I was on another site and we were discussing the types of games PC gamers want but can't have because no one is making them anymore. After scratching my head, I realized that one genre we haven't seen in a long time is the starship simulator. By that, I mean a game that puts you in command of a full-fledged, space-going warship. The last good one I played was back on the 16-bits and was called Starfleet Command I. It was a game that took place in a Star Trek-like universe where the player was put in charge of a warship. You could earn ranks and medals by completing successful patrols and such. Even though it was a simplistic game by todays standards, it still had all the essential feature: navigation, tractor beams, marine boarding parties, damage control, phasers and photons torps, mines, etc. Great stuff!
In the world of 32-bit gaming, we haven't really seen a good starship simulator. There have been a steady trickle of Wingman-type games (with Jumpgate Evolution being the most recent), but those are more about single seat craft and dogfighting. There was Battlecruiser 3000 AD, but that was a disaster. Star Trek Bridge Commander was decent, but it is quite long in the tooth now (but it did have the right idea). EVE does offer command of large ships, but while configurations can be quite complex, you really are still only operating a ship of one.
I would love to see some company take a crack at this forgotten genre once again. After playing Ubisoft's excellent Silent Hunter series, I think a similar, space-based game could be awesome. With today's computational abilities, a gamer could literally walk the corridors of his ship, interact with his crew/systems and engage in detailed patrols (again, basically Silent Hunter).
Perhaps Stardock/Ironclad would be the ones to do this? Both companies seem to love their space-based games. What is more, now that we've seen the excellence that is Sins, a game that will only get better and more epic as it matures with these expansions, the Sins universe would seem to be a natural setting for such a game. I think it would be a lot of fun to see the Sins universe from the bridge of a single vessel, such as a Kol battlecruiser.
Just a thought. I just wish somebody would pick up the spaceship sim genre once again, though.
As far as I know there is no Gathering Storm demo - the only demo out currently is original relatively unpatched Starshatter.
Ahh there was a game, a very old game called Rules of Engagement 2, and it could be linked with another game called Breach 3. You commanded a ship, and at times commaned a small fleet from your command ship, and you could board other ships and starbases and every now and then, Breach 3 would open up and you commanded the boarding party, setting their weapon loads etc. I enjoyed it alot on the old Amiga 2500, could never quite get the PC version to work.
You could make a game like Rules of Engagement 2, then make another game like Breach 3, that could be linked to the first game. You then could play either game seperatly or you could link them. You controled everything from damage repair, to communication with other fleet commanders, who had charactoristics alot like D&D, they would even earn experience IIRC, they would follow you or they would be slow in their reaction. You had a pool of other ship commanders to chose from for each mission, some commanders were really good and others not so. You could hide in astroid felts and actually mine them for resources to repair you ship damage. Even if a ship system was completely destroyed you could get it repaired at a starbase, if the starbase tech level was high enough that is (I remember often taking over neutral starbases just to fix ship systems, as they were not always very cooperatable).
I would like to see a game like that again.
Or even another old game called "Star Frontiers: Elite II"
Ahh the memories. Horrible graphics by todays standards but man were they fun.
The best starship simulators I have ever played were also the best and first "true" open world games --- STARFLIGHT! and STARFLIGHT 2 Trade Routes of the Cloud Nebula!
Starflight Resource Page
Games like Grand Theft Auto and Saints Row or Eve, talk about being an open universe or game world but in reality they are extremely limited only to their specific actions. Starflight and Starflight 2 offer not only a Space Opera style story but a true open world in which you only need to ever use your weapons twice. You are allowed to create and customize your crew, your ship, and talk/kill/whatever your way to glory/fame/Credits/Ru's/power... And the games have a great sense of humor.
And here is the amazing thing, these games are roughly the size of a few MB's (They were made for the DOS). Though it is true you can find different versions of both the first and second game it is widely thought that the DOS versions are superior.
And if Starflight is too old school for you then I recomend The Urquan Masters.
x3 terran conflict, you can hire marines to do ship boarding.
or if you want something free and full version, but might not be good, but still decent, try universal combat, you can download the full version for free.
Funny that I stumbled on this thread. I've been thinking a lot lately of quitting my job (I'm currently a finance lawyer) and starting an independent game studio. I wanted to do a hardcore starship simulator as our first title, ala Silent Hunter in space. Obviously, less sneaking around than a sub simulator, of course.
It's an interesting proposition. Right off the bat you're talking about cutting out 75% of the market (consoles) to make a PC-only game. Not only that, a very niche PC-only game. I would be quite wary of spending more than $600,000 to make such a game. And that doesn't buy you much. I understand Ironclad made Sins for under $1,000,000 which is impressive. I wonder if that includes marketing.
I'm looking around at a few of these games, and X3TC looks interesting. But is it out yet? Gamestop says it doesn't come out till this April, and Gamespot says the same thing. But it seems that a demo and patches are available on the X3 website. Wikipedia says it came out last October or so. Am I seriously missing something?
Its been out for a while now. You should be able to buy it from a number of places.
The retail disk based version uses a DVD check for copy protection, you must play with the disk in the drive.
The digital download release on Steam uses a limited install system , but they are very loose in that regard because you get 5 installs and from what I hear customer support is friendly about activation issues.
I want an online EVE type game with multiple people able to be on the same ship.
No, I don't mean like having engineers (although maybe different classes could give your ship different bonuses such as speed, maneuverabilty, etc) but everyone being a gunner or some combat role (although I guess engineers could be like healers in fantasy MMO's?) I would really like to see a game like EVE where you could have 30 people all cooperating to run one huge ship. I guess internet latency might make this undoable currently.
