Warframe! I haven’t played in a while but the art style and game in general will always have a place in my heart.
Of the ones on your list I have only played mass effect back in the xbox360 days. It was one of the first games I played. Super good memories. I might need to revisit those if my Xbox is still working
I’ve never actually played Warframe, mostly because I’m not really into competitive arena shooters (with CS:GO and Apex being notable exceptions, though I’ve long since left them behind), and from my short glances that’s how it appeared to me. Does it take place in space?
Oh it’s quite different! The gameplay loop is centered around PvE in a cooperative style with a handful of different modes and a ton of different maps. It does take place in space but there are also missions that feel less spacey like the planes of eidolon
That is actually #5 on my Small Games list. It sort of straddles the line in terms of size and complexity, but in the end I think it really falls under being a small, Indie game, being as it’s FOSS and community-developed and all.
As a “space games guy” is there anything out there that is as satisfying to simply fly around in as Elite Dangerous is without the absolute shit fuck of ass-backwards, tedious and boring mechanics?
I fucking love flying ships in that game with my HOTAS and VR headset, but I will be damned if I am going to roll around on a moon praying I trip over some precious metals just so I can play logistics hot potatoes trying to figure out how I am going to get my module to the relevant station, upgraded, and then placed into the ship I designed it for. Elite is such an incredible space cockpit sim, and they’ve gone to great lengths to prevent me from wanting to actually play it. I just want a good cockpit sim with HOTAS support that doesn’t make me want to scoop out my own eyeballs whenever I think about loading it up again.
You should give Squadron 42 a shot on one of their Free Weekends. It's pretty close to Elite as far as flight mechanics and maneuvering goes and a lot more forgiving about getting the parts you want in your ship. It's pretty jank on foot though. Not sure if that's a dealbreaker.
I just want a good cockpit sim with HOTAS support that doesn’t make me want to scoop out my own eyeballs whenever I think about loading it up again.
Atmospheric flight combat sims, and I haven’t played either much, but maybe Il-2: Sturmovik: Great Battles or DCS? Those kind of fit the “slap a lot of money on the counter, and we give you a hard sim with a lot of levers” bill.
I fucking love flying ships in that game with my HOTAS
I have a HOTAS setup too, along with pedals. And I’m kinda with you on wishing that there were good space flight combat HOTAS games. But…I’m skeptical that it’s gonna happen.
You need to have enough people running around with a dedicated throttle and flightstick to get sales up enough to make it worthwhile to focus a game on it.
I feel like the decline in flightsticks may have been a factor in moving away from the combat flight genre (both space and air-breathing), that the late '90s/early 2000s may be permanently the heyday.
My guess is that there are a number of factors:
Gamepads got analog thumbsticks and analog triggers. They aren’t ideal for flight sims, but that’s enough analog inputs that most people who aren’t absolutely devoted to the genre are going to just live with a gamepad rather than buying a bunch of extra input hardware that can only be used with that game.
During the 1990s, joysticks such as the CH Products Flightstick, Gravis Phoenix, Microsoft SideWinder, Logitech WingMan, and Thrustmaster FCS were in demand with PC gamers. They were considered a prerequisite for flight simulators such as F-16 Fighting Falcon and LHX Attack Chopper. Joysticks became especially popular with the mainstream success of space flight simulator games like X-Wing and Wing Commander, as well as the “Six degrees of freedom” 3D shooter Descent.[27][28][29][30][31] VirPil Controls’ MongoosT-50 joystick was designed to mimic the style of Russian aircraft (including the Sukhoi Su-35 and Sukhoi Su-57), unlike most flight joysticks.[32]
However, since the beginning of the 21st century, these types of games have waned in popularity and are now considered a “dead” genre, and with that, gaming joysticks have been reduced to niche products.[27][28][29][30][31]
The XBox gamepad became very common as a convention on the PC, whereas up until that point, it was more-common to have all kinds of oddball inputs, and it was expected that a player would set up the controls on a per-game basis. I think that not having to do input configuration made gamepad-on-the-PC more approachable, but it also made it harder to sell people on games that require actual input. HOTASes are still in the “setup required” family (and it’s good that they have the flexibility, as you can’t have a one-size-fits-all HOTAS setup). Maybe you could have Internet-distributed profiles for different hardware, choose something reasonable out of box, kinda like how Steam Input works.
