Agreed. I'd really love for us to have to deal with a, if not simplified, at least heavily assisted model of orbitals, with your ship's computer doing most of the heavylifting for the different speeds and such. Orbitals should be easy in the distant future, but they should exist. I'd much prefer if we had to use orbitals for local travel around a planet, with non boosted greater speed than what the max we can do now, rather than jumping to OM points, or whatever that newer "slow quantum jump" they've planned (I forget the name of it) is. Travelling around a planet's surface should be part of the journey rather than just blinking about all over the place.
@@MrAnothis I think only a few would like that. Before OM points or surface quantum traveling was a thing. It took half an hour to get where you wanted. And orbiting would take a lot of time doing nothing.
@@Sakisaka_Rei Possibly, but there are ways to find a balance in between. Chris Roberts is too obsessed by Star Wars and the reason because flying from point to point at average planetary distances is boring is because there is almost nothing to do while aproaching. Just look at how much more reasonably implemented is the docking system compared to the mess CIG envisioned for SC. The point being that, if you want to orbit in a geo stationary position, you should keep the right height, and if you want to enter atmosphere, you should do it at the correct speed instead of just jumping in at 1000kps and looking at the pretty flames. Advanced computer systems and future engines could help a lot, without going full kerbal; jumping to locations, might still be available to bring you in key positions, but you should mind your entry trajectories, at least for what concerns planets with atmosphere, not really too many in Stanton, while the moons really should have almost none.
I've played the demo a ton. Hey everyone there is a free demo! I loved the flight mechanics because it felt very free. Like Alex piloting the Rocinante with all the minor adjustments to vectors
I saw this a few years ago, and the first time his ship VTOL'd on three main thrusters, then transitioned the rear engines to flight mode, I was hooked. And have you see the speeds in Newtonian space?
Did you like my LANDING/DOCKING camera in FoN... it's what I asked Star Citizen for FOUR YEARS AGO, so I got together with David to develop it for his game. David's little game also has FULL-SCALE PLANETS, SHIP MASS and DECENT NEWTONIAN SPEEDS in space i.e. it's a thrust-based game, unlike SC's speed-based artificial fixation. We even worked on a planetary-exodus narrative that didn't quite take his fancy... where you live in space stations surrounding the planet and have to salvage what you can from the planet below. Wonder if David remembers that. :)
Star Citizen is trying to saddle the horse from the back: instead of designing a functional flight model and then figuring out what combat would look like in that environment (something the Expanse authors did with great success), they said "it needs to look like Star Wars" and then went bending everything to make that happen. And frankly, I think it sucks. I can't even orbit a planet in the "best damn space **sim** ever". If they just could let go of these simplistic 500m engagement distances, everything else would fall into place so nicely. And box or rescue missions to or from stations/ships in highly inclined and eccentric orbits, maybe even spinning a bit, would be challenging and a very fun thing to do that doesn't involve pew pew pew. Also, I got murdered on Spectrum as well as Reddit for asking for this.
@@himansu_behera I'd rather not, it depressed me a great bit and lead me to a bad place just by how vile the reactions were. Most of them didn't even try to discuss the topic, they just resorted to ad hominems, of which "Oh, you're just stupid then" was one of the nicer ones. Say what you will about SC, but its community is very toxic.
@@Karackal When I want orbital mechanics, I play a game ABOUT orbital mechanics, like KSP. When I want a game about realistically simulated space combat, I play a game ABOUT that, like Nebulous: Fleet Command. Star Citizen has expressly been a Wing Commander spiritual successor in the vein of Star Wars and Star Trek's style of sci-fi. That's been the core touchstone of the experience they are trying to create since literally the original Kickstarter pitch video. At some point, it's just your fault for expecting it to be something else and getting mad when it's what the developers want to make instead of what you want them to make. Going to see an action movie, and complaining that it was a terrible murder mystery, is not really the fault of the filmmakers.
@@Karackal To be fair... while I definitely would prefer a physics based simulation, you really cant do combat properly while keeping it fun when you have orbital speeds and distances. You simply cannot target by eye on a computer monitor something more than 300m away, and something traveling 8km/s is not going to be within 300m unless it is after extensive docking style maneuvering. Orbital speeds are just too fast for humans to process. So this kilometers distant , beyond visual range target would have to be tracked and aimed at entirely by computer. You click to target and click to shoot, and a blip on the radar you never physically see vanishes. It's not engaging, it's automated. The flight is manual and engaging, the combat is not. So Star Citizen opted, right from the beginning, to be WW2 dogfights in space. The only way to keep the human in the equation is to lower speeds and distances to where you can realistically drag a reticule onto target and pull a trigger. You can see their canopy glass shatter, and the bullets crash off their armour. This is also why you probably wont see interesting and fun combat in any of these games where you can go orbital speeds.
My biggest complaint with sc’s flight model is how the maneuvering thrusters can lift up the entire ship. I wish every ship needed either vtol or lift from wings to stay afloat. Imagine if in order to take off from a pad in an arrow u had to use ur boost upwards to barely generate enough lift to get off the ground and then gun it forward and get lift from the wings
You're right, in star citizen the manoeuvring thrusters are practically as powerful as the main engines. It's completely ridiculous and totally unbelievable.
The problem is that thrusters don't have wear and tear right now - no matter how hard they're working, they can't burn out or take damage. Once that's implemented, maneuvering thrusters won't be able to hover a ship for longer than is reasonable without vtol, lift, etc. It's not unrealistic for the thrusters to be able to hover the ships anyway - if you want a ship to be able to thrust at over 1G in a certain direction, then it'll be able to hover in place in 1G of gravity. That's basic physics. It looks wacky, but that's literally how physics works. CIG's solution is to make thrusters a lot weaker in atmosphere than in space (which also has some roots in real life, w/ vacuum or sea level optimized engines, though it's a little different) such that ships can still pull cool maneuvers in space, but not hover endlessly on their nose in mid-air. Once wear and tear is in, though, thrusters won't be able to fire continuously at high power for very long w/o taking damage, essentially forcing players to use VTOL or wings for lift, like you were saying.
@@thenecrolept I don't even play SC, but if spaceships behaved like spaceplanes it would make me interested - land on a runway, unless you have gimballed engines and launch from pads which point your ship vertically
@@pawepakura5404 Despite the newtonian physics in space, SC has programmed limits on velocities because bad players who cannot figure out space cant dogfight properly. IMO, they were never gonna be able to do real newtonian stuff because the devs were trying to make a dogfighting thing anyways.
