Combat

##Combat Mechanics

###Space Combat

Combat in FrEee is real-time, newtonian, and AI-controlled. It's similar to combat in SE5, but ships move in a newtonian fashion, with their strategic speed used for forward acceleration. Ships also get strafe acceleration and turn rate based on their strategic speed and a few other stats such as evasion. Beam weapons have fixed range, while projectile and missile weapons are newtonian like ships, so their range depends on the firing ship's velocity.

###Ground Combat

Ground combat is currently not implemented. In fact, for now, planets don't take part in combat at all, so it's technically not possible to win the game at the moment.

##Future Plans

Here are some ideas for future combat mechanics:

• Combat that takes time in the strategic sense, as opposed to being an an "arena at the end of the universe"
• Pluggable combat engines - if you don't like real-time newtonian combat, you could swap it out for something more traditional
• Planets that take up a huge area of the combat map and are at least somewhat realistically proportioned relative to ships
• "Terrain" such as storms, asteroid fields, and solar coronas
• Ground combat with limited troop drop rates

We will probably not support tactical (player-controlled) combat, at least with the real-time combat engine.