the large "carrier" type ships in Battlestar Galactica would be a uselessly huge target.

Not if done properly.

Is a nimitz class aircraft carrier a big target? Sure. But getting a hit on it is not trivial as there is a layered approach to security using a carrier battle group, jamming, anti aircraft and anti missile technology backed by onshore radar etc.

Taking this into space and Sci fi, galactica wouldn't have been designed to operate alone as it had to in the show, it's just that the cylon attack would have eliminated the rest of the battle group.

If I was to implement your game I would make planetary and space based radar/scanning tech part of it and make large targets protected by layers of backup ships that have to be gotten around.

Getting around those strategies and forming a successful attack plan would be like attacking a base in an rts and would be where the real fun would lie...

If I was to implement your game I would make planetary and space based radar/scanning tech part of it and make large targets protected by layers of backup ships that have to be gotten around.

Getting around those strategies and forming a successful attack plan would be like attacking a base in an rts and would be where the real fun would lie...

This would make it more interesting. You'd need to identify targets with electronics/radar, which would take time.. or take a risk and lob a bunch of rounds at whatever radar blip pops up. Start by picking off the point-defense ships, or blind them by focusing on radar.

I think the whole battle process would go like this:

-use active or passive radar to get a blip

-identify the blip (ship type/armament) - or skip it just attack blindly

-once you've got a positive position/vector, you can begin calculating a trajectory

-the longer you calculate, the more accurate the shots. Of course this can be short-cutted with massed low accuracy fire.

RTS would probably be the best approach to this setting I'd think, with a small-unit count. Maybe 3-6 ships in your battlegroup, otherwise the details would get out hand with micromanagement or would get lost if they were simplified for playability.

The one thing I really appreciated about Space Engineers and it's 'near future' technology claims is that it allowed you to create contraptions and operate them to the finer details (possibly more relevant in medieval engineers though).

As a result, spaceships are being built but many people opt for some forms of space 'artillery' weapons, and outside of regulated pvp skirmish fights to test out fighter designs, range and accuracy does trump it all.

Long-distance guided missiles with sufficient armor to deter anti-missile gatling guns tend to have very good results, but actually, fast-accelerated mass tends to be crude but effective.

With the addition of planets and the possibility of planetary bombardments, the usage of user-created mass-driver contraptions is well en vogue, and up to now, most forms of armors have had only limited success though some clever designs proved interesting:

- The self-repair shell: an outside shell which protects auto-repair units. When taking damage, the inner shell starts to repair the outer shell. May not operate as efficiently in practice, but worth a look.

- Ferromagnetic push: using inverted coils to push-back incoming high velocity projectiles. More efficient when trying to DEFLECT than to slow down.

- Chaff/Flare/Micro-mines: The ability to drop small objects (explosive or not) to detonate incoming projectile on high velocity contact. Prevent high AoE damage.

In other words, Space Engineers took the engineering approach to make this an interesting challenge, but if you're bound to making this a typical RTS, this could suck big time.

With MMOs running over years I think we could go with realistic interstellar (still have to see the movie) space games. Why would there be a space battle within a solar system? There is a battle in earth orbit, but it is linked to battles on earth surface. You know, satellites yamming each other, shooting laser, planes shooting spy satellites ... I think interstellar travel would need a web of intense laser beams to push ships into all directions of space. The battle would be about deflecting laser beams, finding beams, setting up lasers near stars. Capturing deceleration lasers at destination points. Mining asteroids.

From what I've researched, if in the future there were space battles, they would occur at mind-boggling ranges. 10,000 or 100,000 miles or more.

It seems that mass-drivers and missiles would be the only realistic weapons to use, although lasers would be a possibility, but they wouldn't be nearly as damaging.

I've thought of a sci fi setting like this too! As mass driver guns get more powerful, a single shot could destroy a single ship, and targeting computers could guarantee a hit if their target can't dodge fast enough. Battles would have to get further away, and could be a matter of stealth and detection at insane distances. Once the distances are far enough, lasers might become more popular, since your target wouldn't be able to detect the attack coming unless they detect the laser weapon powering up. I also imagined non-laser guns might attempt to get matter to near light speed (like maybe half or quarter light speed), so the attacks might take seconds rather than hours.

So I made a card game with this setting in mind, where you play cards face down, and place energy tokens on those cards to indicate the ship is powering up. That card could be a ship that gets powerful after getting a few energy tokens, or could be a simple bluff that disrupts the enemy scanners when it's revealed. The idea is that your scanners could detect a ship or something getting in range (seeing the card played face down), and could detect it's energy signatures, but you would have to use a scanning ability to flip the enemy card face up, to see what it really is.