Imagine a crossover with Subnautica: doing small suborbital hops to get from the crater to sector zero and back, or doing an orbital rendezvous maneuver with a sinister looking Alterra spacecraft that contains important blueprints (and an onboard AI that is the love child of Glados and Shodan).
@@Karackal Ever since I first found the coffee machine in Subnautica, I've been playing under the assumption that Alterra is just Sirius Cybernetics from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy... There's just _far_ too much overlap, especially when you take the Spaceship Titanic game into consideration 🤣
Helion is the closest I have seen of "realistic" space based survival. The project is closed, but I had great time there. If anyone knows anything that comes close to it, please let me know.
No Mans Sky is a game about flying spaceships, where the spaceship autolands for you. They won't let you crash into the terrain if you tried. I never understood the appeal.
I think the major reason SC opted for doing things this way is that having true orbital mechanics requires rediculously high speeds. just staying in orbit of earth would require a speed of about 8000m/s and with Hurston being an Earth Analog and about the same size it would require equal speeds. but with SC being an MMO and the servers being planned to all interact with one another. having to deal with objects that could be in opposite orbits potentailly interceping eachother at 8km/s each would be trying to calculate a 16km/s collisions you would die without ever seeing what hit you, or you would just completely phase through eachother cuz you'd be skipping hundreds if not thousands of meters per physics frame, it's really hard to keep up with speeds like that from a syncronization stand point in a multiplayer game. it's why most ship in the SC universe are capped to a speed of about 1km/s, to keep speeds low and potential differential speeds reasonable for a MMO server to keep track of.
Another aspect is how broken pvp would be. It's a video game after all, so the consequences of dying aren't very large - imagine a capital ship getting rammed at 0.1% of the speed of light and instantly dying to a new player in his starter ship.
Been playing this game for a while now, it can't be overstated how satisfying it is to fly in this game. The sense of weight and power paired with the excellent flight mechanics makes the simple activities so much fun. A nice variety of missions in an enormous playground. What I'm hoping the future brings is a wider variety of ships to fly and a more detailed surface of the planet. Can't believe it's being made by just one guy, huge respect, this is the sort of game I've been wanting to have
This is the first game since when I first started playing Elite Dangerous, that I wasn't so excited for a game. This looks VERY promising. Especially the flight physics!
Finally, this game getting more attention! I've had it for months now and have been waiting for more UA-camrs to cover it. Thanks for this video, the community could definitely use some growth!
This is literally the next step in evolution for the genre perpetuated by Hardspace Shipbreaker. Imagine being able to break down ships and asteroids in orbit like Hardspace Shipbreaker, and then be able to fly your cargo down to the planet to sell it, with this games realistic gravity simulation. gods that would be so amazing.
I really wish this was implemented in sc! SC always reminds me of tv sci fi like star trek and stargate where orbital physics isn't really ever part of the narrative and while i love that about it, i also wish it was more real to life like this!
I have played the demo on steam and it's very fun. You can feel the weight of the ship and even the resistance of the atmosphere. Correct orbital mechanics and realistic flight models are my jam. I have even flown from one station to another outside of the main missions
I would play star citizen if the orbital mechanics applied. It would make fighting people harder too which would probably keep people safer in the game.
I played the demo and did surprisingly well. I think I like this flight model. It would certainly make pvp interesting when you actually need skill to fly.
Starfield won't even have (manual) planetary landings - I can't imagine orbit mechanics in that game would be anything more in-depth than a menu that shows an orbit animation while you select which of the preset landing sites you want to head to.
Dude you need to play Outer Wilds! It’s a small scale matchbox solar system with REAL ORBITAL MECHANICS. There is no speed in the game - only velocity relative to another celestial object and it really gives you the feeling of taking off and flying to orbit - there is one trophy in the game to dock with a solar orbital station - i crashed directly into the sun x1000 times before i finally got it. I kept thinking that pushing the stick forward would move me forwards - when in reality because i was in vacuum and free fall - not touching the sticks at all my ship will continue moving in the trajectory it was going at the same speed
Flight of nova flight model has its own charm but i wouldn't replace SC's IFCS flight model with it. Edit: Not because I think SC's flight model is better or anything like that - not even close. But because SC's flight model fits in better with the SC's concept. These are two different games entirely with only spaceships in common.
Thx for the discovery ! Looks like a good middle ground between KSP and a 1st person atmo flight sim. Let's hope the SC flight model will have some of those ideas well implemented :)
Here is my take as both a dedicated SC player and someone who would for sure enjoy better orbital mechanics and take of/landing in SC. I think all of this should be divided into multiple issues here: 1. Dumped down take-off/landing. The entire issue here is the mav thrusters in SC which are incredibly powerful to fight and overcome the gravity no matter what it is. Smaller ships can upstrafe with the power of 6Gs which completely negates any ability of a gravity to pull you down. Usual moons gravity in SC is 0.3G and planets gravity is 1G. It is just a fraction of what mavs can output so obviously no one basically notices the gravity in the majority of scenarios. Another good example of takeoff/landing would a flopped game DualUniverse. In their case, whenever you built a ship that is capable of both atmo and space flight you had to have two types of engines and fuel tanks and you had to manage the weight of all that so you can actually fly. For StarCitizen to have better takeoffs/landing developers have to dramatically nerf the engine thrust output in atmo. Basicly explain it by the specifics of "tech" where the thicker the atmo is the worse is the performance of "space" engines. The only way to achieve a more interesting takeoffs/landins is to reduce the possible thrust that is given into players hands, so they have to think about the trajectory of their takeoff utilizing their main thrusters. 2. Aerodynamics. This is another thing that makes SC atmo flight feel bad. We have an overall drag logic but that is about it. It is completely all over the place. In some ships its better, in other its worse. Full hadwavium. No proper calculations behind it nothing. This hopefully (abandon all hope) gets better with addition of a proper lift mehcnaics and control surfaces logic in future. 3. Speeds and orbital mechanics. This is a different type of a beast. Speed are limited due to gameplay and networking logic. Servers struggle to sync clients even at the low current speeds we have right now. Making those speeds higher so the proper orbital mechanics are valid does not seem technologically possible with the current code and logic they have. This does sound like an excuse and I would be the first person to have all that in the game, but it just seems all the dreams crush upon those issues whenever we are talking about the online game where not only it is about the flight but also about combat and precision of shot projectiles between players. Lack of speed also prohibits doing propper reentries and effects of bouncing or burning down. On such low speeds it will just look unrealistic just like the reentry burn right now in SC which is completely faked. I totally feel you with the video, and we can just hope it will get at least a little better with time in future. :/
about 2% of people will love this game, everyone else thinks you float in space and, not that you're free falling off the edge of planets gravity well.
