Children of a Dead Earth

[panzerde]

This. Is. Awesome.

Have played the first three missions so far. I managed the first two without a lot of difficulty, but the third is challenging me. There's a lot going on, with having to change orbital planes, keep distance from the enemy ship (which has guns that outrange you) and launch drones that are deadly, but have limited delta-v.

I love it.

The ship models are nothing super exciting to look at, but are almost certainly very accurate. The UI for plotting orbital changes and intercepts is very good, very easy to use. The glowing lines stuff is actually traces so that you can see the effectiveness of your fire. Those aren't beam weapons at all, but mass drivers and cannon. Quite accurately, lasers are (mostly) invisible in space!

To say that I'm excited about the drones being a major weapons system is an understatement. The lack of drones and reliance on beam weapons (or even worse, manually controlled fighters) is a major immersion killer for me with nearly all space games today. This game gets things SO RIGHT.

Definitely not for the flashy explosions and WWII dogfighter in space crowd. If you're after something about realistic space combat with a great tutorial and a pretty intuitive UI for giving orders, this is a good bet.

Thanks JH - this was a great buy.

[Jarhead0331]

My pleasure! Glad I'll have at least one other person to share stories with.

It's sort of like a cross between aurora, CMANO and Homeworld. Really an impressive piece of software here. I don't know who the developer is in "real life", but he is a rock star!

[bobarossa]

I looked up Q Switched Productions.  The boss is a software engineer who spent 14 years at Relic and Bungie.  Suspect they hired the 'brains'.

[jomni]

Intriguing game. so this is more "science fact" than sci-FI. All combatants are bound by the limits of human technology and cannot use undiscovered alien tech.

[panzerde]

I looked up Q Switched Productions.  The boss is a software engineer who spent 14 years at Relic and Bungie.  Suspect they hired the 'brains'.

I don't know, but whoever is writing the blog (which is also whoever wrote the tutorials and briefings in the game) knows what they're talking about. There's some good stuff on the blog.

The blog for the game also really describes the amazing underlying detail in the game. It isn't just the orbital mechanics that have been simulated accurately. Power systems, armor, crew accommodations. fuel characteristics, weapons...there's been an impressive amount of thought put into this. They developers have really stuck to known, working technologies as well, from what I can tell. Fission versus fusion reactors are used, for example.

[panzerde]

Edit:  also there is a trilogy (only two books done yet though)  that is called "through struggle the stars"
Authors last name is Lumpkin.  Great "hard"  military space opera in the near future. Uses near future weaponry and the spaceships are very fragile and nothing fancy about them.  They are just tubes with thrusters at the end basically. Like in this game.  Things like having to extend giant "heat sink" sails in order to get heat out off of the ship. These have to be retracted during combat because they are vulnerable. if they aren't and get destroyed then eventually people inside  Will die from the heat.  Combat can only go on so long before the internal heat sinks Phil because of the heat involved with the weaponry. Little things like that.  It is great hard near future military sci-fi. Seems to go along with this game very well

I have the first of these and hadn't got around to reading it yet. Opened it up this evening, and what do you know - our very own Mark Graves provided some editing/commentary on a draft of the novel, and did it while he was deployed. Mark is not terribly active in the forums but assists with Command Post Wargaming at Origins and I believe has written some articles for the Mythical Front Page.

[mikeck]

Well read it...because if you like this type of "hard" space combat, you will like the book. Stuff I never thought about: like having to have "shutters" over the lasers. When you fire the laser, an enemy ship can detect it and fires a laser back at yours...blinding the optics and destroying it. So you may burn one hole in the enemy but you lose your entire laser. So in less than a second, a shutter opens, laser fires, shutter closes. Issues with interception, heat dissapation, you name it. Plus, the story isn't fanciful

A technology discovers allows for wormholes. They must be created at the same point in space. Then one is moved to another star and ships can pass from one to the other (basically it's particle entanglement). At this point, the U.S., China, and Japan are the big boys and India, Russia and Europe are in it as well. Each power has anywhere from 1 to 6 planets staked out that it is colonizing. Then war. So no alien invaders. No super hero captains who always make the right call and amaze everyone, no stupid technologies made up to force ships to fight like 18th century ships of the line, etc

[panzerde]

Started reading it last evening, and enjoying it enough that I've purchased the sequel. The Praxis trilogy by Walter Jon Williams is similar, though involving more SF tech, but reasonably realistic space combat tactics.

