This engine was always intended to support a hard scifi game universe, but until now I was willing to make concessions to improve playability. Things such as gravity on ships just made the game easier to play (and to code). But now I'm switching gears.
For one, I've settled on more realistic ship designs for the actual game. Pictured here is a small scout ship. The crew area is the front cylinder, and the decks are stacking along the boosting axis. Acceleration by the main engine produces gravity "downwards". When the ship is not accelerating, there is no gravity inside.This design choice will require me to develop a way for the player to move around inside the ship while in freefall, and I think I've come up with it. But more on that in the future once it's actually been prototyped.
As for other concessions that are going out the window, Jump Drives are among them. Previously, capital ships had jump drives which would allow them to instantly travel to any star system which was inside that ship's jump range. That will no longer be the case. Instead, FTL travel will be accomplished via wormholes. I already have an early prototype in the galaxy generation algorithm which will grow a wormhole network between stars in the galaxy. Ships will need to travel to these wormholes at sublight speed.
