You have finally traversed the vastness of space to find SpaceSimCentral, one of the most obscure outposts in our known space. Now that you have arrived you can relax in knowing that you are protected by this community of space going adventurers. So be friendly and introduce yourself to your fellow adventurers.
My name is David and I'm afraid I might be qualified as an "old-timer" as I just checked that my first space game was probably "Satellite Attack" (Philips Videopac) in 1981... ouch
More recently I've been developing my own spacesim (Alliance Space Guard) in an attempt to combine "realistic" ship systems and orbital mechanics with a "regular" sci-fi sandbox combat game. This is why I didn't join sooner as I wanted to have enough to show, already took me 5 years full-time actually!
I'll post some more information in the proper forum to see if some here may be interested in the concept.
Very impressive simulation and I look forward to seeing more of it, especial as Rogue System is on hold.
One thing I would point out and I'm sure I will not be the only one too say this, is that you should consider moving the game into our own galaxy. I see your reasons for not doing it on the website but I would say that the 12,000 ly around earth would give the game a greater grounding than a made up galaxy.
The main idea behind the made-up galaxy is to somewhat alleviate the pure randomness and lack of structure indeed. It is obviously very unrealistic in density and size but because of its overall spiral shape it really helps differentiate regions.
All systems are placed on galactic orbits and their respective velocities depend on the enclosed mass: this makes the external ones move much faster and they are consequently more difficult to reach in average (because of the extra DeltaV the ship has to compensate for).
Also to be honest I'm still discovering the properties resulting from the jump mechanics! Yet I'm expecting to see some kind of "galactic shipping lanes" emerge between main civilization centers, partially following loose elliptic arcs and with actual waypoints regularly changing over time due to the varying local orbital configurations.
If it is confirmed this would be very nice because then the network of space stations will follow an underlying logic that should clearly appear to the player through day to day navigation. It will also concentrate the action and traffic around specific areas, making nearby ones very remote and dangerous : a valuable effect in an otherwise very empty space.
I'd have to check my "Starflight Handbook" again ^^ but unless I'm mistaken a local Milky Way neighborhood of 4000 systems would probably be very uniform in comparison, leading to very random locations without much structure I think.
So I do agree with you that the more grounding the better, although ideally I'd prefer to have as much of the needed work emerge from the game mechanics if possible. I hope this helps answering your objection! Anyway I'll have more concrete results as I work on the galaxy populating algorithm. What's for sure is that it will make use of the flight planner.
Welcome to SSC David, and excuse the sites auto spam and link checker but 5+ years of work on a game is definitely shows a passion and obsession to your creation and cannot wait to see more and more and you push it for a official release.