If you try to appeal to everyone, your game will turn out to be mediocre at best: sure, Call of Duty and Assassin's Creed sell well, but they're devoid of soul and not necessarily pieces of art. If you want to make something special you'll always reduce the size of your target audience, but the fans you get will be so much more loyal.
Unfortunately that ship sailed years ago, they tried uping the realism some with changes to atmospheric flight and hover and people lost their shit complaining about it being too hard, best flight model they have had so far in my opinion.
@@Ender240sxS13 Damn so sad that many ppl are too tard to understand/grasp basic physics . Orbital mechanics are not hard at all say in kerbal space program and it's realistic , the only thing that's hard is the calculating part , not the understanding because calculating requires math knowledge while understanding classical physics requires understanding force,mass ,inertia and momentum and their interactions with eachother.
This looks really good - your descriptions were entertaining and detailed. You earned FoN a customer! So does the game - space sagas are great, but I also dig stuff like this and Hardspace: Shipbreaker, where it's a little more task-oriented.
Excellent video about an excellent game. Just one small inaccuracy I noticed and you even mentioned. "Pitching up will increase your altitude at the expense of speed" in fact when the Space Shuttle re-entered pitching up past a certain AOA would decrease the altitude because you are decreasing speed as you are presenting a larger area of drag. This of course is only true in the upper layers of the atmospheres when the aero dynamic surfaces don't produce enough lift. Spaceplanes are super weird when it comes to their re-entry which makes it even more of a miracle the damned shuttle orbiters flew 40 years ago
You forget that the spaceships are extremely modern and go in a hover mode in orbit. This also means that in the future you can fly straight up from orbit (even if it is not efficient or gentle). In itself, this is still very realistic as you continue to consume fuel in orbit. What is missing is that at a certain speed you can no longer fall to the ground because you then circle the planet perfectly. I mean, that’s possible in Star Citizen with some ships, but you have to give it a permanent push or at least I had not tried to get into a perfect orbit. But I am sure that with the right ship on a small moon in Star Citizen you can get the perfect orbit, but that will take hours if not days and you will need good luck.
The onboard landing MFD is what all spacesim games are missing and it always boggled my mind why developers never implemented it. Without it, switching to an “external” aka third-person camera view; always removed me from the immersion. Happy to see that it is finally done.
Just one thing regarding star citizen I'd like to mention. I think it was called decoupled mode that either has to be turned off or on (can't remember exactly) which will disable the automatic thrusters that normally decrease the descent rate etc. maybe try playing with that off if you haven't yet to see whatever it might be closer to what you're looking for. Although doesn't change the fact that SC seems to be set more in an era where engines are advanced enough that people in that age assumingly don't look at space flight the same way they do with current tech though at the same time I don't know what direction they are heading for so I'm just speculating.
You are also overlooking the fact that the ships in the game produce an immense amount of thrust, allowing for maneuvers such as nose-down glides and zero-point turns. This resulted in a complete overhaul of the game mechanics, as a single burst of thrust could counteract the gravitational pull of an entire planet, based on in-game calculations.
I've used the Flight Model to skydive towards a landing pad using the Belly and Air Resistance to adjust my position until I need to burn to avoid crashing.
Star Citizen DOES have orbital mechanics. Your thrusters just work to counteract any movement. Turn off coupled mode or exit your ship and you'll start falling. It was a lot easier to feel in the earlier versions when planets were smaller, for if you had enough velocity you would literally orbit around them.
I've been saying this for ages. The only limiting factor here is the fact that ships have a max speed, otherwise you'd be able to enter orbits a lot closer than you currently can right now. And of course they have a max speed for multiple reasons, first being client-server replication at high velocities (it's an MMO), second ramming ships would be OP, and third it'd really trip out new players.
Did you try Children of a Dead Earth? It's a hard sci-fi RTS space combat game where fighting is based on orbital mechanics. The game also includes a lot very detailed customization for ships, modules and levels, all of it based on real physics and currently existing technology. Developer's blog about the game is a treat in and of itself.
There is something magical about docking with a space station that you can see visibly orbiting a planet. I remember it from KSP and it looks just as nice here. Star Citizens space ports are very flat by comparison, even though the graphics are better, because they never really move.
star citizen is planning on adding control surfaces to the game and disabling the maneuver thrusters at high speeds only using the flaps. BUT in star citizen you are limited to 1km/s
@@Ender240sxS13 hope so. Fighters will be fighting dropships will be dropping. if they keep the current flight model people will get mad they they left the idea behind and that the dropships have no purpose. Fighters have the role of cas and cap in the current build and for the past ten years. When control sufaces come in fighters wont be able to fly around a base at 30m/s instead you would need a dropship or something with vtol engines to not crash and fall due to lack of engines at the bottom. all though i wish they added such level of detail to space travel they probably wont.
SC is not just a game. Its a MMO where typical physics that it does have is not common due to server limits. We have to look at the game not only at the perspective of what CIG should do but also what is the cost of implementing it at the cost of performance.
I really wish we could combine beautiful space sims like this with games like car mechanic simulator. Because I really want to be working on the individual components of a ship like it's a car, then be able to walk around in an open world multiplayer hub.
There was a Game like that once - called Hellion. It had no planetary landing but otherwise had orbital mechanics and docking with a station was really nerve wrecking. Sadly not much development happened after it went into early-access on steam and the small Team eventually disbanded.
This is probably the first time I've heard "beginner friendly entry level" being used about Star Citizen. I don't know a single person who have gotten off the ground without watching countless UA-cam tutorials let alone achieved anything without trying hundreds of times.
Very neat game. I think with SC it's not just "rule of cool" that is making it a non-orbital game however. It's also because it's a multiplayer game with dogfighting. This would be an exceptional challenge to implement where relative speeds could get insane if ships are on different trajectories. That said, dogfighting could be limited to points of interest that are on a predetermined orbital plane...but that's just not in the current design of SC. Maybe their coding wizards could figure it out one day if Chris changes his mind about it...but tbh, don't want to plant that idea until after the game is released...its scope is crazy enough as is :P
Hellion had this mechanic. There weren't any planetary landings, but you controlled your ship through orbital mechanics. Shame it got dropped. The docking sequence at the end of this reminds me of it a lot.
