Space sci-fi games

[rusty_shackleford]

Video games… IN SPAAAAACEEEEEEEEE!!!!!
This is for games that actually involve the player character being someone who explores space. Therefore, it must involve some kind of travel between planets and travel either on alien planets or large spacecrafts(space stations, etc.,)
Preferably the game must feature the player character as a separate entity from their ship, otherwise they're just spaceship simulators. Likewise, it must have features other than action, I don't think too many people would put Halo in the same category as the games below.

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Excluding games made last century, when men were still men.

• No Man's Sky: Boring, rewardless treadmill. Normie's idea of what a space game is. Incredibly shallow.
• Starfield: Terrible
• Starbound: 2D No Man's Sky
• Scam Citizen: Not a real game that exists
• X series: Barely count as games, autistic offline trade management simulators
• Rodina: Daggerfall… IN SPAAAAACEEEEEEEEE!!!!!
• Everspace 2: Sadly, it's ship only, but otherwise a fun arcade-style space flight shooty pooty game. I recommend it. (Unlike the first game, it is not a roguelike)
• Elite Dangerous: Shimmering jaggies stop me from playing, galaxybrains can't figure out how to implement antialiasing(not joking, none of the antialiasing options work they've closed the issue as WONTFIX. My guess is it's something to do with how specular is rendered because it's a very weird sort of shimmering.)
  elite jaggies.webp
  Maybe I'll check it out once they feel like fixing that.
• Stellar Tactics. Been in early access for a decade. Maybe someday!
• Rebel Galaxy. Similar to Everspace 2, it's a fun arcade shooty pooty game but it's just spaceship only. Don't get the sequel, it's a girlboss game and reportedly sucks.
• Spacebourne 2: The little turk that could. Still in early access, let's see how it goes.
• Outerworlds: Sucks. The sequel is going to suck too. Nusidian is full of foids, avoid!

Games that look interesting but I have not played and/or have no opinion on:

• PULSAR: Lost Colony
• Parkan 2: I need to play this but looks like it might be neat. Flew under my radar for years.
• Empyrion - Galactic Survival
• Galaxy on Fire 2. Supposedly the PC version lacks addons that the mobile version has, need to look into this sometime.

[Bertram_Tung]

Independence War 2: Edge of Chaos is still the best one all around one that I've ever played. It just barely qualifies for the cutoff of this century, having released in 2001.

Edit: It is space-ship only, though. But you do have a space station that you live in and you do cool operations style management stuff there while not in your ship.

[Norfleet]

[*] Elite Dangerous: Shimmering jaggies stop me from playing, galaxybrains can't figure out how to implement antialiasing(not joking, none of the antialiasing options work they've closed the issue as WONTFIX. My guess is it's something to do with how specular is rendered because it's a very weird sort of shimmering.)

I dunno what a Shimmering Jaggie is. It sounds like something from that WhiteSquare game that he dragged me into and then promptly ragequit out of. But have you tried using VodkAA? I don't use any weird AAs, I just turn the AA off and use VodkAA.

[*] Everspace 2: Sadly, it's ship only, but otherwise a fun arcade-style space flight shooty pooty game. I recommend it. (Unlike the first game, it is not a roguelike)

So what's the deal here: Is ship-only valid or not?

[Bertram_Tung]

[*] Elite Dangerous: Shimmering jaggies stop me from playing, galaxybrains can't figure out how to implement antialiasing(not joking, none of the antialiasing options work they've closed the issue as WONTFIX. My guess is it's something to do with how specular is rendered because it's a very weird sort of shimmering.)

This blew my mind as well and caused me to nope out the last time I re-visited. Funny, I used to play years ago for quite a while, and for some reason I either didn't notice or wasn't bothered or maybe it wasn't as bad on my smaller monitor, but the last time I tried to come back, it was a massive eyesore, and their refusal or incompetence to fix the problem was shocking.

[Oyster Sauce]

This game blew my mind as a kid. It might have been my first open world RPG

[Nooneatall]

What about Freelancer?

[Bertram_Tung]

What about Freelancer?

I enjoyed it muchly.
There was actually just another update to the Freelancer HD mod which quite nicely polishes the game while being very respectful of vanilla.
https://github.com/FLHDE/freelancer-hd-edition
v0.7 released last week. He's been rolling out updates steadily for a few years. It's really high quality.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Honkai Star Rail: ongoing zany space fantasy RPG with a contemporary Chinese fantasy aesthetic. Haven't seen anything quite like it. You wake up on a futuristic sci fi spacestation that is being attacked by robots, fight them off, get invited aboard an ancient space train that is retracting a historical route along the cosmos as it jumps from point to point in its database. Recommended if you like linear, story heavy JRPGs and/or great aesthetics. Not recommended if you want non-linearity, being able to kill anyone, or a "hard sci fi" aesthetic.

