Children of a Dead Earth - KSP with Space Battles

[dofborg]

Based on this picture, it looks like there will be a fire control window (on the right), which in theory should be able to handle whatever range.



This image shows a wave of incoming missiles, denoted by the little red dots.

I think the images we've seen are test shots meant to look pretty rather than reflect what combat turns out like in a real game.

edit: Either that, or the stock weapons are limited in ways that mean combat at tens of kilometers is optimal.

The game allows you to view both your own or enemies ships, allowing you to traverse the vast distances instantly and keep the gameplay relevant and not a big black screen. That said, most engagements tend to happen below 10 km.

Why is that you might ask? Missiles can and are launched from much farther away, and you get to deal with them via PDS once they get within that 10 km range. All other weapons are easily dodged at ranges greater than that, and laser effectiveness fall off due to diffraction before 10 km.

"Baked in assumptions" within Children of a Dead Earth are pretty much constrained to provable or prototype technologies that are supported by journals or white papers. Weapons that are black box hypotheticals right now may change that in the future, but with the technology included in the game, the ranges have come out to be what they are. Also, within Tech Design if you can optimize the weaponry to overcome these ranges, more power to you!