And here I was trying to think and plan my own proper space flying game! Thank you for sharing it! Insta buy - no questions asked! Btw, another game that is kinda good with orbital mechanics and flying (and building your own ships) is Dual Universe. Not that level of simulation but has some nice aspects. Especially atmospheric and space fuel. Just leaving the planet can be a huge problem. (but game has some other problems :( )
Asynchronous no gravity function set to run physics at height and the height in the logic is calculated by how far you are from the center point of the planetary mass
SC is a very realistic game, but the way ships move in atmo is by far the most artificial looking aspect of the game imo. I’m not saying it needs full orbital mechanics simulations but that fine balance that you need when taking off and landing in this game is exactly what I wished for SC. The ships feel heavy whereas in SC they feel like paper in the wind.
@@Ender240sxS13 So people don't really want a space game? They want an arcade shooter in front of a matte painting of space? That shouldn't surprise me but it still does somehow. I remember the original kickstarter as "There is no drag modeled - everything is done as it would be in space." (Chris Roberts, 2012-10-20) and now this turns out to not be what people want? Then why did they give the project so much money? Here's to another ten years until someone makes the game I want to play.
I didn’t get a chance to play when they released that feature so I never got to form an opinion either way about how it felt. I seem to recall the problem being that some of the ships’ engines weren’t powerful enough to actually maneuver which I can see being a problem. Seems to me like they should have iterated on the feature rather than omitting it entirely. Maybe it’ll come back one day.. I can only hope!
Amazing thank you for sharing, this looks like "finally" a proper career space game, we have had zero of these since "Frontier: Elite II" that was released in 1993. There has bene many attempts, and similar, but nothing like it, they have all been messed up by silly ideas... I am Buying immediately to support this solo developer.
You can actually still do this, and you do 'fall' when around planets, you just have to reach a very high altitude in order to orbit at speeds of less than 1km/s, which is incredibly slow and a barely noticeable orbit. You also need coupled mode turned off.
Try turning flight assist off while on a planet in Elite Dangerous. You have to manage all your thrust manually and it feels way different. I've got this one on my wishlist :D
You can achieve everything you just showed if you use decoupled mode in star citizen. The atmospheric flight models, orbiting in freefall etc. You just dont need to match orbital speeds in SC as stations are static currently. But you can get into an orbit, shut off your engines and orbit a planet using just the physics. It's also a bit inconsistent that your initial argument is that flight isn't complex enough, but then claiming docking is too complex.
I loved just trying to reach Orbit with an overpowered Delta Glider in Orbiter. This game seems to scratch that same itch. Does FoN have pro/retrograde etc. autopilot modes to balance out the orbit or do you have to do everything manully?
Man, this looks awesome. I just played the first 2 levels of the free demo and managed to not crash. I doubt I will fare that well on the orbital landing and the hot re-entry levels. I'd love to see this game take off even if it's just slow high quality updates like VFX updates to the stations and like, quests you can take on for different people to haul cargo. I don't care about dogfighting in space so that's not really on my dreamlist of wants. Just a laid back game where you can haul stuff in space with a realistic flight model. Maybe let us earn credits in-game to upgrade/buy new ships, earn faction rep to do more jobs with different entities. Maybe have an apartment mechanic where you can have a little sci-fi apartment somewhere on whatever planet you choose, earn in-game credits to trick it out with cool stuff. You could include mini-games in your apartment to 'PVP' against other players in, like old school arcade games or something. Something with a gameplay loop that we can take at our own pace and not anything that's centered around high intensity PVP or anything.
The best space game I ever played was HELION. The physic in that game had my palms of my hands sweating. It has no planet landing but everything in the game had an orbit.
Aerodynamics is coming SoonTM to SC. Have you tried decoupled? or is it not the same thing? Coupled is the training wheels and can be toggled, makes it somewhat easier for smaller and especially larger ships to manoeuvre in gravity.
This dev and the spacebourne 2 dev should get together and make a game together.
Amen to this
Both great games and both underrated
No thanks, I have better- Star Citizen.
spacebourne 2 dev's fixed it for you there is not just one person who made all of those assets and more
@@Osashes request denied
i wish SC flight model was between this and what we have now
Agreed. I'd really love for us to have to deal with a, if not simplified, at least heavily assisted model of orbitals, with your ship's computer doing most of the heavylifting for the different speeds and such. Orbitals should be easy in the distant future, but they should exist. I'd much prefer if we had to use orbitals for local travel around a planet, with non boosted greater speed than what the max we can do now, rather than jumping to OM points, or whatever that newer "slow quantum jump" they've planned (I forget the name of it) is. Travelling around a planet's surface should be part of the journey rather than just blinking about all over the place.
@@MrAnothis I think only a few would like that. Before OM points or surface quantum traveling was a thing. It took half an hour to get where you wanted. And orbiting would take a lot of time doing nothing.
100%
I wish SC would hire Flight of Nova's Developer to consult on nerd stuff.
@@Sakisaka_Rei Possibly, but there are ways to find a balance in between. Chris Roberts is too obsessed by Star Wars and the reason because flying from point to point at average planetary distances is boring is because there is almost nothing to do while aproaching. Just look at how much more reasonably implemented is the docking system compared to the mess CIG envisioned for SC.
The point being that, if you want to orbit in a geo stationary position, you should keep the right height, and if you want to enter atmosphere, you should do it at the correct speed instead of just jumping in at 1000kps and looking at the pretty flames. Advanced computer systems and future engines could help a lot, without going full kerbal; jumping to locations, might still be available to bring you in key positions, but you should mind your entry trajectories, at least for what concerns planets with atmosphere, not really too many in Stanton, while the moons really should have almost none.
I've played the demo a ton. Hey everyone there is a free demo! I loved the flight mechanics because it felt very free. Like Alex piloting the Rocinante with all the minor adjustments to vectors
This one looks really interesting. I always enjoyed supply runs to stations and surfaces bases in a heavily modded KSP.
I saw this a few years ago, and the first time his ship VTOL'd on three main thrusters, then transitioned the rear engines to flight mode, I was hooked. And have you see the speeds in Newtonian space?
There's lack of gameplay. For me it is kind of boring after couple hours.
