Fun first, real numbers as flavour: how the game is designed
Published
The Moon sits 384,400 km from Earth[1], and in Hostile Flagship it sits exactly there, at its real size. The game is built on a short list of rules. The first one decides most of the others: the game has to be fun first, and real-world numbers are there as flavour.
This page lists those rules, with examples from what is already built. Everything is a work in progress, and the numbers are placeholders until they are tuned.
Fun first, real numbers as flavour
The design notes put it this way: real numbers where they make the game better, stylised where they would make it worse. “Silent space would be dull.”
- Real where it helps. The Earth and the Moon are at true size and distance: Earth’s radius is 6,371 km[2], the Moon’s 1,737.4 km[1]. The maps are NASA’s.
- Simple where it helps. Combat is not a ballistics simulation. Every shot is a dice roll set by the ship’s tech level, its Mark.
Numbers are derived, not made up
Only what physics cannot give, such as a drive’s exhaust speed or how much acceleration a crew can live with, is a stated assumption. Everything else follows from it, and guesses stay marked as guesses.
- Every ship has a real counterpart of its size and role. Its length, empty mass and fuel come from that counterpart. The carrier is modelled on a Nimitz-class carrier, the Striker on the Super Hornet.
- Jump fuel comes from the rocket equation. Ships burn at 1 g the whole way with a fusion drive of 10,000 km/s exhaust speed, close to the Project Daedalus study’s figures[3]. Fuel per trip, burn rate and range all follow from that. Details in jump drives and fuel.
- Gun range comes from gun spread. A gun’s range is where its spread grows bigger than the target. The top-Mark gun uses an M61-style spread, which gives it 1,250 m in game.
No waiting, no busywork
- Jumps are instant once the drive has spooled up, but they cost the fuel of the real trip: “no waiting, but the cost of the real distance”. Flown at 1 g, the Earth-Moon trip would take about 3.5 hours. In game the ships arrive at once and pay that trip’s fuel.
- Jumps have no cool-down. The carrier’s drive spools for 12 s, the Hawkeye’s for 4 s.
- Hot drops and tactical burns cost no fuel. In the owner’s words: “nobody should waste time saving slivers of fuel.”
- Resources are spent per action, never per time. A docked ship refuels from the carrier at once, and out of a fight, guns top up their magazines at once.
- Nothing time-gated. No skill training, no timers to unlock better gear. There is no progression in the game yet; this is the rule it will follow.
The cheapest way through a fight
The best way through a fight is the cheapest one that gets it done: the least force committed, the least lost, the least noise. Brute force works, but it costs.
- Just enough fire. Fire control holds off a target that the rounds already in the air will finish, and moves straight on to the next.
- Loud moves give you away. A hot drop leaves a streak that shows everyone in that sky where and when you came down.
- Retractable guns. A gun drawn into the hull cannot fire and cannot be shot. Bring it out when it counts.
Commanding, not piloting
You command a fleet; you do not fly a fighter. “Orders win; the pilot is a turret on the way.” See orders, not joysticks.
- Orders on a flat plane. Fighters change height on their own when they attack. Near the ground there are four height bands (Shift+1 to 4) instead of a lift step on every order.
- Facing by drag. Press where to go, drag toward where to face, release.
- A command menu that lists only the commands possible right now.
- Stances, not stick work. Reckless, cautious or evasive decides how a fighter fights. To disengage, set evasive.
One world, watched or not
A fight nobody watches plays out exactly like one you watch. Some space games run a simpler simulation for areas off screen, so players learn to look away to get a different result. Here there is one simulation, and the view only decides what gets drawn.
- Tested. The same raid is run twice, once watched and once with the view moved away. Both runs fired 747 rounds and scored 146 hits.
- Visuals never decide. Effects, tracers, sounds and markers read the simulation; they never change it. Muting a sound changes nothing in the game.
The full story is in one world.
A fair fight between equals should cost both sides
Going in alone, head-on, against an equal is a mistake. You win with support, a better angle or more ships.
- Equals trade. In game an equal top-Mark gun shot hits about 20 % of the time, and a fighter takes about 36 hits from its equal, so an even fight lasts long enough to pull out.
- Angle pays. A fighter fires only while its nose is within 8° of where the target will be. The better-placed ship fires more, and the other fires nothing back. There are no hidden hit bonuses for position; the geometry does the work.
Marks: steep and readable at a glance
Every ship has a Mark, its tech level. The rule a player learns once: one Mark up is worth about five of the one below, two up about thirty, three up and they cannot touch it. Few Marks, a big gap each. In the owner’s words: “oh, a Mk3 fighter: it just wasted 30 Mk1s, no worries.”
- In game, accuracy runs 60, 75 and 90 % from Mk1 to Mk3, and each Mark doubles hull and damage.
- Marks set speed too: Mk1, Mk2 and Mk3 fighters reach 300, 400 and 500 m/s.
The ladder is still being tuned to that rule.
