Starfield - the greatest space sim?

[potatojohn]

Is Starfield the best space sim ever made?

There's certainly a lot to think about:

- You can switch between the arcade and newtonian flight models. The latter feels very similar to Independence War, except for the speed limit. Once there's a mod to remove the arcade flight model and up the speed limit (iirc in IWar it was 2km/s?), it will truly be great
- Ships have FTL like power allocation to subsystems, which you have to manage
- There's stealth, where you power down your systems to avoid detection
- There's crew, and their perks give you bonuses on the ship
- The ships are made out of parts and take individual damage, which then damages subsystems. Ship subsystems only repair out of combat.
- You can build your own ships, and it's extensive and rewarding
- You can flee combat, as long as your grav drive is working
- There's no sound in space - you only hear your own ship
- There's a bunch of weapon types, including turrets, and they're good at different things
- On very hard difficulty you need clever ship design to survive
- You can destroy enemy ships' engines and board them and take them over
- There's a bunch of random encounters, both hostile and friendly
- You can be a pirate
- You can land on planets
- You can walk around your ship while in orbit
- Planets have "areas" where you fly to and is most busy, kind of like IWar's Lagrange points. In fact I don't know they didn't call them Lagrange points.
- Technically you can fly around the star systems freely, but due to the speed limit and vast distances, it will have to wait for mods
- The graphics, especially the ship interior aesthetics and ship-mounted weapons, are outstanding

I can't think of a game that offers even half of what's in Starfield, and that's just the space sim part.

Some improvements that could be made in the future:
- Turn off the arcade flight model
- Zero-g in space ships and space stations. There are already zero-g space stations, and the in-game explanation is that the grav drive creates a local gravity, but I think it would be fun if all the ships and space stations were zero-g.
- EVA. It would be nice to be able to get out of your ship in space. Maybe to repair it, or just to look at it.

 

[Hag]

Well, it is widely known the best space sim is Noctis IV, but props on Bethesda for trying.

 

[King Crispy]

- You fly with your mouse and keyboard
- There is no inertia, despite your claim about Newtonian being available
- Your ship's speed (velocity) automatically reduces itself if you "turn" it too quickly
- There are no hotkeys to manage your power distribution; you have to manually do this every single time with the arrow keys on your keyboard
- You don't land on planets, you trigger a cutscene which teleports you there
- Almost every single screen or control panel depicted in the ship's interior is cosmetic only
- Why am I bothering with this list?

 

[potatojohn]

You fly with your mouse and keyboard

The way god intended

- There is no inertia, despite your claim about Newtonian being available

Yes there is

You have to unlock Piloting 1, which gives you thruster mode, and that's 100% newtonian

- Why am I bothering with this list?

I don't know, since clearly you either didn't play it or your IQ is too low.

 

[King Crispy]

The way god intended

Right.

You have to unlock Piloting 1, which gives you thruster mode, and that's 100% newtonian

Oh, you mean where you can achieve sideways thrust, which immediately ceases (your ship stops traveling in that direction) once you stop using that contol? Do you even physics, bro?

I don't know, since clearly you either didn't play it or your IQ is too low.

I'd quote you how many hours I already have into it, but that would be too embarrassing.

 

[potatojohn]

Right.

Right!

Oh, you mean where you can achieve sideways thrust, which immdiately ceases (your ship stops traveling in that direction) once you stop using that contol? Do you even physics, bro?

Yes that enables newtonian flight. Try turning the ship and you'll keep going in your original direction.

Just need a tiny mod that enables that all the time.

 

[King Crispy]

Radiane, I corrected my mistakes. Thank you.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

- You fly with your mouse and keyboard
- There is no inertia, despite your claim about Newtonian being available
- Your ship's speed (velocity) automatically reduces itself if you "turn" it too quickly
- There are no hotkeys to manage your power distribution; you have to manually do this every single time with the arrow keys on your keyboard
- You don't land on planets, you trigger a cutscene which teleports you there
- Almost every single screen or control panel depicted in the ship's interior is cosmetic only
- Why am I bothering with this list?

That's one thing I really liked about Evochron Mercenary - you could fly into and through a planet's atmosphere, through the clouds, to the surface of the planet, and though there was not much to see down there, at least that part was immersive.

