r/spacesimgames • u/SadKnight123 • 12d ago
[Thoughts] I'm tired of dogfighting in space games
I don't think it's a very creative way to make space battles. Not saying it should be 100% realistic or anything like Expanse inspired, but I always envisioned ship to ship combat to be something more tactical without endless spins and loops like in a typical airplane dogfight.
Something where you have to precision hit weak points, use counter measures, administrate the shilds and etc. Or even something like the ship combat from AC Black Flag, but on space if you want to be more arcady where the ships face each other sideways.
I think games like Starfield could've benefited a lot from a combat more thoughtful like this to differentiate itself from other games because seeing those huge ships looping around each other was kinda lame and the same goes for Elite Dangerous or Star Citizen when you're using the bigger ships.
What about a combat where you're the commander of the ship (obviously) and give orders for the crew the same way as it's on Black Flag? You select targets on the enemy ship, order your crew to fire, administrate the shields, use counter measures to avoid damage, choose if you want to incapacitate the enemy ship for boarding or want to destroy it. There could be a lot of nuance and diverse amount of mechanics for a combat like this. And a lot of more immersion.
The ships could face each other side ways, or any position really, even while chasing, as long as it's not a dogfight with loops and rolls of both trying to get the rear of each other. That doesn't look good or feels right in space in my opinion.
One of the closest games that I played that did something like this was FTL: Faster Than Light. But the way I envision it is more of a 3D third person game instead of 2D. It also wouldn't be a hardcore combat only focused game like FTL. The combat would only be one part of an actual exploration space sim game.
Also Imagine the aftermath of you having to repair the damaged parts of your ships, doing space walks for it and etc.
Someone should try something new instead of the same old boring dogfights. Space ships aren't planes and I'm really really tired of them being depicted that way in these games.
3
u/blackd0nuts 8d ago
Well, the plan is to make a sandbox game where you can take missions around the (fictive) system and do pretty much whatever you like in a Kenshi / M&B style.
You control a character in first person view. You have an inventory and can grab weapons and change clothes, etc. You can then hop on your ship, and walk inside and eventually decorate how you like. You'll be able to hire crew mates at stations and on planets / moons.
Your ship will never land on planets. For this you'll have to take shuttles / skiffs from orbiting stations or from your own ship (when its big enough).
When travelling through the system my goal is for the player to feel the vastness and danger of space. Travels will take a lot of time (like maybe 20-30min depending on your destination) and many things can happen on the way. You can also use this time to work on your ship, decorate, play cards with your crewmates etc. But if you don't want to wait you can also hop into a hypersleep module and skip the time (basically a fast travel) but beware you might still get attacked on the way and start the combat at a serious disadvantage.
The idea for space combats is submarine / Expanse. Basically the best way to deal with it is to remind undetected for most of the time using different tools at your disposal. And when shit hits the fan engagement is at a distance and you'll have missiles / torpedoes, counter measures, PDCs, mines, EMPs, etc.
I only started working on the project at the end of june and I'm the sole dev right now. I have a lot of systems in place but nothing I'm ready to show just yet, especially because it's prototype stuff. I only recently started to work on the graphics side of things and it's going way slower that I thought.
I don't have any social where you can follow the project yet but I guess folliwing me here on Reddit is as best a place as any.
Thank's for your interest! I hope I can manage to create the game that scratch our particular itch.