► My current evaulation

You get to visit weird different worlds. The first planet is a planet that has frozen over and there is just one Soviet-esque city left on the planet, with an underground city that has been cut off from the surface for thirty years. Then visit a travelling fleet of 6 Chinese worldships the size of planets that use spacefolding so that they are even bigger inside, that have lifted up entire oceans from their homeworld, and is populated by three different races of immortals, including one race that can no longer have children and instead turn into an egg and reincarnate over and over. Then there is space Las Vegas, and then there is this ringworld populated by space Greeks that has robo-titans on it.








There are mortal who ascended to become physically powerful pagan "gods" called Aeons who are the leaders of concepts called Paths. There is a bug swarm rolling over the universe, but unlike the dinosaur looking aliens in Alien/Warhammer 40k/Starcraft these ones look like rhinocerous beetles, and their Aeon ruled over the concept of Propagation. In the distant past during the Swarm Disaster, apparently anyone procreating would result in giving birth to these swarm bugs, regardless of the race of the mother, simply because their Aeon controlled the concept of Propagation.

Gameplay is your usual four-dudes-in-a-row turn based JRPG combat, with great ability cutscene animations. The characters are designed to look appealing to look at from behind with multilayered tassels and cloaks on their back and subdivided skirts. You can run around different districts and streets of a city on the world you are visiting. However, because it is a gacha game, which interferes with the experience of the game (you don't get all of the playable characters like you would in a box purchase RPG, the way those characters are trotted out in the story corresponding to their release schedule, some managerial issues, the dialogue boxes and tutorials are too verbose, etc). There are also many minigames to spruce up the experience, though they are not very sophisticated.

The story so far has been merely "okay". Writing issues aside, the main issue is the presentation. The moment-to-moment experience is running to a lot of cutscenes where people stand around in a circle and yap on and on while emoting with canned animations and the camera is zoomed out, which is disappointing for a game of its enormous expense and a company of such prestige when smaller companies are able to achieve much better storytelling with less. The Japanese voice dub helps infuse some emotion into what is going on, but fundamentally there isn't much of interest to look at for most of these lengthy cutscenes, and often not that much tension to keep the reader engaged.

Scam Citizen: Not a real game that exists

I spent many hours on this game. There was a time when I might have recommended it. It is incredibly immersive. Unfortunately, the game has terrible netcode, and you can die to enemies shooting through walls or you step foot on a floor and you just randomly die, and they have added more mechanics like losing your items on death and long travel times from a respawn point that just makes the game increasingly unenjoyable to play.

► Show Spoiler

(Original post on MMO-C)

I awake in the floating shipyard city of Orison.






While walking out of my hab, I pass by an advertisement.




I want one.

Finding the giftshop turns out to be a little more difficult than I had imagined, given that the playable cityspace is spread out across 5 platforms. Eventually I do find it.




Finley is mine.




I place him on the dashboard. To Microtech!




While I am trying to search for the river from orbit, someone (NPC? Player? IDK) launched a missile at me.




I mash G hoping to send out a chaffe to divert the missile. No chaffe is launched. Boom.




I respawn in Orison, where I began an hour ago. And now I have no Finley.




I go back to the gift shop and reunite with Finley again. I also buy his sister, Francis. I wait 7 minutes for my ship to respawn. We depart Orison and fly out of atmosphere, then quantum drive to HUR L4.

My ship, the Origin 325a, does not have enough quantum fuel capacity to travel across the star system from Orison to Microtech in one jump, so I have to stop at the space station HUR L4 along the way to refuel. During transit to HUR-L4, I place Finley on my dashboard once again, but he bugs out and disappears.

I place his sister, Francis Francis on the dashboard.




You won't leave me, will you?

Fortunately, she did not bug out.

We arrive at Microtech. We find the river. It's early morning. Francis and I watch the sunrise together.






It's beautiful.

We dip into the river. (Surprisingly touching water no longer insta-kills you now!)




We shall avenge your brother.




We catch up to the cutlass, still loitering at high altitude over the river.

Give me luck, Francis!




I dive on top of him guns blazing. However, since there has been a wipe, I am not equipped with my preferred loadout. Since the default loadout for the 325a uses ballistic gatling guns, which are terrible against shields, I run out of ammo just as I deplete his shields, barely scratching his hull. I press middle-mouse button, trying to launch my own missiles at him, but it doesn't work (another rebind?).




