If anyone in here has played the game Children of a Dead Earth, it may make you appreciate The Expanse even more (if that’s possible!). The game is a true-to-physics representation of how space battles would actually happen, and the scenes in The Expanse replicate them wonderfully, albeit they look much more pretty. Hats off to the developers of this show, they really did their homework.
I'm a huge fan of The Expanse, Atomic Rockets, and Kerbal Space Program, so I felt like I should have loved Children of a Dead Earth too. But try as I might, I just couldn't find it fun.
I have a feeling that if the game controls were slightly more abstract, it might be better. Less "burn 100m/s retrograde" and more "intercept target", "pull alongside target", etc.
But part of it might just be that realistic spaceship combat isn't very exciting; it's not conducted at human-relevant distances and timescales, it's all over in the blink of an eye, and it's hard to judge whether your salvo of nuclear missiles will beat their swarm of laser drones.
The Expanse does a much better job of making ship-to-ship combat interesting, but I think they only manage that by ignoring some of the more pedantic hard sci-fi rules (stealth ships in S1E4 "CQB"), and they contrive battle settings (Thoth Station in S2E2 "Doors & Corners") that are more interesting than CoaDE's open space.
Still glad CoaDE was made, and it's worth a few bucks for the experience. :)
> I have a feeling that if the game controls were slightly more abstract, it might be better. Less "burn 100m/s retrograde" and more "intercept target", "pull alongside target", etc.
I believe this reflects the creator's conclusions regarding the nature of space combat. that is, the outcome of the battle is more or less determined by the weapons loadout and approach speed/direction. so the real "fight" is maneuvering for a favorable approach and/or forcing the enemy to waste their delta-v, which the game definitely stresses. there aren't a lot of meaningful tactical choices once you're within gun range.
could be a case of being too realistic for its own good. I do think the game would be less frustrating if it had checkpoints within missions. very annoying to have to redo some complicated orbit transfer over and over because you keep losing the final battle.
> and/or forcing the enemy to waste their delta-v, which the game definitely stresses
Totally agree, and this is another case where controls at a slightly higher abstraction would be nice. In the game, sometimes the enemy jukes your intercept, so you do another burn to re-acquire, and the cycle repeats.
A show like The Expanse would operate at that level of abstraction:
Sensor Officer: "Captain, they've detected us and are taking evasive action!"
Captain: "Navigator, match course and speed. We can't lose them."
XO (aside): "Captain, that's a Cortéz-class recon ship; they've got more than enough thrust AND delta-v to outmaneuver us. We need to change the game."
Navigator: "They're evading again; re-acquiring intercept."
The game has you play the navigator, but playing the captain would be more fun.
100% agree, an update to CoaDE (is there still active development on that game? Blog/website hasn't seen updates in some time [1]) could add some save points and maybe some better tutorials. Though, I kind of liked the steep learning curve tbh. I've played probably 300+ hours of KSP and it was nice to see the hard maneuvers based on DV in CoaDE. No reason we couldn't get both that and the actual combat maneuver you're talking about!
PS Season 5 is great.