I’m rewatching Babylon 5 and it’s putting me in the mood for an immersive game where I get to command a spaceship and blast stuff with lasers or plasma cannons or whatever.
I fondly remember playing Tie Fighter, Elite 2 and Privateer, and I was wondering if there were good games from this side of the millennium? I’ve tried playing Tie Fighter Total Conversion, but without a joystick I found it very hard to control. I’ve played some Elite Dangerous, and enjoy a bit of trading, but the combat is a bit too hard for me.
I’m a very casual gamer, and not looking for an mmo, or anything particularly challenging. I just want to zoom around in a spaceship as epic battles rage around me, and have a bit of a power fantasy.
Oh no, mods… If it’s anything like skyrim I’ll spend more time messing around with mods than playing the game… But a bit of reading suggests that just the HD mod is a good choice for a 1st time playthru?
I haven’t really played since I was at most a teen so maybe the later battles aren’t actually as hard as I remember, but if this is a bottleneck then OP may find later sections of the game’s main story frustrating. I think the game itself is a good vibe fit and has broadly aged well, but something to keep in mind for OP!
It has the following gameplay types that you can switch to and play as long as you like:
PvE missions where you and other humans (team or randos) battle AI
PvP missions where its you and your team up against anther human team
Free Space missions that you can complete solo or in teams
Free Space exploring where you can jump system-to-system and explore without any objectives
The game studio, Gaijin, is Russian-based and has a tank game War Thunder (infamous for real-world military leaks) and a vehicular combat game called Crossout, though I’ve never played them.
Anyway Star Conflict is free-to-play, pay-to-win (PvP), but if you play the PvE and open space parts you don’t need to invest any money to have fun. You can stick to the lower ship tiers for casual gaming, and switch between fighting styles and ship roles easily. You can pilot blazing-fast interceptors, balanced mid-size fighters, heavy-hitting frigates, or super-slow but massive destroyers, and customize each one with a huge selection of weapon types, shields, and auxillary syatems. The underlying fighting principle is kinda like rock-paper-scissors-lizard-Spock, so an interceptor can easily solo a destroyer, a destroyer can take out a group of frigates, frigates outpower fighters, fighters hunt interceptors, etc. And the same goes for weapons and shields too, with thermal, EM, and kinetic types and their shield counterparts. If you venture into a space region infested with pirates who use kinetic weapons and thermal shields, then equip your ship with weapons of the opposite type of their shields to maximize damage, and equip shields of the same type as their weapons to minimize damage.
Anyway go try it out and let me know what you think!
Very cool, very indie game where you explore a solar system, and the Newtonian-style dog fights are wicked awesome. But it’s also got boarding ships, and realtime atmospheric entry.
It’s one single developer creating it, and it’s been 2 years since the last update, but there is a recent post saying a new one’s coming.
For a game that’s themed as space battles and isn’t an action game, check out Cobalt Core. It’s a deckbuilding adventure about a space crew trying to escape from a time loop. The characters and story moments are fun and combat is like a turn-based puzzle of trying to position the ship to line up with enemy weak spots or to dodge missile barrages.
Everspace is very cool - it’s a rouge like where you upgrade your ship as you progress with very unique skills and different branches.
I’m also in love with Cosmoteer - 2D game where you can build, rebuild, salvage enemy ships, eventually create a small fleet and experiment a lot with different designs.
Everspace 2 might be what you’re looking for. It’s fighter piloting and npt battleship style combat bit it’s one of the closest feels I had to what Xwing vs Tie Fighter was back in the day. You can drift and swap end for end just like XvT.
You might also like the spaceship portions of Star Wars Outlaws. I’ve been having fun in there, too.
I’m a very casual gamer, and not looking for an mmo, or anything particularly challenging.
Putting aside anything else, I doubt FTL meets the requirements just because it’s firmly on the hard side of things. Might be a good suggestion to check out for some others reading the thread though!
This was the first thing that came to mind when I saw the Tie Fighter mention. Though OP mentioned not having a joystick and I don’t have direct experience playing on controller so YYMV.
The single player campaign is short but fun and very nostalgic for enjoyers of the X-Wing/Tie Fighter era of games!
The online (if anyone even still plays) is anything but casual so I don’t necessarily recommend that unless you are super invested in it.
The X series (X3 and X4 in particular) might be fun. Very sandboxy. The late-game turns into more of a management game than a ‘fly around blasting stuff’ game, but you don’t have to go that route if you don’t want to.
The custom interiors and crew based stuff is really interesting and I want to see it as a light no fire testbed if nothing else after they said it was the same core tech as their ocean faring ships.
Unless they did a proper rework of space combat, it’ll get old fast, just like ground combat. I also remember you could pile up dozens of “Kill space pirate Whoever” from several systems, travel super far away so that you could reset the quests, reset said quests, then manage to complete ALL of them by killing only one target
In increasing order of casualness I recommend:
Elite Dangerous->X3/X4->Everspace/Everspace 2-> No Man’s Sky.
Everspace 2 is a spiritual successor to Freelancer, so probably your best bet ( Everspace 1 is more roguelike, but holds up nicely ). Speaking of Freelancer, I hear the game is still alive and has a vibrant community around it.
If you ever want to revisit Elite shoot me a message, I may help you with starting up. They say Elite doesn’t have a learning curve but a cliff, so help is usually needed. Luckily the game has the most welcoming and helpful community I’ve seen in/around a video game.
Other than these, there’s Chorus, but I haven’t played that one and it seems more story driven than open-ended.
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Freelancer is still the best of its genre, IMO.
It’s abandonware, so you can download it for free, and the community has released a ton of mods over the years.
Oh no, mods… If it’s anything like skyrim I’ll spend more time messing around with mods than playing the game… But a bit of reading suggests that just the HD mod is a good choice for a 1st time playthru?
