having trouble finding a really solid starship game for PC.

[Korivan]

As the title suggests. I'm looking for a game I can really sink my teeth in.

For Sci-fi, I'm looking for something like Star Treks Klingon Acadamy. A fair game in general, but I'm really looking for something that lets me take control of capital size ships and go nuts. But I'm looking for something alittle more customizable. If possible, I'd like to build the ship, rather then take the premade stuff, and be able to use it in a first person shooter style. So basically, I want whats in STKA, but more custimizable.

The computer I'm running is about a year old. The graphics card is a 256, got 2gig ram, good processer. But I'm really not hung up on that its got to be the best graphics wise. An older game is just as fine.

Can anyone point out a good game. Cheaper is prefered, but not necessary.

[warty goblin]

X3 Terran Conflict I believe allows you to command capital ships, but you have to buy them by mastering the freakishly hardcore economy, so it might not be what you are looking for.

An independant one man game called StarShatter features capital ships I believe, although my recollection of the demo is that the game tended towards the hardcore sim, and was mostly fighter focused.

There's the infamous Battlecruiser 3000AD.

Gratuitous Space Battles is indirect strategy instead of direct control, but it certainly features capital ships going nuts.

Battlestations: Midway and it's sequel Battlestations: Pacific feature lots of hot capital on capital action. Granted, they're WWII battleships and carriers, but since a good 90% of sci fi space combat is based on the WWII model, the difference is honestly not that huge.

But really, space sims seem to be overwhelmingly fighter oriented, which is a damn shame.

[Tavar]

Battleship forever might also work, and it is free. Not the best looking game, and horribly resource intensive, however.

[Korivan]

But really, space sims seem to be overwhelmingly fighter oriented, which is a damn shame.

Its not that I don't like fighters, its just that, well, they get old. Its nice to have varity. Is there anyplace out there for demo's? I'd rather not spend a bunch of money just to experiment. Done it before, learned my lesson.

[Erloas]

X3: Reunion has a playable demo. The full game is only $10 on Amazon to start with though, so its not a big deal. The Terrain Conflict expansion is still $20, but by that time you will know if the game is worth it or not from the first one.

Its been a long time since I played it much. I got it when I still had my old computer and it didn't run very well, enough to play quite a bit but it bogged down too much in big fights, so I didn't get all that far in it. I know they had a wide range of ship sizes, but I didn't get to the bigger ones.
The game has a very steep learning curve, so much so that I don't really think it is playable without at least a short visit to the offical forums to figure stuff out and find some good scripts (for the AI control of your other ships).

[warty goblin]

I own and have played a bit of X3: Terrain conflict, and it's quite good if you're into that sort of thing (namely buying stuff, selling it for money, then buying more stuff), but the combat is not mindblowing. It's not bad, just not stunningly, dreamhauntingly good. But I've not played enough to really get a fair idea, so with better weapons and ships it might become much, much better.

From everything I've read, Terran Conflict is significantly better than Reunion, particularly in terms of the interface. Given that the TC interface is reasonably difficult, this bodes very ill for Reunion if the reviews and general fan opinion is to be believed.

[factotum]

X3:TC is a great game. Yes, you'd need to play for a bit to get to capital ships, unless you just mod the game to script one in for yourself. You don't get to build the ships yourself, although you CAN choose which guns to put on the turrets, and there's a pretty wide selection of those!

[Seonor]

The X-games had always an active mod-community so if you cant find the ship you want in the main game, just look for a mod. XTended (http://www.thexuniverse.com/index.php?pageid=xtendedhome) has over 50 new ships if I remember correctly and if the economic aspect of the game isn't your style, just change that, too.

[Ikialev]

Darkkstar One is good. ^^

[Bouregard]

X3:TC ftw... however you have to pay for your capital ship.... its not like 150 MW shields and photon cannons are for free....Oh and someone should fill your big ships belly with a few fighters... a good hundred sounds good...

[SmartAlec]

It doesn't have any of the customisation you want and I'm not even sure if it works on modern computers, but I-War or Independence War is quite a superb space sim. The ship you control isn't a gigantic capital ship, but it's not a fighter either.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-War_(Independence_War)

[Archonic Energy]

i too will suggest X3:Terran Conflict. also it's a standalone Expansion. the learning curve can be a bit... vertical at times, the Economy can be... broken in places (which you can fix thereby making TONS of cash!) there's nothing like jumping your carrier into a Kha'ak sector & launching 150 fighters...

:smallsigh:

i need to break out my Saitek X52...

[AgentPaper]

EvE online might also be worth looking at.

