Disclaimer: It’s been 2 years since I last played this game so a lot might have changed (though I suspect it hasn’t).
Not sure if it counts as AAA but since you mentioned X4, I think Elite: Dangerous can be included as well. Honestly, I have a love-hate relationship with this game because I feel it has so much wasted potential.
Just as an example: the devs made a 1:1 replica of the Milky Way galaxy, featuring more or less 400 billion star systems. From what I could gather, it uses real astronomical data and you can travel to each and everyone of those systems. I’m not sure how much it has changed nowadays, but last I checked, around 99% of the galaxy was yet to be explored. Also, someone correct me if I’m wrong, but it takes months to go from the populated systems to the far end of the galaxy and its a massive, massive undertaking, where you sort of need to use external tools to plan your trip. And honestly, for me, the sheer scale, the possibility of exploring actual, real places, like the Galaxy core, and also the actual undertaking, is probably the best part of the game. Just going from the core systems to Colonia (which is the other cluster of populated systems) takes a good while, namely days, or even weeks.
But there’s a catch: there’s not much to see or do in these trips. You’re basically warping from system to system and you might stumble upon some really cool real life phenomena like a neutrino star or a hypergiant star or even a black hole (which does nothing to your ship, as far as I know, just gives you a cool visual effect). I’m going to be honest, when I first got to the system harboring the Betelgeuse hypergiant, it was so massive, I couldn’t see the end of it and thought I was going to crash into the star and lose my ship. There was another time where warped in the middle of a binary star system. Again, panic ensued. And honestly, these moments are memorable and stick with you for a long time. But they’re not nearly as a common as one might think.
And it wouldn’t be that bad if, again, there was more to do and see. To put it simply, most of the time, the game feels aimless and empty. You can trade, be a pirate, mine, but you’re doing it just because. Sure, there are community events where you can have an effect on the galaxy, but I don’t feel they have that much of an impact. I guess they were trying to change that with the addition of an hostile alien species but I’m not sure how’s that working out nowadays.
But even then, I could’ve tolerated all of this if it wasn’t for the consistently stupid decisions made by the devs. Instead of actually addressing the current criticisms of the game, they added fuckin’ space legs to the game instead, which nobody asked for. Adding insult to injury, this expansion, Odyssey, is (or was? Not sure how it is nowadays) an unoptimized mess. I had the game crashing on me so many times, I eventually got fed up and uninstalled it. The framerate was also very unstable as reported by a lot of people.
Oh, and they also stopped supporting the console versions. Not sure if they got some sort of compensation, honestly.
And yet, I still haven’t found a space game that managed to equal the highs that I experienced in Elite: Dangerous. I tried No Man’s Sky, X4, Everspace, and all of them came up short. I’m sure they’re great games but the game that makes me forget about Elite: Dangerous is yet to come. Although I should probably try No Man’s Sky again.
I think that I was probably spoiled by Eve in that regard. It has a lot of “wow” moments too. Or SC, though obviously that came after E:D. I’m also just not sure it really had the impact on the genre that the others have, though some of their impacts have not all been positive, obviously.
I guess it has an apparent advantage over SC, in that it’s an actual game that released. How much of an advantage that is, I don’t know, as I never tried Star Citizen. To me, something that put me off Star Citizen (and as far as I know, the same happened with a lot of other people) is the funding model.
It seems straight up dishonest. It’s like they’re leading people with a carrot to a game that might or might not come out. And it’s been this way for years, now. Again, from the outside, it seems they keep eternally promising and adding (or trying to add) stuff to the point where the game is never going to be finished and, at some point, they either keep this model forever or are going to abandon the game. I don’t want to be too judgemental regarding a game I don’t even play or have been hearing much about these past few years but, honestly, it’s what made me stay away from it.
Whatever the merits or flaws of Star Citizen as an individual game, I do think that the sheer amount of cash dumped into the thing by backers does demonstrate that there’s legitimately demand out there for a game in the space flight combat genre.
Agreed 100%, but to be fair I knew which way the wind was blowing with this game back before release when they made that horrible yaw change to keep pvp 'engaging'.
The whole legs thing would have been a nice to have, though. Not being able to just stand up out of my chair was immersion breaking. Once upon a time I jumped through a whole lotta hoops to get it working with my VR headset and NGL, I cried when I drove my rover on Mars. It was that gorgeous. What struck me most was physically looking over my shoulder and seeing the tires of it kicking up dirt and leaving that telltale track on a world where nobody had ever been.
Then I realized I could never leave a bootprint. I think the worst punch to the gut with the space legs thing was not being able to do VR with it afterward. Like...wtf, there's just a very clear disconnect between what direction the ED devs took the game versus what the players wanted.
