It needs a polishing yet, but it’s got all the basics of newtonian motion in about 50 pages.

After that, I think, was the paper-and-pencil system in the original Traveller, which was a simple step up (and my maths lessons had covered vectors by then). Gravity wells were a lot trickier to navigate around in that system, so we tended to avoid them, making them less fun.

Then there was SPI’s BattleFleet: Mars, in which the tactical game, I recall, was very similar to Vector 3. Like V3, it took the action into the third dimension, but while I found it an easy transition, none of my friends took to it. Also, it had no gravity at all, so no terrain. I had a go at hacking a facing system to it at one point, but I didn’t get anywhere satisfactory with it.

(This probably has too many links for the automatic system to pass, but I assure the mods that I have no commercial links with any of these sites.)

WIN.

(And if he re-releases something like Creature That Ate Sheboygan, I will do a happy dance indeed.)

SJGames site does have a bunch of variant material for Triplanetary, including some I wrote:

http://www.sjgames.com/triplan/spark.html

http://www.sjgames.com/triplan/nifty.html

On the PC: I-War and I-War 2. Now dated, but IMO I-War 2 is the closest thing to a spiritual successor Elite 2 has ever had.

For simple vector wargames fun, it’s hard to beat ‘Full Thrust’ by Ground Zero Games – the base game does not have vector movement, but a good (and still simple) set of rules were included as an option in Fleet Book 1.
Rules (and fleet book) available to download free from the downloads section at their page.

For added coolness, FT still works well if only _one_ player is using vector movement… cue plucky human defenders versus superior invading alien go-where-we-want-drive ships.

(ObDisclaimer: I have no financial interest in GZG. But I have thought Full Thrust was frakkin’ awesome ever since I bought the first ever flimsy-yellow-booklet edition from the designer at a con nearly twenty years ago. It remixes easily and well.)

At the exact opposite end of complexity, check out Attack Vector: Tactical for 3-D, accurately simulated vector space combat. Vector movement in this is actually more accurate than in other games, physics fans. And it has some cool orientation-in-space stands so you can tell which way you’ve rotated. Downside: this game is not simple; first-time space combat gamers should play something easier.

(It is possible that there are some first-time space combat gamers on this thread, surely?)

Also, the old BattleSpace rules for BattleTech are due to be revamped in the upcoming Strategic Ops sourcebook, due out any minute now. The old version had decent hex-based vector movement. But people who aren’t already BattleTech players will probably not find this to be the best place to start.