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BioWare's Star Wars MMO To Have Space Combat
An anonymous reader writes "Big news for Star Wars fans looking forward to BioWare's upcoming Star Wars: The Old Republic MMORPG — space combat has been confirmed for the game. Players will be able to fly around the galaxy in their own personal starships, avoiding asteroid belts, landing in dangerous territory and battling other vessels. The initial news makes it sound like a cross between Mass Effect's galaxy map and a traditional space fighting game, where players will have to find 'hotspots' on the galaxy map in order to enter a particular zone."
I'm having flashbacks to X-Wing and Tie Fighter, two of my favorite DOS era games.
You know you're suffering from post-traumatic-SWG-disorder when you realize that "will feature space combat" actually is newsworthy when you're talking about the relative Star Warsiness of Star Wars' MMORPG incarnations.
Hopefully BioWare will have co-op capital ship combat where multiple players are on a single ship who can fire turbo lasers, missile turrets, repair engines, shields, etc. while other players who can solo (no pun intended) smaller fighter or bomber ships. Raid parties when ship engines and shields are knocked out. Let us put others in airlocks and shoot them into space! Eve Online got it wrong, CCP only let one pilot per ship regardless of size.
How many parsecs will it take me to make my run?
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
But who's gonna fly it, kid, you?
So it will be like EVE Online, except with Wookies?
This game will waste your life. Don't clicky!
No, a good space game could be both realistic and awesome. It'd just be really, really hard to make.
Look, lets break it down. Purely Newtonian physics is doable. No speedometer, no throttle. WASD for acceleration (plus a couple keys to handle up and down), mouse for pitch and yaw. Turn the mouse to turn your ship, then hold a WASD button to accelerate in the direction specified. Stop accelerating and you fly on whatever trajectory you're on until you accelerate again. Limited delta-v (engines can't fire forever) but you make it so that it regenerates like weapon energy and shields when your engines are idle. Thrust for a player controlled small craft could be measured in 10s of Gs or more, with the pilot's survival in the face of such force handwaved as inertial compensation (a perfectly sensible tech if the setting includes generated gravity). You'd be able to radically change course quickly. Bonus points if the exhaust kills.
This would make landing and other finicky maneuvers tricky, which is why you'd include a good autopilot to handle those. In combat, you wouldn't run the risk of hitting much of anything, at least not if the distances were at all realistic, and the simple notion of pointing yourself toward the enemy and holding W to approach would be easy to understand. More complex maneuvers would be possible, like using side thrusters (A and D) to "jink" out of the way of incoming fire, or turning toward the enemy, hitting S to back up, cutting loose with your guns as you open up the distance.
Realistic distances are manageable without making things too small to see. Objects in the distance are automatically zoomed in for your convenience - a zoomed in representation overlays the ships location in your field of view - since even if your eyeball MK I can't see them, the ship's scopes surely can. Justify this by saying the pilot is actually experiencing spaceflight through something like a VR helmet or direct neural connection, and he/she is in a "virtual cockpit". This can also justify sound in space - the virtual interface is taking advantage of your ears as well as your eyes.
So you can see an object a thousand klicks away as clear as if it were right next door, and close the distance from a relative standstill very fast by pointing your nose at it and holding W. Now all you need are weapons. Make the guns fire in a forward arc, instead of straight ahead, make it such that you pick the target, line your nose up with it, let the guns lock on, and cut loose. Beam weapons could be made realistic, with lasers invisibly covering thousands of kilometers in hundredths of a second, and particle beams for the closer in work. Missiles could be kinetic kill weapons. ECM and ECCM would affect targeting accuracy, as would evasive action. Point defense guns would provide missile defense, and added offense at close range, without having to turn your ship about and bring your big guns to bear.
That would be realistic, at least up to a point. And it would be awesome.
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.