   Designing in a vacuum: unique challenges when designing a space-based RTS.
  I recently finished programming the first game for my indie games development company, and I'm really pleased with the end result.  However, that doesn't mean that there were not a LOT of headaches during development and design, especially in the earlier months.  Most of the headaches, from a design perspective, really revolved around the fact that the game is set in space.  I was completely accustomed to terrestrial RTS games, and figured I could just apply what I knew from there to a space setting -- I was mistaken.Fortunately I use an iterative prototyping process, so these issues were able to be figured out in a series of prototypes, and the final product I think is actually more unique just because we ran into these challenges and had to think up new solutions.I've written two articles about the various challenges we ran into, and what our solutions were.  Feel free to use those ideas in your own games, if you are so inclined:Designing Games In A Vacuum, Part 1: Terrain & PositionalityDesigning Games In A Vacuum, Part 2: Units, Walls, and Caps
  Excellent article, thanks for posting it. As someone who is similarly interested in space game design, I found your clear writup of some of the challenges and solutions inspiring. I look forward to running the game someday, but can't as the current SlimDX won't install on my system (Vista64 Ultimate).   