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.