Traveling great distances and a mechanic as you described above, but even with more interaction was done as it should by a game called I-War 2 edge of chaos. It was not only done correctly and quite realistically but it was done well. It used a combination of Auto Pilots that would take the fuss out of judging how fast a ship should go and when it needed to decelerate not to overshoot the planet or nav point it was aiming to approach, even if this was many LS away, by using an LDS drive (Linear Displacement) To travel between planets at great speeds. The game had 4 autopilots which were activated with F5, F6 F7 and F8. -Autopilot Disengage -Autopilot Approach -Autopilot Formate -Autopilot Dock An Intercept Autopilot was available as a separate ship system one could purchase and mount separately, (a bit like we can do in Starfield using the Equipment tab to install Comspikes and such) This add on Interceptor autopilot would effectively intercept your active target (with newtonian physics in play during dogfights and gouges, that was sometimes a godsend, and sometimes a burden, but it was there.) And you could of course target subsytems on ships as well. So, for example flying from Sol to Wolf, you would plot a course from Sol to Wolf on the Navmap, lock in the destination, activate the Approach Autopilot, and it would drive you in LDS (Warp or Supercruise) at great speeds to the nearest Lagrange Point. At this point the autopilot would line up with the point of entry and capsule jump between Sol to a Lagrange point in Wolf. From there another LDS (supercruise) leg would take you to your final point. Mind you that the L-Point would never be next to a station, so another LDS leg would be required to go to the station or planet you set up in the nav computer. The autopilot would thus take the calculation and the guestimate on when to decelerate out of the pilot's hands. It got interesting though for a number of reasons. The Autopilot could be turned off manually by disengaging it, and you could take over manual control. In addition to the Newtonian Physics the game had, this created some interesting navigation possibilities. Pirates that would be roaming around the L-Points to prey on incoming freighters, that emerged at the L-Point from their Capsule jump (they just spawned there with a certain velocity and vector) would be scanning cargo and a juicy freighter would be targeted with an LDSI missile. The LDSI (inhibitor) missile denied the quarry from turning on their LDS drive to jump away until a certain cooldown period was reached. IIRC countermeasuers such as chaff or flare could not spoof LDSI, unlike regular missiles that locked on which could be outrun or outmaneuvered given the right circumstances LDSI missiles were loudicrously fast. When at the start of your LDS transit from one point to another they could catch up with you while you were accelerating. These missiles could be compared to what Elite Dangerous does when you interdict someone in Supercruise, but instead of creating a thether that you have to keep in line while the interdiction took place, LDSI was immediate. The difference between Elite Dangerous, where you were immediately pulled down together with your assailant in the same 'bubble', your attacker would take some time to reach you depending on the distance you already covered, giving you the chance to prepare your own LDSI to attack it when it got close, in order to have your LDSI cooldown precede theirs and run away again by engaging your LDSI or, facing your attacker and dealing with him once and for all. You could manually add or retract speed from the LDS warp, (so go from warp 8 to warp 4 for example) by reducing pips allocated in the engineering screen to the engines, or by reducing thrust. Once you got interdicted or you wanted to help an NPC to kill off some pirates, you could take manual control or let the autopilot do the calculus for approach and optimal vector and then manually disengage the autopilot and start dogfighting yourself, once you had a good idea of target speed and vectors, and you were in control of your approach and orbiting around your target manually using thrusters was manageable. Your Ship could be run 'cold' both by purchasing Chemical thrusters instead of the 'burning variety' or by allocating less power to all unnecessary systems, to make you less 'bright' on the enemy's sensor, and effectively let you sneak past some checkpoints or catch a pirate by surprise, or evade patrols. Remote Links to control drones and certain smaller ships was also possible. Lasers, and PBC cannons had a much lower firing rate than in Starfield, but every shot was very powerful, making shots count on target important. You needed to lead your shots on to a certain point if you switched off your auto aim (keeping the nose of your ship and your weapons pointing at a certain area where your weapons could adjust slightly) or if your auto aim was malfunctioning due to having been hit before in the encounter and being auto-repaired by the engineering software and repair bots and power was being rerouted to other systems, making 'dogfighting' a tactical real time affair, which didn't require split time decisions, but a careful planned approach, but not turning it into a turn based strategy encounter. Something that Starfield does now by slowing down time in 'targeting mode' You only had 1 (or sometimes 2) shields, that were constantly being redirected by the ship computer to face the attacker at all angles, except in the rearward direction due to covering your engines, a bit like a knight holding a real shield when performing a gouging attack while on their horses, so your 6 could only be covered by you facing your enemy while flying in the opposite direction, as is feasible with Newtonian Physics. So you had the option of 'flying backwards', trying to keep yourself orbiting your enemy without getting closer or getting out of range to keep your ordnance from hitting it, and trying maneuver to the enemy's six while denying him the same favor. With one on one encounters this was doable with practice, mutiple opponents would require a 'dance' to come out on top so to speak, or make a run for it. The shots of your enemy could actually be evaded, like Neo dodging bullets in 'The Matrix', if the distance between you and the target ship was a few kilometers away. Again that would also count in both directions.A lot of these mechanics are actually already part of Starfield. LDS is a reality in starfield, the autopilot that takes care of the acceleration and deceleration however is not (yet). Lagrange points could be added. And Newtonian physics is already a thing in Starfield. This would be a dream come true if someone actually would be able to program this into Starfield when the CK comes out. I-War 2 can be found on GOG and Steam for a bargain as well, and mods for the game are still available at https://www.i-war2.com as are still a few gameplay videos on YT, if you want to have a look at this. I will try to make a gameplay video showing these things off and linking them here. A freeroam mod, providing 'open end gameplay' where you can pirate, trade, hire ships etc... is also included after finishing the main story.
