It's one of the things severely cramping my mojo right now, and why I am spending so much time (too much) on starship design. The problem is a lack of clear vision of how I want starship combat to work and feel. It's a trifecta of clashing issues: reality, individuality, and cool-ality.
The reality of space combat is incredibly boring. And even though I'm not shooting for reality, some aspects of common sense keep dogging me. For instance why is every ship armed in Star Wars? A stock light freighter coming off the line is equipped with a laser cannon. In reality things would be more like Firefly where civilian vehicles don't run armed, they just run.
Individuality? Well, what sets my setting apart from thousands of others? Do I make space combat more unique or do I just keep doing the same thing everyone else is doing?
And Cool-ality. What will my future players enjoy? What do people like? Do they even want a (semi) unique yet common-sense approach to space combat because it is different or do they want Star Wars with the serial numbers filed off?
Self-editing is the problem here. I keep going over and over the same rules, the same design concepts, all because I can't work out which of these three voices to satisfy. This is where having a second voice, a writing partner, makes all the difference. Unfortunately I'm all alone here on space station Yelp. Unless you count the voices in my head.
If anyone has any advice to get me out of this rut, I'm all ears.
