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Nexus 2 - Jupiter incident Sequel! - needs you

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x4000:
That was one of the more amusing rants I've read lately, I have to say. :)

Not having played the game, I don't really have a stake. But -- if they are taking steps to improve realism while still keeping the game actually fun, isn't that a good thing? Put another way -- is this a simulation or a game? "Simulation game" is kind of a misnomer, and refers to a whole genre that bends reality in order to make the experience more fun. Take SimCity -- lauded as educational. Since when do mayors wield that much power? Why do zoned buildings take time to build, whereas water pipes and power lines and power stations build instantly? And so on.

The list of "sins" of SimCity are easily as long or longer than your list of stuff with Jupiter. And I agree, playing a true space simulation would be very fun and (for many) educational. What I'm less sure of is if it would make for satisfying game mechanics.

I think Jupiter's team made the choice to go as realistic as they could while keeping the game fun for the average player, and while keeping a game-like progression of ship components (which wouldn't necessarily jive with reality, either). That's going to frustrate the hardest-core space junkies, bu for everyone else it at least gives them something approximating reality closer than other games did.

keith.lamothe:
I found Nexus a lot of fun, the hard thing for me is that while the 3d looks awesome I felt that I never had the kind of situational awareness that a computer on my ship's bridge could show me with a simple top-down 2D map and order-issuing interface (maybe they had that and I missed it).

Interesting point on the half-way realism.  I think it was more fun for me than a full-on newtonian system would have been in that I probably wouldn't have gotten past the part where I kept slamming my ship into whatever station/ship/planet/star I was flying towards, but it was also more fun than a rainbow-propelled-dolphin model in that it felt more tactile and so on.  But conscious analysis of physics is not part of my daily life; if it were I probably would have lost hair playing the game.  Like if I played a game about programming that had tradeoff-free garbage collecting or simulated floating point division as taking the same amount of time as integer add, etc ;)

BobTheJanitor:
It's true, I should probably take what I can get and be glad for it. But it would have taken the smallest graphical changes to make that intro correct. Just show the ships coming in at the Jupiter end of the trip with their nose pointed back towards Earth and their main jets firing towards their destination. Bang, done. Admittedly, probably it doesn't bother most people. Once I got in game, it didn't bother me too much either. Clearly it's built to be a game that nods towards realism while still trying to be as loose and gamey as possible.

It's probably because I've read too much Heinlein in my day. He'll have characters in danger with their ship's systems out having to fly by working out ballistic curves in their heads and firing their jets manually. I know that's not necessarily everyone's cup of tea. Some people seem to have the crazy notion that science fiction loses its magic if you make it too realistic. Those people, of course, should be reading fantasy stories instead. Which is an excellent genre of its own, but clearly different from real sci-fi, regardless of how often they're lumped together by lazy bookstore shelving systems.

And though it may not have worked for this game, I think a fully realistic space flight system could still work and lead to some great battles. Look at the battles in Babylon 5 for a good example. While some of the aliens do have sufficiently advanced technology that flies by rainbow, the human ships all follow good old Newton, and fly like they're in vacuum and not in air. Using all directions, spinning around on a dime to aim at someone behind them while still careening in the same direction that their velocity was carrying them originally, etc.

eRe4s3r:
No such thing as real sci-fi - unless you misunderstand what "fiction" means ,)

Newtonian space battles by the way, would be the blandest and most boring display of golf with spaceships ever. If the enemy doesn't want you to you could never actually catch a fleet. And if the enemy wants to stop, not only do you see that too late due to the delay of information getting to you no, the enemy could be flying in another direction while you see him stopping and react to that, and before you see the enemy moving in another direction you would have lost another hour on him.

And please do not ever mention realism + manned space vehicles + fight in 1 sentence. Nobody would build manned spaceships for space combat when they could build a drone for a tenth of the price with 50 times more powerful engines that no longer have to be G-Limited so they don't turn a human into jelly when they fire. Babylon 5 might be many things, but realistic ain't one of them. (And later on with the whitestar ships there is no realistic physics anymore either ;p)

Basically all i really wanted to say is that the "realistic" newtonian physics idea comes up every now and then and is in all cases and for all game types a bad idea.

x4000:

--- Quote from: eRe4s3r on January 11, 2012, 12:56:49 PM ---Nobody would build manned spaceships for space combat when they could build a drone for a tenth of the price with 50 times more powerful engines that no longer have to be G-Limited so they don't turn a human into jelly when they fire.
--- End quote ---

That's a really interesting point.  Forever Peace dealt with some interesting stuff along those lines.  And a few others I read, too.  Basically, the idea that we wouldn't real be suited for going out on space combat adventures ourselves, but instead might just do it through remote-controlled avatars since AI might not be sufficient.

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