Gaming thoughts about a 4x game set in the solar system

[jedidia]

What kind of motion system do you plan to use?

As I said, I'm not really planing anything definite. I did that thing from which the screenshot is taken some months ago (I think it was even before new year, not sure anymore) When I happened to find myself with a bit of time but not motivated enough to work on other stuff, and I was mostly interested in whether I could make aything of the sort actually work.

The result is fully newtonian, just heavily simplified. You arive at the same tile at the same turn as a planet and the encounter velocity isn't too high, you're there. Moons are handled as their own system on "sub-tiles" (tilesize on global map is 10e9 meters, the sub-tiles would be 1e6).

The whole thread is more or less a result of me thinking about what I might do with it, and a Sol-based 4x game seemed cool and not completely impossible...

 

[Urwumpe]

The whole thread is more or less a result of me thinking about what I might do with it, and a Sol-based 4x game seemed cool and not completely impossible...

I could even imagine making a 4X game in Orbiter, if you can tolerate its limitations and its first person perspective. But it would be a lot more work than even for a vanilla game engine, I think.

 

[jedidia]

I could even imagine making a 4X game in Orbiter, if you can tolerate its limitations and its first person perspective. But it would be a lot more work than even for a vanilla game engine, I think.

It's not like I never thought about it...

Something like Alien Legacy might be better suited than a full-blown 4x, because to make an AI that can navigate vessels in orbiter sounds pretty nightmarish (well, maybe OBSP gets there some day).

The whole thing isn't completely orbiter unrelated, though... When the framework is designed with it in mind, one could export the current game-state to orbiter to fly around a bit in the solar system he created. But I'm selling the hide before ever even seeing a bear in a book, really :lol:

 

[Donamy]

Forgive me, but how the heck does it rip the Earths atmosphere away? Most asteroids have a relatively small cross section when compared with the entire volume of the Earths atmosphere!

A really big one.

 

[Urwumpe]

Something like Alien Legacy might be better suited than a full-blown 4x, because to make an AI that can navigate vessels in orbiter sounds pretty nightmarish (well, maybe OBSP gets there some day).

Just a matter of the margin of error, that the vessels allow. Have futuristic vessels with a lot of DV, and even poor trajectory planning will work.

The landing autopilot of the Arrow is for example pretty bad, since it is constantly fighting gravity instead of going with it. But as you can see, it works perfectly fine for such a vessel. You could make it better - but is it really an improvement?

 

[wingnut]

Just a very general suggestion: maybe the boardgame "High Frontier" can provide some inspiration?

 

[jedidia]

Had a little bit of time to do some conceptual prototyping... I think something like this would be the best way to go for the planet maps:

 

[fsci123]

Had a little bit of time to do some conceptual prototyping... I think something like this would be the best way to go for the planet maps:

Is it rotating?

 

[jedidia]

Wouldn't be much point if it wasn't, now would it?