Why the hell aren't there more "space opera" / futuristic CRPGs?

[Darkzone]

Star Trek and Star Wars are now fucked and dead franchises, that only cucked manchildren watch and care about.
Therefore it is time to go back to the true glory:

Spoiler

Even in the Star Trek series of Voyage they knew upon which shoulder they stood.

 

[Cael]

Star Trek and Star Wars are now fucked and dead franchises, that only cucked manchildren watch and care about.
Therefore it is time to go back to the true glory:

Spoiler

Even in the Star Trek series of Voyage they knew upon which shoulder they stood.

Battlestar Galactica

 

[Darkzone]

Star Trek and Star Wars are now fucked and dead franchises, that only cucked manchildren watch and care about.
Therefore it is time to go back to the true glory:

Spoiler

Even in the Star Trek series of Voyage they knew upon which shoulder they stood.

Battlestar Galactica

Guess on which shoulders Battlestar Galactica stands on? Spoiler:

Spoiler

Spoiler

Ok that is not entirely true. I just wanted to post the link to this series.

 

[laclongquan]

BTW, I admit I might be a bit biased in the discussion because as a developer I personally like fantasy setting much more than SF

People generally like Fantasy better than SF. There're many explaination for this, but one simple, easy-to-understand-math answer is

There's millenia of history where people understand and enjoy fantasy. There's maybe 3 centuries for people to enjoy SF.

 

[Louis_Cypher]

ow you have two major issues with sci-fi:

1. There is no "standard" sci-fi setting. The equivalent of what fantasy games do would be making a game that's just Star Trek

Yeah a lot of the most beloved TV shows differ in methods of FTL, and things like that, but share a lot in common in visiting planets, etc.

It makes me wonder actually about Archetype Entertainment's game. Maybe what Wizards of the Coast has the ex-BioWare people working on is a science fiction setting they can expand on into a big franchise? WOTC might want a space opera intellectual property to compliment Dungeons & Dragons. Drew Karpyrshin and the others working on this mystery game have expertise on no two other genre classics and I hope strike gold a third time. WOTC could then create sequels and a tabletop system out of it. Then again maybe not, it might just a random experiment. Paizo Publishing tried to create a sci-fi counterpart to Pathfinder but it ended up just being arcane magic and fantasy in space (lame), rather than true space opera, so I hope WOTC do better.

Even in the Star Trek series of Voyage they knew upon which shoulder they stood.

Flash Gordon started out with an eccentric inventor's private space ship being used to face the threat to Earth from the approaching planet Mongo. Without a lot of retooling and extra world-building it would make for a setting with too little depth for an audience today, as well as too little fidelity to modern science. Thats why modern adaptations that retain the ray-gun aesthetic and early 1900s timeframe like Disney's John Carter, while sometimes visually interesting, don't really inspire people from a visceral 'this could actually happen!' perspective. In their era, Flash Gordon and the others were aiming for being somewhat plausible.

So I guess the modernized Flash Gordon could be a military mission launched onboard a requisitioned SpaceX Starship to a planetoid that has appeared in the outer solar system on NASA deep space telemetry, moving under it's own power. The astronauts led by Mission Commander Flash Gordon arrive on a world with a complex sociology of it's own, with multiple cultures, but dominated by the influence of a single God Emperor, Ming the Merciless. His main technological advantage lies in his ability to utterly dominate a sentient mind, coupled with a huge star fleet. He seeks to conquer Earth as an addition to his personal star empire.

I guess Farscape was the modern equivalent, with John Crichton's IASA space shuttle being shot through a wormhole to a distant sector of the galaxy, and the Goa'uld in Stargate were the theatrical villain equivalent of Ming.

 

[Gangrelrumbler]

Star Trek and Star Wars are now fucked and dead franchises, that only cucked manchildren watch and care about.
Therefore it is time to go back to the true glory:

Spoiler

Even in the Star Trek series of Voyage they knew upon which shoulder they stood.

Never watched Buck Rogers but Flash Gordon serials and comics weren't really that great.
Perhaps we should go a bit further into the past for some real quality sci-fi pulp:

Spoiler

 

[Cael]

ow you have two major issues with sci-fi:

1. There is no "standard" sci-fi setting. The equivalent of what fantasy games do would be making a game that's just Star Trek

Yeah a lot of the most beloved TV shows differ in methods of FTL, and things like that, but share a lot in common in visiting planets, etc.