I’ve never played them myself, but I’ve seen some mods that completely overhaul the game.
That being said, I would recommend playing the vanilla experience first, with an HD mod if you’d like.
I haven’t really played since I was at most a teen so maybe the later battles aren’t actually as hard as I remember, but if this is a bottleneck then OP may find later sections of the game’s main story frustrating. I think the game itself is a good vibe fit and has broadly aged well, but something to keep in mind for OP!
Even though it’s an old game, Tachyon The Fringe is a great space shooter, it’s available on GOG and well worth it.
https://www.gog.com/en/game/tachyon_the_fringe
Try out Star Conflict https://store.steampowered.com/app/212070/Star_Conflict/
It has the following gameplay types that you can switch to and play as long as you like:
The game studio, Gaijin, is Russian-based and has a tank game War Thunder (infamous for real-world military leaks) and a vehicular combat game called Crossout, though I’ve never played them.
Anyway Star Conflict is free-to-play, pay-to-win (PvP), but if you play the PvE and open space parts you don’t need to invest any money to have fun. You can stick to the lower ship tiers for casual gaming, and switch between fighting styles and ship roles easily. You can pilot blazing-fast interceptors, balanced mid-size fighters, heavy-hitting frigates, or super-slow but massive destroyers, and customize each one with a huge selection of weapon types, shields, and auxillary syatems. The underlying fighting principle is kinda like rock-paper-scissors-lizard-Spock, so an interceptor can easily solo a destroyer, a destroyer can take out a group of frigates, frigates outpower fighters, fighters hunt interceptors, etc. And the same goes for weapons and shields too, with thermal, EM, and kinetic types and their shield counterparts. If you venture into a space region infested with pirates who use kinetic weapons and thermal shields, then equip your ship with weapons of the opposite type of their shields to maximize damage, and equip shields of the same type as their weapons to minimize damage.
Anyway go try it out and let me know what you think!
Rodina.
Very cool, very indie game where you explore a solar system, and the Newtonian-style dog fights are wicked awesome. But it’s also got boarding ships, and realtime atmospheric entry.
It’s one single developer creating it, and it’s been 2 years since the last update, but there is a recent post saying a new one’s coming.
For a game that’s themed as space battles and isn’t an action game, check out Cobalt Core. It’s a deckbuilding adventure about a space crew trying to escape from a time loop. The characters and story moments are fun and combat is like a turn-based puzzle of trying to position the ship to line up with enemy weak spots or to dodge missile barrages.
Everspace is very cool - it’s a rouge like where you upgrade your ship as you progress with very unique skills and different branches.
I’m also in love with Cosmoteer - 2D game where you can build, rebuild, salvage enemy ships, eventually create a small fleet and experiment a lot with different designs.
Everspace 2 might be what you’re looking for. It’s fighter piloting and npt battleship style combat bit it’s one of the closest feels I had to what Xwing vs Tie Fighter was back in the day. You can drift and swap end for end just like XvT.
You might also like the spaceship portions of Star Wars Outlaws. I’ve been having fun in there, too.
FTL
Putting aside anything else, I doubt FTL meets the requirements just because it’s firmly on the hard side of things. Might be a good suggestion to check out for some others reading the thread though!
Star Wars Squadrons is pretty good fun.
This was the first thing that came to mind when I saw the Tie Fighter mention. Though OP mentioned not having a joystick and I don’t have direct experience playing on controller so YYMV.
The single player campaign is short but fun and very nostalgic for enjoyers of the X-Wing/Tie Fighter era of games!
The online (if anyone even still plays) is anything but casual so I don’t necessarily recommend that unless you are super invested in it.
That looks fun! I am a sucker for games set in classic SW.
Fun in VR, too
The X series (X3 and X4 in particular) might be fun. Very sandboxy. The late-game turns into more of a management game than a ‘fly around blasting stuff’ game, but you don’t have to go that route if you don’t want to.
Everspace 2 is a blast(er). The combat is pretty arcadey but has some decent crafting and upgrading mechanics to it
Came here to say this!
I am not into crafting or upgrading at all, but the story, quests and simple but cool-looking combat kept me on it more than I am willing to admit.
Just be sure to take the second one, as the first one is a completely different type of game.
NO Mans Sky. You can dogfight space pirates. I need to spin the game up again now that custom ships are a thing.
The custom interiors and crew based stuff is really interesting and I want to see it as a light no fire testbed if nothing else after they said it was the same core tech as their ocean faring ships.
Unless they did a proper rework of space combat, it’ll get old fast, just like ground combat. I also remember you could pile up dozens of “Kill space pirate Whoever” from several systems, travel super far away so that you could reset the quests, reset said quests, then manage to complete ALL of them by killing only one target
In increasing order of casualness I recommend: Elite Dangerous->X3/X4->Everspace/Everspace 2-> No Man’s Sky.
Everspace 2 is a spiritual successor to Freelancer, so probably your best bet ( Everspace 1 is more roguelike, but holds up nicely ). Speaking of Freelancer, I hear the game is still alive and has a vibrant community around it.
If you ever want to revisit Elite shoot me a message, I may help you with starting up. They say Elite doesn’t have a learning curve but a cliff, so help is usually needed. Luckily the game has the most welcoming and helpful community I’ve seen in/around a video game.
Other than these, there’s Chorus, but I haven’t played that one and it seems more story driven than open-ended.
FTL and star command come to mind.
Isn’t FTL more of a base (ship) builder than a space dogfight type game?
Yeah
I haven’t played it in years, but I have fond memories of FreeSpace 2 and its open source community version. A quick search turned this up.
There was also a Babylon 5 mod for Free Space 2