PSA - Realism VS Awesome

Well part of the point is that the good gameplay aspects tends to (but not always) be found in between Realism and Awesome.

Take The Simulation aspect of FA, in particular vehicle movement. You could define exactly how they moved with turn rates, max forward/reverse speed, acceleration, braking force and more, but the numbers and settings are used not just used to create realistic movement, but to allow the Devs extreme control to deliver good Gameplay.

I only thought of it a couple of weeks ago, but I figured we were over the hump so to speak, but hey at least it's here now!

Mike

Anyone think we should turn that into a poll...?

No, not sure what it's doing in this thread at all to be honest, there are more than enough "Orbit mechanics" types threads.

Mike

If it would be "Gameplay VS Awesome" I would fully sign to gameplay.
Realism is not very important to me in sci fi games. Even in SupCom there was never a situation where I wondered if the presentation would be "realistic".

There are other games like "Wargame: EE" where I could not get enough of realism, but in sci fi games it is not on my focus.

Ok there really is one point: I hate RTS where every shot is also a sure hit. Thats absolute unrealistic and a reason y I dont like StarCraft.

I just wanna say that realism is a very floaty term, as since we're this far into the future many things might be possible that would seem completely unrealistic today. I think when they said that they are referring to things such as the size of planets the distance between planets the art style and all such.

you have to remember in which context it was said.

I kinda touched on this;

And I went on to say it's not about being 100% realistic, but have enough recognizable elements to trick us into filling in the blanks or just flat out accepting it.

For example we know the idea behind KEWs would work according to lots of math that has been done and what not, but the ability to do it is beyond us, it's not strictly referring to realism as in our actual capability. We know from testing that lasers are effective weapons in several circumstances, but we're still working on the implementation and technology.

Mike

That statement was actually in response to Neutrino asking me "Is there sound in space".
And I said "Of course there's sound in space. Because we aren't shooting for realism, we're shooting for awesome."
And when they edited the video, they kept the end part.

I believe the common term for what you're aiming for in RPG design circles is 'verisimilitude'.

Ah ha! It's like I kinda said;

"...like many slogans or catch phrases in marketing, it's not quite everything it's cracked up to be."

Just goes to show how things can be twisted even with just a simple edit!

And further re-enforces my point, Silent orbital combat, while realistic would be boring, so adding the sound back in adds awesome and helps the gameplay be more engaging.

Mike

yeah sound in space is something that nearly all space games do have and should have, even if its pure nonsense.

Here's my stance.

Is something cool to play with/look at and has a valid game application? Can you possibly justify it in any way? Put it in. If you can't justify it, find a way to justify it (assuming you have the feature planned anyway of course). Realism takes a back seat because it's a game and good game > realistic (logical/plausible/whatever) game.

But sometimes realism does drive me up the wall, though its more often in broad "why is X class of things behaving like Y when they should be behaving like Z".

Let’s also not forget that with the scale of the units shown relative to the planet size, these fighting units (even the smallest of bots) would be several miles tall, weigh billions of tons, and move at speeds of tens of thousands of miles per hour on land, and be able to stop on a dime. But I can easily suspend my disbelief with this for the sake of gameplay.

Silent space combat would be boring. So the engineers building the Commanders included a sound simulator for all those silent combats. Later, they discovered that it also helped for atmospheric combat, as it avoided the pesky issue of sound lagging behind image due to the finite speed of sound in the air.
Problem solved.
Not that there was much of a problem to begin with.

I'd like to make the distinction between realism and believability, coherence or logic. The first one is how much things stick to our reality. Giant robots smashing planets in each-other face wouldn't be realistic anyway. The others will determine if willing suspension of disbelief will break or not. Whatever you do, as unrealistic as you go, it's important.

But then, there's another concept, the "like reality unless noted". Sure, planets are tiny and giant robots are smashing them into each-other face, but like in reality, for a very basic example, gravity pulls them toward the centre of the planet.
This is why, all things being equal, we should always choose realism. Because it will then be like people expect it. (Sometimes, reality so unbelievable, though, that it may be better to do something unrealistic to keep it like people expect it. Sound in space may be an example, made to follow the rule of perception.)
This is, for example, why supernova or expanding red giants are better than all-sucking black holes for a "sudden death" mechanic. The first ones are realistic, and awesome in their own right. The last one isn't, and anyone knowing anything on the subject will know it. So, all else being equal in terms of gameplay mechanic, it's better to take the (more) realistic option.

Sound in space isn't completely wrong. You're going to hear sounds of your own weapons fire. Anything impacting your ship is going to be pretty damn loud, may be very brief though.

Dude!! You are at least 100% right. Even in SupCom 1 when you sent Fatboy thru a base it was going over all buildings not crashing with them and not colliding with them. It was not awesome but it was not realistic.

Why in the holy name of the Solar Bean would you quote my ENTIRE post, proceed to tell me I'm "at least" "100% right" and THEN try to tell me how I'm wrong? Next time you're about to post stop, take a deep breath and slowly read through your post next time.

Mike

I quoted your entire post because you are @ least 100% right in your entire post.

Actually you were a little wrong. Technically you can never go from orbit, but you can actually change it. ;D

Well next time just say that instead, it's obnoxious to quote wall-o-texts.

What do you mean? Use your words.

Mike

It really doesn’t matter to touch this topic (why you are a little bit wrong) because it doesn’t bring anything new to the discussion. By definition orbit = path of an object (including future path predicted on current conditions or assumptions or expectations). Technically this means you never get from orbit, you just change it by changing the conditions. For example you would go 10 more times around Earth but you came up with idea last second of turning engines that change your orbit so you land on Earth, and you came to Eart after going only once around it. No one could predict that you are going to change the orbit so the orbit was differrent. Once you unexpectedly decided to change the conditions, you changed the orbit of your spaceship. This wrongness is a minor one and not worth discussing because we are strafing away from the purpose of the main topic. I just wrote what I just wrote because you wanted to know why you are a little bit wrong. Otherwise I wouldn't write a thing.