It makes me wonder actually about Archetype Entertainment's game. Maybe what Wizards of the Coast has the ex-BioWare people working on is a science fiction setting they can expand on into a big franchise? WOTC might want a space opera intellectual property to compliment Dungeons & Dragons. Drew Karpyrshin and the others working on this mystery game have expertise on no less than two other genre classics and might strike a third time with another Mass Effect. Then WOTC might want to create sequels and a tabletop system out of it? Then again maybe not, because a new game is often converted into a pen and paper setting these days, so it might not be that important to them, just a random experiment. Paizo Publishing tried to create a sci-fi counterpart to Pathfinder but it ended up just being arcane magic in space (lame), rather than true space opera, so I hope WOTC avoid that like the plague and make a real science fiction game.

I ran a 3.5 game that was basically Stargate with swords and magic, and another that was Spellforce-like in the whole portals in a sundered world type setting. A third was a supernatural horror-crime detective type deal in a DnD type city (and this would be rated R18+, if not more). It isn't that hard to adapt 3.5 into various genres. You just need the creativity for it.

 

[Louis_Cypher]

Yeah, but I still rather they created a new system specifically for space opera personally.

 

[tritosine2k]

The genre is not corridor shooting friendly despite ME2 led many to believe and substandard hardware cannot support lengthy dev cycle either ( LOD solutions only starting to gain traction after UE5 putting the bug in ears) I suppose a lot real good devs bolted when hw limits became obvious, both displays and gfx, and you can't hack LOD it will be problem for many years.

 

[Darkzone]

ow you have two major issues with sci-fi:

1. There is no "standard" sci-fi setting. The equivalent of what fantasy games do would be making a game that's just Star Trek

Yeah a lot of the most beloved TV shows differ in methods of FTL, and things like that, but share a lot in common in visiting planets, etc.

It makes me wonder actually about Archetype Entertainment's game. Maybe what Wizards of the Coast has the ex-BioWare people working on is a science fiction setting they can expand on into a big franchise? WOTC might want a space opera intellectual property to compliment Dungeons & Dragons. Drew Karpyrshin and the others working on this mystery game have expertise on no less than two other genre classics and might strike a third time with another Mass Effect. Then WOTC might want to create sequels and a tabletop system out of it? Then again maybe not, because a new game is often converted into a pen and paper setting these days, so it might not be that important to them, just a random experiment. Paizo Publishing tried to create a sci-fi counterpart to Pathfinder but it ended up just being arcane magic in space (lame), rather than true space opera, so I hope WOTC avoid that like the plague and make a real science fiction game.

There was Spelljammer Dungeons and Dragons campaign by TSR published in 1989.

Even in the Star Trek series of Voyage they knew upon which shoulder they stood.

Just for fun, let's make one, even though I don't like the era as much as later sci-fi from the 1960s to the early 2000s.

Spoiler

Flash Gordon started out with an eccentric inventor's private space ship being used to face the threat to Earth from the approaching planet Mongo. Without a lot of retooling and extra world-building it would make for a setting with too little depth for an audience today, as well as too little fidelity to modern science. Thats why modern adaptations that retain the ray-gun aesthetic and early 1900s timeframe like Disney's John Carter, while sometimes visually interesting, don't really inspire people from a visceral 'this could actually happen!' perspective. In their era, Flash Gordon and the others were aiming for being somewhat plausible.

So I guess the modernized Flash Gordon could be a military mission launched onboard a requisitioned SpaceX Starship to a planetoid that has appeared in the outer solar system on NASA deep space telemetry, moving under it's own power. The astronauts led by Mission Commander Flash Gordon arrive on a world with a complex sociology of it's own, with multiple cultures, but dominated by the influence of a single God Emperor, Ming the Merciless. His main technological advantage lies in his ability to utterly dominate a sentient mind, coupled with a huge star fleet. He seeks to conquer Earth as an addition to his personal star empire.

I guess Farscape was the modern equivalent, with John Crichton's IASA space shuttle being shot through a wormhole to a distant sector of the galaxy, and the Goa'uld in Stargate were the theatrical villain equivalent of Ming.

Hmm this looks kind of familiar, like this:

For me the problem of making an SF-Fantasy RPG is not in the programming and scripting part within the unreal engine. The Assets are rather extremely time consuming and while i can analyse the writing i fail at writing myself.
Give me the texts with quests description, the assets and in a year you have an SF-Fantasy RPG. And most important: Give me the MONEY!
No if Kris and his BM makes some decent amount, then we can talk about making an SF-Fantasy TB RPG. Before that there is a plan of making a BM TB RPG in a similar fashion of the pictures posted by JarlFrank (same world like BM, but different southern location) in this or different thread ("why there are no more OGL games" or so).

