Falling Frontier - Space RTS with Aurora-like attention to detail and warfare?

[QuakeIV]

I'd also personally prefer getting the scale correct, or at least more-or-less correct.

Doesn't need to be exactly right, but the point stands that planets are really damned big.  Frankly you could probably make a solar system detailed enough that you get more interaction and interesting stuff going on than most galaxy-spanning games just by nailing the sheer scale of this one star system alone.  Many people like to assume that the earth is basically already 'at capacity' as such but I am more of the opinion that Isaac Arthur got it right: https://youtu.be/TqKQ94DtS54?t=1185

Basically for a high tech and highly industrialized civilization the earth could potentially house hundreds of billions alone without even necessarily getting particularly close to covering the surface.

There could be fairly massive and powerful civilizations (by our current standards) living on fairly minor bodies in the solar system, let alone major systems like the Jovian or Saturnian moons.

The level of complexity that such an environment could house is frankly quite spectacular and far beyond what most science fiction environments even scratch the surface of.

[Droll]

Game seems cool, though I'm disappointed by the scale fail. As with most space games, ships are waaay too big relative to planets and planets are way too big relative to the spaces between them. I get that this results in more interesting tactical options, but it's hard to claim attention to detail as a selling point when you have ships playing hide and seek in the asteroid belt. Nasa doesn't even check the path of its spacecraft before chucking them through the belt it's so empty.

Aurora and EVE Online are the only games I'm aware of that get the scale right.

Distant worlds with some mods can be coaxed into respecting scale. I can set a relative/absolute scale for my ships for example and make them appear properly small (or I can do the opposite and make them ridiculous) but this hits limitations with respect to AI empires.

The problem with scale in space games is that there is a tradeoff between UI visibility and scale accuracy. You can make ships tiny, but people will complain that selection and seeing their units is now too hard. You make ships hard and now they look as big as the planet which looks ridiculous.

[QuakeIV]

You could just use abstract icons most of the time...

[Droll]

You could just use abstract icons most of the time...

Then there's no point in having a 3d model to look at - might as well just do something similar to aurora

[QuakeIV]

You could just use abstract icons most of the time...

Then there's no point in having a 3d model to look at - might as well just do something similar to aurora

Well, yes, I principally agree