@@trashcan7340 Just buy a better ship, a more multi role one. there's plenty to do
Did you like my LANDING/DOCKING camera in FoN... it's what I asked Star Citizen for FOUR YEARS AGO, so I got together with David to develop it for his game. David's little game also has FULL-SCALE PLANETS, SHIP MASS and DECENT NEWTONIAN SPEEDS in space i.e. it's a thrust-based game, unlike SC's speed-based artificial fixation. We even worked on a planetary-exodus narrative that didn't quite take his fancy... where you live in space stations surrounding the planet and have to salvage what you can from the planet below. Wonder if David remembers that. :)
Star Citizen is trying to saddle the horse from the back: instead of designing a functional flight model and then figuring out what combat would look like in that environment (something the Expanse authors did with great success), they said "it needs to look like Star Wars" and then went bending everything to make that happen. And frankly, I think it sucks. I can't even orbit a planet in the "best damn space **sim** ever". If they just could let go of these simplistic 500m engagement distances, everything else would fall into place so nicely. And box or rescue missions to or from stations/ships in highly inclined and eccentric orbits, maybe even spinning a bit, would be challenging and a very fun thing to do that doesn't involve pew pew pew.
Also, I got murdered on Spectrum as well as Reddit for asking for this.
@@himansu_behera I'd rather not, it depressed me a great bit and lead me to a bad place just by how vile the reactions were. Most of them didn't even try to discuss the topic, they just resorted to ad hominems, of which "Oh, you're just stupid then" was one of the nicer ones. Say what you will about SC, but its community is very toxic.
@@Karackal go to play in Sims 2000😂 SC better and greatest.
@@Karackal When I want orbital mechanics, I play a game ABOUT orbital mechanics, like KSP. When I want a game about realistically simulated space combat, I play a game ABOUT that, like Nebulous: Fleet Command.
Star Citizen has expressly been a Wing Commander spiritual successor in the vein of Star Wars and Star Trek's style of sci-fi. That's been the core touchstone of the experience they are trying to create since literally the original Kickstarter pitch video. At some point, it's just your fault for expecting it to be something else and getting mad when it's what the developers want to make instead of what you want them to make.
Going to see an action movie, and complaining that it was a terrible murder mystery, is not really the fault of the filmmakers.
@@Karackal To be fair... while I definitely would prefer a physics based simulation, you really cant do combat properly while keeping it fun when you have orbital speeds and distances. You simply cannot target by eye on a computer monitor something more than 300m away, and something traveling 8km/s is not going to be within 300m unless it is after extensive docking style maneuvering. Orbital speeds are just too fast for humans to process.
So this kilometers distant , beyond visual range target would have to be tracked and aimed at entirely by computer. You click to target and click to shoot, and a blip on the radar you never physically see vanishes. It's not engaging, it's automated. The flight is manual and engaging, the combat is not.
So Star Citizen opted, right from the beginning, to be WW2 dogfights in space. The only way to keep the human in the equation is to lower speeds and distances to where you can realistically drag a reticule onto target and pull a trigger. You can see their canopy glass shatter, and the bullets crash off their armour.
This is also why you probably wont see interesting and fun combat in any of these games where you can go orbital speeds.
My biggest complaint with sc’s flight model is how the maneuvering thrusters can lift up the entire ship. I wish every ship needed either vtol or lift from wings to stay afloat. Imagine if in order to take off from a pad in an arrow u had to use ur boost upwards to barely generate enough lift to get off the ground and then gun it forward and get lift from the wings
You're right, in star citizen the manoeuvring thrusters are practically as powerful as the main engines. It's completely ridiculous and totally unbelievable.
The problem is that thrusters don't have wear and tear right now - no matter how hard they're working, they can't burn out or take damage. Once that's implemented, maneuvering thrusters won't be able to hover a ship for longer than is reasonable without vtol, lift, etc.
It's not unrealistic for the thrusters to be able to hover the ships anyway - if you want a ship to be able to thrust at over 1G in a certain direction, then it'll be able to hover in place in 1G of gravity. That's basic physics. It looks wacky, but that's literally how physics works. CIG's solution is to make thrusters a lot weaker in atmosphere than in space (which also has some roots in real life, w/ vacuum or sea level optimized engines, though it's a little different) such that ships can still pull cool maneuvers in space, but not hover endlessly on their nose in mid-air.
Once wear and tear is in, though, thrusters won't be able to fire continuously at high power for very long w/o taking damage, essentially forcing players to use VTOL or wings for lift, like you were saying.
@@thenecrolept least retarded cig apologist
@@thenecrolept I don't even play SC, but if spaceships behaved like spaceplanes it would make me interested - land on a runway, unless you have gimballed engines and launch from pads which point your ship vertically
@@pawepakura5404 Despite the newtonian physics in space, SC has programmed limits on velocities because bad players who cannot figure out space cant dogfight properly. IMO, they were never gonna be able to do real newtonian stuff because the devs were trying to make a dogfighting thing anyways.
This is what I have always wanted no mans sky to be. Realistic physics in a space based survival game.
Imagine a crossover with Subnautica: doing small suborbital hops to get from the crater to sector zero and back, or doing an orbital rendezvous maneuver with a sinister looking Alterra spacecraft that contains important blueprints (and an onboard AI that is the love child of Glados and Shodan).
@@Karackal Ever since I first found the coffee machine in Subnautica, I've been playing under the assumption that Alterra is just Sirius Cybernetics from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy... There's just _far_ too much overlap, especially when you take the Spaceship Titanic game into consideration 🤣
Helion is the closest I have seen of "realistic" space based survival. The project is closed, but I had great time there. If anyone knows anything that comes close to it, please let me know.
imagine playing No Mans Sky lol omfg
No Mans Sky is a game about flying spaceships, where the spaceship autolands for you. They won't let you crash into the terrain if you tried. I never understood the appeal.
I think the major reason SC opted for doing things this way is that having true orbital mechanics requires rediculously high speeds.
just staying in orbit of earth would require a speed of about 8000m/s and with Hurston being an Earth Analog and about the same size it would require equal speeds.
but with SC being an MMO and the servers being planned to all interact with one another. having to deal with objects that could be in opposite orbits potentailly interceping eachother at 8km/s each would be trying to calculate a 16km/s collisions you would die without ever seeing what hit you, or you would just completely phase through eachother cuz you'd be skipping hundreds if not thousands of meters per physics frame, it's really hard to keep up with speeds like that from a syncronization stand point in a multiplayer game.
it's why most ship in the SC universe are capped to a speed of about 1km/s, to keep speeds low and potential differential speeds reasonable for a MMO server to keep track of.
Another aspect is how broken pvp would be. It's a video game after all, so the consequences of dying aren't very large - imagine a capital ship getting rammed at 0.1% of the speed of light and instantly dying to a new player in his starter ship.