 

[Louis_Cypher]

Spelljammer is nice and all, but it's fantasy.

When Games Workshop created Warhammer 40,000 they didn't just put fantasy races in space. They justified any direct borrowings with natural science as best as they could, to normalize the setting into science fiction (baring in mind it started off as a dark parody). Orks became a form of fungus-like extraterrestrial with multiple forms determined by environmental conditions. Dwarves were replaced by Squats; mutant humans altered over millennia of isolation and exposure to radiation; they were later retired. Elves were replaced by an ultra advanced civilization of technologically sophisticated aliens who had suffered a genocide called the Eldar. The undead were replaced by an ancient race of androids with the entombed consciousnesses of an ancient race; Necrons. Unique enemies like the Tyranids were added. It's honestly evolved into one of the most interesting settings for fiction available today.

Starfinder on the other hand just put fantasy into space, with no attempt to increase it's naturalism, and we have enough actual fantasy as it is, so I hope if WOTC ever decided to create a sci-fi D&D they just make a full science fiction from the ground up.

 

[Darkzone]

Never watched Buck Rogers but Flash Gordon serials and comics weren't really that great.
Perhaps we should go a bit further into the past for some real quality sci-fi pulp:

Spoiler

View attachment 13370

John Carter is also a possiblity for a great RPG. Currently the rights holders are Edgar Rice Burroughs Inc., and they would be quite interested for someone to revitalise their franchise, especially after the failure of the disney film.

 

[JarlFrank]

Personally I'm a big fan of oldschool sci-fantasy, the sword and planet and raygun stuff. It's distinctly fantasy to us today, but back then the authors tried to explain things with the science of the day. Mars being populated was still a plausible idea when novels like John Carter were written. Of course scientific knowledge always expands so old sci-fi seems like unscientific fantasy decades later, and maybe some day we'll find real FTL drives and any attempt at explaining FTL drives used in past science fiction will appear as silly unscientific fantasy to us then. But the important part is that sci-fi attempts to explain its fantastic elements with the science of its time. Sci-fi is using current scientific knowledge and combining it with your imagination to see how far it could go. Come up with the wildest, weirdest ideas you can that are still explainable with at least vaguely scientific methods.

Sci-fi can be as fantastical at fantasy without the need for magic. Shit like terraforming, dyson spheres, artificial planetoids. Reading hard sci-fi like Rendezvous with Rama gives me the same sense of exploration and exoticism as reading sword and sorcery, because it's an exploration of exotic and alien environments and cultures.

Retro sci-fi can work if you write it with the assumptions of its time. And any sci-fi requires just as much imagination as fantasy (if not more, because you can't just handwave stuff by saying it's magic lol).

 

[Darkzone]

Personally I'm a big fan of oldschool sci-fantasy, the sword and planet and raygun stuff. It's distinctly fantasy to us today, but back then the authors tried to explain things with the science of the day. Mars being populated was still a plausible idea when novels like John Carter were written. Of course scientific knowledge always expands so old sci-fi seems like unscientific fantasy decades later, and maybe some day we'll find real FTL drives and any attempt at explaining FTL drives used in past science fiction will appear as silly unscientific fantasy to us then. But the important part is that sci-fi attempts to explain its fantastic elements with the science of its time. Sci-fi is using current scientific knowledge and combining it with your imagination to see how far it could go. Come up with the wildest, weirdest ideas you can that are still explainable with at least vaguely scientific methods.
Sci-fi can be as fantastical at fantasy without the need for magic. Shit like terraforming, dyson spheres, artificial planetoids. Reading hard sci-fi like Rendezvous with Rama gives me the same sense of exploration and exoticism as reading sword and sorcery, because it's an exploration of exotic and alien environments and cultures.
Retro sci-fi can work if you write it with the assumptions of its time. And any sci-fi requires just as much imagination as fantasy (if not more, because you can't just handwave stuff by saying it's magic lol).