I felt like the stealth and scanning part of the game was pretty interesting. Each turn you get 1 or more scans, which you can use to flip one of the opponents cards face up, and a cloaking ability could be used to cancel the scan. However, the way I tried to simulate attacks taking their time to get to the enemy was kind of weird. While I really liked some parts of the game, it was a bit complicated and non-intuitive to teach to new players. I may come back to it someday, but for now it's shelved.

While I really liked some parts of the game, it was a bit complicated and non-intuitive to teach to new players. I may come back to it someday, but for now it's shelved.

This is why I haven't really attempted to create a game in this kind of setting. While I think there's room for an interesting game, it's all very non-intuitive. All of the game projects that I've started that had very odd gameplay were always so odd, that their mechanics ended up being clumsy, confusing, or overly complicated.

The only idea I've had to bring more into the zone of mainstream space combat would be to simply make it like a standard space combat game, except the weapons have very long range and the ships move fairly slowly. Opposing ships that were too far away would need to be found with radar, and you then visually target them if you knew where to zoom in. Trajectory calculation could be automatic as long as you have the opponent in the sights, which would simply increase accuracy. A simplified stealth system could use a basic "visibility" stat which increases as you fire or as an opponent locks you, and decreases when you stop firing, lose lock, or deploy countermeasures.

I think if i were to try a prototype, I'd probably go with a slightly bastardized realism for the sake of being able to actually see your enemy and to make the mechanics less complicated. Since the current paradigm is so far removed from anything realistic, even a small step toward a more reality-centered style might make it interesting.

except the weapons have very long range and the ships move fairly slowly. Opposing ships that were too far away would need to be found with radar, and you then visually target them if you knew where to zoom in.

This reminds me of the sniper arcade game where you saw a very wide view through the screen where your target was possibly only a couple of pixels in size. If you looked down the rifle scope, the scope had its own VR like screen which showed the view at a much higher zoom factor.

You could make it a little like this perhaps...

Opposing ships that were too far away would need to be found with radar, and you then visually target them if you knew where to zoom in.

It's worth pointing out an additional factor with radar: active vs passive radar.

Active radar works by sending out radio wave 'pings', and waiting for them to bounce back. The time it takes to bounce back gives you the distance, and you sweep a fairly narrow radio beam to get direction. The problem here is that your opponent can receive those radio wave pings too, even if they aren't sending any out themselves (thus 'passive radar'). Passive radar doesn't give distance (because it only has half the roundtrip), and direction may be a bit fuzzy, but it does tell you than an enemy is scanning for you.

This makes for an interesting tradeoff: radar lets you find the enemy, but it also warns him that you are looking for him, and may let him locate you as soon as you locate him (or even sooner).

In fact, if both of you are using only passive radar (to escape detection), it may be worthwhile to get much closer, such that you can find your opponent visually, and retain the element of surprise (assuming you spot them first).

In fact, if both of you are using only passive radar (to escape detection), it may be worthwhile to get much closer, such that you can find your opponent visually, and retain the element of surprise (assuming you spot them first).

Sounds like this has all the makings of a good stealth game...

The sniper system is an interesting idea. That way you could actually see your enemies rather than a dull radar blip. I if I went with an active/passive radar type system, I'd link "ping" to a button. So you just "ping" once, it marks returns on the screen after a few seconds (which could just be asteroids or debris) , then you can zoom into those areas. If you ping a second time before the markers fade, it would show you which ones have moved.

I'm mostly just musing here, since I'm currently tied up in another project, but I've made several attempts in the past to do realism-centric space games. I even had a near photo-realistic Jupiter level with it's 4 major moons, rotating cloud layers, etc. It's surprisingly easy to make our solar system look realistic, especially since NASA scans are public domain. The main problem with our solar system is that it takes a lot of fudging to make it even slightly interesting because everything moves so slowly. I had to speed up Jupiter's rotation x20 just to be able to see it move slightly. With a little backstory though - like orbital settlements, captured asteroids, trade lanes, etc, it could have some eventful things happening.

I think if a prototype of a sniper-esque combat system set in a void could be interesting, it might be worth it to try a full game with a fully developed setting.

If anyone else has the urge to try the idea, go for it. It's not my "million dollar idea" or anything. My philosophy is that game ideas are worth exactly $0. It's the time you put behind it that makes it worth something.