I need to see spacefleets going bang zap!

ROBOTECH, FOOLS!

I think “Min Mei roll” should become the new way to punk people. You tempt them with the concept of something awesome, like Robotech, then BAM - Min Mei.

Mmm… flak cannons. One of my favorites from FS2. Who knew a terrestrial atmosphere weapon could be so cool in outer space?

We can win!

Wow. I sure was fine not knowing that existed.

I wanted to be Miriya when I was a kid. :(

You are a being of pure evil.

There’s some great anime to consider. I don’t know about that Robotech shit, but you could look at Macross: Do You Remember Love. Better animation than the series…

Sadly there is only limited scope for that, in the context of the game design.

Thanks for everyones links, I’m going through some new stuff now and it’s pretty inspiring stuff.
Just don’t flame me if my game ends up looking like 2 badly drawn spaceships going ‘pew-pew’ at each other… (looks like this now)

Whoa, that looks sweet so far. Color me sold if it turns out as good as that suggests!

Sorry for the dickish question, but I’m hoping I’ll get some nice video footage out of it: are you looking at real naval battles as well? I suppose that’s the ultimate source of the material in most cinematic space battles.

The thing for me that I always thought was underutilized in space battles were collisions. In space, of course, there’s nothing stopping a spinning burning wreck from tearing through a battlefield, turning the unaware into other bits of shiny high-speed shrapnel. It’s kinda why I like the Serenity battle so much, since it’s protagonists don’t fire a single shot, yet delve into a maelstrom of death bits.

cliffsky, are you planning on making the game moddable, i.e. allowing users to create their own ship graphics, basically?
The screenies are crying for total conversions to any popular scifi setting…


rezaf

That is one of the main aims of the game. It’s basically got “do an unofficial star trek / wars / galactica /babylon 5 mod” written over it in clear letters.

Glad you are mod-friendly - that’s more sales right there :)

I love the name of the game and this sentence on the site:

Gratuitous Space Battles aims to bring the over-the-top explodiness back into space games.

Much luck with your game. I’ll be keeping my eye on it.

I’ll second Robotech- especially if you pay attention to the in the background mechs- much richer universe than just veritechs.
like these

Last episode of starblazers has a good space battle too.

I get what you’re after cliffski, but…

These gratuitous space battles are not won by plucky heroes with perfect teeth, but by the geeky starship builders who know exactly what ratio of plasma-cannons to engines each ship in the fleet will need.

I think part of the fun here would be having some personality in the game via those Admirals. Never forget how games like Close Combat were made so much better by having Pvt. Highwater surviving the fight through incredible heroics!

If you can somehow add that kind of personal touch to your big angry spacefleets, it would really help draw players in. Same principle as the X-Com teams, etc.

Yeah, and I think generals’ experience and RPG-like leveling and stat improvement would be an interesting dynamic as well.

I am a sucker for character leveling.

Don’t forget the ruthless culling of escape pods as the capital ships burn as a morale modifier.