Finished the game - anything similar out there?

[Dhansak]

Now I have a RG sized hole to fill, I was wandering what you all may have moved to that had a similar feel.

I have considered Starpoint Gemini 2 and Everspace 2 but can't be sure .... I have downloaded the Demo of the latter, it's fun but the ship lacks the heft of an RG vessel.

Thanks!

[Henry]

There is StarFury but it's old and "unpolished".
Maybe Nexus : The Jupiter incident may be worth a look but it's mission based, not open world. More a tactics game (pausable).
I liked Starpoint Gemini 1 alot too. But it's not as fast as RG and has some bugs and QoL things missing.
Have you tried Freelancer (also older but very good game, 3d space, mostly agile ships)? Should be free right now.

If you are fine with 2d I suggest VoidExpanse, Transcendence and 3030 DeathWar.

There are not many 3rd person spaceship games, unfortunately.

[Dhansak]

Thanks for all the suggestions Henry - that's great!

I had a look at the 2d titles just in case, but don't think they are for me. Then I checked out Star Fury And Nexus.

Nexus looks really good! Although as you say, it's a different animal to RG, it does look pretty impressive in it's own area. I have put it on my wish list for my wife to get me for Xmas. She and I thank you for making her Xmas shopping that little bit easier!

I have heard a lot of praise for Freelancer, but have never owned it. I have looked around in the past but couldn't find a place to buy it; also I didn't know which abandonware sites I could trust so left it at that at the time. Time for another hunt.....

Thanks again for the help - cheers :)

[Henry]

Originally posted by Dhansak:

I have heard a lot of praise for Freelancer, but have never owned it.

Well, you missed something. I suggest to get your hands on it. Maybe look if some used copies are sold on Ebay. Or use my next suggestion.

Originally posted by Dhansak:

I have looked around in the past but couldn't find a place to buy it; also I didn't know which abandonware sites I could trust so left it at that at the time. Time for another hunt.

There is (still) a striving mod community around Freelancer. I know that you can download the iso from the site of discovery mod. I'm not sure about Steam rules regarding linking such stuff so I left it to you to find that site. Should not be too hard and can be trusted since its a
fan community.
I suggest to play the vanilla game first, but then you can enhance it with mods alot.
Good luck.

[Dhansak]

Ahh - that is valuable info - found the iso. Will download shortly.

Excellent - thanks again!

[WillieSea]

I have the original disc for Freelancer, and I thought, why not install it again?

So I did, and found "if" you have windows 10, you also have to find the 'no CD' file because windows 10 refuses to read the 'validation/authorization' file from the CD because it is not signed (or something like that). I then added the v1.1 patch and the game works great on my i9 Windows 10 computer.

And it aged very well, it is still playable and fun.

I remember back when I added a whole new star system, but I can't find those files now. ;)

[Red-Eyed_Gelynome]

For Starpoint Gemini 2 and Starpoint Gemini Warlords are decent.
2 allows you to freeroam and do whatever submissions you like with your custom char while it does have a campaign with a pregenerated characters

Warlords is similar to 2 but allows you to be like manage fleets and conquer the galaxy

-but both games have static market. No price drops or anything.
-Trading is as simple as looting this and sell. not like X3 series
-Both game tends to get boring fast, but it's like of those games that you'll come back after for a bit of nostalgic feel.
-Warlords tends to have a bug (vanilla or modded) that when using better shipclass like frigates, random encounters gets bugged and spawns ALOT of capital ships that you cant fight solo. (no fix)
-Both games are considered Finish (but more like abandoned) but still decent enough to be played and enjoyed.
-Once you get Capital Ship Class, you're pretty much done and fighting gets boring and repeatative fast.


Other games I could recommend are:
-Star Valor = 2d topdown still in EA but the dev (1 person only) gives constant update and the community is decent.
-Avorion = Minecraft in space, build your own ship and fly it to do trading/exploring/fighting/etc. Actually a decent one, but takes time to master
-Between the Stars - Another game with Beautiful Graphics, you can fly decent looking ships and explore "custom" lore of the game, The game is still on EAccess and it used to have Overwhelming Positive reviews but due to the late updates, its lowered to very positive, the good one on this game is the indept story, just give it a try, it's really fun and some of the ships used here are the same from RG, (they paid for the models anyways)


So far, Star Valor is my most recommended for you, it's 2d but it's like RG top down :v

[Henry]

Yeah StarValor is a good one. Albeit Updates come only sparsely lately.

