Mech Flight Simulator?

[Brumski]

So I enjoy Mech games(Armored Core and Front Mission come readily to mind), largely for the RPG qualities of letting you build and equip your character in a variety of ways, even if your character is a 10 meter tall robot instead of a more typical elf with a bow in a RPG. Anyway, in discussing games with friends it became evident that I would enjoy that same idea taken to a flight simulator, building your ship, doing missions, getting funds, buying better equipment, building better ship...you get the idea. Does anyone know of a game like this? Preferably using a joystick. Some old star wars game I pulled out made me think of this (quick Wiking, it was Star Wars: Rogue Squadron)

Little help?

[Sean Mirrsen]

There isn't a flight sim like that that I can remember off the top of my head. If you're willing to try space flight sims, there are quite a lot of options, from incredibly old to relatively new. As old as the second Elite game (though First Encounters is probably better), and up to and including the most recent game in the X series. There are lots of indie games on the subject too, but most I'd struggle to call sims. They're all more than a little arcadey.

[Brother Oni]

On a more abstract level, Eve Online and Star Trek Online are both space ship games with the ability to dramatically customise your ship. STO gives you more control over your ship, while Eve has more customisation (and significantly higher learning curve).

I believe there's a Macross game for the PSP which has the gameplay you're looking for, but not the customisation or on the right platform.

I assume you've played the Mechwarrior games?

[Zorg]

Wing Commander: Privateer fits the bill nicely I think. It's available on GOG.

[The Succubus]

A number of games may fit sir's bill:

* Mechwarrior - Pretty much THE mech simulator. While you can customise your weapon loadouts, there isn't really any sort of levelling or xp feature, aside from access to bigger mechs and better weapons at later levels.

* X-Wing / Tie Fighter: These two are legendary space flight simulators, back from when Lucasarts made games that people crawled over broken glass for. Again, no real XP/levelling system but an epic story line and a real sense of being in SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE.

* Zone of the Enders: Something of an oddity this one. Featuring strong mech combat and fast pased action, the weapons and mechs do feature a levelling system but it's not a particularly open world environment. Difficult to get hold of but worth the effort if you can.

[Ashtar]

Privateer II : The Darkening is the absolute pinnacle of that flight simulator / trader space simulator.

Play it. Just watch the intro: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gP9LVXvRrT0


It features live-action video scenes, directed by Steve Hilliker. The cast included Clive Owen, Mathilda May, John Hurt, Christopher Walken, Brian Blessed and Amanda Pays. Dani Behr voiced the onboard computer, also named Dani. The game also featured David Warner, and Jürgen Prochnow, who later played Admiral Geoffrey Tolwyn and Commander Paul Gerald respectively in the Wing Commander feature film. The filming was done at Pinewood Studios in England, famous as the location for all the James Bond films.

[Daremonai]

As awesome as it was, Privateer II didn't seem to have any notion of varying clock speed. While it was fine on the PC I had when I bought it, after an upgrade the game ran too fast to make tracking other ships even remotely feasible.

[GungHo]

Privateer 2 was Zardoz weird.

[Brumski]

Well, thanks for the info, nothing looks to be like what I was imagining.

To be clear, I was hoping for a flight simulator (or space flight simulator) where you create your ship very much like Armored Core. Like how you pick the arms, legs, torso, head, hard points, weapons, reactor, thrusters, targeting computer... Only obviously you'd be picking a hull, wings, engines, cockpit, armor, weapons, targeting computer... I imagine this would work best in a sci-fi setting.

Just to clarify for the people who suggested mech games and/or flight simulator games, I was thinking more like a RPG flight simulator. Mech games were just an example I was using.

[GungHo]

Most of the things you're going to find are space trader style games like Elite, X series, Privateer series, etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_space_flight_simulator_games, go to section "Free-form space trading and combat flight simulator games".

[Sean Mirrsen]

Well, thanks for the info, nothing looks to be like what I was imagining.

To be clear, I was hoping for a flight simulator (or space flight simulator) where you create your ship very much like Armored Core. Like how you pick the arms, legs, torso, head, hard points, weapons, reactor, thrusters, targeting computer... Only obviously you'd be picking a hull, wings, engines, cockpit, armor, weapons, targeting computer... I imagine this would work best in a sci-fi setting.

Just to clarify for the people who suggested mech games and/or flight simulator games, I was thinking more like a RPG flight simulator. Mech games were just an example I was using.If you're thinking of custom-designed craft, then I'd very much like to see something like this as well. There are precious few games that let you custom-design anything meaningfully, and I like most of them. If you're not too picky about the actual detail and accuracy, you could try a game like Evochron (whatever its current version is called) - it lets you compose a ship out of components, but it's a bit like Spore in that regard, in that the actual design matters less than what components you choose.

My personal all-time favorite is the game called Edge of Chaos. Sure, you don't get much of a selection of ships - five total, I think, with only two guaranteed. But you can do all kinds of neat equipment combinations, with different weapons and hardpoints. And of course the process by which you acquire said equipment is incredibly exciting. Nothing quite like trying to rob a convoy of military superfreighters when all you have is a glorified tug. :)