Denryu, while not MMO, Angels Fall First Planetstorm (the UT3 game of the AFF universe) does have fleet battles with individual players crewing ships and manning turrets/helms/fighters.
No body mentioned Starfleet command
It the computer vrs of a pnp game called starfleet battles.
Playes resonable well if you dont crank up the speed to twitch levels.
The single player still works but the online world has long since disapeard.
The best & closest to the pnp game is version 2 or the orion wars.
The vers 3 is not very good x ships and next gen ships.
If you can find vers 1 or 2 or the orion wars xp you should have some fun with it
Independance War as there a long, long time before B5. Good game to boot if you can track down a copy.
Moving on, one of the problems with being the captain of a virtual starship was demonstrated quite admirably by bridge commander. fundementally it's quite boring. I mean if it were real then it'd be the best job in the universe; shoving your starship in to every anomoly going and using the main gun(s) in a planetry version of ant vs magnifying glass. But in bridge commander you ended up in the twisted position that the AI 'crew' were better at their jobs than you were, so you ended up taking a back seat whilst the game played itself (seriously, the AI could shoot and move the ship much better than your controls allowed and the same went for damage control). I'll grant you it's realistic but boring for a player of games.
Submarines has worked well for decades though.
I think if you're going to do space sim type thing then you need to move away from existing francises, there is just too much bagage attached to say Star Wars/Trek (or A. N. Other) to really pull it off without upsetting someone.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQO
The X series is kinda tedious for a single player. You spend hours doing stuff just to realize it doesn matter. Autopilot doesn't work, you ram into random asteroids and your ship costs more to repair than money you have.
If you want space, Eve is the best. Not really a sim, but iot is damn good.
http://www.freeallegiance.org/
Focused totally around multiplayer battles. Each team has a commander that gives orders and builds structures via a RTS-like interface.
Infinity the Quest for Earth is my big hope right now, but it's still lacking bridge command
There is a fairly old/new online game called FlashTrek Broken Mirror; it is i guess somewhat (i think) similar to what you are talking about, graphics are good for a free online game, buut there are few gliches on the game. They have for some reason stoped working on BM1 nad BM2 and now have gone on to Broken Mirror 3. Maybe you should look into this.
Once again this is a free online flash game from http://www.vexxiang.com so maybe you should look into this.
Wow, didn't realize this discussion was still going on! Thanks for all the links! I, too, am eagerly awaiting Infinity - it sounds awesome, I just hope it doesn't become vaporware.
Thank you!!!!
I just downloaded and installed it.
If anyone else does, read through the forums before you play. There is a lot of good info there on how the physics work. As said, it is 'real Newtonian physics', which means you don't fly the spacecraft like an aircraft. It works exactly the same way as in the Bab5 show. Much more realistic, but expect a steep learning curve.
I have just made it through the first tutorial. So far, I feel that I have found a new game to occupy much of my time as well as a new challenge. "Flying through hyperspace isn't like dusting crops" - is exactly true. And this game makes that perfectly clear.
You want the challenge of piloting a real spacecraft, in real-space conditions? Then play this game!
There is even Multiplayer. It is set up for LAN only, but there is at least one thread on the forum that discusses how to get it running through Steam over the internet.
I really liked 'Nexus: The Jupiter Incident'. It put you in COMPLETE control of all the weapons and defense systems of between 1 and 12 ships. I would say it's a star ship simulator, it's just sleek enough to let you handle a small fleet of them. Im just kind of upset that it was a student project at some school, so there are like no chances of any kind of sequel. I haven't seen much like it come out yet. Maybe 'Battleships Forever' or 'Gratuitous Space Battles' but they don't look nearly as nice.
ok so i apologize in advance if someone has already mentioned it but if no one has i'm honestly amazed, Nexus - The jupiter incident, seems to be exacltly the games everyone is saying they want to see, aside from the beautiful graphics, it has a simple to use control system, full cap ship command, and you even get to add 3 or 4 frigates/crusiers as a support capacity(you also control these in essence you get a small strike fleet build up as you progress through the game) all of your ships are customizable it has a good single player campaign, i can't personally comment on the online playability as im not an on line gamer, but i spent months and months trying to find a good cap ship sim (or any for that matter) and honestly its the best i've come across... sorry again if its already been mentioned but after getting a headache from tralling through the streams of comments on this page i gave up and just decided to type this as i could't let Nexus go unmentioned... oh and one little thing as well, Nexus has a brilliant modding community that have come up with some awesome Battlestar galactica/Babylon 5/star wars/stargate mods, and a whole lot more.
Yeah nexus - the jupiter incident is a lot of fun. It has some quirks in the story, though. And frankly the stealth missions are horrible. I also would have liked to see more large-scale battles.
You obviously never left high sec, lol.
I'd really like to see a good Starship Simulator as well. Something that puts you in command of a massive battlecruiser or space carrier that launches wings of fighters. Some day hopefully developers will realize not All Gamers are 12 year olds who can't comprehend complex games and strategies. It all comes down to what they think the market (being the public that buys games) is interested in and most developers these days want an instant return on their investment. They want to make games that are Easy to Make and that don't require actual thought to play because today's market mostly wants instant gratification. I seriously doubt we'll ever see a Real Return to the Golden Age of PC gaming. Back when PC games were mostly strategy and simulator titles. Back when games to thought and planning to play and that gave you a Real Sense of accomplishment when you Won because you had to Think and Put Effort into winning instead of just pointing and clicking.
Battlecriuser 3000
/runs away laughing
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