So this is apropos of nothing — I'm not working on a space sim and looking for ideas or anything like that, but this is an issue that's been rolling around in my head a lot lately, and I thought it would be an interesting topic of discussion and a fun thought experiment of sorts!
I'm an avid fan of both DCS World — a hyper-realistic flight simulator — and Elite Dangerous — a pseudo-realistic "hard sci-fi" space sim. But when I think about which one holds my attention longer, which one provides more challenge, and which one engages me more as a player, it's no contest: DCS World. But the problems with Elite Dangerous seem, to me, to have less to do with the specific design decisions of that game, and more to do with the limitations of the genre.
In DCS World (and any proper flight sim), even during low-intensity activities like taking off and flying from waypoint to waypoint, there's a lot to think about and keep track of. You need to watch your heading, altitude, and airspeed. You're constantly trimming and re-trimming your flight surfaces to account for the aerodynamic changes that come with any sort of minor course adjustment. And when you do have downtime, there's always something relatively interesting to look at, i.e. the terrain passing below your plane.
In a space sim like E:D, it's a totally different story. Making a long journey between waypoints becomes a matter of setting a course, letting go of your instruments, and waiting. Since space is so big and bodies are spread so far apart, you're mostly just looking at empty space for the entire journey, or the same, unchanging backdrop of stars.
And a similar problem happens in dogfights. In DCS World, you have to manage your radar (which is usually a pretty complicated task in itself), and maneuver for position compared to your opponent, all while being very careful about the current flight characteristics of your plane. If you pull a turn too hard for too long, not only do you risk blacking out, but you could bleed off too much energy and send your plane into a stall. It's a lot to manage all at once and provides a very high degree of challenge even for experienced pilots.
But newtonian physics in a vacuum are quite a bit easier to manage. Elite: Dangerous has attempted to add in some systems to keep things a little more interesting than they would be otherwise, like maximum speeds and turn-rates that vary from ship to ship, the ability to target individual modules on the enemy's ship, and mid-fight power management between your engines, weapons, and shields. But these battles still end up mostly being a game of point at your enemy and pull the trigger. This can be challenging in the same way that first-person shooters are challenging, in that it takes practice to aim quickly and accurately, but there's nowhere near the level of depth that something like DCS World provides. Even in more casual flight sims like War Thunder, flying your plane in a way that effectively manages your potential and kinetic energy plays a huge role in dogfights and has a direct impact on your ability to maneuver and aim effectively.
So the challenge I set before you is: How would you design a space sim to overcome some of these issues and provide an experience that rivals the depth, complexity, and challenge of an equivalent flight sim? What sort of mechanics would you introduce to make dogfights more exciting? How would you make the simple activity of flying long distances in space as engaging as flying long distances in a realistic flight sim?
