(Decloaking in this thread for one last comment on Elite's acknowledged classic flight controls.) I have not the slightest bit of objection to players of Elite: Dangerous being able to fly ships using the classic Elite flight controls if that's what they like. I think that's a great idea; it's a pro...

To be fair, there's normally a balance point of effectiveness where team size is between 1 and n, where n is somewhere around 4-10 people. Several people can (normally) do more than one person can, which is why cooperative teams exist. Communication complexity only starts eating away at effectivenes...

It is definitely still early. This is alpha. I'm fully aware of that, and I'm happy to give a developer lots of leeway for an alpha... ...assuming they respond in a polite and professional way to the actual user feedback they get, which is what an alpha is intended to elicit , and by doing so set th...

Tom, I'm actually in agreement with you; I think dynamic difficulty adjustment is a reasonable approach to keeping a game fun as players (personally and through the abilities/gear of their characters) increase in power. My question is for those who are bothered by that. I don't say they're wrong to ...

HowSerendipitous wrote:How remarkable, First Contact was the next one on my list....

You might even say... how serendipitous.

Sigh. I normally prefer to look for and highlight positive things, but I can't this time. I installed the Elite: Dangerous alpha last night. After 30 minutes of fiddling with settings, I gave up in frustration -- the thing is just too damned hard to fly. It's the opposite of fun. I'm using a mouse a...

HowSerendipitous wrote:I'm halfway through the Wrath of Khan. How could I forget this? And, yes, more James Horner.

That is indeed a wonderful score, and makes me want to go re-watch TWOK Right Now. Again. (The real one.)

Instead, I will just note that the depth of the theme for this Star Trek score is astonishing.

Gameplay > Realism, but if realism presents a functional solution, why not use it? Because functional doesn't imply appropriate. Just because something works well in one environment doesn't mean it's the best choice for all environments. You wouldn't expect to find a description of a CQB fight from...

Actually, what does happen to assets when the owner dies? In most games an object equals the owner. But what if the player (or just an AI actor) owns several factories. Who owns them then? Exactly what I was wondering. One possibility for handling this is simple incorporation as a side-effect of cr...

Wow. If I didn't normally take my caffeine cold I would be all over this.

I note that at $141,000 they have somewhat exceeded their target of $23,500... and still have 14 days left to go.

Science is never useless. :) These comments about the player as a character got me thinking, though... to what extent will we actually be able to play as a distinct person ? Will we have a name? A visible body? RPG-like character stats? If I switch to a different character and meet "myself," how wil...

As per my usual "plausibility > realism" argument ;), I'd note that if mines are to be included in Limit Theory, what's important is not how they work in the real world but what would be fun to play with in a science fiction game. A reasonable point is that space is really big compared to the vessel...

Where do mines fit into this categorization?

Bear in mind that mines can have different kinds of triggers (or no warhead at all), as well as engines....

Extrasolar is an odd little thing. Currently in testing, the notion of this browser-based project is that you control a rover exploring a distant world. You send commands; hours -- real-time hours -- later, you get back images of whatever new vista the rover sees. While that sounds like the "energy"...

Hmmmm. From a simulationist point of view, I like the idea of a database of tactics, operations, and strategies that NPCs can "check out," improve on, and then check the improved processes back in (as a replacement if the goal is the same, as a new process if the goal is new). I'd be very interested...