A few tweaks would've allowed FE2/FFE to mimic Elite's combat style while also surpassing it:
- the ability to set one's motion as relative to a target - whatever the target
- renaming of the engine's "manual mode" to "cruise control", and "engines off" mode to "manual mode"
- JJFFE-style thruster control, coupled with throttle control of all thrusters (rather than all-or-nothing as per standard "engines off" mode - if the computer can throttle thrust, why can't the pilot? Are pilot and autopilot using separate solid vs liquid engines or something?)
- implementation of both selectable and automatic flight envelopes, from a variety of options. For instance, Elite-style handling is only physically possible within a low range of relative speeds, however in space there's no maximum speed, and injudicious throttle control will see inexperienced pilots quickly exceeding their optimum manoeuverability - which will be a function of their ships' retrothruster power compared to their mass (and mass distribution), over that of any opponent. Exceeding a given safe handling speed will leave you vulnerable and hand the opportunity to the opponent - especially if you can't outrun them or their weapons systems.
For example if fighting a smaller, lighter, higher-impulse craft, you'd want to be able to trade absolute speed for manoeuverability - going slower, but turning tighter. Against a larger ship, wider turns are more acceptable, allowing higher speeds.
Thus you'll have an optimal flight control envelope for any given scenario, and a maximum useful speed within that particular envelope and its respective reference frame. So you can still have an Elite-like speed indicator bar on the left of the console, except it'll have a green range, progressing into a red range. The speed could be limited artificially by the ship's computer, allowing classic spacebar-to-accelerate, slash-key-to-decelerate handling, instead of FE2's full-engine-power on-or-off handling, but should still allow the pilot to override the limits if they choose..
A simple two-axis graph could allow pilots to pre-set optimum envelopes for their current ship configuration and combat handling requirements, or, alternatively, these could be determined constantly and dynamically by the ship's computer - in which case the changes will be transparent to the player; a given amount of speed indicator bar will refer to a different speed range depending on the relative mass and engine power of an opponent. All the pilot needs to know however is whether they're at full power, half power or whatever, with the actual speeds being extraneous information.
This scheme allows relative acceleration to replace absolute speed as used in Elite, while maintaining the classic flight control style and conservation of momentum.
It might even be retro-causally invoked to explain the original Elite flightmodel..!
they could do an hybrid: use newtonian for planet Gravity, but don't use Inertia for ship movements, so dogfighting will be more enjoyable, and you won't have problems passing-by planets.
