I’m a massive sci fi fan and played the ever loving shit out of Star Citizen for a while there. Loved the 6 degrees of freedom and the capability to be a person or a starship.
I know Starfield is coming in September and I’m excited for what is has to offer but in the interim does anybody have a sci fi/star fighter game they can recommend? I kickstarted Everspace 2 so I can give that a go and I’m almost done with the current No Man’s Sky expedition
Not first person, but Starsector is my go-to for my SciFi fix. Trading, pirating, smuggling organs and selling them on the black market, exploring star systems for suitable planets to establishing your own thriving colony…there is a ton of options and something for everyone.
Oh nice, this totally reminds me of Escape Velocity back in the day. Looks like an updated version. I love it.
Starsector is closer to a strategy game version of escape velocity. A game closer to what you’re envisioning would be Endless Sky
That looks super cool! Not OP but thanks for the recommendation!
I’ll check this out! Thanks :)
I hadn’t heard of this before. Seems really fun. I’m going to have to try this out.
Starsector is one of those rare games that is so good it’s hard to believe it exists and since it does, why isn’t everyone talking about it. It feels like the Factorio of 2D space adventure games.
Like I need more space games to add to my already growing list!
The biggest competitor to Star Citizen right now is Elite: Dangerous. I’ve played it a lot and it’s pretty good. You can play solo or online, too. It can feel a bit slow and it doesn’t hold your hand when it comes to learning how to play. There’s combat, trading, and exploration. Also pretty active communities online.
If you want to go back in time a bit, there’s also the X series from Egosoft that’s spanned back many years. There are a few installments and more is being developed. These games are definitely more colorful in several ways than Elite: Dangerous. More of a focus on the Rule of Cool than trying to be real sims.
Haven’t played Star Wars: Squadrons, so I don’t know the state of the multiplayer side of things. It does offer a solo story mode, apparently. May be worth looking into.
Every now and again I’ll think about games like Freelancer, Freelancer 2, X-Wing, and the Wing Commander franchise for straight sit-in-cockpit combat action. Those are very old- early Mid 1990’s to early 2000’s. If you feel like something retro and can run them, those are options. I wish we had more games styled after those early space sims.
I have to second the Elite Dangerous vote here. Especially if you find an online community to play with. It is part space flight sim, part trading and now part fps. It has its problems, but the expansive scope of it always amazes.
Groups like The Buur Pit are new player friendly and will help a new commander learn. Game can also be had fairly cheaply on its frequent spelials.
Elite Dangerous has been on the downswing for a while now. May not be the greatest time to dive in, when at least their biggest fans on YouTube are talking about chances the company will stop development.
Any tips/thoughts/input for a new ED player then? If I were to give it a go. I don’t know a whole lot about the game but I do have HOTAS/HOSAS setups I can use. One better than the other?
Don’t skip the tutorials. Learn to dock without the autodock. Never fly without a rebuy (the amount to pay to respawn with your previous ship’s setup should you die, otherwise you lose everything)!
HOTAS and HOSAS are welcome, they definitely add to the experience. HOSAS is better for combat but HOTAS is really nice too. I’m on a HOTAS myself.
I’m gonna chime in and say you don’t need a HOTAS setup, I played quite well on just a steam controller, and that translated exactly into the steam deck.
OP already has both HOTAS and HOSAS setups, so was just answering their question.
Right but more than OP are reading for ideas. If a random user thinks they need a hotas, they don’t.
Play co-op! You join someone’s ship and shoot out of one of their turrets or fighters.
It’s a great way to meet some people to talk with. It’s also nice to play on the same team as other people - much of SF seems - whats the word? Not antisocial - imagine like people who walk by when you’re eating lunch, and shove you into the bushes for the lulz. So it’s nice to find people with a common goal.
More importantly for new players, it can also be a good way of checking out more expensive ships, and it can be a good way of making money - if the person you join can finish the mission.I am using a Logitech x52 setup at the moment. It is busy game from a control scheme perspective. The flight model is more simulation than arcade so expect complexity.
I will have a look for a few getting started guides if you are interested.