Been playing this game for a while now, it can't be overstated how satisfying it is to fly in this game. The sense of weight and power paired with the excellent flight mechanics makes the simple activities so much fun. A nice variety of missions in an enormous playground. What I'm hoping the future brings is a wider variety of ships to fly and a more detailed surface of the planet.
Can't believe it's being made by just one guy, huge respect, this is the sort of game I've been wanting to have
This is the first game since when I first started playing Elite Dangerous, that I wasn't so excited for a game. This looks VERY promising. Especially the flight physics!
This Physics in Star Citizen will make better.
@@ARCHITEKTVonDerAnderenWelt Probably not at this point lol
Finally, this game getting more attention! I've had it for months now and have been waiting for more UA-camrs to cover it. Thanks for this video, the community could definitely use some growth!
I'm very happy to see someone reviewing this game, it's one of my favorite space genre games. Orbital and planetary physics are realy amazing.
This is literally the next step in evolution for the genre perpetuated by Hardspace Shipbreaker.
Imagine being able to break down ships and asteroids in orbit like Hardspace Shipbreaker, and then be able to fly your cargo down to the planet to sell it, with this games realistic gravity simulation.
gods that would be so amazing.
I really wish this was implemented in sc!
SC always reminds me of tv sci fi like star trek and stargate where orbital physics isn't really ever part of the narrative and while i love that about it, i also wish it was more real to life like this!
I have played the demo on steam and it's very fun. You can feel the weight of the ship and even the resistance of the atmosphere. Correct orbital mechanics and realistic flight models are my jam. I have even flown from one station to another outside of the main missions
You have convinced me to play this. These mechanics are so cool and remind me of what I loved about Outer Wild's space mechanics.
I would play star citizen if the orbital mechanics applied. It would make fighting people harder too which would probably keep people safer in the game.
Sweet video man and awesome recommendation. Much appreciated
Bought this game thanks to you! My first orbital rendez-vous took me something like 40 minutes, what a delight
I bought this game on steam 6 months ago and have hundreds of hours of gameplay. It just never gets old.
I played the demo and did surprisingly well. I think I like this flight model. It would certainly make pvp interesting when you actually need skill to fly.
I wish more games were like this. Orbital mechanics can be fun.
Would be cool if starfield had this.. and star citizen.
Starfield won't even have (manual) planetary landings - I can't imagine orbit mechanics in that game would be anything more in-depth than a menu that shows an orbit animation while you select which of the preset landing sites you want to head to.
I'm happy your video got recommended to me! 😃
Dude you need to play Outer Wilds! It’s a small scale matchbox solar system with REAL ORBITAL MECHANICS. There is no speed in the game - only velocity relative to another celestial object and it really gives you the feeling of taking off and flying to orbit - there is one trophy in the game to dock with a solar orbital station - i crashed directly into the sun x1000 times before i finally got it. I kept thinking that pushing the stick forward would move me forwards - when in reality because i was in vacuum and free fall - not touching the sticks at all my ship will continue moving in the trajectory it was going at the same speed
Flight of nova flight model has its own charm but i wouldn't replace SC's IFCS flight model with it.
Edit: Not because I think SC's flight model is better or anything like that - not even close. But because SC's flight model fits in better with the SC's concept. These are two different games entirely with only spaceships in common.
Thx for the discovery !
Looks like a good middle ground between KSP and a 1st person atmo flight sim.
Let's hope the SC flight model will have some of those ideas well implemented :)
The flight mechanics of this game are quite addictive with an extensive learning curve. Liking it so far
The perfect video to showcase a game like this, showing what makes the game so awesome
Here is my take as both a dedicated SC player and someone who would for sure enjoy better orbital mechanics and take of/landing in SC.
I think all of this should be divided into multiple issues here:
1. Dumped down take-off/landing. The entire issue here is the mav thrusters in SC which are incredibly powerful to fight and overcome the gravity no matter what it is. Smaller ships can upstrafe with the power of 6Gs which completely negates any ability of a gravity to pull you down. Usual moons gravity in SC is 0.3G and planets gravity is 1G. It is just a fraction of what mavs can output so obviously no one basically notices the gravity in the majority of scenarios. Another good example of takeoff/landing would a flopped game DualUniverse. In their case, whenever you built a ship that is capable of both atmo and space flight you had to have two types of engines and fuel tanks and you had to manage the weight of all that so you can actually fly. For StarCitizen to have better takeoffs/landing developers have to dramatically nerf the engine thrust output in atmo. Basicly explain it by the specifics of "tech" where the thicker the atmo is the worse is the performance of "space" engines. The only way to achieve a more interesting takeoffs/landins is to reduce the possible thrust that is given into players hands, so they have to think about the trajectory of their takeoff utilizing their main thrusters.
2. Aerodynamics. This is another thing that makes SC atmo flight feel bad. We have an overall drag logic but that is about it. It is completely all over the place. In some ships its better, in other its worse. Full hadwavium. No proper calculations behind it nothing. This hopefully (abandon all hope) gets better with addition of a proper lift mehcnaics and control surfaces logic in future.
3. Speeds and orbital mechanics. This is a different type of a beast. Speed are limited due to gameplay and networking logic. Servers struggle to sync clients even at the low current speeds we have right now. Making those speeds higher so the proper orbital mechanics are valid does not seem technologically possible with the current code and logic they have. This does sound like an excuse and I would be the first person to have all that in the game, but it just seems all the dreams crush upon those issues whenever we are talking about the online game where not only it is about the flight but also about combat and precision of shot projectiles between players. Lack of speed also prohibits doing propper reentries and effects of bouncing or burning down. On such low speeds it will just look unrealistic just like the reentry burn right now in SC which is completely faked.
I totally feel you with the video, and we can just hope it will get at least a little better with time in future. :/
Wow, what a cool simulation! Thanks for introducing me, since I had never heard about it before!
about 2% of people will love this game, everyone else thinks you float in space and, not that you're free falling off the edge of planets gravity well.
Wow. This looks like it takes the space trucking aspect of Elite to another level. Definitely going to give it a shot.
Wow this looks incredibly fun, thanks for bringing this to my attention
Thank you so much for making this video! I never would've discovered this game without it!
I would love for some of these aspects to make it into Starcitizen. Hopefully they can use this as inspiration.
That would be a bad idea. Only very few people would enjoy a realistic flight model.
A mod would be great, so only the people who would want could play with it.