Mars still can be terraformed and populated in the future. And a cataclysm could revert the spacefaring human race back to planet dwellers with still gates open between the planets of Earth-Moon, Mars and Venus or even the Jovian solar system. You as the adventure escaping earth could find yourself:
In the dense jungles of Venus hunted by the venusian predators. Or in the dark caverns of Earth's Moon where mutants lurk in the dark. Or in the cold waste deserts of Mars filled with strang artifical and mechanical lifeforms, while you are traveling by sailwagons between the "water well" oasis cities.
The reason why i like the Numenera setting is that it offers possibilities for the sense of wonder and exploration, but Monty reverts to the "Technology like Magic" explanation the whole time. And sadly InXile failed at creating the wonder and feeling of exploration.
And yes Sci-Fi requires much more imagination as Fantasy as you have correctly written.
Therefore i like the channel of isaac arthur, because he tries to explain SF, Future and spacefaring technologies with our current science and engineering possibilities. Example: Juvian Solar System. (Ok i make here for him advertising once again, but the last time was some 2-3 years ago.)

 

[Louis_Cypher]

Of course scientific knowledge always expands so old sci-fi seems like unscientific fantasy decades later, and maybe some day we'll find real FTL drives and any attempt at explaining FTL drives used in past science fiction will appear as silly unscientific fantasy to us then. But the important part is that sci-fi attempts to explain its fantastic elements with the science of its time. Sci-fi is using current scientific knowledge and combining it with your imagination to see how far it could go. Come up with the wildest, weirdest ideas you can that are still explainable with at least vaguely scientific methods.

Exactly, agreed 100%. Amazingly some people don't get this. I once got into an exchange with someone online who said that dilithium crystals in Star Trek were magic, in an attempt to justify the bullshit science in Star Trek: Discovery. Allegedly this person was a Star Trek fan, but incredibly had gone though life not understanding the difference between fantasy and science fiction. They didn't grasp that dilithium was intended to be a projection of an undiscovered natural material/mineral. Just because this speculative material hasn't been discovered in reality, does not make the concept fantasy, on par with witches on broomsticks.

If I was to compare science fiction world-building and fantasy world-building to someone, I guess the main difference on a practical level would be that you think about natural laws a lot more. Figure out what effect something would have on the real world. If an alien species lives on a planet full of radioactive minerals in every rock face, then perhaps their biology must have adapted to protect their DNA, ergo you give the aliens thick armor-like skin capable of deflecting all alpha radiation, and some beta radiation. It's almost like a logical if/then proposition. You work out your entire setting like that. After a while, you have something waterproof where the bullshit is at a minimum, but fantastic because like you say the natural world is fantastic enough without embellishment. If a planet with a lone solitary monastery of warrior monks is called for, no problem, you invent a sociological reason for it and think it through. Fantasy can reason things out too, but ultimately always can just say 'because it was magic'.

Personally I'm a big fan of oldschool sci-fantasy, the sword and planet and raygun stuff. It's distinctly fantasy to us today, but back then the authors tried to explain things with the science of the day. Mars being populated was still a plausible idea when novels like John Carter were written.

I quite enjoy retro fiction although I would prefer a modern sci-fi for an RPG just because we get so few, niche parts of the genre can come after.

I guess the science fiction space opera from before the 1950s seems especially dated to us now because of the amount of vast technological and scientific leaps that were made around then, and we haven't altered our overall understanding as fundamentally since. The discovery of DNA in 1953. Early computers. Working rockets. The first satellite in 1957. I think the first spectroscopic analysis of the atmosphere of Mars was as late as Mariner 4's flyby in 1964. Like you say, before that many people thought the atmosphere might be breathable, and Mars a sort of habitable desert planet like Arrakis or Tatooine in our own solar system.

I recently watched Destination Moon (1950), Flight to Mars (1951), Conquest of Space (1955) and they are a lot more plausible than I might have thought having seen less scientific B-movies from the same era with giant spiders and stuff, perhaps because Hollywood started working with NASA and the USAF to popularize concepts like realistic space physics, staged rockets, zero-g space walks, etc. They still sometimes treated the atmosphere of Mars as breathable, but have pressure suits, torus-shaped space stations and modular vehicles. John Carter was pre-WW1. Buck Rogers was created in 1928, the same year penicillin was discovered.

 

[TemplarGR]

Space Opera implies Mass Effect production values. How many companies can pull off something like that today? Our only hope is Bethesda's Starfield since Bioware is dead. Typically for Bethesda, they will save the CRPG genre, again.

 

[Louis_Cypher]

Re-reading the post above, it got me thinking that maybe we need a good clear definition of the difference between science fiction and fantasy, because I remember how some people had trouble with distinguishing the difference between them on another forum. There hasn't been any problem here, perhaps because the Codex is made up of many people who are familiar with how settings work and concepts like high magic vs. low magic settings. But it might be necessary to communicate the idea succinctly at some point, and might further the discussion here.

