If there will ever be I-War 3...

...what would you like to have in this game?

I really like the Newtonian physics and if there's ever going to be a sequel, it should rely on them like the other titles did.

Although I'm playing games like Diaspora and their television/action physics are fine, it's a part of I-War. And the feeling of being in space really comes with that.

The thing I never liked about I-War is the fact that I have to fly to mission points for 10 minutes straight sometimes. While nothing is happening (apart from distress signals). That is definitely a thing I wouldn't miss in a sequel.

What about you? :whistle:

I'd like to see I-War 2's world living.

With all stations doing meaningful stuff, transports hauling cargo with real destinations, with each station a place to explore and enjoy.

Badlands cluster has enough unrealized content for a great game on its own.

Aside from the 'Newtonian' flight model, without which it would not be I-war, I'd like to see attention to the 'backworld'

Not the back story, but rather, the technology and reasoning behind all the technology that makes the world of the game operate.

I've never played a game with ships as believable as I-war. I think this is because so much effort was spent on rationalizing the technology behind the ship. Those technology then gave concrete forms and rules for the formation of the ship(s) itself. The ships were (mostly in I-war) were built up from this principal.

Many space related games have fleets of ships that just 'look cool', and don't really have any thinking put into them beyond that (okay, they might have more, but my point stands).

Without this 'backworld', I don't think it would really be I-war 3

PS - does anyone own the orginal I-war manual? It is insane. From what I remember.

I have actually thought about this. I haven't gotten all the way through the game, but I thought that if there was an I-War 3, you should play as the aliens (perhaps the Chaos aliens if I-War 2 allows). I agree with Cambrogal about the realistic ships. I am not really excited about Diaspora or Freespace and the likes, because of the ship designs. They often have all of those unnecessary fins and fringes that aren't practical for a real ship. Because of this, I thought that since I-War 2 has about 40 different ships, mostly extremely original, I would make a goal of designing original ships for the aliens. I have several orthographic and isometric projections of these and a basic storyline. What was I going to use these for? If I got to the point where I had made I-War 1 and 2 on Khan Acadamy (see here ) then I could develop these ideas. This was before Shmatzler took over the site. Anyways, thats my perspective.

A little insider secret... I was working on a massive mod for I-war2, the details are in the thread 'New mod coning soon!' (I absolutely hate that stupid typo, but I can't seem to get rid of it.) Anyway, until my brother told me it would be breaking some law somewhere, I was originally going to call it Independence War 3: Into Chaos. So I called it I-War2 ADVANCED for the duration of the project.
The point is, it was going to have everything I thought a good I-War3 should have, and was going to build on I-War2, since it was a mod. I was even cooking up a shiny story line which picks up right where I-War2 left off. Lots of alien action, with subfactions and civil wars, the Marauders ressurected, and to top it off, your old enemy Caleb Maas engineering the whole thing.
Here are my favorite features, which I think any good space game should have (although none do that I know of.)
Dynamic hulls, which means if your shot hits an enemy, you see a realistic hole blasted in it, with debris chunks flying, all of which were originally part of the 3d mesh for the hull. I'm talking about what movies have been using for a long time, but I haven't seen used in any games yet.
Volumetric fluid effects for smoke, fire and other fancy stuff. Some games do in fact have this.
A fully dynamic economic system. I think this one is self explanatory.
As part of the dynamic hulls feature, every system, every inch of every ship would be dynamically featured. Plasma pumping through the ship, electric lines, corridors... Everything simulated to the fullest possible extent, which allows for a wildly dynamic damage model. This is something I-War2 seriously lacks.
A procedurally generated world. Okay, many games have this one, but I'm thinking of what Space Engine has. The whole galaxy fully present, along with many other galaxies, with high detail right down to walking on a planet's surface and tripping on its equivalent of a friendly cat (with seven eyes!)
A really, really cool feature that I'm not sure would actually work, is procedural generation of spaceships, ensuring infinite numbers of designs, infinite variations, and all of it completely correct relative to the available technology and resources. Every ship you meet would be perfectly plausible, and the system would still, because of procedural generation's funny quality of generating the same given the same seed numbers, produce the same ships every time you play the story, maybe with variations caused by non-scripted events, ie the player's actions.
Last but the opposite of least, a Newtonian physics system with a high degree of realism. I-War2's system is decent, and, annoyingly, the best out there, but it falls short when your ship takes damage. Say you just took a deadshot in the tug's top right engine, and the auto-repair will take several minutes to fix it. Your enemy is still alive, and you need to kill him. The possibilities are huge. Every time you try to accelerate in a straight line, the lack of a quarter of your thrust in the top right will cause you to swing in that direction, as well as not accelerating as fast in the first place. Also, because the spider tug uses it's main engines for turning, the tug will certainly not turn like you expect it to, requiring a rather high level of alertness and skill to beat your fully maneuvering foe. This is just one example. I've though of dozens of scenarios that could have been massively improved, or were even unimplemented, like collisions and missiles not doing subsystem damage. Shots only!
These features are so desirable in my mind, that if there were ten games which all had these features, I'd still get them all. Everyone does it a little different, and all the games would be fun.
Apologies for not saying anything funny in this post, but I think the topic is a very serious one.

--IronDuke

If there will be an I-War 3, who is going to make it?

I love your ideas, IronDuke. Especially the idea about boarding ships and and stations. Also, whenever you destroy a ship in I-War 2, it blows up, right? This is only if the reactor goes critical from the damage. However, whith your ideas on more realistic ship systems, it would be possible for there to be a "destroyed" ship, but it is still in one piece.