If you try to appeal to everyone, your game will turn out to be mediocre at best: sure, Call of Duty and Assassin's Creed sell well, but they're devoid of soul and not necessarily pieces of art. If you want to make something special you'll always reduce the size of your target audience, but the fans you get will be so much more loyal.
Unfortunately that ship sailed years ago, they tried uping the realism some with changes to atmospheric flight and hover and people lost their shit complaining about it being too hard, best flight model they have had so far in my opinion.
@@Ender240sxS13 Damn so sad that many ppl are too tard to understand/grasp basic physics . Orbital mechanics are not hard at all say in kerbal space program and it's realistic , the only thing that's hard is the calculating part , not the understanding because calculating requires math knowledge while understanding classical physics requires understanding force,mass ,inertia and momentum and their interactions with eachother.
this game needs a VR mode for the first person cockpit
This looks really good - your descriptions were entertaining and detailed. You earned FoN a customer! So does the game - space sagas are great, but I also dig stuff like this and Hardspace: Shipbreaker, where it's a little more task-oriented.
Excellent video about an excellent game. Just one small inaccuracy I noticed and you even mentioned. "Pitching up will increase your altitude at the expense of speed" in fact when the Space Shuttle re-entered pitching up past a certain AOA would decrease the altitude because you are decreasing speed as you are presenting a larger area of drag. This of course is only true in the upper layers of the atmospheres when the aero dynamic surfaces don't produce enough lift. Spaceplanes are super weird when it comes to their re-entry which makes it even more of a miracle the damned shuttle orbiters flew 40 years ago
You forget that the spaceships are extremely modern and go in a hover mode in orbit. This also means that in the future you can fly straight up from orbit (even if it is not efficient or gentle). In itself, this is still very realistic as you continue to consume fuel in orbit. What is missing is that at a certain speed you can no longer fall to the ground because you then circle the planet perfectly. I mean, that’s possible in Star Citizen with some ships, but you have to give it a permanent push or at least I had not tried to get into a perfect orbit. But I am sure that with the right ship on a small moon in Star Citizen you can get the perfect orbit, but that will take hours if not days and you will need good luck.
Wow truly incredible
When I saw the orbital station it reminded me of the early days of elite dangerous , such good days
The onboard landing MFD is what all spacesim games are missing and it always boggled my mind why developers never implemented it. Without it, switching to an “external” aka third-person camera view; always removed me from the immersion. Happy to see that it is finally done.
oh this would be amazing in VR... hopefully the dev will strike a deal with some VR port modder, after the game is mostly done ofc
Just one thing regarding star citizen I'd like to mention.
I think it was called decoupled mode that either has to be turned off or on (can't remember exactly) which will disable the automatic thrusters that normally decrease the descent rate etc. maybe try playing with that off if you haven't yet to see whatever it might be closer to what you're looking for.
Although doesn't change the fact that SC seems to be set more in an era where engines are advanced enough that people in that age assumingly don't look at space flight the same way they do with current tech though at the same time I don't know what direction they are heading for so I'm just speculating.
This looks amazing
not just look, but feel
Wish we could have had this crossed with Rogue System.
You are also overlooking the fact that the ships in the game produce an immense amount of thrust, allowing for maneuvers such as nose-down glides and zero-point turns. This resulted in a complete overhaul of the game mechanics, as a single burst of thrust could counteract the gravitational pull of an entire planet, based on in-game calculations.
I've used the Flight Model to skydive towards a landing pad using the Belly and Air Resistance to adjust my position until I need to burn to avoid crashing.
Star Citizen DOES have orbital mechanics. Your thrusters just work to counteract any movement. Turn off coupled mode or exit your ship and you'll start falling.
It was a lot easier to feel in the earlier versions when planets were smaller, for if you had enough velocity you would literally orbit around them.
I've been saying this for ages. The only limiting factor here is the fact that ships have a max speed, otherwise you'd be able to enter orbits a lot closer than you currently can right now. And of course they have a max speed for multiple reasons, first being client-server replication at high velocities (it's an MMO), second ramming ships would be OP, and third it'd really trip out new players.
Did you try Children of a Dead Earth? It's a hard sci-fi RTS space combat game where fighting is based on orbital mechanics. The game also includes a lot very detailed customization for ships, modules and levels, all of it based on real physics and currently existing technology. Developer's blog about the game is a treat in and of itself.
There is something magical about docking with a space station that you can see visibly orbiting a planet. I remember it from KSP and it looks just as nice here. Star Citizens space ports are very flat by comparison, even though the graphics are better, because they never really move.
One of my favorite Games although it took a little bit of patience to get into it. I love it.
Thanks for the recommendation!
star citizen is planning on adding control surfaces to the game and disabling the maneuver thrusters at high speeds only using the flaps. BUT in star citizen you are limited to 1km/s
They said they were planning that years and years ago, is that even still a thing at this point?
@@Ender240sxS13 hope so. Fighters will be fighting dropships will be dropping. if they keep the current flight model people will get mad they they left the idea behind and that the dropships have no purpose.
Fighters have the role of cas and cap in the current build and for the past ten years. When control sufaces come in fighters wont be able to fly around a base at 30m/s instead you would need a dropship or something with vtol engines to not crash and fall due to lack of engines at the bottom.
all though i wish they added such level of detail to space travel they probably wont.
This is like the dream mix of star citizen, elite dangerous and ksp.
I wish Chris Robert would hire this guy. That is a beautiful flight model.
As a former Kerbal Space Program player this is what I always wanted!
SC is not just a game. Its a MMO where typical physics that it does have is not common due to server limits. We have to look at the game not only at the perspective of what CIG should do but also what is the cost of implementing it at the cost of performance.
Finally someone think about real spaceflight.
Realistic physics and atmosphere are must have
this is where players can try besting that docking maneuver on an out of control spinning spaceship like in Interstellar
I really wish we could combine beautiful space sims like this with games like car mechanic simulator. Because I really want to be working on the individual components of a ship like it's a car, then be able to walk around in an open world multiplayer hub.
You should look into dual universe, kinda sounds like what you want
FoN+Hard space ship breaker+NMS+Dust141=probably the best game ever made
There was a Game like that once - called Hellion. It had no planetary landing but otherwise had orbital mechanics and docking with a station was really nerve wrecking. Sadly not much development happened after it went into early-access on steam and the small Team eventually disbanded.
Thanks for this video. I have never heard of this simulator before (looks like more than just a game). 👍🏻
Please do some more videos about this game would like to learn more from someone that's played it and has some experience in it
I can't agree more. This is what is missing in Star Citizen.
isn't that decoupled mode?