I tried to formulate it like this earlier:

• - I define fantasy fiction as folklore-based world-building.

• - I define science fiction as science-based world-building.

Later on, hard vs. soft science fiction:

• - Hard Science Fiction deals with "an emphasis on scientific accuracy"

• - Soft Science Fiction deals with either "soft sciences" or are simply "not scientifically accurate"

I know this is obvious to most people, but seems to be a major sticking point for others from my memory. The person who I recall arguing with basically couldn't accept that since we have chemical elements and compounds in real life, and not all of them have been discovered, a fictional compound is not a fantasy. To put it differently, he was essentially arguing that a detective novel is a work of high fantasy just because Sherlock Holmes doesn't exist, never mind that humans in general do. So the problem seems to come from not being able to take the general intent.

So instead maybe start with a negative definition, what is magic, by contrast:

• - Magic entails something supernatural (meaning outside nature), something that can never exist.

Science fiction then perhaps could be defined as:

• - "Speculative literature that could potentially happen, given the right set of natural circumstances."

Klingons potentially could evolve by freak chance, even if a galaxy full of freak chance humanoid bipeds is highly unlikely, and future humans might also discover warp drive... ...but the wings of a fairy will never be able to lift 7 stone woman into the air in a 1 standard atmosphere of pressure on a planet with 1 g of gravitational force, nor will a wooden sailing ship be lifted into orbit by the magical will of a wizard.

Even a deliberately retro science fiction might choose to give Mars an atmosphere, but that wouldn't quite be fantasy, because it is not violating a natural law - Mars could have an atmosphere in some alternate unfolding of history, atmospheres generally exist, and in the retro setting Mars has one (nature here being used in the philosophical sense: meaning the universe and everything in it). It's another way of saying the metaphysics of your setting are fundamentally either natural (sci-fi) or supernatural (fantasy).

 

[Darkzone]

I once got into an exchange with someone online who said that dilithium crystals in Star Trek were magic, in an attempt to justify the bullshit science in Star Trek: Discovery. Allegedly this person was a Star Trek fan, but incredibly had gone though life not understanding the difference between fantasy and science fiction. They didn't grasp that dilithium was intended to be a projection of an undiscovered natural material/mineral. Just because this speculative material hasn't been discovered in reality, does not make the concept fantasy, on par with witches on broomsticks.

Dilithium in Star Trek serves as an moderator to controll the matter - antimatter reaction. While Li2 (only gasous form) would clearly not function even under high current, there are speculations that other kristaline matrizes could be used to hold and direct antiprotons via electro magnetic ( force ) repulsion (electron-antiproton). Currently there is only the possibility to hold anti-deuterium, that is magnetic fields and i think that a containment like the one of the fusion reactors stellarator is more feasible than some crystals.
Just saying, but the material physics is not my hobbyhorse.

I quite enjoy retro fiction although I would prefer a modern sci-fi for an RPG just because we get so few, niche parts of the genre can come after.
I guess the science fiction space opera from before the 1950s seems especially dated to us now because of the amount of vast technological and scientific leaps that were made around then, and we haven't altered our overall understanding as fundamentally since. The discovery of DNA in 1953. Early computers. Working rockets. The first satellite in 1957. I think the first spectroscopic analysis of the atmosphere of Mars was as late as Mariner 4's flyby in 1964. Like you say, before that many people thought the atmosphere might be breathable, and Mars a sort of habitable desert planet like Arrakis or Tatooine in our own solar system.

Spoiler

Many things even from the 30s and 50s sci-fi are not that impossible and not that far off from reality as one would think.
There are reasons why i post my post in a specific manner. Look at the series "Space 1999" and "Odyssey 2001" and see how many things we already made possible or even better, like Smartphones, Tablets and HAL 9000. Look at the picure that i have posted of the SpaceX Starship and see how similar it is in its designs to the 50s rockets with its shiny steel hull. One imaginative mind has made the reentry passive ablative heat shield (something from the 1960-2020 like SIRCA, AVCOAT) a relict of the past and made the step to active cooling. (The principle was already proposed in the 1960s.)

