Comment by m4rtink
4 hours ago
I still think it would be doable if done right. There are so many interesting elements of modern science and hard SF that could be included to introduce interesting game mechanics:
- adding various types of radiators (solid, droplet, etc.), gloving when weapons fire or engines activate, shooting them off prevents system from running
- planets on eccentric orbits with wildly varying surface conditions in mere days as the planet periodically get closer and farther to the star, from frozen solid to metals flowing like water days apart
- aerostat habitats in the atmosphere on gas giants or Venus like worlds, you could fly around but go to low (or get swept by a storm) and you might get crushed
- radiation belts, sun grazing comets or energy harvesting stations very close to a stellar body, can enter for a very limited time until even your shielded systems burn out - and good like with repair space walks!
- tidally locked bodies, where one side is always illuminated and the other one has an eternal night, with perhaps a thin habitable belt where conditions are just right for life, presenting interesting options for story telling and world building
Doing all of that math and tracking them is a huge order. Outer Wilds famously simulates an entire solar system using Unity and they had an issue early in development where bugs would occur more frequently as the player visited the edge of the solar system due to floating point math getting wonky in the engine and the solar system's Sun being 0,0,0 coordinates. Their solution? Make the player coordinate 0,0,0 and everything else moves _around_ the player. That's right, in Outer Wilds, when you jump, the planet you're on is actually moving away from you. But they managed to use this method to simulate newtonian physics pretty well.
And even that solution is only temporary. Its possible to watch the simulation go on so long that planets begin to de-orbit the sun as the math simulation breaks down. For spoiler reasons players don't run into this issue, but it exists.
PS: If you haven't played Outer Wilds and you enjoy exploration/puzzle games go play it. Avoid spoilers if possible.