That’d be much appreciated. From my time in star citizen I don’t mind sim style play over arcade. I think I might prefer it honestly - or at least some sort of balance
Well if you can deel with a very crusty Latvian ass, look for The Yamiks on youtube. He loves / hates the game, but knowledge is good. Agreed with the tutorials mentioned by @HidingCat.
Another YouTube channel worth exploring is Better Atronomy. A level headed German sounding bloke who is very technical.There is an Elite Dangerous magazine here that had not taken off yet, but I am monitoring it from time to time. Ask questions.
Open can be dangerous, but the galaxy is vast. Expect ganking in high traffic systems. Fly in either Private or Solo when visiting engineering systems. There is a new commander safe zone that should at least get you started.
The game, is at best incomplete. I use inara.cz extensively as a companion resource. But that is for when you have left the starter area.
Never Fly without a Rebuy is a motto to live by.
Eddit to remove mention of eddb.io, which is no more. Inara does most things eddb did almost as well.
Ooo, I didn’t think of looking the magazine up; thanks for mentioning, going to sub to that.
Is Eddie still around? I thought they shut down. There are still other tools, but they aren’t the same.
Star Wars: Squadrons
This game was infuriating for the enormous wasted potential that it was. From the day of launch they said they were planning to never update it, add to it, or expand it.
It could have been the successor to X-Wing/TIE Fighter, but they starved it from the beginning. The multiplayer was bad and they only had a few servers in the US, so it was too laggy for everyone overseas.
The game could have been something great, but it was dead out the door.
If you haven’t already, it might be worth checking out TIE Fighter Total Conversion. It’s a fan remake of TIE Fighter built on a massively modded X-Wing Alliance engine that works well on modern computers. It has a pretty faithful recreation of the original TIE Fighter (plus collector’s CD content) campaign, and a reimagined version of it using things that weren’t possible in the original game engine. https://www.moddb.com/mods/tie-fighter-total-conversion-tftc
You’ll need a copy of X-Wing Alliance (available cheap on gog) to run it.
Wow! That is fascinating and the videos/screens are gorgeous! Thanks for letting me know about it, I will definitely check it out.
Idk, I’ll take a short and sweet tie fighter tribute with modern graphics over a microtransactioned live service game any day of the week.
Those aren’t the only 2 choices though. Ideally we’d get something like modern visuals on top of the game design of 15-20 years ago. Remember when you could host your own server and play with dozens of people? Remember college LAN parties of Wolfenstein with 60+ players? That’s what this could have been. We need TF2 in space, but we got Overwatch.
Squadron’s ugly flaw (aside from the bad latency caused by US-only servers) was that they copied the current trend in pvp games where it’s a 5v5 battle and everything has to be “balanced.” It was like playing crappy football with Star Wars ships. The objectives were pathetic and matchmaking was so bad that the games were almost always a pathetic wipe because one side was a team of 5 near-pro level gamers vs 5 solo newbies.
Still, it was gorgeous. And in VR it was chef’s kiss
With some patching it could live up to its potential, but as it is it’s sadly a dream that never came true.
I guess, but realistically EA doesn’t work that way. Especially under disneg licensing terms. Overall, I kinda appreciated squadrons for being a no BS, give the fans what they want kinda game. Trying to do live service updates with Disney licensing terms just doesn’t work- look at avengers and fan reactions to battlefront on release.
I can appreciate that.
I enjoyed it for what it was. I just saw so much more potential in it, and was heartbroken that it didn’t go in that direction.
If you want a great game though, you have to play freespace 2, which i raved about in another post.
Thanks! I will check it out!
This game is simultaneously the most jank yet most complex space game I’ve ever played. Love it.
I have this but the controls felt super weird when I tried it out of the box. Any rebindings you’d suggest?
Seconding this. This game is deep and amazing. You can literally run a space empire in it with enough work and time.
Gotta mention FTL: Faster Than Light. Not a 6dof game, but great fun commanding your crew and navigating some fun encounters.
There’s always No Man’s Sky, I haven’t played it for a year or so but I know they have added a ton of new stuff in the last few updates. Maybe not completely fulfilling, but could kill some time pleasantly
I always give it a go but the loop winds up losing me within 10 hours of play or so. Love the art and idea behind it but struggle with the gameplay :/
Someone once described No Man’s Sky is as “wide as the sea, deep as a puddle.”