[Triaxx]

Freelancer is fighters by default, but mods add Capital Ships which mostly work well.

[HandofShadows]

No mention of Homeworld? Even though it's an RTS.

[factotum]

No mention of Homeworld? Even though it's an RTS.

Reasonably sure the part where he said he wants to fly his capital ships like an FPS (e.g. personally controlling it) wouldn't quite fit with Homeworld.

[warty goblin]

Its not that I don't like fighters, its just that, well, they get old. Its nice to have varity. Is there anyplace out there for demo's? I'd rather not spend a bunch of money just to experiment. Done it before, learned my lesson.

I know. Plus I'm really tired of 'destroy the capital ship' missions, since I always feel like I'm being handed my victory. I mean most of the time a cap ship in one of these games will have four or five or so AA batteries. C'mon people, real world battleships used to mount more AA than that by a long shot!

[EleventhHour]

I know. Plus I'm really tired of 'destroy the capital ship' missions, since I always feel like I'm being handed my victory. I mean most of the time a cap ship in one of these games will have four or five or so AA batteries. C'mon people, real world battleships used to mount more AA than that by a long shot!

Or it's Rogue Squadron style, where the Star Destroyer has a crapload of AA, but mysteriously, none of it can kill you. At all. Or aim.

Laser half the size of your fighter, and it still takes a dozen or more hits to die... :smallsigh:

[Willis888]

Wing Commander: Privateer Gemini Gold
http://privateer.sourceforge.net/

It's an open source, fully (and easily) editable space fighter sim. You will need to learn how to edit the files out of game (I used notepad) to customize your capital ships, but once you've got that down it has everything you asked for.

The last time I played through it, I was eventually able to buy a Carrier style capital ship and load up all the fighters that I had been flying - launch them and the AI will fly the fighters for you while you gun a turret (or jump to control a fighter while your repair/reload-capable capital ship is run on AI).

Some enemy capital ship shield regen rates are set to Crazy High so a single fighter will never touch it, but a swarm can.

[shadow_archmagi]

I believe Star Control 2 gets points for being:


1. A huge classic
2. Small and easy to download
3. Available at the terrific price of "none"

[warty goblin]

Or it's Rogue Squadron style, where the Star Destroyer has a crapload of AA, but mysteriously, none of it can kill you. At all. Or aim.

Laser half the size of your fighter, and it still takes a dozen or more hits to die... :smallsigh:

Exactly. I want fields of brutally accurate, deadly flak sweeping through space like a petaWatt broom, burning all in its path. Of course it's always been my opinion that the only thing that should really threaten a battleship is another battleship.

[Bouregard]

Exactly. I want fields of brutally accurate, deadly flak sweeping through space like a petaWatt broom, burning all in its path. Of course it's always been my opinion that the only thing that should really threaten a battleship is another battleship.

X3TC offers fully customizable capital ships.... what you put in your 18 turretslots is purely your thing. You can fill them with flak cannons, shockwave generators (thing about a HUGE spread, no matter how fast you are it will hit you... but so does it allies...), EMP guns or mom's good old fashioned big ****ing lasers that tear capitalships apart but are to slow for the fightersquadrons. Oh and if that's not enough for your capitalship -feeling... equip a 150ship squadron individually and watch them fighting while you're playing heavy weapon support with your carrier.

[warty goblin]

My ideal space game is all capital ships. The smallest (armed) thing in space would be a Defense In-System Vessel (DISV), which would be about 500 meters long, and have enough firepower to blast North America into a glowing slag- mostly cannon fired nuclear missiles and gigawatt range lasers. These would be backed up by a plethora of fast cycling, rapid tracking lasers to burn down enemy missiles, and autocannon firing 120mm self-guided rockets as a last ditch defense against enemy missiles. These would be about the equivilent of a corvette or escort in a modern navy.

I don't want carriers, those are annoying, and lack sufficient punch. Anyway, their fighters would be annihilated by sequenced detonations of 50 megaton nuclear warheads.

[Kane]

I believe Star Control 2 gets points for being:


1. A huge classic
2. Small and easy to download
3. Available at the terrific price of "none"

Truly, your words are wise. (http://sc2.sourceforge.net/downloads.php) I love that game. (And at least some of the ships are capital ships, allegedly. Chmmr Battlships, Ur-Quan dreadnoughts, etc.)

It's a fun download, at any rate.

[EleventhHour]

No, no. You still need to have fighters. What else will give that wonderful popcorn line of crackling explosions when you fire one of the 50m diameter plasma burst cannons at an enemy ship, and hitting them as collateral?

