How do you make Space Combat interesting?

[Deleted]

With Chris Roberts revival of the space simulation underway I wanted to take a moment and discuss the merits and problems with space combat in games.

Now while I'm personally looking forward to Squadron 42 and thoroughly enjoyed some of the older Space games like Freelancer, Starlancer and even X-Wing, Tie-Fighter and all the Wing-Commanders games I've always felt that there was one aspect about Space Combat that always fell flat.

And that was the core mechanic of space combat. While the plots, ship customization and visuals were always very appealing, the actual space combat always seem to evolve around circling your ship until you found your next target and then not to lose it again. While regular flight simulators had comparable issues at least you had real-world physics to limit your maneuverability.

But space combat just feels like circle wars most of the time (turn turn turn until you line up your target).

So my question is, how can you make space combat more engaging?

So far I've only come up with two rather obvious mechanics.
1. Apply some real physics and thus limitation to the space crafts so they can't twist and turn as they like.
2. Keep the environment interesting by adding various nebulas, asteroid fields and planet surfaces to fight around.

But plenty of games have tried this without doing much to prevent the "circle wars" style combat.

[MickoLis]

laser guns the go pew pew pew

[Halicia]

There was an *old* space combat game I liked that had the option to match the facing and/or speed of your targeted ship. I found this fit in well with the fact that these were supposed to be futuristic ships, but most in the genre still rode completely on manual. It also let me focus more on the *fun* stuff, the firing and defense.

If I were to make space combat more engaging, I'd try to concentrate things around actual strategic targets. Asteroid belts, moons, bases, etc. Stuff with some actual terrain to it. Also doesn't hurt to be part of a larger scale battle, and have specific objectives to meet on your portion of the battle.

[Dyros]

After picking up EVE a couple months ago and abruptly throwing that crap out the window last week, this thought has run through my head quite a few times. While I don't have too much experience with other space-combat games, simple things we've all thought of at one point could easily be the ground work for a new game in addition to what's already been mentioned.

*These are all with an online/MMO mindset.*


1. Customizable ships. I would love nothing more than to design my own ship, and/or make changes to a generic one.

2. Sim-style combat. Sitting in 3rd person while the ships computer orbits isn't fun. Would be great if I could jump into the cockpit and take control, or if I had a larger ship, sit in a turret or launch a fighter wing.

3. A crew. Maybe not on a character level, as in sitting in the captains seat on the bridge, but a crew that runs the ship. It's an added responsibility for bigger ships; take enough damage in certain areas and risk losing personnel. Lose people, lose control.

4. Simple traveling. Every time I had to travel in EVE, I'd look at the 20+ jumps and say "Jeus f**king Christ" to myself. Give me a jump drive and let me explore on my own route. If it needs limits, then put a cooldown on it for X distance traveled, but not some absurd length of time.

5. Unmapped areas/new peoples to encounter. Maybe I watched a little too much Star Trek, but man, it'd be great to bump into some unknown civilization and claim some rare technologies or resources... or play god.

6. Open universe. EVE did this part pretty well. Outside of faction-controlled space, it's all free game. Kill who you want and claim whatever you can. No policing, no babying, no boundaries. Just a limitless expanse of planets, people, and resources to conquer.


Well, that's my 2 cents. Like I said, I don't have a whole lot of experience with space sims, so there's a good chance these are already around.

[flarecde]

Two things Freespace did well was using scale and requiring some degree of tactics. Fighting with ships much larger than your fighter or bomber meant making strafing runs, avoiding point defense and defending fighters.

[Adam Jensen]

Take SWTOR's space combat and remove the damn rails.