The whole legs thing would have been a nice to have, though.
To clarify, I’m not opposed to the possibility of you exploring a planet with your character directly on the ground. The thing is, the base game had some fundamental flaws, the lack of content being a glaring example, that the community pointed out as needed fixing and/or improving. But instead of actually addressing the problem, the devs went in another direction entirely. It’s like you said:
there’s just a very clear disconnect between what direction the ED devs took the game versus what the players wanted.
Couldn’t have put it better myself. I mean, if they listened to what the players wanted (at least the bigger and most obvious issues) and fixed their shit, and then added space legs (which was, itself, something hastily and poorly added), I think the community’s reception would have been much more favourable and we’d have a better game to play.
E:D has the basics of a good game, but never builds upon them. FDev is deathly afraid of player agency. They want you to play like it’s on rails in a single player game, but have it an “MMO” for the PVP.
I just fucking want Elite to be good. I could shoot pirates and 'goids all day if getting a ship ready to do so wasn’t as enjoyable as running dental floss into my mouth and out my asshole.
I still have a soft spot for Freelancer, despite all the years that have gone by (and aside from some minor UI issues, plays perfectly on a modern PC), and it still looks remarkably nice for its age, too. The story is pretty linear, and the characters not hugely memorable (despite some voice acting from George Takei, John Rhys-Davies, and Jennifer Hale), but it’s just fun to play. It can be challenging if you want to venture into areas less travelled, but because progress through the game is largely dependent on the money you earn (in-game), if you just want a chill evening, you can just trade goods.
And like… this is a game I’ve been playing on and off for 20 years, and occasionally I still find something new. I played it a couple of months ago, committing to docking with every planet and station… and discovered a new trade route that was both shorter and more profitable than the one I had been using. It probably only cut 10 minutes off my three stage trade run around the entire map, but it was still kind of exciting to go “oooh, I never realised this was an option!” All because I visited a station I don’t usually visit.
Yeah, Freelancer is very special. I really think it’s completely unappreciated for how open the world really is, because it’s very easy just to follow the storyline and never just sod off and explore the world. I recently was replaying it with a bunch of mods, and I went exploring the ice asteroid fields in the south end of New York system, and it’s so atmospheric and cool.
I’ve definitely thought about modding Freelancer, but haven’t quite found the right ones yet. I tried Discovery (I think it was), and felt that the changes to the enemy AI and equipment (such as constantly using shield batteries and nanobots) just made gameplay more frustrating than enjoyable, because it made every single battle challenging - no more just chilling out while hauling random stuff through trade lanes. I’d really love a mod that adds new systems, planets, locations, ships, etc without dramatically changing the gameplay to be exclusively about the combat.
One thing that I think that they did right in Freelancer was to cheap out on the not-in-ship content.
X4 put a lot of work into building up an out-of-the-ship environment that lets you walk around space stations, and I just don’t feel that it added a lot of the environment. There are a lot of things that I’d rather have had done relative to X3.
Agreed! I think a lot of games benefit from trying to do one thing really well, rather than multiple things badly, and Freelancer is unapologetic about focusing on doing the in-ship stuff well. Games that try to do both the in-ship and not-in-ship elements end up either with both being done badly, or one just feeling like it serves little purpose in the game.
I’m a Freelancer fan as well. I was looking for a game like that since then. And now it seems there is kind of a successor to the Freelancer. store.steampowered.com/app/1111930/Underspace/
I literally responded to that link with an out loud “oooooooooh!”, my standard “yes I want it” sound. Spiritual successor to Freelancer with Lovecraftian elements? Ticks all the right boxes.
So many great games mentioned, like Sins of a Solar Empire (will have to get back into it sometime), Homeworld, Freespace, and Galactic Civilizations. Thanks for reminding me of them!
Oh, and since we’re on the topic, here’s a great playthrough by Tom Francis that showcases how great the Galactic Civilizations II AI is.
Although, I have to ask: no Endless Space? Not even 2? I had a great time playing it, to be honest. Probably not as complex as the aforementioned GalCiv but it was a ton of fun for me, nonetheless.
There is also the lesser known, but quintessential space game: Space Rangers (GOG). It takes a little figuring out, since it’s a Russian game from 2003 (and a successor of the 1999 game) and they kind of tend to be obtuse like that; but, its genuinely the coolest space sandbox I’ve played. It’s kind of a space Mount and Blade: you can fight aliems, you can trade, you can be a mercenary, or a pirate, and the game accomodates for all of that. At whim, it switches between the core X4-esque gameplay to an RTS, or to a text quest, some of which are basically an entire game of their own. The English translation is a little spotty, but it’s good enough.
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.
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