With my shields depleting, I break off to flee knowing that my lighter ship can eventually outrun the Cutlass, but I was too late.





It is rather frustrating when you come back to a game, and all of your prior knowledge and experience is useless because they reworked flight mechanics and remapped the keybinds for the Nth time, on top of losing your progress due to wipes.

Also, flesh and blood Stormwal whales haven't been added to Orison yet.



When will you add them CIG?

[Stack of Turtles]

Empyrion suuuuucks. I've never played Pulsar but some of my friends played it briefly and liked it.

[asf]

empyrion is fun

[Stack of Turtles]

empyrion is fun

Did they change the gay *** EA motorcycle sound?

[Norfleet]

Honkai Star Rail: ongoing zany space fantasy RPG with a contemporary Chinese fantasy aesthetic. Haven't seen anything quite like it. You wake up on a futuristic sci fi spacestation that is being attacked by robots, fight them off, get invited aboard an ancient space train that is retracting a historical route along the cosmos as it jumps from point to point in its database. Recommended if you like linear, story heavy JRPGs and/or great aesthetics. Not recommended if you want non-linearity, being able to kill anyone, or a "hard sci fi" aesthetic.

I am unclear why you are trying to peddle a ****** Chinkslop weeb MMO with bundled CCP spyware in a thread about PRESTIGIOUS SPACE GAMES that are NOT MMOs.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

PRESTIGIOUS SPACE GAMES that are NOT MMOs.

I remember playing a few missions of that old Tie Fighter game. It was pretty neat. Might be worth revisiting. There were a few other Star Wars games with spaceflight that I played. That one where you played as a Naboo starfighter, I think that had overall pretty boring gameplay. Rogue Squadron was neat but most of the missions are about flying around the surface of planets IIRC, probably because having a ground moving past below you makes it easier to judge distance and you can have difficulty like trying to navigate those tight canyon levels.

I played a bit of Freelancer, I think the demo. I thought it was odd how there were warp gates inside a star system, as in for going between planets. Typically warp gates like in EVE Online, Babylon 5, Mass Effect, etc, are used for traveling between star systems.

Kerbal Space Program was pretty neat. I think I managed to get to land on the moon and then come back. Lots of adjusting the orbital lines. Apparently a sequel was made by a completely different dev team, so it's probably not very good.

There was another late 1990s/early 2000s game I played a bit of that I cannot recall the name of. I remember I was controlling this red ship in an underground city or huge spacestation, I think it had a 3rd person view, and there were other ships like police going around.

[Norfleet]

I played a bit of Freelancer, I think the demo. I thought it was odd how there were warp gates inside a star system, as in for going between planets. Typically warp gates like in EVE Online, Babylon 5, Mass Effect, etc, are used for traveling between star systems.

The hugeiosity of space is not to be misunderestimated. If there weren't warp gates INSIDE the system, it'll take you like half an hour to get to Mars at lightspeed. That means either ships are capable of LUDICROUS SPEED (lightspeed is too slow), you get a time compression (can't be used in MP), the scale of the game is just completely shot. Warp gates let you have ships that don't go at LUDICROUS SPEED. Also, the scale in Freelancer is, in fact, completely shot anyway on top.

[Bertram_Tung]

PRESTIGIOUS SPACE GAMES that are NOT MMOs.

I remember playing a few missions of that old Tie Fighter game. It was pretty neat. Might be worth revisiting. There were a few other Star Wars games with spaceflight that I played. That one where you played as a Naboo starfighter, I think that had overall pretty boring gameplay. Rogue Squadron was neat but most of the missions are about flying around the surface of planets IIRC, probably because having a ground moving past below you makes it easier to judge distance and you can have difficulty like trying to navigate those tight canyon levels.

I played a bit of Freelancer, I think the demo. I thought it was odd how there were warp gates inside a star system, as in for going between planets. Typically warp gates like in EVE Online, Babylon 5, Mass Effect, etc, are used for traveling between star systems.

Kerbal Space Program was pretty neat. I think I managed to get to land on the moon and then come back. Lots of adjusting the orbital lines. Apparently a sequel was made by a completely different dev team, so it's probably not very good.

There was another late 1990s/early 2000s game I played a bit of that I cannot recall the name of. I remember I was controlling this red ship in an underground city or huge spacestation, I think it had a 3rd person view, and there were other ships like police going around.

Tie Fighter is an incredible game. Highly prestigious. Doesn't get enough respect.