 

[Louis_Cypher]

Yep, I get the impression that some people think that dilithium actually powers a starship, but as the writer's guide made clear, the starship was always powered by a matter/antimatter annihilation reaction releasing energy. In the later technical manuals they reconcile dilithium's place within the warp drive as being a kind of moderator material that helps regulate the reaction like you say. Aside from proving how far ahead of it's time the show was, the Star Trek: The Original Series writer's guide still has some great things to say about creating a sense of realism:

"Remember always that STAR TREK is never fantasy; whatever happens, no matter how unusual or bizarre, must have some basis in either fact or theory and stay true to that premise"

"IMPORTANT: The writer must know what he means when he uses science or projected science terminology. A scattergun confusion of meaningless phrases only detracts from believability."

"What have been the "big problem areas” in past story and script submissions?: Again, it has been in areas of believability. Many otherwise good writers tend to pepper their science fiction with "out of left field” coincidences, un-explained and illogical actions, unmotivated character changes, things they would never dream of perpetrating on even a kiddies show script."

"Keep in mind that science fiction is not a separate field of literature with rules of its own, but, indeed, needs the same ingredients as any story -- including a jeopardy of some type to someone we learn to care about, climactic build, sound motivitation, you know the list."
​

"Out of left field coincidences, un-explained and illogical actions" it's almost like they went into the future and saw current Star Trek. Or rather current Star Trek has regressed to a pre-1966 level of maturity.

Although I always wondered how Space: 1999's moon was capable of FTL travel, it's true that some older science fiction can be surprisingly realistic perhaps because writers did more research than we give them credit for or you can go backward and justify a lot of what you see on screen using modern science. In Star Trek, famous for predicting things, you can see people writing on touchpads with styluses decades before the first touch screen was invented.

 

[wahrk]

I can’t remember who posted the Night Lands excerpts, but thanks for sharing. Reminded me of Gene Wolfe’s stuff. I enjoy that kind of SF quite a bit, although I have a hard time seeing that translate into video game mechanics, much less represent it visually.

I think the main problem why you don’t see SF cRPGs is simply because classic RPGs are inherently tied to fantasy, no? cRPGs came from tabletop games like DnD, which was obviously heavily based on Tolkien fantasy. So the gameplay systems and loop of create character->buy equipment->explore dungeons->kill monsters->get loot fits a fantasy universe more than some of the hard SF people are posting.

Not that I wish people wouldn’t try more. I just think you aren’t going to see RPGs do anything other than a Mass Effect or Star Wars sort of space fantasy (and only the first Mass Effect got anywhere close to something like Star Trek - the sequels dropped the little science it had for dumb drama or compromised it for gameplay reasons).

 

[Gangrelrumbler]

I think the main problem why you don’t see SF cRPGs is simply because classic RPGs are inherently tied to fantasy, no? cRPGs came from tabletop games like DnD, which was obviously heavily based on Tolkien fantasy. So the gameplay systems and loop of create character->buy equipment->explore dungeons->kill monsters->get loot fits a fantasy universe more than some of the hard SF people are posting.

That's also what I thought. There is no place for ancient weapons found in tombs in your standard sci-fi setting. Even normal gamey things like upgrading your ship along the way are silly since whoever is fielding the ship should already outfit it with the best available technology.
This part was silly even in Jagged Alliance, I can get the most deadly assassins in the world and ship them anywhere I want but getting some high-grade weaponry for them is out of my reach and I have to loot them out of some poor African redshirts? It just doesn't add-up.
Sure you can make it into rogue trader type thing where you start as a lowly space merchant/pirate and then try to get some money for a decent ship but I don't think that chasing after cash is what space opera is all about.

 

[JarlFrank]

Similarly to how sci-fi is split into hard and soft, we can do the same with fantasy btw.

There are hard magic systems and soft magic systems. In hard systems the rules of magic are explained and never broken (the allomancy from Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn series is a good example), while in soft magic systems the things magic can do are more flexible, and its source less well-defined.

 

[Morkar Left]

Stellar Tactics and Star Traders Frontiers are basically space operas. Empyrion seems to go into the direction of space opera as well.

 

[ItsChon]

I wonder how a game that played exactly like Mass Effect, but once you entered into dialogue with someone, had the old IE dialogue system, would feel...

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

There is no place for ancient weapons found in tombs in your standard sci-fi setting.

Ancient advanced civilizations gets used quite often in sci-fi settings.

Even normal gamey things like upgrading your ship along the way are silly since whoever is fielding the ship should already outfit it with the best available technology.

That too can be circumvented with some common plot hooks.
You get weak starting gear because limited resources/need for secrecy/ being someone who's doing something different that gets sucked into the grand adventure.