[Jarhead0331]

Panzerde, have you been able to complete the 3rd campaign mission? I was able to transition planes and match the enemy corvette's orbit, deploy my drones and intercept the corvette with the drone fleet. However, I only had about 12 seconds I think to engage before fly-by and although the drones got a few shots off, they didn't do any real damage.

I didn't try to reengage because I didn't think I would have the delta-v.

How'd you fair on this mission?

[panzerde]

Panzerde, have you been able to complete the 3rd campaign mission? I was able to transition planes and match the enemy corvette's orbit, deploy my drones and intercept the corvette with the drone fleet. However, I only had about 12 seconds I think to engage before fly-by and although the drones got a few shots off, they didn't do any real damage.

I didn't try to reengage because I didn't think I would have the delta-v.

How'd you fair on this mission?

I beat my head against this one for a couple of hours last night before I finally figured out that you're better off telling your drones, which are actually more like fighters than missiles, to orient broadside rather than to do homing. Once I did that the drones opened up with a torrent of projectiles and shredded then enemy ship in seconds. Launch as many drones as you can to maximize firepower.

The other thing to try is to intercept at as shallow an orbit as possible, with as low a relative speed as you can manage. That will increase the engagement envelope of the drones. Honestly though, I didn't need that for this mission. Once I was orienting broadside (which actually means "point your biggest guns at the enemy") it was over in seconds.

I think I ran the mission five or six times before I figured that out.

[Nefaro]

I've curtailed my computer gaming (and purchasing) considerably recently but I think this one will make it's way into my steam collection.  I'm a big fan of Attack Vector:Tactical so this looks amazing.

Same.

While I don't yet have Attack Vector, I did just break out Birds Of Prey last week in preparation for learning it's related physics-based system.  Especially now that there is also a solitaire add-on for it.   8)  Brilliant system, despite a higher learning curve than many.  I <3 you, nomographs.

I'll probably get back into a space mood if Ares Magazine ever gets their ass into gear, and production done, on the High Frontier 3rd Edition.  Which was supposed to be delivered a year ago, but hasn't even had the print materials finalized yet.  Would be a good time to pick up CoaDE, while I'm learning all that space colonization gobbledeygook.

[mikeck]

Haven't played it yet. But what is the deal with the glowing orange fins and solar panel looking things? In the videos, every ship has several. Why do they glow orange?

Also, anyone else find it odd that there is really no mention or discussion of this game anywhere? No reviews, no previews, nothing.

[MikeGER]

Haven't played it yet. But what is the deal with the glowing orange fins and solar panel looking things? In the videos, every ship has several. Why do they glow orange?

Also, anyone else find it odd that there is really no mention or discussion of this game anywhere? No reviews, no previews, nothing.

i don't have the sim (jet  ;))  but i found this link provided by JH very interesting

There is a wealth of information on the systems and concepts modeled in the game here:

https://childrenofadeadearth.wordpress.com

the red fins and solar panels must be the heat dissipating devises and because its in the empty vacuum it can only be done by radiation.

question for the active players: how are nukes (warheads) handled in the simulation.

[Hofstadter]

Bought it too, the fapping in this thread convinced me

[Jarhead0331]

Also, anyone else find it odd that there is really no mention or discussion of this game anywhere? No reviews, no previews, nothing.

There is an engrossing discussion of the game right here. What are we, chopped liver?

Panzerde, thanks for the tip. I didn't try with a broadside approach.