In reality, there is (almost) no force to reduce speed in space.
It was quite unituitive to me in the beginning that when I boost the spaceship, it works lke a car on earth rather than a spaceship. I’d have liked the spaceship to continue to gain speed when either the boost was applied or you continue to throttle the engine. They could have kept a fuel limit to keep the speed in check.
What are your thoughts on this? Would you have liked this to be more based in reality or prefer the familiar car based speed/acceleration that’s in the game?
I’ve made a few games with accurate phsycis for spaceships. It always ends up with a lot of players complaining about not being able to control them. The way I usually handle this is having a match speed button or other form of dampening, but it’s still not enough for some players.
Starfield made spaceships behave like aircraft. That’s the other method you see often. It makes more sense to us humans who have only experienced life on earth. It’s why Star Wars does it, even though a person doesn’t even have to control it.
I don’t think either option is “wrong.” I do personally prefer the former, but that’s from someone with hundreds of hours in KSP and many other space sims. For a mass market game, the airplane model is probably the correct choice, at least as a default. I would love a toggle to change modes though.
I have never played an accurate physics game. True, it could become tough to handle, especially in combat.
Now that I’ve played more of this game, I think a mod that simulates accurate physics might break the combat as designed currently.
Here’s one of mine that I did recently for Ludum Dare 53. it’s 2D and not combat, but accurate Newtonian physics. The same applies in 3D with just one more axis to control. I don’t think I have an easily publicly accessible 3D game online.