Indie Space Sims - post 'em if you find 'em

[Carceri]

The Freelancer vibe is very strong with this one. Not a fan of the attributes point system though.

 

[ShaggyMoose]

Funny how you can tell just by looking at a game that it was originally released on mobile...

https://steamcommunity.com/app/1401630/discussions/0/3279195432657650179/

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

edit.

 

[ShaggyMoose]

Starfield actually looks decent and the lack of MP makes me more hopeful than I would otherwise be.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

Starfield actually looks decent and the lack of MP makes me more hopeful than I would otherwise be.

I like spaceship design in it.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

 

[Galdred]

edit.

I gave it a spin. It focuses a lot on spaceship design over combat micro compared to FTL. I have the same issue as in Empyrion: you end up making really ugly ships (at least, the ship in Cosmoteer is more abstracted).
I started with a poor ship loadout that made me spend a lot on repairs after each battle. It is critical to put a lot of armor everywhere to make repairs cheap.
Apparently, you can form a flottilla, but I'm not there yet.

 

[Modron]

There is an ongoing kickstarter for a 2 man team space sim.

 

[ShaggyMoose]

The waifu Macross pilot aside, the game actually looks/sounds decent from the KS page. Backed!

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

Anyone played this?

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

 

[cpmartins]

Homeworld: Mercenaries? They ripped the whole aesthetics directly from Homeworld which, to be fair, was heavily inspired by Chris Foss.
Looks great.

 

[Blaine]

cpmartins The closest parallel would be to EGOSOFT's X series in general concept and format, I'd say, up to and including managing your empire.

Essentially:

• it's in space (but there's sound and a speed limit and everything's mashed really close together and environments are largely laid out in a roughly 2D plane)
• fly solo or command a wing/fleet (and/or automate ships to operate remotely)
• work for/against factions, eventually obtain sovereignty and become your own faction

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

This one is heavily inspired by Virus on Amiga.

 

[ShaggyMoose]

That is the second Virus-inspired game I have seen recently.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1431890/Starfighter_Renegade/

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

I wonder how this compares with Cosmoteer.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

https://tallyhocorner.com/2023/02/reentry-reflections/

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

 

[ShaggyMoose]

Looks like many other contemporary games, but the addition of co-op is sure to interest someone (just not me).

 

[Galdred]

Is there any recent-ish good capital ship game? I'm still waiting for Star fleet 2, Krellan Commander and Capital command.

 

[anvi]

There was one that was almost great. But then they made a sequel that was different and really bad. There is an old Star Trek game that I'd probably play over anything newer.

 

[PanickedTushkano]

Reassembly:

Top-down space action game with strategy elements. There is only one starting faction, but the others can be unlocked fairly easily. Depending on faction the player will start on a different part of the map and have different technology and pre-built ship types available. Whatever else one might want to build, has to be done manually by the player. That is done by collecting R from defeated enemies and the environment. R can be traded for C, but it can also be earned through defeating certain enemies and such. C is used to unlock more bits and pieces for the ship-building: Engines, shield generators, weapons and so on. C can also be spent on getting higher P, which is just the threshold for how big/expensive your ship designs can get. The freedom in what ships to build is mostly restricted by the parts available to the faction, the eventual 8000 P limit and how much time one is willing to spend on the ship designs. There are a lot of mods though.

Mostly the required R and C will be earned while flying around on the top-down space map and while fighting enemies, reclaiming ruined space stations and destroying Agents. The latter are player-built fleets, which can be uploaded through in-game Wormholes. Check here for some quick impressions. If there is a factory on a ship it can be used to directly spawn any available ship designs and the AI ships in the player faction will do the same, so the AI will start using your designs even outside of the player-bound fleet. It is all physics-based, so there is mass and the strength and amount and placement of thrusters is quite important for speed and maneuverability. It also means that there will often be a lot of wreckage lying around after bigger battles.

One nice feature is that various gun selections can be bound to different mouse buttons or to fire automatically. A current ship design can easily be tested against example ships from the building screen and there is also a tournament mode where ships or whole fleets can be tested against each other. There are in fact a lot of tournaments on youtube including the kind of battles and ship sizes that the game simply can't handle.

Outside of tournament mode it plays a bit like an ARPG where the player dedicates a lot of time to the character building. Gameplay will often be fairly effortless once the player has replaced the starter ship with something more powerful, but with the equivalent of Champions and Bosses thrown in. Agents especially can be unpredictable in strength.

 

[ShaggyMoose]

I actually spent a fair bit of time playing this (45 hours according to Steam). It was fun to create ships and test them against various enemies and slowly take over sectors. In the end, the sandbox nature of the game without any worthwhile overarching narrative or meta wore me out.