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Any good hard sci-fi RPGs?

Tavernking

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Hard sci-fI: characterized by concern for scientific accuracy and logic. i.e. no time travel, no faster than light, etc.

There are plenty of good soft sci-fi RPGs, how about hard sci-fi?
 

Silly Germans

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Deus Ex. While it doesn't go into the details of the science behind everything, it neither does completely fantastic things that would break physics completely.
 

Sykar

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Cyberpenis is the hard future of sci fi dreams!

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Plug in anywhere!
:troll:
 

Lurker47

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The amount of good hard science games, let alone CPRG's, can probably be counted on both your hands without using all of your fingers. Hard science as a literary genre seems to have essentially died over the past 50 years as, if you look at the Hugo award nominees and winners (among others), progressive politics seems to be at the front-and-center while scientific accuracy and scientific intrigue are a bit of an afterthought. Sounds familiar...
 
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demoman

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I recently re-read Asimov's "Lucky Star and the Oceans of Venus" and it got me thinking about how "hard sci-fi" it must have been considered when it came out, getting softer as astronomy and physics evolved. I bet i will get the same feeling if i pick up some of my faves from Heinlein or Clarke. On that note, if anyone is interested in hard sci-fi in literature i wholeheartedly suggest Cixin Liu's "Three Body Problem" trilogy or even the first few "The Expanse" Books (haven't gotten that far with those yet)

On the subject of games, i believe there are many "science games" but it is indeed hard to draw the line on what constitutes hard sci-fi.

Simulation games are probably the most typical attempts, for example Kerbal Space Program, Children of a Dead Earth, Ostronauts(in a while) etc are pretty faithful in their sci-fi representation although none of them (except hopefully Ostronauts) are my cup of tea. You can go on and on and on with other genres like strategy and adventure games like SOMA, Tacoma and others. I thoroughly enjoyed Alpha Centauri for a very long time and i consider it a very ambitious attempt at realistic futuristic technology.

Specifically on rpgs though it gets even more complicated because, as always, you have to define what is an rpg. Titan Outpost, mentioned above did scratch that itch for a while but it was incredibly unoptimized when i tried it and left me a bittersweet taste. Buck Rogers was a good answer too! Then it is up to you where you draw the line about hard Sci fi. If you dont mined Psionics(which i ADORE as a concept in sci-fi) what has been a stable favorite of mine all these years is System Shock 2 and its spiritual successor, Prey (2017). From that point on, as you lower your science minimums, games like Deus Ex might get included although i do know that all three i have mentioned can be considered RPG lite.
 

Agesilaus

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some good recommendations in this thread. I think Titan Outpost is a great place to start, unless you want combat, aliens, and a larger scale universe.

If we're going old school, try one of my favorites: Crescent Hawk's Inception. It is the only Battletech crpg. For something new that hasn't been mentioned... Colony Ship. There's a combat demo which has a good amount of flavour, but you'll have to wait for the full version.
 

1111111111

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I liked Starsector. I don't know if it is classified as a `RPG` but it certainly scratches that space trade economy feel.
 

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