Ubiquitous Internet access has made multiplayer more common than it was around 2000. If a game supports competitive multiplayer, then having configurable input (and macros and such) may be undesirable, because you want a level playing field. Game developers may not want to permit for a variety of inputs if it doesn’t make for a level playing ground and they’re doing multiplayer. There’s some game that I recall (Star Citizen?) where I remember players being extremely unhappy about changes being made that favored mouse-and-keyboard players over flightstick players.
Newer combat aircraft are fly-by-wire. There’s no mechanism to let one “feel” resistance, and so not much reason for flight sim games to do so either. For a while, there were force-feedback joysticks (we typically use “force feedback” today to refer to rumble motors, but strictly-speaking, it should refer to joysticks that push back against you). That was never a huge chunk of the market, but it was a reason to get dedicated hardware.
I assume that modern aircraft don’t need trim adjustment; having trim controls is another thing that you can add inputs for on-controller.
For space combat games, manipulating the throttle doesn’t have the significance that it does with an air-based combat flight sim. Like, you aren’t constantly storing and releasing kinetic energy as you ascend and descend. You don’t have much to crash into. Stalling isn’t a problem. Exceeding aircraft speed maximums isn’t a problem. A lot of space combat flight sims aren’t “hard sims”, so you don’t need to worry about things like engine overheating the way you might in Il-2 Sturmovik: 1946 (though I suppose that one could introduce dynamics for that; Starfield has a “peak maneuverability” speed, so there’s an incentive to reduce speed to do a turn before speeding back up).
Many space combat sims aren’t simulating existing hardware; developers are only going to introduce mechanics if it significantly adds to the gameplay. In Il-2 Sturmovik: 1946, I have a ton of controls that are there because they reflect real-world mechanical systems. Armored cowlings over air intakesthat can be set to variable levels of openness. Prop pitch. Fuel mixture. The only real analog I can think of in space flight combat sims are maybe “system energy levels”.
HOTAS is really limited to PC gaming. It’s not incredibly friendly to other video game hardware. With a console, you need to have the input hardware mounted somewhere, something that a living room couch isn’t as amenable to as a desk. With a mobile phone, you want to have the hardware with you, and so size is at a premium; I think that few people are going to want to lug around a throttle and flightstick with their phone, even if the hardware can technically handle it.
Some games are doing VR (e.g. Elite Dangerous) and in VR, I think that if the world does go heavily down the VR route – which it has not yet – that it’ll be likely that there will just be virtual controls using VR controllers rather than dedicated HOTAS input devices. The concept of only seeing the ship kinda isn’t an ideal match for the physical controls. Yeah, you don’t get tactile feedback, but it gives you a lot of flexibility in ship control layout. Now, yes, there’s a VR+HOTAS crowd like you; going all the way with inputs and outputs. But I don’t know how many people are willing to put the money down for a top-of-the-light flight sim rig, and video games have fixed costs and variable revenue, so they benefit from scale, getting a lot of people pitching in money. You really don’t want to target just a small market if you can avoid it.
I think that the best bet for broader HOTAS support down the line is one of the two:
Go low-budget. Yeah, a lot of flight sims are AAA…but I’m not sold that they absolutely need to be. I’ve played some untextured polygon games that are pretty good (like Carrier Command 2). I understand that BattleBit Remastered is considered pretty highly too. That’s a big whopping chunk of assets that just don’t exist. And if you do that, you can target a much smaller audience and still make a reasonable return. Just focus on flight mechanics or something. Maybe down the line, if there’s enough uptake, sell some kind of DLC with fancy assets.
