Now is the time, because the time is now!

ok

Just kamikaze with ice flares. It's much more fun.

Not the same though.

I want sharks with frickin' lazer beams on their heads!

Yes, give capships capital starshatter-style beam weapons!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3K_TYpU2B8

A shattering star is not the first thing brought to mind by the name Starshatter.

I loved that game. It was so awesome. The promo video absolutely doesn't do it justice.

Does Starshatter use newtonian physics with their fighters, by any chance?

This article says it does. The game actually looks quite interesting, but, lacking MP, it's not much more than a WC clone, from where I'm standing. That is not to say that its SP does not rock. I'll have to see if I can find a copy.

And I agree with Lecter.

EDIT
They're making it hard for me to buy the game. For one thing, it's nearly as expensive as on launch; and for another, no copies are to be had in Europe, so shipping to me costs 3 times the price of the game. Helllooo tpb.
/EDIT

Yes, it does have Newtonian physics, as well as planets, atmospheric flights, and believe it or not, the whole thing was a one man project.

An early version of it came free on a CD I got in 2001, I have never played the actual commercial version as I have not used Windows since its release.

The "beta" I played did have some things VO could borrow, namely capship control and combat (you don't directly control the capship, you are the captain and you order helm to steer on a course).

It would be awesome of Guild could find that guy and get him to come and work with them :-)

Starshatter has a very realistic newtonian physics flight model. There are no maximum velocities or anything; you have x number of thrusters at specific points of your hull capable of generating Newtons of thrust at the cost of z kg of fuel per second. If you're in a fighter, though, you better think twice before just sitting on the thrusters, as you'll quickly run out of fuel if you do that very often. Fighter to fighter combat takes place at longer ranges than in VO, generally, and guided missiles are at least equally as important as guns. That being said, I used to get in close (<15km) and tear up entire wings of interceptors with guns while spamming chaff and flares to keep their missiles off of me. It was good times.

The capital ship combat was very well done too; it's one of the few games thoughtful enough to provide point-defense turrets on capital ships to shoot down enemy torpedoes and missiles while leaving the main laser and plasma cannon batteries free to pound away at the enemy capital ships.

I'm tempted to see if it works in Wine now.

Damn, I am convinced. Going to try it in wine too now...

I shall try CrossOver and also see how it performs in VirtualBox.

Try FS2 + SCP + MediaVPS 3.6.10. It is single player, but WHAT A GAME!!! Hundreds of user-made missions, campaings and mods...

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=freespace+scp+%2B%223.6.10%22&search_type=&aq=f
(Notice how some ships are 'metallic', and explosion debris...)

FS2 can have newtonian physics or 'airplanes in space', just like VO. Beam weapons, ammo, missiles and everything is there, including "realistic" capships, but only combat is there, no mining/trading/etc

Yeah .. freespace still kicks ass. Capship battles look like a light show of doom there.

I think this thread increased the number of peers by about 50% >_>

Heh. SS failed miserably in wine (it made my screen go black), but performed admirably in VirtualBox.

Yay, I get to fly capships with lazer beamz!

Didn't find any place to buy it, so I grabbed a torrent and took it for a spin on Bootcamp... I ended up playing it all day :D I'm very impressed with the pure frictionless space flight, I'm going to play this every time my internet is down! Traveling during patrols/bombing runs gets a little tedious, though, when the distances are so far that 2km/s @ 4x speed just doesn't cut it lol... I have to admit, though, even that is immersive.