There’s been a resurgence of dogfighting games in recent years. No, not Madden 2004 featuring Michael Vick – I’m talking about multiplayer air combat games. Titles like Star Conflict, Eve Valkyrie, and Strike Vector challenge you to take down your foes as you zip around in the skies and in space, tailing them and evading their fire until one of you is inevitably blasted out of the air (or vacuum). It’s exciting to see shooters that truly think in three dimensions, but while these games are a lot of fun, they always see you piloting some kind of Starfighter or scout.

In lieu of the hundreds of different space ships that have sprung from mankind’s imagination, this lack of variety is a little disappointing. Where are the freighters? The capital ships? The star destroyers? Dreadnought, an upcoming free-to-play shooter developed by Yaeger (the team behind Spec Ops: The Line) and published by Grey Box, seeks to fill that void. The smallest ship in the game is the size of the Millenium Falcon, while the largest could make a Battlestar blush. With a solid mix of twitch action and heady tactics, this one-of-a-kind multiplayer game deserves your attention.

Dreadnought lets you pick from one of five vessel classes – ranging in size, speed, durability, and power – and fly out in a five-ship armada against an enemy force of equal size and strength. The five ship classes roughly fall into your typical shooter classes – you have medics, snipers, heavies, and so on – though if you pilot them with a straightforward shooter mentality you’ll probably end up dead. Hit and run tactics work with recon ships, for instance, but you’d better run fast if you don’t want to be obliterated by a barrage of missiles. Hit and run tactics can also work with massive dreadnoughts, though only if you’ve got your warp drive charged. For the most part, your ship will be tanking damage and trying to line up its broadside with the enemy to finish them off.

Though matches in dreadnought move fast, individual battles feel somewhat slow and pensive. Once your ship enters the fray it will take a while to exit, so you often end up locked in pitched combat. Dogfights can last for a solid minute, and you’ll have to make a number of swift tactical decisions as you engage - do you divert power to your engines, shields, or weapons? Do you open with a broadside salvo, or conserve it until you’ve whittled away at your opponent a little? Even when you’re on the ropes, there’s a sense that one smart decision could turn the entire battle around – as could a tactical nuke from across the battlefield, if you’re feeling dangerous.

Battles don’t last quite as long with smaller ships, of course, but their speed allows them to flit between engagements and help other, larger ships out. “Smaller” is of course a relative term, though, as these ships are still the size of small houses, and they fly like it. Every ship in the game has serious weight which can be felt whenever you try to maneuver.  Yaeger gets the dynamics of being a starship captain right, creating something that feels almost like a real-time, action-based FTL.

Thanks to the power of Unreal Engine 4, Dreadnought looks positively gorgeous. The ships are, of course, lovingly crafted and packed with details, but the environments they fight in are equally impressive. Seeing sunlight glinting off the arcticocean, or a massive cliff face looming in the distant haze is enough to leave you speechless – though you’ll want to get your voice back quickly lest you end up scuttled on the scenery. The new, more powerful engine seems like an ideal choice to render battles of this scale and scope.

Dreadnought is shaping up to be one of this generation’s best multiplayer experiences. Yaeger seems to have a knack for making ingenious games that stand apart from the crowd, and gamers looking for a shooter with a little more tactical meat should keep this on their radar. If nothing else, the jaw-dropping visuals will make good use of whatever cutting-edge hardware you can throw at them.