Push HOTAS support out to some kind of game-agnostic software package. Like, say there were enough people who really wanted to play HOTAS games. Have an open-source “HOTAS app” that provides most of the functionality: distributing input profiles, linking together collections of devices, setting indicator LEDs, etc. The game just links up with that app, and doesn’t attempt to handle every device out there. It exposes a bunch of input values that can be twiddled, and some outputs. There’s some precedent for that kind of software; Steam Input, or (not input-specific) VoIP apps with game integration, like Teamspeak. Buttplug.io basically fills that “third-party open-source middleware” role for outputs for adult video games and sex toys.
Either way – push HOTAS out to a separate cross-input-device, cross-game software package, or going lower-budget, reduces the need to be mass-market, which – in 2024 – HOTAS isn’t.
Od kilku lat sprawdza mi się porządna obudowa żelowa i szybka - ważne, żeby nie oszczędzać na obu. Nie używam telefonu do walki wręcz, ale kilka upadków z ręki na posadzkę (również z uderzeniem narożnikiem) przeżył.
Great write up, thank you for sharing and I can’t wait for Part 2! I’ve never heard of X4, but now you’ve got me curious to check it out. I appreciated your thoughts on Stellaris. I played Stellaris after Crusader Kings and found myself wishing it had a little more of Crusader Kings in it, so it’s interesting to hear you describe it as having “a high focus on randomized events, narrative events, and overarching story lines.” Maybe I need to give that another chance, too.
Outer Worlds has no space-based content. Yes, you have a spaceship, but it’s essentially a fast-travel device. One of the locations is a space station, but it’s no different than a large building (e.g. it’s not shaped like a torus or anything interesting like that).
Outer Worlds is a really fun take on the Firefly space western concept, though, as long as you understand all of your activities will take place on worlds/moons with basically the same gravity & atmosphere.
The Outer Worlds is in the same bucket as Starfield, but with fewer space-specific elements. Starfield has light space flight combat, though it’s not very sophisticated, more of a minigame. And Starfield has zero-G FPS bits. Oh, yeah, and you mention The Outer Worlds having fixed gravity – Starfield does have variable gravity. But if you removed that, you could make either Starfield or The Outer Worlds not set in space and it’d basically play the same way. Maybe you’d have to come up with some alternate explanation for alien animals and flora, like bioengineering or something, but lots of games have done that.
Sort of surprised Elite Dangerous never made your list. It seems like it would be right up your alley! I've invested thousands of hours in Elite Dangerous and several thousands hours across the entire Elite franchise.
I've had lots of fun with more recent space games, but to this day Star Citizen's Squadron 42 is the closest I've seen any game come to Elite's level of flight control and maneuvering. I would say it's currently held down by how they try to manage additional content and flushing out existing content. Endgame content isn't as exhilarating as I'd hoped, but there's still plenty to do in the game to keep you busy for hundreds if not thousands of hours.
Elite certainly isn't without it's faults and I'd be pleased to see more contenders in this space (ha!), but I also recognize that space sandbox games are very difficult to get right.
I will probably add E:D to the list, but under protest. ;P
I kickstarted it, and I just honestly didn’t find it that much fun. Once Frontier started doing lots of “balance” changes that nerfed money accrual, I really bounced off. I’m not someone who plays any single game exclusively, but it felt like it was going to take 60+ hours just to move up each ship level, and I wasn’t gonna wait 6+ months realtime, or however long it would’ve taken, to buy an Anaconda (and not be able to afford insurance, and lose it anyways).
There has always been ways to make stupid money in the game.
My favorite has been to cozy up to a local faction so I can get assassination assignments that pay the big bucks, and void opal mining was still super lucrative last I checked.
Bounty hunting is a bit slow, but taking on a a mercenary contract with a faction to fight for them in conflict zones pays well IIRC.
The real grind is engineering your ships and weapons, though that was also improved significantly by making it so re-rolling your mods can only make them better, never worse.
