I've only played this game for a few hours, but I have a lot of thoughts on it. And I've enjoyed thse skirmish games I've played, as well as the extensive ship designing. I've only really played as the Protectorate because I like the fantasy of converted civilian freighters turned into flimsy warships. But I have just been thinking, is this really even sci-fi?
The game is basically a modern naval sim with sci-fi paint. It's not really spaceship combat. Yes it feels like the Expanse when playing and it is certainly has a lot of dna from that show, but apart from the visuals in practice the gameplay is literally just naval warfare. Like… rear aspect IR missiles in space? That doesn't make any sense if you think about it for more than a second.
The game does a bunch of stuff common in modern warfare that isn't depicted very well outside of simulators, namely electronic warfare and long range missiles. But electronic warfare of this type wouldn't even be a thing in space I don't think, because you would always have such a good thermal image of the enemy it doesn't matter what radar distortions you do in space when they will always have a perfect image of you. But it does these systems really well. Like having decoys with really big radar signatures to fool the enemy is a real thing in naval warfare. Same with big missiles that have a really fast terminal phase. Having your carrier send fighters to deploy said long range missiles.
It depicts modern naval warfare (or maybe 90s naval warfare tbh) really well. It's a fun game because of this. But there is no thought at all to how space battles would actually happen IRL other than the token retro rockets. Like why are all the guns chemical weapons when every ship has a nuclear reactor, it makes no sense to waste so much mass on shell propellent when you could do economy of scale and have a bigger reactor. Why are there space fighters? In space its all about fuel and economy of scale, fighters just don't have a place. Where's the lasers? The only ones are for point defence because the game is stuck in modern naval fighting rather than space where they are extremely efficient. The ridiculously close engagement ranges. And then obviously there is the lack of radiators.
It is fun as an Expanse simulator and I don't want to make the game seem bad, I enjoy it. But when people are saying that this is 'realistic' space warfare I just think they are being misled by pop-culture. I
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