As a KSP enjoyer, this one looks fun.
This video is mesmerizing from start to end
It’s a fantastic sim, & even plays well on Steam Deck.
This is probably the first time I've heard "beginner friendly entry level" being used about Star Citizen. I don't know a single person who have gotten off the ground without watching countless UA-cam tutorials let alone achieved anything without trying hundreds of times.
God damn, Star Citizen can't ignore that landing system.
Pioneer. Open source game. Also pretty good orbital mechanics.
this is dope, casual KSP lol
I didnt even know this was a thing. Finally
Very neat game. I think with SC it's not just "rule of cool" that is making it a non-orbital game however. It's also because it's a multiplayer game with dogfighting. This would be an exceptional challenge to implement where relative speeds could get insane if ships are on different trajectories. That said, dogfighting could be limited to points of interest that are on a predetermined orbital plane...but that's just not in the current design of SC. Maybe their coding wizards could figure it out one day if Chris changes his mind about it...but tbh, don't want to plant that idea until after the game is released...its scope is crazy enough as is :P
I would love to see this in VR
Hellion had this mechanic. There weren't any planetary landings, but you controlled your ship through orbital mechanics. Shame it got dropped. The docking sequence at the end of this reminds me of it a lot.
And here I was trying to think and plan my own proper space flying game! Thank you for sharing it! Insta buy - no questions asked!
Btw, another game that is kinda good with orbital mechanics and flying (and building your own ships) is Dual Universe. Not that level of simulation but has some nice aspects. Especially atmospheric and space fuel. Just leaving the planet can be a huge problem. (but game has some other problems :( )
Reminds me of Frontier Pilot Simulator with space added.
EXACTLY, im buying this game for sure.
so in star citizen, the gravity is simulated, when you go into space and orbit around, if you turn off your ship it will fall back to the surface
Omg, the space engineer ship asthetic is so visable in this game and i love it
FoN dev and Rogue System’s dev are my two role models. Too bad Rogue System was abandoned.
I’m also working on something mix of both in UE5.
I really hope SC adds one of those rear cameras. Its sorely missing.
Realistic movement is so important. I really wish FPS games would incorporate some QWOP mechanics.
Asynchronous no gravity function set to run physics at height and the height in the logic is calculated by how far you are from the center point of the planetary mass
Definitely going to have to pick this one up and tinker :)
SC is a very realistic game, but the way ships move in atmo is by far the most artificial looking aspect of the game imo. I’m not saying it needs full orbital mechanics simulations but that fine balance that you need when taking off and landing in this game is exactly what I wished for SC. The ships feel heavy whereas in SC they feel like paper in the wind.
They added it in SC years ago and the broader community pissed and moaned about how hard and un-fun it was that it literally only lasted a few months.
@@Ender240sxS13 So people don't really want a space game? They want an arcade shooter in front of a matte painting of space? That shouldn't surprise me but it still does somehow. I remember the original kickstarter as "There is no drag modeled - everything is done as it would be in space." (Chris Roberts, 2012-10-20) and now this turns out to not be what people want? Then why did they give the project so much money?
Here's to another ten years until someone makes the game I want to play.
I didn’t get a chance to play when they released that feature so I never got to form an opinion either way about how it felt. I seem to recall the problem being that some of the ships’ engines weren’t powerful enough to actually maneuver which I can see being a problem. Seems to me like they should have iterated on the feature rather than omitting it entirely. Maybe it’ll come back one day.. I can only hope!
Amazing thank you for sharing, this looks like "finally" a proper career space game, we have had zero of these since "Frontier: Elite II" that was released in 1993.
There has bene many attempts, and similar, but nothing like it, they have all been messed up by silly ideas... I am Buying immediately to support this solo developer.
Back when delemar in game players used to dial in the right speed, turn off engines and enjoy orbiting the planetoid.
You can actually still do this, and you do 'fall' when around planets, you just have to reach a very high altitude in order to orbit at speeds of less than 1km/s, which is incredibly slow and a barely noticeable orbit. You also need coupled mode turned off.
Try turning flight assist off while on a planet in Elite Dangerous. You have to manage all your thrust manually and it feels way different. I've got this one on my wishlist :D
For a space game Newton mechanics is truly must have feature.
I'm not ready for a second space game but it totally looks intriguing
You can achieve everything you just showed if you use decoupled mode in star citizen.
The atmospheric flight models, orbiting in freefall etc. You just dont need to match orbital speeds in SC as stations are static currently. But you can get into an orbit, shut off your engines and orbit a planet using just the physics.
It's also a bit inconsistent that your initial argument is that flight isn't complex enough, but then claiming docking is too complex.
I loved just trying to reach Orbit with an overpowered Delta Glider in Orbiter. This game seems to scratch that same itch. Does FoN have pro/retrograde etc. autopilot modes to balance out the orbit or do you have to do everything manully?
I bet, they just still plan to make something like this for SC too, but ... I need it now!
also i wonder if we could cause the space station to crash back to the surface by maliciously thrusting down for a bit
Man, this looks awesome. I just played the first 2 levels of the free demo and managed to not crash. I doubt I will fare that well on the orbital landing and the hot re-entry levels. I'd love to see this game take off even if it's just slow high quality updates like VFX updates to the stations and like, quests you can take on for different people to haul cargo. I don't care about dogfighting in space so that's not really on my dreamlist of wants. Just a laid back game where you can haul stuff in space with a realistic flight model. Maybe let us earn credits in-game to upgrade/buy new ships, earn faction rep to do more jobs with different entities. Maybe have an apartment mechanic where you can have a little sci-fi apartment somewhere on whatever planet you choose, earn in-game credits to trick it out with cool stuff. You could include mini-games in your apartment to 'PVP' against other players in, like old school arcade games or something. Something with a gameplay loop that we can take at our own pace and not anything that's centered around high intensity PVP or anything.
If you want graphics, you can get assloads of mods for KSP that make it look absolutely beautiful.
Super impressive for a single person.
The ONLY issue I have with this game is a minor nitpick, but the RCS thrusters in atmo just feel off... Otherwise, 10/10
The best space game I ever played was HELION. The physic in that game had my palms of my hands sweating. It has no planet landing but everything in the game had an orbit.
Actually just watched the docking haha this is very similar to helion but looks better
Aerodynamics is coming SoonTM to SC. Have you tried decoupled? or is it not the same thing? Coupled is the training wheels and can be toggled, makes it somewhat easier for smaller and especially larger ships to manoeuvre in gravity.