Plus, bomber-fighters. You have to have Bomber-fighters so the AA has something to do.

I think a really epic game that they should do (Or redo if someone else got to it first) would be Battlefleet Gothic. Yes, I admit. Mainly because I'm a 40K fan, but also ; they really do big weapons right. A primary armament of (Some at least) capital ships is the Nova Cannon. It's described as running almost the length on one of thier ships (Between 2-8km, I can't remember what class of ship it was.), about 450m diameter, the projectile is both High-Ex and nearly hits the relativity barrier, and scores kills even when missing by miles. Lance weapons, broadsides (For Imperial), and they could even have an end-game boss ; Abbadon's Planetkiller. Or a hijacked Blackstone Fortress.

>.>

[warty goblin]

No, no. You still need to have fighters. What else will give that wonderful popcorn line of crackling explosions when you fire one of the 50m diameter plasma burst cannons at an enemy ship, and hitting them as collateral?

Plus, bomber-fighters. You have to have Bomber-fighters so the AA has something to do.

AA is to shoot missiles. At the end of a day a fighter or bomber is just a bigger, slower moving missile with a wetware CPU.

[Kane]

AA is to shoot missiles. At the end of a day a fighter or bomber is just a bigger, slower moving missile with a wetware CPU.

Could you imagine, then, fighters being relegated solely to screening, as an early point defense system?

[warty goblin]

Could you imagine, then, fighters being relegated solely to screening, as an early point defense system?

Missile defense is a hard enough job, the last thing I'd do is trust shooting down very fast moving deadly weapons to clumsy, slow humans. A drone network sharing sensor data and coordinating their fires with the evasive actions of a ship to destroy the parts of the salvo most likely to impact the target yes, but I suspect that human coordination is simply not good enough to produce effective results fast enough.

[Kane]

Missile defense is a hard enough job, the last thing I'd do is trust shooting down very fast moving deadly weapons to clumsy, slow humans. A drone network sharing sensor data and coordinating their fires with the evasive actions of a ship to destroy the parts of the salvo most likely to impact the target yes, but I suspect that human coordination is simply not good enough to produce effective results fast enough.

Then consider you fighters the controller (local, so as to minimize light-lag) for a swarm of killsats (or whatever) bent on destroying missiles. [Most of their mass is given up to ECM and controlling computer.]

Now, if you assume that ant-ship missiles are big, fast, and only maneuverable enough to be able to hit a capital ship, and that your fighters are significantly more so, you can keep fighter combat as a conflict between 'screens' between the different fleets; Fighters trying to take out opposing controllers, and interceptors trying to protect their controllers.

Also, since your PD systems are computer controlled, if you managed to damage enemy computers, then fighters might be usable, if only to keep you big ship out of the way. [/tangent]

[Willis888]

Swarms of smaller, faster missiles might be better for destroying an anti-missile satellite network.

[warty goblin]

Then consider you fighters the controller (local, so as to minimize light-lag) for a swarm of killsats (or whatever) bent on destroying missiles. [Most of their mass is given up to ECM and controlling computer.]

Now, if you assume that ant-ship missiles are big, fast, and only maneuverable enough to be able to hit a capital ship, and that your fighters are significantly more so, you can keep fighter combat as a conflict between 'screens' between the different fleets; Fighters trying to take out opposing controllers, and interceptors trying to protect their controllers.

Also, since your PD systems are computer controlled, if you managed to damage enemy computers, then fighters might be usable, if only to keep you big ship out of the way. [/tangent]

Indeed, you'd want the killsats under as local of control as possible, and probably some people out there to keep an eye on things.

The problem is that there's no real reason for a fighter to be more maneuverable than a missile. In space maneuverability, assuming sensible engine placement, is pretty much only a function of acceleration. A missile can, until you get to insane delta v capable of crunching its frame, accelerate pretty much as fast as your engine will allow. A fighter pilot has to worry about not stepping too hard on the engines and causing his brain to liquify. Until you start to invent some technobabble inertial compensators, this pretty much hard limits the possible acceleration of a manned vessel*.

That you would have a conflict between screening elements I don't doubt. The difference being I would expect to see that conflict consist of killsats lobbing lots of smaller yield missiles at each other and hoping to get lucky, or else a capital ship devoting a couple big ship killers to blowing up inside the enemy screen in the hopes that a significant number of enemy drones were near enough the center of the blast to be melted.

*And even if you do have inertial compensators, assuming they don't have infinite capacity, the differential between the maximum acceleration of a manned and unmanned craft will still exist. It will probably be less relevant because it will be a smaller percentage of the overall rate, but it'll still be there.