Nie miałem czasu kupować ani czekać na przesyłkę, założyłem starą, usuwając wcześniej przedmiot, który przebił dętkę (chyba ten). Ale jeśli ta opona będzie dalej przebijać, to pomyślę o kevlarze.
To wydaje się lepsze od wymiany dętki, ale ja próbuję zmniejszyć w ogóle szansę jej przebicia. Czy z klejeniem dętek jest problem, że łatki się odklejają lub ucieka pod nimi powietrze?
A wożąc ze sobą sprzęt do klejenia (np. taki allegro.pl/…/zestaw-do-klejenia-detek-7164222848 , chociaż ja zamiast “tarki” używam papieru ściernego) i pompkę możesz nawet na trasie sobie skleić.
Podsumuję w jednym, podbijając z czym się zgadzam:
na każdej oponie jest informacja o ciśnieniu. Pompować maks. Troszkę mniej warto gdy upał, gdy śnieg i gdy jeździ się w przyrodzie (co by zapobiegać erozji). Warto regularnie podjezdzac do sąsiedzkiego warsztatu rowerowego i korzystać u nich z pompki z manometrem (albo zanabyć). Pompowanie min. raz w tygodniu i przed jazdą jeśli rower stoi dłużej nawet nieużywany.
przy zmianie dętki sprawdzić gdzie dziura. Jeśli od wewnątrz to problem moze być z taśmą, jak już napisano - mogła się zawinąć albo sparcieć. Jeśli są dwie podłużne dziurki wyglądające jak ugryzienie węża (mówi się na to snake) to powodem bylo bardzo niskie cisnienie, obręcz przyszczypała dętkę. Jeśli dziura jest od zewnątrz to trzeba mega dokładnie obejrzeć + obmacać oponę, to może być nawet igła z akacji (serio). Tip: oponę zakładaj tak, żeby nadruk był przy wentylu. Wtedy gdy znajdzie się dziurę na dętce będzie też wiadomo w którym miejscu na oponie szukać przyczyny przebicia.
oglądając oponę sprawdzić nie tylko czy w niej cos nie siedzi ale też czy po prostu nie ma już dziur, przetarć.
totalnie polecam łatanie, moje dętki wyglądają jak paczwork. Zestaw do łatania to 15 zł (DJ, za 20 to już jakiś wypaśny;)))
opony z taśmą antyprzebiciową - można, ale moim zdaniem serio dużo ważniejsze jest odpowiednie ciśnienie
jeśli sie dużo jeździ to i tak warto zainwestować w dobre opony, np. contilentale. Dobre = ok 100 zł/sztuka. Jednorazowo duży wydatek, ale starcza na dłużej i dzięki temu jest to tez bardziej ekologiczne (nie mam prowizji od contilentala)
Tip: oponę zakładaj tak, żeby nadruk był przy wentylu. Wtedy gdy znajdzie się dziurę na dętce będzie też wiadomo w którym miejscu na oponie szukać przyczyny przebicia.
Ja w tem celu naklejałem kawałek taśmy malarskiej na oponę z jednej strony.
jeśli sie dużo jeździ to i tak warto zainwestować w dobre opony, np. contilentale. Dobre = ok 100 zł/sztuka. Jednorazowo duży wydatek, ale starcza na dłużej i dzięki temu jest to tez bardziej ekologiczne (nie mam prowizji od contilentala)
Co do ekologii, to myślę, że z wieloma rzeczami tak jest – wielki procent śmieci to tanie chińskie jednorazówki i zbędne tanie pierdoły.
Bardzo dobre rady, zwłaszcza ta o ustawianiu nadruku na oponie na równi z wentylem, co potem ułatwia znalezienie problemu przy obowiązkowym sprawdzaniu opony po przebiciu.
Jeżeli chodzi o ciśnienie, to dodałbym, że jeżeli jeździmy po szutrach, albo innych nawierzchniach słabej jakości, trzeba jednak zrezygnować z nabijania maksymalnego dopuszczalnego ciśnienia, bo inaczej będzie bolało.