I'm reluctant to play Starfield since reading the review where someone described it as going from fishbowl to fishbowl instead of a seamless open universe; and this was from a reviewer who gave it a positive recommendation. Will probably give it a look a few patches down the line but I'm certainly not clamoring for it.

 

[King Crispy]

someone described it as going from fishbowl to fishbowl instead of a seamless open universe

This is not an entirely inaccurate description, but for what it's worth, after playing the game for a while and realizing how the "space" actually works (it's not faked, it's just that Bethesda knew immediately no one who likes their games is going to want to spend any amount of time actually "flying" in space) it doesn't quite feel as much like that.

The closed-in feeling really comes from the planets and their surfaces once you do land on them. You quickly realize that Todd's old idiom of being able to go anywhere is no longer true. There is clearly a large square walkable area with one main location and a few miscellaneous (all nearly pointless) locations sprinkled about.

Liberal amounts of suspension of disbelief are required to stomach it.

 

[potatojohn]

That's one thing I really liked about Evochron Mercenary - you could fly into and through a planet's atmosphere, through the clouds, to the surface of the planet, and though there was not much to see down there, at least that part was immersive.

I never "measured" it but I always thought that the planets in Evochron Mercenary were more like asteroid sized (at best). You flew through the clouds for 3 seconds, then 10 seconds later you landed.

I'd rather have an animation than that.

The closed-in feeling really comes from the planets and their surfaces once you do land on them.

There's something wrong with your head dude

There is clearly a large square walkable area with one main location and a few miscellaneous (all nearly pointless) locations sprinkled about.

The word 'clearly' is doing some heavy lifting here. I didn't know how it worked until I read some whiner post on here.

Liberal amounts of suspension of disbelief are required to stomach it.

Among all the things one could complain about having to suspend one's disbelief in video games, this is surely one of the stupidest

What's next, are you going to go into a Fallout thread and say you just can't get into it because the character moves on a hex grid? You have lost all perspective.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

There are probably better examples of planetary re-entry in space games than Evochron Mercenary but that's the only one I've played I remember where you could enter a planet's atmosphere right down to the surface. What are some better ones?

Poor Crispy. I'm always surprised by the regularly occurring insults moderators get on this forum. It's like you don't respect them or something.

 

[King Crispy]

I actually got roped in because at first I thought this was a joke thread.

 

[potatojohn]

There are probably better examples of planetary re-entry in space games than Evochron Mercenary but that's the only one I've played I remember where you could enter a planet's atmosphere right down to the surface. What are some better ones?

Well there's the simulators like KSP and Orbiter. These are near-future tech, so you can barely make it into orbit with a lot of effort, and coming back you have to be very careful not to disintegrate. If you fuck up your reentry trajectory you're crashing into a mountain, or leaving a shower of atoms across the sky. It takes careful planning and coming up or down can be a 5 minute+ action.

Other more futuristic space games, although I'm only thinking about Elite 2 and 3 here (not the latest Elite, which is arcade shit) also have physics but give you much more powerful engines. This makes taking off and landing completely trivial. In return you get nice visuals, and occasionally ships will intercept you in space.

Interplanetary travel is done by doing a burn near earth and then spending months or years waiting to arrive at the destination. You might do a course correction or two, but other than that nothing happens. This is why KSP and Orbiter both provide 100000x time acceleration.

In practice it's just "an animation with extra steps" (literally in KSP, since physics isn't simulated at above 4x acceleration and you get a kinematic path. Orbiter uses more advanced algorithms that can run physics at high time accel).

This is what's confusing about the delusional Starfield complainers. Have you ever played a space game? Seems not.

You say you want a space game but you don't appreciate the best space game that has ever been made that's right in front of you.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Man I love the Codex.

 

[Vic]

I’ve spent maybe 1% of my playtime in space. Rest was spent on planets. You could cut out space stuff completely and it would largely play the same except for the few missions that do take place in space but that’s a minority.

 

[King Crispy]

I agree. This probably should have just been called Fallout 5.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Play Spacebourne 2

 

[Galdred]

Is Starfield the best space sim ever made?

