QuillmonkeyPrevious versions of elite did employ a more dynamic newtonian flight model. You needed to select the reference point, manoeuvre using thrusters and accelerate in relation to the point of reference. Combat was similar to FA-off flight in ED. Saying that, it was a bit of a PitA and I 90% prefer the implementation of Flight Assist in ED, even if it has peculiar knock on effects like auto-deceleration, max speed and realism.
There again, Frontier Elite had a game-speed slider which was a bit 'gamey'. As far as I remember it was also called something ridiculous, like the StarDreamer? (basically the lore suggested the Pilot's Federation drugged all CMDRs so they'd nod off to sleep for days while travelling under severe G-force. Obviously before the invention of Supercruise).
Yeah, Stardreamer it was called, and I agree, the lore around it was rather ridiculous. (Although I learned about that much later, from the net; when I played FE2, that was early 1990s in the former Eastern Bloc, pretty much everyone there played pirated games without manuals…)
MinonianAnd yes, the flight model of elite II & III was completely newtonian
Not quite in the case of FFE; it has a stupid kludge where, if a hostile ship was within 10 km of you, the ships behaved as if they were connected by a rubber band (that’s how the author of JJFFE described it, AFAIR). The purpose of the kludge, of course, was to enforce combat; otherwise, if your ship had better acceleration you would be able to simply accelerate away, as was the case in FE2.
