How does this compare to the oldschool Starflight games?

[ximslammin]

Do you mine planets for mineral resources etc?

[Captain Brendig]

Never played those, but yes there are deposits and ore nodes to be gathered and mined. Necessary for surviving and crafting the basics for flight, amongst many other things.

[MechWarden]

Honestly, it sucks... in both directions.

NMS (as of writing this) isn't a particularly good space fighter game (aka, bi-plane combat in space!) since that isn't the main focus of NMS. And in comparison to NMS, old school starfighter games suck, because you only get to fly in your little bi-plane spaceship, and not explore countless worlds and get out of that cramped cockpit and walk around.

In NMS, yes you can mine select parts of the planet surface for stuff... or not. You aren't required to, besides the satisfying the tutorial missions. It is much more open than most starfighter games. And games that were more exploratory weren't really starfighter games to begin with.

Long story short, this is comparing apples to oranges nuts.

[Lindy Bomber]

Starflight, as in 1986 game published by Electronic Arts?

Vaguely similar concept, but completely different game engine and game play. NMS is much less story driven and has no end game or big bad enemy to defeat.

[Enoch Dagor]

Never played Starflight 1... but I found a lot of similarities with Starflight 2. Loved SF2 (dos).

You can explore planets on land. You can fly through space. The galaxy is huge.There are a few races to discover and work with (not as many as SF2). There is an overarching storyline. Etc... So, ya, I see a lot of similarity.

[Asmosis]

Not sure which one i played, it was on sega genesis. The good ole days when instruction manuals were manuals and not a piece of paper folded in half !

and uh yeah, there's a few similarities when you factor in the limitations of the day.

Ship upgrades are similar, planets are very similar, fauna is similar. Races arent as interesting, and there's no dynamic encounters or space events (like the abandoned satelites).

[MechWarden]

Oh, the game that is named "Starflight", not star-fighter as in the genre. Misread and got stuck thinking about those silly arguments about how NMS 'sucks as a flight sim' and stuff like that.

I've barely heard about Starflight (saw a few YT videos), and from what I've seen, there are some similarities to NMS. The main difference I can see is that the NPCs are more active and likely better written for the (obviously limited) game mechanics they are used in. There is likely more game mechanic details in Starflight than NMS as well... as odd as that sounds.

Then again, NMS is about a lone Anomalous Traveller than about a select crew of a given multi-person starship. For its time, Starflight was likely much more polished and obviously complete, unlike NMS.

NMS is likely more geared for people new to the classic sci-fi setting and skims over quite a few details... both for ease of use and HG not getting around to filling them in yet. Another big difference is just plan visual. Starflight you have to imagine what the pixelated stuff is, which is done pretty well when used to format; but NMS leverages (relatively) recent graphic technical to literally render classic sci-fi scenes at almost every turn. (with a Picture Mode to shamelessly show that aspect off to others)

Because of limitations in hardware in the 80's, Starflight focused more on text based things to get their story across; while NMS uses visuals and their unique world generation to get their story across.