Podpisuję się pod polecajka dla continentali (też bez prowizji) - na ponad 40 tysięcy kilometrów zrobionych od 2015 tylko dwa razy musiałem zmieniać dętkę w trasie, a jeździłem po różnym syfie, od DDR przez asfalt po leśne i polne ścieżki.
Opcją do rozważenia w przypadku częstego łapania gumy jest rezygnacja z dętek i przejście na mleczko, ale obręcze i opony muszą wspierać to rozwiązanie.
Też rozważałam polecenie osobom mleczka, ale wtedy z kolei jest już mega problem jak ci pójdzie gdzieś w trasie opona. Wtedy i tak musisz włożyć dętkę, a jeszcze wyczyścić, i jeszcze się modlić żeby ta dętka też zaaz nie poszła skoro w oponie już dziura. A ty jeździsz na mleczku?
Nie, ale przymierzałem się do sprawy. Najpierw nie miałem kompatybilnych opon, a potem okazało się, że nie mam problemów z przebiciami, więc przestałem się nad tym zastanawiać.
Zapomniałem dodać, że opona musiałaby mieć naprawdę sporą dziurę, żeby nie dało się jej załatać tym sprytnym plugiem (nie wiem, jak to po naszemu się nazywa, czopek, zatyczka?), a z tego co widziałem, takie łatanie zajmuje mniej, niż wymiana dętki.
I just finished playing X3: Terrain Conflict, and I’ll never play another X game.
As an achievement hunter, I normally play past the point of normal enjoyment, but this game told me, more or less, to go fuck myself.
The first kick in the nuts was completing “Dead Is Dead” mode.
You don’t get to save (with the exception of shutting the game down, but the save will delete upon starting it back up).
The game is prone to crashes, meaning you can have your entire save wiped in an instant because the game decides it doesn’t like it when you use the fast forward function within 10 seconds of a cut scene.
On top of that, one of the campaigns requires you to set up a massive complex of microchips and silicon, which also has a chance of triggering a crash each time you place a factory down.
The final 2 achievements are basically “grind until we say stop”. Which functionally resulted in me leaving my computer on overnight, four nights in a row.
The fact that the devs left the game in this state is inconsiderate at best, and disrespectful at worst.
Besides, the game is basically just an excel sheet simulator, it really isn’t very engaging.
The new items stuff in particular seems like QoL considerations for “we just added a hundred items to the game for players coming back to it after months away.”
EVE always fascinated me, but at the same time how beginner unfriendly I’ve heard it is + feeling like I’ll probably not last long before I get killed off makes me wary of trying it.
If Outer Wilds counts as AA, then I’ll nominate that next (even if I still need to finish it)
I like Starfield, but as you point out, unless “space game” means “space-themed”, it’s really not the same genre as some of the other games in here. It has space combat, but it’s little more than a minigame. It’s not trying to be a space combat-oriented game. It does have some zero-gravity first-person-shooting combat sequences, which is kinda nifty, but
Of course, the same apply to Stellaris – it’s a 4x game that’s space-themed.
I haven’t played Mass Effect, but my understanding is that something similar would apply.
For me, the genre has more to do with games being comparable than the theme.
So, if I were gonna compare top games, I think I’d maybe do space 4x games, space combat games (and maybe subdivide those into Newtonian and non-Newtonian physics), and first-person games set in the far future, maybe a few other divisions (e.g. I’d certainly call Kerbal Space Project a good “space-themed game”, though it’s not a combat game). I’ve enjoyed all those sorts of games, but I’d be hard put to compare a game in one genre to the other…it’s like asking “what’s better, a steak or a banana split?”.
Non-Newtonian space combat flight games
This refers to games where you’re flying something that works kind of like an aerodynamic fighter in an atmosphere, but in space. If you turn, your spacecraft moves like flying in a fluid, and your whole spacecraft’s velocity changes.
This was a really big genre in the late-90s and early-2000s, but it saw a major dropoff over time. It was also big in TV series an movies – stuff like Star Trek and Star Wars.
