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.
You. You did this to me. I’ve been playing this practically non stop for two weeks now.
I picked this up based on this comment and it’s really great, thank you for the recommendation!
I hadn’t heard of this before. Seems really fun. I’m going to have to try this out.
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
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.
You are corrct. I always mix inara and eddb up in my head. Inara.cz was the one I meant.
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?
Gotta mention FTL: Faster Than Light. Not a 6dof game, but great fun commanding your crew and navigating some fun encounters.
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.
If you’re into colony sims, check out Space Haven.
While not a flight sim I’ll give a recommendation for Hardspace: Shipbreaker. Spend some time salvaging old spaceships in zero-g.
Try Everspace. It’s a roguelike space shooter. Controls feel very free and intuitive. There’s also a sequel that’s out now that’s more of an open world space RPG (same shooting mechanics but not a roguelike). But you can try the first game for only 4 dollars and see if you like the combat.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/396750/EVERSPACE/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1128920/EVERSPACE_2/I was kinda disappointed by Everspace. I like roguelikes, and like space games, so it ticks my check boxes. I was really hoping to like it, but it just felt repetitive and grindy to me. But YMMV.
I felt the same way. Thought I’d love it, but only played it for a short while.
How about Empyrion - Galactic Survival? Kind of like Space Engineers but with better singleplayer content.
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.
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.
Definitely get the Mass Effect Trilogy. You could probably play through the whole thing before starfield comes out if it hooks you like it did for me.
Eve Online (I have not played Eve)
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.
If you like the idea of building your ship and then using it to blast pirates into little pieces, you could give Avorion a go. It’s currently half price on Steam and is a bit Minecraft in space. It had no player view though, everything is done from space craft from mining to trading to combat.
Combat mand flying feels like The Expanse if you have seen / read that.
Probably not what you are looking for but I found myself enjoying the JumpLight Odyssey demo yesterday. Has a very 1970 Anime vide ala Star Blazors.
I tried the demo, pretty fun. Like a more involved and proper starship simulator, with FTL’s chase mechanic.
This looks interesting!