There's certainly a lot to think about:

- You can switch between the arcade and newtonian flight models. The latter feels very similar to Independence War, except for the speed limit. Once there's a mod to remove the arcade flight model and up the speed limit (iirc in IWar it was 2km/s?), it will truly be great
- Ships have FTL like power allocation to subsystems, which you have to manage
- There's stealth, where you power down your systems to avoid detection
- There's crew, and their perks give you bonuses on the ship
- The ships are made out of parts and take individual damage, which then damages subsystems. Ship subsystems only repair out of combat.
- You can build your own ships, and it's extensive and rewarding
- You can flee combat, as long as your grav drive is working
- There's no sound in space - you only hear your own ship
- There's a bunch of weapon types, including turrets, and they're good at different things
- On very hard difficulty you need clever ship design to survive
- You can destroy enemy ships' engines and board them and take them over
- There's a bunch of random encounters, both hostile and friendly
- You can be a pirate
- You can land on planets
- You can walk around your ship while in orbit
- Planets have "areas" where you fly to and is most busy, kind of like IWar's Lagrange points. In fact I don't know they didn't call them Lagrange points.
- Technically you can fly around the star systems freely, but due to the speed limit and vast distances, it will have to wait for mods
- The graphics, especially the ship interior aesthetics and ship-mounted weapons, are outstanding

I can't think of a game that offers even half of what's in Starfield, and that's just the space sim part.

Some improvements that could be made in the future:
- Turn off the arcade flight model
- Zero-g in space ships and space stations. There are already zero-g space stations, and the in-game explanation is that the grav drive creates a local gravity, but I think it would be fun if all the ships and space stations were zero-g.
- EVA. It would be nice to be able to get out of your ship in space. Maybe to repair it, or just to look at it.

I think that the Battlecruisers series/Universal Conflict does all of this and more, but that doesn't m

Is Starfield the best space sim ever made?

There's certainly a lot to think about:

- You can switch between the arcade and newtonian flight models. The latter feels very similar to Independence War, except for the speed limit. Once there's a mod to remove the arcade flight model and up the speed limit (iirc in IWar it was 2km/s?), it will truly be great
- Ships have FTL like power allocation to subsystems, which you have to manage
- There's stealth, where you power down your systems to avoid detection
- There's crew, and their perks give you bonuses on the ship
- The ships are made out of parts and take individual damage, which then damages subsystems. Ship subsystems only repair out of combat.
- You can build your own ships, and it's extensive and rewarding
- You can flee combat, as long as your grav drive is working
- There's no sound in space - you only hear your own ship
- There's a bunch of weapon types, including turrets, and they're good at different things
- On very hard difficulty you need clever ship design to survive
- You can destroy enemy ships' engines and board them and take them over
- There's a bunch of random encounters, both hostile and friendly
- You can be a pirate
- You can land on planets
- You can walk around your ship while in orbit
- Planets have "areas" where you fly to and is most busy, kind of like IWar's Lagrange points. In fact I don't know they didn't call them Lagrange points.
- Technically you can fly around the star systems freely, but due to the speed limit and vast distances, it will have to wait for mods
- The graphics, especially the ship interior aesthetics and ship-mounted weapons, are outstanding

I can't think of a game that offers even half of what's in Starfield, and that's just the space sim part.

Some improvements that could be made in the future:
- Turn off the arcade flight model
- Zero-g in space ships and space stations. There are already zero-g space stations, and the in-game explanation is that the grav drive creates a local gravity, but I think it would be fun if all the ships and space stations were zero-g.
- EVA. It would be nice to be able to get out of your ship in space. Maybe to repair it, or just to look at it.

I don't think the feature list is a great way to rate a game, but that seems to be an ambitious attempt indeed.
I think the Battlecruiser series had all that, and vehicular combat on top.
Spacebourne 2 does indeed feature all of this, with much more focus on space (the ground part is still a bit barebone and janky), except for the walking around your own ship.
Empyrion does that too, but it feels pretty empty if you play on your own.

 

[ArchAngel]

someone described it as going from fishbowl to fishbowl instead of a seamless open universe

This is not an entirely inaccurate description, but for what it's worth, after playing the game for a while and realizing how the "space" actually works (it's not faked, it's just that Bethesda knew immediately no one who likes their games is going to want to spend any amount of time actually "flying" in space) it doesn't quite feel as much like that.

