I'm working on a Newtonian 3D space shooter game. There's no drag or speed limit, no "down" and the skybox is selected specifically to make orienting oneself near impossible. Relative velocities can get extreme, so before picking a fight with anyone you first need to organize a rendezvous and then accelerate up to their speeds.

Oh, and I almost forgot that nearly all powerful tools are really weird, like a ship that shoots gravitational points, or a coop pair where one emits gas and the other lights it (zipperback), or a cloaking unit that hides anyone nearby unless they're accelerating.

Also, looking for fucked-up weapon ideas.

Reminds me of space engineers

@AlgoRythm Minus the construction and the unmentioned requirements for a gtx 1080 ti

The ultimate weapon that should be the only thing equipped and can only fire under specific conditions
A time weapon that can either slow down or accelerate opponents
A weapon that set the limit on how fast you can travel (instant deceleration like in the Expanse)

🚀

@skydhash How fast you can travel relative to what? For the most part there isn't a V0, the only absolutely positioned object is a core that you can't travel too far from, and even that is only necessary to prevent people from fleeing the battle entirely.

The thought of a battle playing out in orbit around a black hole came to mind after I read this. Can you imagine how funky it would be to account for time dilation when planning a battle like that? Of course if you did find yourself in those particular circumstances I suppose the events leading up to that point would make it all rather mundane

An item that reverses damage points. Means, if you activate it and get hit, lighter weapons cause you heavy damage, but heavy weapons cause only minor damage. The opponent doesn't see the activation and just wonders why his super guns don't seem to work. Or you wonder how quickly he figured it out and blasted you with a minor weapon. Works until either maximum duration has been reached, or the user deactivates it.

Two-way invisibility - you get invisible, but also blind. Can be gradual, i.e. you can only see at close range, but can also be seen only from nearby.

The equivalent of chaff / flair in air combat - setting up fake objects to distract the enemy. Will also confuse your own weapon systems though.

In general, items that are useful, but have also drawbacks for the user so that the user needs to use them wisely.

@AlgoRythm in Space Engineers, the speed of everything is limited to 100 m/s.
(Due to the Havok physics engine)

I find the idea of a space shooter without a speed limit exciting!

A health swapper that swaps your health with the enemies. It would be really trippy when someones like uno reverse card and you end up with one health.

There must be some kind of limit there. Remember that computers really dont like stuff like that just look at ksp.

Also: Newtonian physics and the gas weapon in space......

@Gregozor2121 Newtonian mechanics, and only for the spaceships.
There is indeed a limit to velocity as neither the playfield nor acceleration is infinite.
KSP has many difficult concepts, like aerodynamics and describing more-or-less solid objects as a net of joints, and it still does really well.

Remember: the enemy's gate is down.

@endor What if there's no gate and every single enemy unit is moving?

@Lor-inc I was quoting Ender's Game 😂 if you haven't read the book you really should, since one of the main 'games' they play is zero-g tatctical military fights. Apparently the movie does a good job at visualizing that part of the book, though I haven't watched it yet.

@endor I quickly looked up what it means. :) I'll probably read it. Still, my question stands. Consider a typical dogfight scenario. Where would down be if there's no gate?

@Lor-inc I guess it would be in whichever direction [the bulk of] your enemy is, if we follow the book's logic.
The original idea is best suited for zero-g person vs person combat: by showing only your feet to your enemy and shooting through your legs, you minimize the potential target surface they have available.

@endor What about teams?

@Lor-inc generally speaking, members of the same team/platoon should agree on the same frame of reference (doesn't have to match the enemy's though). But the whole point of 0g is that it's all a matter of convention, there's no "right answer"

Weapon idea 1
You know those cinematic space explosions with a saturn ring like shockwave? Would be cool if you have a weapon that explodes like that. Has a huge radius but only does damage in that narrow slice.

Weapon idea 2
Cloud of nanobots. When a ship hits it random failures occur

I know I'm a little late to the party... but I love the idea! Have you got a link to a repo or anything?

@lucaIO Right now I'm trying to export from Blender to Godot, as I've finally decided to dump Unity. Once I have a workflow set up and move all my scripts I'll create a repo.

@lucaIO This is my first half serious game project so I need to decide on a stack, learn my tools and fuck up severely a few times before I can produce anything.

@Lor-inc Awesome! I have never developed a game so I'm not sure how much of a difference it makes but I always appreciate it if people use foss in their projects instead of the bloat that e.g. unity is.
I am extremely excited for your game, I don't even play video games but this sounds fun and I'll try it once you publish it. Good luck and have fun!