Gaming Children of a Dead Earth

[Linguofreak]

I saw Scott Manley's review of this game and, within an hour of knowing that it existed, had it purchased and downloaded, because this is the game genre I have been wanting to exist for a decade. Given the nature of this community, I'm sure people will want to know about it.

CoaDE is a hard-sci-fi space combat game with real, n-body orbital dynamics, and weaponry including railguns, lasers, and nuclear missiles.

It's the type of game where one of the early scenarios places your adversary in an orbit highly inclined and retrograde to yours, and the tutorial recommends that you match inclinations with him to minimize encounter velocity, but you think "wait a minute, I have nukes and kinetics, and he has a laser. I want to maximize kinetic energy and minimize in-range time for that laser. I'm going for a straight retrograde encounter!" And indeed, your first salvo of nukes comes screaming in at 3 km/s, and he's left with about five seconds to blast 30 nukes out of the sky. He catches a couple kilotons upside the head, and his laser is knocked out on the first pass.

Steam link: http://store.steampowered.com/app/476530/

If there's one weakness to the game, it's probably the AI. It seems to overcommit its missiles offensively, leaving them vulnerable to being picked off by a single nuke from you (whereas you may have 100+ aboard), and is then defenseless against your counterattack.

 

[JonnyBGoode]

Looks like Kerbal, with lasers. :lol:

 

[MaverickSawyer]

Oh, you can also design "modules" (engines, weapons, fuel tanks, etc) in game after completing a particularly nasty mission.

 

[jedidia]

Been playing it for a few days now and am pretty fond of it. I wish there was a persistent campaign where you take assets from one mission to the next, but otherwise it's a lot of fun.

 

[Pipcard]

I haven't bought it yet, but I saw that it can show the path of your vessel relative to various things, such as the enemy ship and even Lagrange points (because it uses N-body physics), in a reliable and predictable manner. It's even possible to rendezvous with a disabled ship in a "tadpole orbit" around the Sun-Mercury L4 point (ahead of Mercury in its orbit).

I wish there was a way to predict trajectories like that in an Orbiter MFD, because normally, your vessel's orbit in Orbit MFD or IMFD would perturb significantly when trying to get to an Earth-Moon Lagrange point, and you would need to make significant course corrections.

Also, even though I find the realism of this interesting, I hope space war is something that only exists in fiction.

 

[jedidia]

I wish there was a way to predict trajectories like that in an Orbiter MFD

So do I, but the situation isn't actually as similar as you think it is. That mission to the lagrange point takes place at one specific lagrange point, inside a clearly defined timespan. I have no doubt that the solution is not based on dynamic n-body physics, but on a custom, pre-calculated ephemeris describing the orbit around the lagrange point that is only useful during a certain time.

Still, I wholeheartedly agree, a visual trajectory planner for Orbiter is long overdue. If only I wouldn't suck at math...

 

[francisdrake]

I started playing Children of a Dead Earth on the day it was released, looking much forward to it. It is different from what I expected, especially the turn-based, strategic play with military symbols only, which reminds me much on my old 'Harpoon Classic' game.

I wrote a review on it:
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For those who have read the "Rocketpunk Manifesto Blog" or like to visit the "Atomic Rockets" page, this game is for you!
Now is the time to verify the battles of the Spherical Warcows! Laserships fight against missle frigates, in the Solar system, with Newtonian orbital dynamics.

Graphically the game is barebone. Most of it is played on a strategy screen, turnbased with adjustable timesteps, using warfighting symbols (circle, rectangle, triangle, etc.). You are green, the enemy is red. Space is 3D, so the screen can be rotated with the mouse in all directions. Scenarios include out-of-plane fights or reverse orbits, making mission planning really challenging. The ships (which can be modified once you have gained some experience) are mainly cylindrical, with glowing heat radiators along their sides to shed the excess heat of reactors and engines.

Close encounters of missiles and vessels are displayed by an action camera. They are bright and fast, full of gleaming missiles, colorfull tracers, glowing and splattering of vessel armour when hit.

The game features a campaign of 18 missons (incl. 3 tutorials) and a 'sandbox' where stock ships or own designs can fight against each other, either in deep space or around planets. Your role is that of an Admiral, giving orders to a group of ships, not a single ship's Captain.

Enough said. If you ever imagined how realistic deep space warfare may look like, this game is for you. And it is the only computer game - to my knowledge - that covers this niche topic.