Thanks for the comments, Chris. If you saw the earlier dev diary, you know there is a package out there that supposedly reduces online multiplayer to a few convenient scripts. It's $100, though. My plan is to see if I can get this looking good, then ask people to donate the necessary funds if they want it bad enough. :)

I gotta be somewhat careful with the orbits, since that's the concept. If I let you just fly your ship around, that's Star Control. I wouldn't mind some kind of option to let you go to another planet, though it might indeed quickly get too complicated.

I basically just want something like Scorched Earth in space. That said, I really do need to get working on the weapons and ships, since that's going to be the really cool part. MIRVs, hell yeah!