcore.
And with mods it can be even more...:eek:
 
One of the fun things about being a Kerbalist is that you can watch the movie 'Gravity' and laugh your socks off... even more so. :D
 
Purely from a speculative point of view, what is deemed "realistic" now, is based on current technology and our current scientific understanding.

We're talking about 1,300 years into the future. What amazing tech might have developed by then? Would it not be logical for the human race to develop tech that makes space machines easier to control?

What is to say that thrusters and other reaction-based propulsion systems won't be so advanced, and the fly-by-wire systems won't be so advanced, that the result is the current flight model that ED uses? Why must spacecraft 1,300 years in the future fly like the way ours do now to be "realistic"?

Think back a few hundred years. The only way for man to "fly" was in a balloon. It must be filled with lighter-than-air gases. If someone proposed a metallic, non-balloon way to fly, it would have been deemed "unrealistic" as metal is heavy and thus can't fly. Same for ships. It was only around 1780s that metal ships were built. Prior to that, all ships were made from wood because it floats; because nobody understood the science back then that metal ships could also float.

If we can believe the invention of FTL drives (superluminal drives, aka FSD, aka faster-than-light drives), why can't we believe that sublight engines might be as advanced as well?

Star Wars fighters fly like in atmosphere out in space, and everybody seem to love it :p
To put it bluntly, technology that would make atmosphere-like space dogfights feasible would also make the more realistic 100,000+ kilometre game of hide-and-seek with nuclear missiles a lot better, too. It's like saying better armour and power generation technology would make Gundam robots feasible. Yeah it would, but it'd also be just as applicable to regular tanks, and we'd be back at square 1 with said robots being pointless and dreadfully fragile compared to tanks.

Why bother trying to justify game design by realism? Surely the overriding criteria should be whether it makes the game enjoyable, not whether it adheres to reality. Elements of reality are often incredibly boring, frustrating and sometimes even terrifying when compared to what games make of them.

Games that do base themselves on big parts of realism often ditch the other parts e.g. KSP not including the real engineering nightmares that would result from some of the designs. Real world space rockets are very simple shapes, but millions of things can go wrong with the dizzying array of hardware inside it, many of which would result in catastrophic failure. Wouldn't be as fun if half the time your rocket blows up, not because you made it look like a giant willy and forgot to point some of the thrusters away from the actual rocket, but because of faulty valves screwing up the fuel flow.
 
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Via Reddit /r/elitedangerous, there is an Arena Commander demo available until 5th September here - use dragonflight2k14 as the promo code.

All you need is an RSI login to download the client and play (keep SLI disabled if you have it).

After having a go myself, the Aurora flight model is not bad, very responsive but a bit arcadey in comparison to ED. Needs a bit more polish. The graphics are cool but pretty generic design overall.
 
If you want realism in space games you can choose Kerbal Space Program...;)

Despite the cure appearance it's pretty hardcore.
And with mods it can be even more...:eek:

+1 to that :D

800 hours and more into KSP and I still feel "jeeez theres so much left to do". best sandbox ever IMO :D
 
Seems like a troll thread to me.

The release dates are far enough apart not to clash and many people plan on playing both. I found out about Limit Theory too late to back it but I will probably play that on release too. Amazing what one person and a much smaller budget can achieve proving that the games budget is not indicative of the finished article.

I am sure that ED will be my favourite but we are experiencing a great time for space sims atm and there is room for all of them.
 
My bet is that it won't even involve a human element at all.

Like in the star trek episode where 2 planets at war agree to abide by the results of a computer simulation instead of actually fight. Every day each planet would herd a bunch of people into an annihilation chamber according to the number of casualties each side took in the simulation.
 

drc1983

Banned
You mean, what you want. I happen to like toggling flight assist on and off when needed.

No. You're the minority, I think. Like I said, look at the funding difference. Obviously Roberts is doing SOMETHING people want, and that's just about the biggest, most substantial difference I can see.
 

drc1983

Banned
Both SC and ED have realistic, 'newtonian' physics driving all of the spaceflight. I think that what you have concerns with, if I'm reading you correctly, is Elite's implementation of the 'flight assist' and how that feels.

Yes, Frontier decided very early on in the development to make the flight assist in Elite Dangerous behave in a way reminiscent of WW2 dog fighting. You may disagree with that, and that's fine, but I think this is a bit late in the process to make such a large change in the underlying mechanics of the game.

The feeling of dogfighting in Elite may not please everyone of course. I for one really enjoy it.

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I can already tell that this thread is going to elevate passions all around. Just remember to stay on topic, offer constructive feedback, and do not engage in sniping or personal attacks. Thanks.

Not just the flight assist. Even with flight assist off, the 'speed limit' is still in effect, and that is completely non-Newtonian. More than that, the ships still can't yaw. In point of fact, with flight assist off, the ships just feel like out of control airplanes.
 
No. You're the minority, I think. Like I said, look at the funding difference. Obviously Roberts is doing SOMETHING people want, and that's just about the biggest, most substantial difference I can see.

Yes, he's producing lots of ooohhh awwwwww videos... not too much in the game department though. Oh, and while you are talking about money please don't forget to include the millions FD put in of its own funds.
 
No. Actually I think I plan to do that, although if Braben sticks to current plans I'll probably stick mostly to SC.

I don't know how anyone can say with certainty what people are going to play considering that neither game has been released. I'm excited for both, and loved both Elite and Wing Commander back in the day. But as of now, right now, ED is the only one that's got a playable product, even in Beta. So you're comparing ED right now to wishes and promises and hopeful thinking. I chipped in my money to participate in ED but not SC because ED not only plays like a game that's near and dear to my heart (the original Elite) but it looks like it's actually going to be made.

SC looks great on paper, but they're years away from release. And while the promise of SC is great, I'm old enough to remember Battlecruiser 3000 AD. If you aren't familiar with it, have a look. This was going to be the end-all-be-all space sim. It's creator was a visionary to be sure. But he overpromised on a product that could not be delivered and left a lot of his fans sorely disappointed.

Of course, BC3K wasn't even a kickstarter, so nobody lost their money. But I'm getting the same hype train vibe with SC and it's enough to make me wait a lot longer before I throw my monetary support behind it.

As for ED, shoot I've put more time in playing the beta than some release games I've paid full price for in a tiny bubble with 55 star systems in it and a half-dozen playable ships. Everything they add going forward at this point is gravy. :D
 
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In point of fact, with flight assist off, the ships just feel like out of control airplanes.

Ohgod. You obviously have no idea what a plane out of control feels like...
Which generation of planes to start with? What kind of control loss?
In which part of the envelope?

And those are just beginners questions...

The problem I have with your OP is simply that all you claim is so highly personal that I simply (and most of the poster in this thread seem to agree) can't relate to it.
Maybe some more objective POV...
 
There is at least a choice, more than the game industry has been able to provide for a while, in the space sim department. Go with whatever floats the boat, be happy wherever happiness can be found!

If the ED flight model is dropped at this point in time, I'll eat my hat. Might need some ketchup to go with that... I personally like it, the flight model that is! Reminds me a bit of "Tie Fighter". Those were the times. :)
 
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