[Bertram_Tung]

I played a bit of Freelancer, I think the demo. I thought it was odd how there were warp gates inside a star system, as in for going between planets. Typically warp gates like in EVE Online, Babylon 5, Mass Effect, etc, are used for traveling between star systems.

The hugeiosity of space is not to be misunderestimated. If there weren't warp gates INSIDE the system, it'll take you like half an hour to get to Mars at lightspeed. That means either ships are capable of LUDICROUS SPEED (lightspeed is too slow), you get a time compression (can't be used in MP), the scale of the game is just completely shot. Warp gates let you have ships that don't go at LUDICROUS SPEED. Also, the scale in Freelancer is, in fact, completely shot anyway on top.

What I loved about Independence War 2 Edge of Chaos is it did a decent job of portraying the "Hugeosity" of space. While still being fun. Difficult to pull off.

[MrTwinkls]

Space Rangers 2 - arcade space fights, trading, clunky ground battles and text quests.
Starsector - haven't played it yet. If someone did please give me your brief opinion.

[horstg]

Nexus - The Jupiter Incident : Pretty neat, played it ages ago, but it's ship-only

[rusty_shackleford]

I tried playing Elite Dangerous at 2x supersampling and the jagged lines are STILL there, incredible.

[rusty_shackleford]

Seriously, how do people play this?? I recorded it at 2x supersampling(5120x2880 downsampled to 2560x1440 — meaning it was rendering at much higher than 4k!) WITH SMAA enabled. It even looks so much worse at thumbnail view.

The renderer is fundamentally broken at some level. No idea how they managed this, but it's something they're doing that just inherently creates these jaggies which is why they can't fix it. Again, I think it's something to do with how they render the speculars.

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I'm not a graphics snob in the least, but I just can't play a game that actively hurts to look at.

[rusty_shackleford]

Taken from someone else, this is with supersampling + MLAA

download (4).jpeg

No idea how anyone can play this.

[Bertram_Tung]

It's even worse in motion.

[ThulsaDoomer]

Space Rangers 2 - arcade space fights, trading, clunky ground battles and text quests.
Starsector - haven't played it yet. If someone did please give me your brief opinion.

Playing Starsector currently, but I have done sessions in the past as well. Fairly modded install.

Normally I am not a huge aimless sandbox kind of guy, unless there's severe autistic effort to make it interesting. Starsector has very solid background writing that presents a genuinely compelling sector of a long bygone era of humanities time conquering the stars. The gameplay gives you a ton of options to play with and using mods you can increase the variedness of your fleet or focus on fleet composition. Been enjoying it a lot more than I expected and upon my revisit I can only endorse it further.

One warning, however. A lot of the faction mods, while fairly solid in concept and execution, suffer from a bizarre syndrome of space weebery portraits. I personally changed all of them with fairly vanilla fitting upscaled portraits so that my immersion wasn't utterly ******* destroyed. I would advise the same.

[Tangerine]

Darkstar One was a space sim with RPG elements. You leveled up your ship as you progressed. I remember liking it when it came out, but don't know how well it's held up.

[Bertram_Tung]

Darkstar One was a space sim with RPG elements. You leveled up your ship as you progressed. I remember liking it when it came out, but don't know how well it's held up.

Always wanted to play this, I think I own it on two platforms but never played it. I remember it has some german jankiness or something. But it looked okay.

[rusty_shackleford]

I will give this a looksee

[twig]

[gerey]

Turboautistic game about mining the rings of Saturn:



Naturally, it has a DLC that turns all the characters into furries, and one that turns them all into animu characters.

Fun, arcadey game you are all probably aware of (sequel is woke ****):



Arcade space sim with great presentation and premise, the trailer is pretty badass - you're the remainder of the royal guard tasked with carrying out the final edict of the emperor, hunt down the traitor lords and bring ruin to their people:



Topdown space game with RPG elements that never really got the recognition it deserved:



FREE spiritual successor to the Endless Sky games (that you should also play). Did I mention it's free?



Combination of adventure game and space game, with a dash of RPG elements:

[rusty_shackleford]

Combination of adventure game and space game, with a dash of RPG elements:

Is this based on the similarly titled action-RPG games?
[edit]
nop, but it was 3089 Futuristic Action RPG

[rusty_shackleford]

[*] Everspace 2: Sadly, it's ship only, but otherwise a fun arcade-style space flight shooty pooty game. I recommend it. (Unlike the first game, it is not a roguelike)

So what's the deal here: Is ship-only valid or not?

It's fun