RE: [OT] Babylon 5 combat simulation game

 ---- noah wrote: 
> It does look pretty - apparently using a real physics model, as
opposed to 
> the Wing Commander P-51-in-space model (grrrrrrr...).  Well, there is
some 
> hope for capital ship fans (we lucky few) - Independence War (out in 
> Europe/UK as IWar, IIRC).  You have a frigate/corvette, with a bunch
of 
> guns & missiles, and it apparently uses something approaching real
physics. 

IWar (probably not related to the iMac :-) isn't really a ship game. you
fly a 'dreadnought' class corvette. 'fly' being the operative word. it's
more like a bomber than a ship, really.

and whilst we're on the subject, i don't know if you yankees were
fortunate enough to have had 'elite' or any of its descendents (i'm
pretty sure that that prince amongst machines, the BBC micro, never made
it across the pond), but they started with 'spitfire in space' and
progressed to newtonian mechanics. it was hard as hell to play!

the later elites - elite 2, frontier first encounters, something like
that, had big old corvette-type ships; the biggest you could get were
2000 tonnes odd. you had to hire a crew.

>  Now, if we could get an AI that handles 3d combat...

well, the one in elite 3 (whatever it was called) could, if not all that
well. the trouble is, there aren't any well-established principles of
true 3d combat (airplanes aren't true 3d as gravity provides a
privileged axis).

Tom

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