That sums it up perfectly for me. It’s a gorgeous, immense game with nothing of substance to do. I’ve tried returning to it several times, and each time I get bored in a few hours.
I felt that way at first, but ever since the big turning point update it’s gotten a lot more layered and complex, to the point where I’ve gone from underwhelmed at the options to overwhelmed at the number of things I could be doing.
I’m willing to give it another try. Worst case it’s a few hours spent enjoying colorful images before getting bored.
I was just browsing Steam and found SpaceBourne 2, which I mentioned in another Freelancer-related thread. But it looks pretty solid/promising, based on the reviews. I wishlisted it, but can’t personally vouch for it.
Yea, I saw that too. Wish listed it, but it looks very very early in development.
Pretty nuts it’s only made by one guy
That looks cool as hell, definitely going to be checking this out.
Outer Wilds and Subnautica don’t have ship fights but they give off a similar feel to star citizen/ no man’s sky (to me).
https://store.steampowered.com/app/753640/Outer_Wilds/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/264710/Subnautica/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/848450/Subnautica_Below_Zero/How do those games have a similar feel?
Outer Wilds has 6dof in your spaceship. It has modestly accurate spaceflight, though everything is on a tiny scale. You can fly from planets, into space, match velocities, etc. It’s a game about exploration and mystery without any combat, though.
I like how the games allow the ability to freely move in and out of my ship and the game worlds offer a good amount of exploration. And it might sound silly, but I like being able to perform maintenance on my ship.
Again, this is just my thoughts on it and might not give off the same feelings to others.
Outer Wilds is just a game I couldn’t get into. I realise I don’t like the repititive nature of time loop games if there’s no fast forward like how they do it in movies, where they eventually only show the significant differences between each loop.
That would be weird for Outer Wilds. It’s not really a game about figuring out a complex sequence of events that let you get the correct solution to the time loop, the way so many time loop stories are. There are a couple locations that can only be accessed early or late, but those locations only contain information; once you’ve reached them you have no need to go back on subsequent looks.
And since the game is about exploration, it doesn’t really feel repetitive (at least it didn’t to me), because you’re always looking for something new
I’m currently loving a bunch of games in the factory building genre so can I offer you some Dyson Sphere Program in these trying times?
Imagine factorio but you’re in a mecha suit building factories spanning multiple planets eventually multiple stars, to build exponentially more complex resources until you’re able to shoot swarms of dyson reflectors and eventually build a rigid sphere in orbit.
Still in Alpha after several years, but exquisitely polished, runs fine on legacy machines, excellent responsive dev team, combat is being added soon.
Tried DSP but it lost me within the 2 hours of a return window for Steam. Been loving Satisfactory for factory builders!
I mean, Hotline Miami in space still counts?
If you’re into colony sims, check out Space Haven.
Launch Everspace 2 (especially since you’ve kickstarted it), it’s a great one of those and not as intimidating as something like Elite Dangerous. Although, if you want to go deep, that’s the way to go…
I’ve been super curious to try Everspace 2 since it removed the rogue-like aspects of 1, which were tedious, but reviews have been hovering around 70%. Waiting for a good sale, personally.
It’s on the list! Gonna beat Jedi: Survivor first and then I’ve got a work trip so it’ll have to wait a bit
It’s on GamePass as well, so that’s a good place to try it out.
Came here to recommend Everspace 2 and Elite Dangerous. I grabbed ED on a special for $20 and I’ve done about 200hrs. The freedom in Elite Dangerous is crazy.
For your space reading adventure I love Escape Belocity: Nova. It’s very old but I’ve had so much fun with it if it’s runnable on new machines.
Endless Sky is a free/open source game in the spirit of Escape Velocity, I recommend checking it out if you’re a fan of the Escape Velocity series.
Also there’s an Escape Velocity remake called Cosmic Frontier which has been in the works for many years which I recall hearing had the original developers blessing to use their assets.
now Endless Sky looks interesting. Thanks!
Oh man I loved those games and I never hear anyone talk about them anymore! They were so fun. I found out about them because someone installed the shareware version of the original on one of the Apple computers at my elementary school. I remember when EV: Nova came out and the ships finally had engine glow it was a HUGE deal.