The closed-in feeling really comes from the planets and their surfaces once you do land on them. You quickly realize that Todd's old idiom of being able to go anywhere is no longer true. There is clearly a large square walkable area with one main location and a few miscellaneous (all nearly pointless) locations sprinkled about.

Liberal amounts of suspension of disbelief are required to stomach it.

I do not want to defend Starfield as there is so much wrong with it but each planet lets you land wherever you want (except water) and it spawns more of these really big but limited areas that spawn a decent number of random POIs there. On each planet you can create almost countless number of such landing areas.

 

[Vic]

someone described it as going from fishbowl to fishbowl instead of a seamless open universe

This is not an entirely inaccurate description, but for what it's worth, after playing the game for a while and realizing how the "space" actually works (it's not faked, it's just that Bethesda knew immediately no one who likes their games is going to want to spend any amount of time actually "flying" in space) it doesn't quite feel as much like that.

The closed-in feeling really comes from the planets and their surfaces once you do land on them. You quickly realize that Todd's old idiom of being able to go anywhere is no longer true. There is clearly a large square walkable area with one main location and a few miscellaneous (all nearly pointless) locations sprinkled about.

Liberal amounts of suspension of disbelief are required to stomach it.

I do not want to defend Starfield as there is so much wrong with it but each planet lets you land wherever you want (expect water) and it spawns more of these really big but limited areas that spawn a decent number of random POIs there. On each planet you can create almost countless number of such landing areas.

not almost, you can infinitely land on a planet because each cell is scrapped and re-generated after you leave unless it has a fixed location or you build an outpost

 

[ArchAngel]

As for space parts, beyond the cool factor of making your own ship, putting crew there that each have unique comments you only get when they are in your ship there is not much to do here.
Combat is boring, everything acts like you are in atmosphere, both your weapons and enemy weapons barely miss when enemy is right in front of you. Since you cannot travel freely you miss out on a lot of options real space games have, trading is stupid because prices are same everywhere and teleport system makes space travel basically pointless. There is ONE mission where you actually do some team space combat and there are zero missions like in old X-Wing/Tie Fighter games where you go on runs vs big targets for which you need special weapons where you either have task to take those out or guard those that have those weapons.

Random non hostile encounters you get in space are 90% talking or getting some non space missions from them.
Boarding enemy ships is kind of cool but pointless as at best you get some pathetic amount of credits by selling that ship but you need to waste a lot of time while doing it. Also you get a bit more loot from crew of that ship.
There is no way to get ship parts you want from one ship and move it to another, that would be a good reason to take over other ships, and it would be even better if you could get special ship parts that you cannot buy normally.

There is no Hangar in the game where you can put all your ships next to each other and marvel at them or something, all ships are magically kept in your magical ass and you can pull them out at any spaceport..

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

Liberal amounts of suspension of disbelief are required to stomach it.

A disclaimer that belongs on every Bethesda game.

 

[King Crispy]

each planet lets you land wherever you want (expect water) and it spawns more of these really big but limited areas that spawn a decent number of random POIs there. On each planet you can create almost countless number of such landing areas.

Correct. And I do believe it may literally be 'infinite' because even if you were able to click a second time on the exact same pixels that make up your landing area, that area (unless it contains a story location) is going to be completely randomly generated, with those POIs you mentioned chosen at random from the designers' list of "wow, aren't these so cool?" locations. The only thing any of them are good for are topping off experience points if you're just about to pop a level, if even that.

Still, they're all squares, so what I said isn't inaccurate either. Because you'll quite soon run into Starfield's equivalent of an invisible wall (deadly, unavoidable environmental radiation or whatever) you quickly get that sense of being penned in, despite the attempted illusion.

 

[potatojohn]

Still, they're all squares, so what I said isn't inaccurate either. Because you'll quite soon run into Starfield's equivalent of an invisible wall (deadly, unavoidable environmental radiation or whatever) you quickly get that sense of being penned in, despite the attempted illusion.

My dude, every game world ends somewhere.

It might have been nice if Starfield had planets like KSP, but if you feel "penned in" by the fact that after sprinting for ten minutes you reach an invisible wall of the tile you landed on, the only problem here exists between your keyboard and chair.

 

[Vic]

why would you run to the cell’s end? POIs stop generating way before that