Physical limits, not points
There are no ordnance points (“too gamey”). The limits are physical: the mounts a hull has room for, its mass (a heavier fit accelerates and turns slower), and its ammunition. Mount sizes follow real naval mounts, from small guns up to a full Phalanx-sized mount. Every gun has a magazine and a reload.
Chill is peaceful, hot is dynamic
When no enemy is near, a fighter slides out of the carrier’s bay in 4 s. With an enemy near, it is shot out along the bay’s line at full speed in 0.8 s. When it turns “hot” is worked out from the enemy’s reach, not set by hand. It changes the look, not the cost. Its twin is the hot drop: a fall from 25 km to 300 m in about 10 s.
Real Earth, fictional politics
The stage is real Earth: its geography, cities and terrain. Everything political is fiction.
- No real nations’ flags, uniforms, insignia or names on anything you fight.
- No borders on any map, and no disputed territory drawn. Place names are plain geography: Bangkok, Sumatra, Bukittinggi.
- Sensitive landmarks are left out. Civic ones are fine, such as Bukittinggi’s clock tower.
Every control has a key
The game is built to play on a trackpad, so every control has a key: height bands Shift+1 to 4, landing Shift+5, the node map F4, Simulate Shift+S. Features are built into the game itself, with its own controls, not into separate test screens. The in-game simulation is an example: it runs copies of your ships while the real world carries on.
Built for multiplayer from the start
Multiplayer is planned, so the game is built for it from the start: one simulation that decides everything, orders as the only way in, state kept as plain data, and seeded randomness for anything that changes an outcome.
Where realism was bent, and why
| What | In game | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Carrier top speed | 100 m/s | Speeds are compressed for fun. Slow for space, fast for a ship at sea. |
| Air and space | One top speed per hull, in space and near the ground alike; ships hover on thrust | Same reason: one set of speeds to learn. |
| Jump drive | 1 g the whole way, 10,000 km/s exhaust | 1 g is a pace a crew can live with. The exhaust speed is near the Daedalus study’s figures[3]. |
| Jump trip time | Instant once spooled | No waiting, but the trip still costs its real fuel. |
| Point-defence fire | 25 shown rounds a second from a 500-round magazine | Each tracer stands for three real rounds; the 20 seconds of fire is real. A real Phalanx fires 4,500 rounds a minute from a 1,550-round magazine[6]. Every shown round’s hit is rolled, which keeps the fight readable and the simulation cheap. More in how the Phalanx defends a ship. |
| Crew g limit | 10 g on orders, 5 g in a fight | Kept to what a pilot could take in short bursts, for now. |
| Side thrusters | 30 % of the main engine | Enough to sidestep; braking or turning hard still needs the main engine. |
| Weapon ranges | The real order kept: gun, then point defence, then missiles, compressed | Fights stay on screen. The top-Mark gun reaches 1,250 m; a real Phalanx’s effective range is 1,486 m[5]. |
| Sound in space | Stylised, not silent | Silent space would be dull. |
| Lighting | A soft fill light on a ship’s dark side | Readability, not realism. |
What was not bent: the Earth, the Moon and the orbits are at real scale[1][2], and the carrier is 350 m long, just above USS Enterprise’s 342 m, the longest naval vessel ever built[4].
Self-imposed constraints
- Commercial-safe licences only. Every bundled piece must allow a commercial Steam release, and each licence is checked before anything is bundled. CC0 is preferred. See credits.
- Offline voices. Unit voices come from a text-to-speech engine that runs on your PC: no cloud services, no running costs. Voices with non-commercial or share-alike terms were turned down.
- Sound made by the engine. Every sound effect is generated while the game runs, from the game’s own state. No recorded samples.
- Plain data. Ship definitions live in catalogues; a ship’s state can be written out as a plain row and rebuilt from it.
- One consistent look beats polygon count.
How AI tools are used in making the game is set out on the credits page.
Related
- 384,400 km apart: the Earth and the Moon at true scale
- 747 rounds, 146 hits: the same fight, watched or not
- Orders, not joysticks: commanding the fleet
- Credits
Sources
- Moon Fact Sheet, NASA Space Science Data Coordinated Archive.
Volumetric mean radius (km) 1737.4 … Semimajor axis (10^6 km) 0.3844
- Earth Fact Sheet, NASA Space Science Data Coordinated Archive.
Volumetric mean radius (km) 6371.000
- Project Daedalus, Wikipedia.
producing exhaust velocities of 10,600 km/s and 9,210 km/s respectively.
- USS Enterprise (CVN-65), Wikipedia.
1,123 ft (342 m) (after refit) … she is the longest naval vessel ever built
- Phalanx CIWS: specifications, Wikipedia.
1,625 yd (1,486 m) max. effective range
- Phalanx CIWS, Wikipedia.
The Block 1A and newer (pneumatic driven) CIWS mounts fire at a rate of 4,500 rounds per minute with a 1,550-round magazine.