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Where will the combat take place? What kinds of initial orbits? These are important design factors.

The problem with this kind of thing is that the AI just isn't bright enough to use ships designed for human control in an even vaguely correct manner. For example, I'm working on a carrier/drone centric design, and it will absolutely get shredded if placed under AI control. Design for this kind of fight is absolutely designing around what the AI knows how to use, not what is actually effective against an opponent who isn't dumb. It also pushes heavily for low-dV fleets, because the AI doesn't maneuver, and won't try to punish you for not having enough dV by dodging your intercept and then laughing as you go on a one way trip to nowhere.

My suspicion is that missiles in particular are overpowered when used against the AI (because they won't dodge or change orbits effectively, or use drones effectively to interdict incoming missiles), and underpowered when used by the AI (because the AI has no idea how to actually use missiles effectively, and good human players can just dodge them; not to mention use 'smart' decoys that the AI has no idea how to prevent). And missiles are cheap enough within this limit that they'll likely be a dominant strategy; every fleet will include a missile truck of some sort and every fleet will wipe every single other fleet (when controlled by a player against an AI). On top of that, I think we're waiting for at least some review of the questionable physicality of certain designs - most notably supereffective micro-NTR rockets and minifission reactors.

Also, uh, without streaming or some kind of verification you can't stop someone from winning every fight by just trying again and again until they get it right, then posting three victory screenshots.

Probably? Multiplayer is a whole different problem; one filled with fundamental design and coding issues. It's not unsolvable, but it's a major, major undertaking that's out of line with what resources appear to be available. You'd probably want at least one other developer dedicated to that, as well as doing more intensive QA because multiplayer is bug city.

I think the only way multiplayer will ever be a thing is if qswitched decides to go all in on this. That would probably mean launching a Kickstarter, or talking to a publisher like Matrix Games (who publish a lot of niche simulation and wargames, such as Command: Modern Air and Naval Operations, or Starshatter). If that happens, I'll certainly be there, but it doesn't seem terribly likely at this point.


Right, the arbitrary laser ranges, combined with the lack of intercept logic for missiles, make missiles basically nonfunctional. With the somewhat-ridiculous 10 kps+ NTR missiles and some careful hand-maneuvering, it may be possible to engage a target starting 250 km away, but it's not exactly fun, easy, or interesting. A more robust approach might be to use heavily laser-armored drones with missile magazines as a sort of multi-stage missile and use raw dV to overcome, but still - it's not terribly great. 

I am very excited about the possibility of tournaments, but I agree that human-vs-AI is probably unworkable. Specifically:
* Autocalculated kinetic ranges are much lower than effective, and AFAIK the AI never uses "ignore weapon range".
* It is easy to get AI missiles to engage decoys where a player would probably just scatter--and if not, the AI has weaknesses in handling missile thrust to get hits on maneuvering targets.
Put those huge advantages together with more subtle optimizations, and I suspect that most competent players would go 3:0 against everything.

What would work, and would probably take relatively little developer time, is allowing AI-vs-AI battles. That is how almost every tournament is run in the other design game I play (From the Depths), and has worked quite well. (Incidentally, FTD did get workable multiplayer when it was still a one-man dev team, although I think MP has always had enough severe bugs to just teeter on the edge of usability.)

Edit: I also think there are some rough edges in the physics calculations (particularly for reactors) that need to be hammered out.

I think multiplayer isn't sufficient, and it probably isn't necessary. I think that there are a lot of hard problems that this game can help solve, or at least raise some very interesting questions about - if nothing else it's an amazing place to refight the old purple-green laser-missile wars. But a full answer to "how do space combat" requires, I think, more than an ability to put ships up against each other in the style of a death-match; it requires a harder look at assumptions of economics and logistics which can't really be done in simulation (or, at least, this simulation isn't set up for it), and must be argued for or demonstrated through citation. 

Incidentally, there's an easy-enough way to simulate any fight you want for the purpose of answering questions, which is to simply give the player the ability to control both sides in a fight, along with an ability to pause (and, ideally, the ability to save a game so that specific scenarios can be worked through multiple times). No multiplayer required, though a community that challenges assumptions and suggests different approaches - taking each other's saves and showing how to get one side or another to win an engagement - is probably essential.


That might be an interesting game, but it's a very far cry from answering "how do space combat"; you end up building around the limitations of the AI to the point that the fleets themselves are just gross over-optimized parodies.

Considering the issues, making the tournament AI vs AI sounds good to me.

I also prefer AI vs AI