this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2023
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The biggest competitor to Star Citizen right now is Elite: Dangerous. I've played it a lot and it's pretty good. You can play solo or online, too. It can feel a bit slow and it doesn't hold your hand when it comes to learning how to play. There's combat, trading, and exploration. Also pretty active communities online.
If you want to go back in time a bit, there's also the X series from Egosoft that's spanned back many years. There are a few installments and more is being developed. These games are definitely more colorful in several ways than Elite: Dangerous. More of a focus on the Rule of Cool than trying to be real sims.
Haven't played Star Wars: Squadrons, so I don't know the state of the multiplayer side of things. It does offer a solo story mode, apparently. May be worth looking into.
Every now and again I'll think about games like Freelancer, Freelancer 2, X-Wing, and the Wing Commander franchise for straight sit-in-cockpit combat action. Those are very old- early Mid 1990's to early 2000's. If you feel like something retro and can run them, those are options. I wish we had more games styled after those early space sims.
I have to second the Elite Dangerous vote here. Especially if you find an online community to play with. It is part space flight sim, part trading and now part fps. It has its problems, but the expansive scope of it always amazes.
Groups like The Buur Pit are new player friendly and will help a new commander learn. Game can also be had fairly cheaply on its frequent spelials.
Elite Dangerous has been on the downswing for a while now. May not be the greatest time to dive in, when at least their biggest fans on YouTube are talking about chances the company will stop development.
Any tips/thoughts/input for a new ED player then? If I were to give it a go. I don't know a whole lot about the game but I do have HOTAS/HOSAS setups I can use. One better than the other?
Don't skip the tutorials. Learn to dock without the autodock. Never fly without a rebuy (the amount to pay to respawn with your previous ship's setup should you die, otherwise you lose everything)!
HOTAS and HOSAS are welcome, they definitely add to the experience. HOSAS is better for combat but HOTAS is really nice too. I'm on a HOTAS myself.
I'm gonna chime in and say you don't need a HOTAS setup, I played quite well on just a steam controller, and that translated exactly into the steam deck.
OP already has both HOTAS and HOSAS setups, so was just answering their question.
Right but more than OP are reading for ideas. If a random user thinks they need a hotas, they don't.
I am using a Logitech x52 setup at the moment. It is busy game from a control scheme perspective. The flight model is more simulation than arcade so expect complexity.
I will have a look for a few getting started guides if you are interested.
That’d be much appreciated. From my time in star citizen I don’t mind sim style play over arcade. I think I might prefer it honestly - or at least some sort of balance
Well if you can deel with a very crusty Latvian ass, look for The Yamiks on youtube. He loves / hates the game, but knowledge is good. Agreed with the tutorials mentioned by @HidingCat.
Another YouTube channel worth exploring is Better Atronomy. A level headed German sounding bloke who is very technical.
There is an Elite Dangerous magazine here that had not taken off yet, but I am monitoring it from time to time. Ask questions.
Open can be dangerous, but the galaxy is vast. Expect ganking in high traffic systems. Fly in either Private or Solo when visiting engineering systems. There is a new commander safe zone that should at least get you started.
The game, is at best incomplete. I use inara.cz extensively as a companion resource. But that is for when you have left the starter area.
Never Fly without a Rebuy is a motto to live by.
Eddit to remove mention of eddb.io, which is no more. Inara does most things eddb did almost as well.
Ooo, I didn't think of looking the magazine up; thanks for mentioning, going to sub to that.
Is Eddie still around? I thought they shut down. There are still other tools, but they aren't the same.
You are corrct. I always mix inara and eddb up in my head. Inara.cz was the one I meant.
Play co-op! You join someone's ship and shoot out of one of their turrets or fighters.
It's a great way to meet some people to talk with. It's also nice to play on the same team as other people - much of SF seems - whats the word? Not antisocial - imagine like people who walk by when you're eating lunch, and shove you into the bushes for the lulz. So it's nice to find people with a common goal.
More importantly for new players, it can also be a good way of checking out more expensive ships, and it can be a good way of making money - if the person you join can finish the mission.
This game was infuriating for the enormous wasted potential that it was. From the day of launch they said they were planning to never update it, add to it, or expand it.
It could have been the successor to X-Wing/TIE Fighter, but they starved it from the beginning. The multiplayer was bad and they only had a few servers in the US, so it was too laggy for everyone overseas.
The game could have been something great, but it was dead out the door.
If you haven't already, it might be worth checking out TIE Fighter Total Conversion. It's a fan remake of TIE Fighter built on a massively modded X-Wing Alliance engine that works well on modern computers. It has a pretty faithful recreation of the original TIE Fighter (plus collector's CD content) campaign, and a reimagined version of it using things that weren't possible in the original game engine. https://www.moddb.com/mods/tie-fighter-total-conversion-tftc
You'll need a copy of X-Wing Alliance (available cheap on gog) to run it.
Wow! That is fascinating and the videos/screens are gorgeous! Thanks for letting me know about it, I will definitely check it out.
Idk, I'll take a short and sweet tie fighter tribute with modern graphics over a microtransactioned live service game any day of the week.
Those aren't the only 2 choices though. Ideally we'd get something like modern visuals on top of the game design of 15-20 years ago. Remember when you could host your own server and play with dozens of people? Remember college LAN parties of Wolfenstein with 60+ players? That's what this could have been. We need TF2 in space, but we got Overwatch.
Squadron's ugly flaw (aside from the bad latency caused by US-only servers) was that they copied the current trend in pvp games where it's a 5v5 battle and everything has to be "balanced." It was like playing crappy football with Star Wars ships. The objectives were pathetic and matchmaking was so bad that the games were almost always a pathetic wipe because one side was a team of 5 near-pro level gamers vs 5 solo newbies.
Still, it was gorgeous. And in VR it was chef's kiss
With some patching it could live up to its potential, but as it is it's sadly a dream that never came true.
I guess, but realistically EA doesn't work that way. Especially under disneg licensing terms. Overall, I kinda appreciated squadrons for being a no BS, give the fans what they want kinda game. Trying to do live service updates with Disney licensing terms just doesn't work- look at avengers and fan reactions to battlefront on release.
I can appreciate that.
I enjoyed it for what it was. I just saw so much more potential in it, and was heartbroken that it didn't go in that direction.
If you want a great game though, you have to play freespace 2, which i raved about in another post.
Thanks! I will check it out!