If you like sandbox building, Space Engineers. There are so many good mods to give the game some life and nothing is more satisfying than building your own ship from materials you mined.
I initially though Space Engineers sounded “meh” after having played things like NMS and E:D, but … I really REALLY enjoyed it!
If space engineers were to get a more cohesive solo/coop survival mode without having to juggle fifty possibly incompatible mods it’d be a real killer app. There’s potential there, but there’s a bit too much manual scenario/server setup and once you get started there’s not really a lot of progression outside surviving long enough to get a basic smelter + dirt drill system set up.
That said, I recently had a surprisingly good time with the Wasteland Scavenger mod, which sets up a pretty unique scenario where you have to salvage a lot of components from POIs, you can’t build things like tanks or thrusters yourself, but you find them lying around in bases and wrecks.
That is the biggest thing imo, it needs a better single/multi player experience that drives you to expand and gives you some kind of story. Imagine having to start out one of the planets with that Scavenger mod only to be able to tech up and go farther. It is a game that is begging for a reason to play other than imagination.
I’ve got like 300 hours in it
I can’t help but feel that all of us old timer “why won’t they make another Tie Fighter?” guys did not show up when they did exactly that on Star Wars Squadrons.
But also, hey did you know they made another X-Wing/Tie Fighter game called Star Wars Squadrons? That happened.
Squadrons was kind of boring in my opinion. Lots to love in the gameplay itself and all the details, but by the end of the campaign I wanted to be done and haven’t thought about it since. It would be a great buy for $10 though.
Played the shit out of Squadrons. Multiplayer was fun, story was fun. For whatever reason it breaks my PC now when I launch it so it’s on hold for me
Um, old timer here and squadrons is a different genre than tie fighter. One is a single player campaign, the other is a multiplayer game. Squadrons was nothing like x-wing imo. If space battles were a sport, squadrons would capture that level playing field. If you’re looking for the experience of being a Jedi pilot who turns the tides of battles, squadrons isn’t it.
I’m gonna let the “Jedi pilot” bit go because I feel I’d have to give myself a wedgie at that point.
But… no, there’s a pretty hefty campaign in Squadrons. The fact that there’s also a solid multiplayer mode in there is nice, too, but there’s definitely single player content to pop enemy fighters like so much bubble wrap, if that’s your thing.
It’s also not the first time the franchise (assuming you count it as a X-Wing/Tie Fighter sequel, which I do) has multiplayer. Both Alliance and X-Wing Vs Tie Figher had multiplayer modes, too. Hell, X-Wing Vs. Tie Fighter didn’t even launch with a narrative campaign, they had to add it as an expansion.
I played Squadrons on day 1 and quickly got sick of it. Also that drift maneuver, wtf? It ain’t no X-Wing or TIE Fighter.
I absolutely did, and did not like it. It’s far faster paced, which I guess isn’t surprising since it’s basically came about from Battlefront 2’s space battles, and isn’t as thoughtful compared to the X-Wing line.
Heh. I’ve weirdly had people tell me they didn’t understand why it was so slow, especially if they hadn’t played the original Tie Fighter.
I’ll say that I don’t know if I’d want a modern game to be paced as the old ones were. We can talk about the mission design and other elements and I’ll hear you out about the differences, but I wonder if there’s some rose tinted glasses type of thing going on as well.
I’ve done TIE Fighter streams on 4th May a couple of times in the recent years, and the game play is as good as ever. So no, it’s not some rose-tinted glasses.
Fair enough. I do still like it as well, but that game does have some dead air. I’m not surprised that the read on Squadron’s pacing would be heavily dependent on how much Tie Fighter/X-Wing you played, or that the devs split the difference to some degree.
I really appreciated having the 4x time compression option in TIE Fighter to hurry things along when you’re just flying from A to B. They then inexplicably removed that capability from X-Wing Alliance.
Most of the time, I thought the missions were ok. I like the tension when the designers used the dead air effectively, like the calm before the storm.
There are times when the time compression helps, but I don’t remember using it very often.
I’ll second the recommendation for the X series from Egosoft and the latest X4 has had a number of expansions that make it worthwhile, it’s made by a small team and is a bit fiddly at times but it’s definitely worth a shot.
