Newtonian Aurora?

[v431 (OP)]

Hello everyone.
I came from Terra Invicta looking for a more in-depth strategy experience.  To my disappointment, Aurora does not implement orbital mechanics for ships.  I found a post from 2011 (https://aurora2. pentarch. org/index. php?topic=4019. msg39038#msg39038) talking about a theoretical implementation of newtonian gravity, which is pretty much exactly what i wanted. 
All of that leads to my question as to what is the current state of the idea and whether there are any working implementations. 

[Andrew]

No Implementation and AFAIK not being worked on for around a decade

[nuclearslurpee]

Yeah, Steve worked on it for a while and came to the conclusion that, as much fun as Newtonian mechanics are for space nerds, it didn't add anything to the whole 4X space strategy game thing Aurora is all about besides extra micromanagement. Despite the level of detail, Aurora has never been meant as a hard sci-fi simulator although it's a damn sight closer to realism than, say, Star Trek or something.

That being said, I will say that once you do get into Aurora, you don't really miss the hard sci-fi mechanics as much as you might think. The real meat of the game is in the strategic, operational, logistics, doctrinal, etc. and the tactical parts while quite detailed are really a small part of the whole.

[Zap0]

Pulsar 4X is being developed with newtonian mechanics. It's also not yet playable :-(

[nuclearslurpee]

Pulsar 4X is being developed with newtonian mechanics. It's also not yet playable :-(

Is Pulsar still active? I thought it was abandoned several years ago.

[Steve Walmsley]

Yeah, Steve worked on it for a while and came to the conclusion that, as much fun as Newtonian mechanics are for space nerds, it didn't add anything to the whole 4X space strategy game thing Aurora is all about besides extra micromanagement. Despite the level of detail, Aurora has never been meant as a hard sci-fi simulator although it's a damn sight closer to realism than, say, Star Trek or something.

That being said, I will say that once you do get into Aurora, you don't really miss the hard sci-fi mechanics as much as you might think. The real meat of the game is in the strategic, operational, logistics, doctrinal, etc. and the tactical parts while quite detailed are really a small part of the whole.

Ultimately, Aurora is intended as a game, not a simulator. The focus is on a 'physics model' with internal consistency across all sizes and scales, rather than trying to closely reflect reality. I did get extremely in-depth into the Newtonian mechanics, to the point where I contacted a US rocket manufacturer to ask the weight of the cladding on their cryogenic fuel tank, so I could model their rocket correctly Ultimately, I realised that all the extra effort needed for the player to deal with the mechanics was cool in the short term, but tedious in the long-term. It's fine for a tactical game, where those mechanics would be a major part of combat decisions, but as noted above, Aurora is more of a strategic/operational game where fleet doctrine and deployment decisions are usually more important for long-term success than tactical-level decision-making.

[Froggiest1982]

Hello everyone.
I came from Terra Invicta looking for a more in-depth strategy experience.  To my disappointment, Aurora does not implement orbital mechanics for ships.  I found a post from 2011 (https://aurora2. pentarch. org/index. php?topic=4019. msg39038#msg39038) talking about a theoretical implementation of newtonian gravity, which is pretty much exactly what i wanted. 
All of that leads to my question as to what is the current state of the idea and whether there are any working implementations.

The closest you can get between Aurora and Terra Invicta is Nebulous: Fleet Command.

You can get it on steam here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/887570/NEBULOUS_Fleet_Command/

Without the 4x elements for now.

[Zap0]

Pulsar 4X is being developed with newtonian mechanics. It's also not yet playable :-(

Is Pulsar still active? I thought it was abandoned several years ago.

Se5a and the occasional contributor still work on it from time to time. Development branch had commits three days ago.

[StarshipCactus]

You have probably already heard of it, but Children of a dead Earth might be something you're interested in.