I’ve spent the past four nights sitting in the darkened cockpit of a fictional but mostly plausible spaceship. For an hour or two at a time, I busily turn knobs, flip switches, and watch gauges. Every once in a great while, I’ll very slowly fly a few hundred meters out from the station where the ship spends most of its time moored, then turn around and very slowly fly back—and then I’ll stop and go back to the switches and gauges.

Welcome to Rogue System. It’s a little different from the kinds of combat-focused space sims we’ve had our hands on lately, like Elite: Dangerous—this is much more a module for the realism-oriented DCS World simulation package, crossed with a bit of Kerbal Space Program just for grits and shins. It’s also not actually much of a game yet—there are six tutorial missions you can "play" through, and you can also kind-of-sort-of fly around in free flight mode (by selecting one of the tutorial missions and turning the "tutorial" part off), but the actual game itself is still in early development.

Well—sort of. Rogue System has actually been busy being born for more than two years, and developer Michael Juliano ran an unsuccessful crowdfunding campaign in 2013 to try to assist in funding development of the game. After that didn’t work out, Juliano put development on hold and returned to his day job; now, after a considerable hiatus, Juliano has brought on publisher Image Space Inc and has released a completely redone version of the game as an early access title.

"While content is currently minimal at best, it is based now on a foundation that allows me to confidently start layering on the true gameplay that will make up the bulk of Rogue System’s Core Module," explained Juliano in his June 11 developer update. As explained in the update, development on more content is proceeding, with Juliano using the proceeds from early access sales to fund things as development goes on.

Oddly addicting

Rogue System right now is very minimal, but it’s also oddly addicting. Players can fly (though "fly" is probably more accurate) the fictional FireArc spacecraft through six tutorial simulations, most of which involve walking the player through complex operational procedures that seem very similar to the kinds of procedures required to operate actual aircraft—something that will no doubt appeal greatly to the sim-heads who think Elite: Dangerous is far too arcade-like.

To prepare your FireArc for undocking from the station, for example, you have to start up its electrical systems from external power, connect its batteries, charge them, adjust the power distribution busses, bring the two fuel cells online, bring the comms system online, enable your cooling systems, preheat the onboard low-energy nuclear reactor, talk to traffic control about your departure (and note down the appropriate departure frequencies, including a localizer), start the reactor, disconnect from external power, activate your maneuvering system, and then actually undock.

I wrote the individual steps down on paper while walking through them so I could practice outside of the tutorial. The resulting procedural checklist looks... impressive:

Maneuvering in Rogue System is an all-inertial affair, though the FireArc has some autopilot capabilities (including the ability to null its rotational rates). Rendezvousing with a station requires keeping a careful eye on your orbital parameters (altitude, apoapsis, periapsis, and inclination), though I haven’t yet put in enough time with it to see if the more truly counterintuitive bits of orbital mechanics have been implemented (like slowing down in order to catch up with an object ahead of you). Further, the FireArc spacecraft has multiple maneuvering modes of varying speed—from venting tiny puffs of cold argon gas for extremely fine close-in maneuvering, all the way up to using superheated plasma from the reactor as a booster for major delta V changes.

Head tracking is supported with a TrackIR, which we were able to use to great effect. Full VR support with the Oculus Rift is planned, but not yet implemented—Juliano gave us some suggestions for config file tweaking to try to make it work with our Rift DK2, but it doesn’t yet function properly.

We’ve got an interview scheduled later this week with Juliano to talk a lot more about his plans for Rogue System and when the game might be exiting early access. In the meanwhile, you can pick it up here if you’d like to give it a shot. At least for now, Rogue System is for Windows only.