It’s not really a “hard space sim”, but it has a lot of conventions aimed at making it pretty and exciting. Some conventions in the genre:
Space looks a lot like the kind of false-color photos that NASA puts out (note that other genres are not immune to this either).
Often has “Star Wars lasers”, which are visible, slow, and make sounds going by.
Sound transmits through space, so you get explosions and such being audible.
Fighters play a major role, and combat typically takes place at extremely close ranges (relative to our best guesses at what real-life space combat would look like), in World-War-2-style dogfights. The job the human has is usually in significant part the same as a WW2 pilot would have in a dogfight, lining up the weapons, maybe managing “ship energy” or some other such system. There are likely missiles, but these are used at close range, and don’t have high-off-boresight targeting. There’s typically some kind of CIWS or flare-countering-infrared-homing-missile analog.
Forward-mounted weapons are common, though usually not exclusive.
There’s usually some form of “warp drive” to deal with the kind of distances in space in a meaningful amount of time.
The pilot is usually in an environment analogous to a 20th-century air-breathing jet fighter: there are glass windows looking out on space, and visual identification of targets plays a real role.
Carriers often show up.
There are often torpedoes or analogs – hard-hitting weapons that move more-slowly.
It’s often the case that there’s some form of energy shield which can readily-regenerate and blocks a certain amount of weapons fire.
Tractor beams often show up.
Usually issues like utilizing gravity wells or something don’t play a major role in the game.
It’s common to have some form of engine sound. Engines often look a lot like rocket engines – like, there’s visible combustion products coming out the back and a roaring sound; sometimes you’ll have ion thruster-looking things.
The “space trading” genre is probably a subgenre of this; I don’t know of any “space trading” games that don’t also have space combat as an element.
I think that the genre is in significant part a mix of American cultural elements from the WW2-to-maybe-post-Vietnam era. A lot of the stuff is analogous to carrier combat plus having futuristic-themed forms of weapons common in air-to-air combat in the 20th century.
Those are all conventions developed over time by Hollywood and comic books and video games to make games work and appealing. Some of them work pretty-differently from reality (or what our best guesses are as to likely future space combat). But they’re pretty fun (at least, in my opinion).
I miss this genre, myself – there are a relatively-few games that have come out recently, and personally, I think that it’s people missing games in the genre that drove Star Citizen’s funding. I think that one reason that it was such a big deal in the late-90s was the confluence of cultural elements and the fact that space can be relatively-cheap to render, compared to atmospheric combat flight sims; you don’t need a lot of texture memory to make things look good, and hardware was often kinda limited then.
Newtonian space combat flight sim
This is a bit more of a catch-all, but it generally eschews some or all of the above (particularly the “flying through space is like flying through fluid”) and focuses more on the “hard sim” side.
This is a strategy genre; space isn’t really critical other than in that there are many isolated, habitable worlds to conquer.
Master of Orion and similar fall into this genre.
Space RTS
Not a lot of entrants here, but I think that Homeworld permitting for the use of a third dimension does meaningfully change the RTS genre.
Space sim
I’m not aware of a lot of games in this genre, but I can’t really fit Kerbal Space Project into another category, and it’s undeniably a space game.
Space-themed games
I’m kind of using this as a catch-all, but there are games in many genres that are set in the future and have space as a theme, but play pretty much analogously to games set in a present-day theme. Maybe there’s a bit of stuff that they pull in that wouldn’t happen in a present-day setting (e.g. Starfield’s zero-g FPS combat), but you could basically reskin most of the game and have it play the same way in a present- or past-setting.
There’s also a few “fleet command” games. These aren’t really “combat flight sims” like the above, because the player isn’t experiencing a flight sim from the ship, but like the “space RTS” genre, the third dimension really alters the dynamics. Maybe they’re somewhat-analogous to a naval fleet combat sim.
The only example of this genre that I’ve played would be Nebulous: Fleet Command, but I understand that there are a few more out there.
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