Another recommendation is Astrox Imperium (Early Access). There is not much story yet but you can do missions/mining and upgrade your ships, hire mercs etc. And it is played from 3rd person perspective. But you control it more like an MMO by pressing buttons not steering directly so much (you can click in space for direction). It plays a bit like Eve Online if you know that.

[Dhansak]

Thanks for the info guys!

Have got Freelancer working and modded with HD textures. Looks like it could be a lot of fun. Will finish off Spacebourne first though. It's sort of similar - another game developed by one guy - pretty amazing really.

I loved Avorion - put hundreds of hours into that one. The environments felt so alive it was great. Just finished it pre version 2.0. I enjoyed it all - a nice change!

Between the Stars looked interesting - though the text based mission responses and descriptions seem a bit long winded for my tired brain lol.

I did have a look at Astrox Imperium - though it fell off my radar for some reason - can't remember why though :( Maybe just because it is early access - been put off those a little by a sudden change in core mechanics that can strike out of the blue....

Will definitely have a look at Star Valor - thanks for the heads up.

Cheers :)

[WillieSea]

My recommendations:

Captain Forever Remix
Drox Operative
Rodina
Space Engineers
Space Pirates and Zombies (Really fun despite the name)
Star Valor
Transcendence
Void Expanse (Really fun too)

[Wig]

Elite Dangerous looks very similar although I haven't played it, just read and watched reviews for it. IGN has a partial video review that they started but didn't seem to finish. Although you will want to avoid the recent Odyssey DLC until they've fixed it.

[Henry]

I have played EliteDangerous and it can be quite frustrating and grindy and it is definitely very time consuming. And since it's an MMO I thought it does not fit right in here. If you think about getting it you should definitely watch some tutorials, lets play videos and read some guides before purchasing to decide wether it is for you. I stopped playing it after loosing hours of work because the game put me in an unfair situation. It's not a bad game per se but it definitely has it's flaws and bad design choices.

[Dhansak]

Thanks for the further recommendations!

On following up on the lists I found out about Space Pirates and Zombies 2. Downloaded the demo and am having fun. It is close-ish to RG in that it is 3d but on a 2d plane; it has a capital vessel with broadsides. I think it could be the successor! Nothing is quite like RG, but this could be close enough....

I used to play Elite - but not in MMO form i.e. not in open world play. 3 of us just formed a private group and played together in our instance. We had fun for a good long while - about a 1000 hours each. It is very different to RG - it actually has a pretty good flight model; it's the only game I have so far played that really used all of the features of my T1600 HOTAS and throttle. Anyway - a different sort of beast.

I think my Xmas present for this RG sized hole so far looks to be one of:

Space Pirates and Zombies 2
Starpoint Gemini 2
Battlefleet Gothic Armada 2

Meanwhile still pottering along with Spacebourne for a different style of space game.

[Heliocentric]

This is a game of trucking with occasional violence to me, honestly consider how you feel about the logistics. The SCS Euro and American truck driving games are probably the games that share the sense of haulage best, and they sure get the sense of heft across.

The only thing that meets rebel Galaxy's mix of theme of space trucking is Space Run by
Passtech Games, but its sort of a tower defence?

If you want space but want shooty bangs House of the Dying Sun by Marauder Interactive is my all time high water mark, its actually fully 3D with a sort of mock newtonian physics, but I feel like with a twinstickpad it's pretty friendly to play despite being challenging.

[Lifter]

Between the Stars could be of interest to you. It´s still in early access but there´s some fun to be had. I´d wait for a sale though. https://store.steampowered.com/app/727130/Between_the_Stars/

[Dhansak]

Thanks guys - have put both games (Between the Stars and House of the Dying Sun) on my wishlist (I use it as a reminder list really).

Hmm ... my shortlist of RG hole-fillers is getting longer lol. Tis a good thing!

Cheers again :)