Lomsor,
“Honestly. I think it has more to do with the combat situation being challanging rather then anything else.”
Respectfully – I seriously disagree! I can jump from I:B to E:D, pick one of my small or medium combat ships, go find a PvP fight and fly to the extreme limit of my skill and the ship’s maneuverability. The challenge is there, the stress is there, the unpredictability of fighting a human opponent is there – but the sluggishness is not. I can go from -500m/s to +500m/s in a flash and 1v1 someone doing the same, all the while we stay within a comfortable <2-3km distance to each other, only slipping further than that on purpose.
There are a lot of E:D refugees around here with experience counting in the hundreds or thousands of hours doing 6DOF unassisted flight model PvP. Besides a few differences, the unassisted flight models of I:B and E:D are very close, in my opinion (personally with around 1400hrs in E:D, console and PC experience combined) comparison between the two is completely fair. Actually I:B is a very interesting study in how E:D’s flight model would feel without the “blue zone”, low yaw rates or velocity caps (spoiler: I like it a lot).
I just think the I:B flight model fails in the linear:rotational ratio of the ships’ thruster abilities. The ships turn all right but all that gives me is a good view of my opponent as I’m drifting backwards, furiously trying to change my vector without emptying my blaster capacity doing so. For me it quickly became a showstopper as I’m all about fighters, I don’t care one bit for the big ship gameplay.
I agree the solution is likely not as simple as scaling the ships’ acceleration. I’m fairly confident a reasonable flight model can be reached by tweaking the boost feature. The boost should be cheap and frequent (it should simply regen very quickly and always be available with no delay if there’s >0 boost energy available) and most of all, boost should not leave one drained of ability to fire weapons, otherwise what’s the point of getting into weapons range in the first place?
On G-forces. In design decisions, personally I would favor fun gameplay over scientific accuracy any day of the week. I know everyone may not agree, especially in the niche category of space sims. But games are a form of entertainment and should IMO always err on the side of flowing gameplay and artistic aesthetics over hard realism. YMMV.
On weapons. Fixed weapons should always reward skill – let them be hard to hit but on contact let them do significant damage.
On the flipside, missiles are a very impersonal way to remove a fixed amount of health from your opponent’s health pool. Right now I already see the game favors missile gameplay, and if the current flight model persists, I think it will become the norm even for small ships – instead of closing in for a good 'ole furball, I’ll just dump my missiles and head for the nearest restock point.
That’s one way to play I suppose, but I personally greatly enjoy difficult to aim, slow moving, hard hitting projectiles, delivered at headbutting distance.
Very curious to see how this turns out.
