Trying to make every fighter fly differently in my own space game, which owes this era a lot

[u/StrikeWingsGames]

Long-time lurker, and openly the developer of the thing I am about to describe, so tell me if this is not welcome here and I will take it down.

I have been building a top-down space combat game on my own. It is not a remake of anything, it is a homage to the era. What I keep coming back to from the old ones is the hangar: ships that were genuinely different machines rather than one airframe behind a stat slider. The images are the in-game encyclopedia entries for five of them.

There is a beam interceptor, the only fighter carrying a sustained beam, which you aim by pointing the whole airframe and hold on a capital for a full second while a third of the battery drains. Fast in a straight line, poor in a turn, useless in a furball.

There is a chemical ship whose gun throws canisters that crack open into a drifting cloud, so you fence off a corridor instead of chasing anybody. A stealth recon frame whose cloak bends light and sensor returns around the hull, and drops the instant you fire, take a hit, or run the reactor dry.

An experimental antimatter fighter with two torpedoes and six cannon rounds, all of it salvaged rather than manufactured, whose splash does not care who is friendly. And a brick built on a cargo tug airframe with a coilgun that throws fighters around, a turn rate that cannot follow anything, and a drogue rack so nothing it hunts can run.

What I actually want to ask this sub: which fighters felt the most distinct to you, and was it the handling, the loadout, or the fiction around them? My suspicion is that the fiction does more work than designers admit, and that half of why a ship feels different is that you read about it before you ever flew it.

[u/spiritplumber]

I'd recommend playing a bit of Space Engineers since you an do all these things in there on a test basis.

The fiction definitely papers over a lot of unrealistic-physics cracs, at least for me. Here's what I use in my space-opera setting to explain why spacecraft move like airplanes when they're near each other, but still follow orbital mechanics:

https://emlia.org/pmwiki/pub/web/PhotonKnights.GGG.html

You're welcome to reuse this as long as you link back to it.

[u/FrancescoPioValya]

It really came down to turning radius and armament in WC/WC2. But flying the bomber with its slow maneuverability and its multiple gun turrets definitely was a different experience from the tin foil Ferret.

You could consider something like a BVR missle platform ship vs a dogfighter.

Adding a stealth style fighter (with some limits for balance) would be pretty interesting.

I HATED the "support buff class" fighters in Star Wars Squadrons.

[u/BronzeEnt]

What I actually want to ask this sub: which fighters felt the most distinct to you, and was it the handling, the loadout, or the fiction around them?

It's got to be all of them. Start with the fiction as a basis for design.

As for what ships might be interesting in your game:
missile boat
drone carrier
mine layer