[Willis888]

. . .a capital ship devoting a couple big ship killers to blowing up inside the enemy screen . . .

I thought the whole point of the satellites was to enable shooting down whatever is trying to kill your ship before it can blow up?

The counter to blasting a hole through the network is to make the network mobile and robust with redundant systems. If your defenses are deep enough, and your craft are fast enough, you can close the hole and surround the incoming projectiles with killsats.

Obviously we need a bigger laser.

Epic level space combat might be a lot like sail-era naval combat. The bigger, slower ships have the big, long-range guns that you do not want shooting at you. If you are out-gunned, you run, and if you can't run you die (possibly after a long chase with an inevitable conclusion that you got to think about the whole time).

But that makes for a better RTS than FPS.

[Archonic Energy]

Exactly. I want fields of brutally accurate, deadly flak sweeping through space like a petaWatt broom, burning all in its path. Of course it's always been my opinion that the only thing that should really threaten a battleship is another battleship.

or a smaller dedicated Torpedo boat...
just sayin'

[Triaxx]

My lateral movement abilties would like to say a few words to your unmanned thrust, but I'm afraid I'd get in trouble from the mods.

Don't think in straight lines in space. Just because you have a massive engine to propel yourself doesn't mean you can hit me. I need smaller engines to move directly left, right, up, or down, (relatively speaking), than you do to turn your entire thrust and flight path. Besides which a weapon designed to break through the outer shielding and hull of a capital class ship is going to be a big mother and while I might not have the hand reflexes, I can still pick them out of space with the aid of the computer and kill them with a thought.

[EleventhHour]

Sure, you can argue that anything you can use humans in fighters to do, the killsat AI can manage better, but that leaves you with two deadly openings :

A.) It's easier to fry the delicate wiring of the AI with EMP than it is to toast the thicker cabling of the weapons/engine systems. Humans? Not so worried about it.

B.) Your letting the machines take over combat, and arming them. And setting them to kill other people. Not only could the enemy use digital warfare and put viruses in your system, but the bloody things could rise up. So, the tech that you were all dependant on is now trying to kill you. While the other people try to kill you.

---

Plus, if all Space Combat games are based on WWII models, then shouldn't Torpedo bombers be... extra deadly?

[factotum]

A.) It's easier to fry the delicate wiring of the AI with EMP than it is to toast the thicker cabling of the weapons/engine systems. Humans? Not so worried about it.


These are spaceships we're talking about. The computer systems are already going to be shielded against the raw solar radiation you get in space--a little EMP isn't going to get past a shield that can protect against a constantly-detonating fusion bomb!

[warty goblin]

Sure, you can argue that anything you can use humans in fighters to do, the killsat AI can manage better, but that leaves you with two deadly openings :

A.) It's easier to fry the delicate wiring of the AI with EMP than it is to toast the thicker cabling of the weapons/engine systems. Humans? Not so worried about it.

EMPs are actually quite easy to shield against. All you really need to do is to surround your electronics with a Farraday cage- basically copper mesh. You'd want to do this anyway, along with quite a lot of radiation shielding, which humans most certainly do care about.


B.) Your letting the machines take over combat, and arming them. And setting them to kill other people. Not only could the enemy use digital warfare and put viruses in your system, but the bloody things could rise up. So, the tech that you were all dependant on is now trying to kill you. While the other people try to kill you.
I will only get a virus if my drones are in the habit of opening data streams from unknown sources. Using public key cryptography, trigonometry to determine the origin of the signal (hint, if it's coming from the enemy's direction, ignore it), quantum encription-which will allow me to always know if a tranmission has been intercepted (short of time travel at least), it should be quite possible to keep my ships from being cracked.

This becomes even more true when fire control is entirely local, and all a drone sees is sensor readings. In that case it never actually executes any code transmitted to it. The worst you could do is to fool the sensors, which for a variety of reasons is very, very hard to do in space.

As to the machines rising up, that scenario has very little to do with reality. The AI it would take to run a missile defense system of this sort is very complex certainly, but fundamentally it does nothing more than calculate accelerations and track highly visible objects, then use a simple algorithm to determine a proper course of action. It's really no more likely to obtain sentience than the AI in a game of Pong.



---

Plus, if all Space Combat games are based on WWII models, then shouldn't Torpedo bombers be... extra deadly?[/QUOTE]

[chiasaur11]

It's really no more likely to obtain sentience than the AI in a game of Pong.



You poor blind fool.
The Pong Gnop rivalry is the only thing protecting our fragile civilization. When one triumphs...