And there is no ability to pause other than at the initiation of contact.

After, I thought myself quite accustomed to hard science. I was in for a hypervelocity slug to the face.is an attempt by Zane Mankowski (alias QSwitched ) to determine what realistic space combat would look like by creating a number of subsystem models based on real-life publicly available engineering data, and then handing them to a bunch of playtesters. The final version comes with a range of premade systems and ships, of course, but the ability to build everything to your specification is a key selling point. If you know what “q-switched” is, it’s a good start, but you’re still going to run into a whole mass of hard science, as you fine-tune chemical and nuclear rockets, cannons, railguns, coilguns, lasers and even good old shrapnel warheads.The other key selling point is the hard sci-fi space combat. The game uses N-body simulation of orbital mechanics – thus you’re looking at some counterintuitive maneuvering in order to just get into combat – and is largely set in the asteroid belt and the gas giants’ moons, hence disabling stationkeeping and allowing your trajectory to be perturbed alone can be used to foul up your enemy’s fancy plans. Your maneuvering is limited by Δv budgets. Combat occurs at high relative velocities; contact can be very brief; distances are still quite large – hence the battles are quite hectic.Beware that this game is likely to ruin all of the soft sci-fi for you, permanently. If you’re a fan ofsite, this game is mandatory; if you’re a fan of, there will be no coming back from the Hard Side.The game uses a quasi-turn-based system for strategic maneuvering – with steps from one hour to several days that are quite necessary for skipping through uneventful orbiting. Once anything happens, the game snaps to attention. In Inspection Mode – where the most you see is your drones being released – or if a hostile force makes contact with yours the game reverts to real time, and doesn’t let you to take turn-style steps until the fireworks happen.I dare say the game is not particularly user-friendly, forgoing ease of control and decluttering in favour of giving maximum under-the-hood control. Wanna plate your spacecraft into 10 m of solid gold? Sure, but you’re going to have to skim through 20 lines of physical qualities of gold to conclusively find out why it sucks as armour. You can also use that gold for gun barrels, and virtually anything else; just don’t expect any good results outside,, coilguns. Wanna take your drones into battle? Be sure to watch their fuel levels, lest they will burn out of it. Ships have all too few control options.The game may be released, but in reality it's a bit of an alpha: the dev keeps pushing major updates, such as drop tanks and "extruded" turrets.