Anyone played similar games?

[Ash Wednesday Valentine]

Edit:
What's geekier than space sims? Discussing them on the internet. What's geekier than that? `KokoJacK_^ put all the games we've discussed IN A DAMN SPREADSHEET!
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1J1VaxEC9LLwsNrDdVDROYqgaULxcE8twgTEuAcLq3pw/edit#gid=0

OP:
There's this, Astroneer, Space Engineers, No Man's Sky, and another one (I forgot the name of that game out and everyone hated a few years ago--it's driving me nuts). You played any of the others? What are the differences?

[ZomBeGone]

No man;s sky is the one everyone hated. It is a good game, but becomes very redundant after you pass through the first 50 star systems or so. Still a pretty game.

Astroneers is a very casual game with out any real difficulty. I played it some early on until they dumbed it down too much.

Elite dangerous is a solid game but is mostly economy based. I played a few hundred hours and tired of it. It has the best ship flying mechanics of any similar game, almost a flight simulator. The start system is real and accurate for all near starts.

SE - not played.

Empyrion is survival, mixed with ship building and combat. It can be played casually or as hard as you want it. A lot of progression is involved. If you are impatient and need to get to end game quickly you will be disappointed. There is really not much of an end game, to be honest. Several great mods exist for it to extend the game play and make it harder.

Watch a video or two to get an idea if YOU would like it.

[Bif]

I've played all of them except No Man's Sky, which I have hated irrationally since I first heard of it. Although I'm not willing to sink time into listing the differences (deeming them too numerous), I will read the thread with interest.

[Ash Wednesday Valentine]

This your favorite?

[Bif]

Originally posted by Thomas Riker:

This your favorite?

Yes, Empyrion is the best by a wide margin. Zom's post is good but glosses over the amount of sheer time suckage in such games as Elite Dangerous. As in, drifting in featureless space doing literally nothing but getting ready to press the stop button.

[ZomBeGone]

It is my favorite. I played almost 3000 hours over about 6 years. It has it's strengths and weaknesses. BUT what one person likes another will hate. Everyone is different.
Your milage may vary

[ZomBeGone]

Originally posted by Bif:

I've played all of them except No Man's Sky, which I have hated irrationally since I first heard of it. Although I'm not willing to sink time into listing the differences (deeming them too numerous), I will read the thread with interest.

No Man's sky is actually good and you might like it. The whole kerfuffle was blown out of proportion. They just released too soon because of pressure from the market place. There is an interesting discussion from the CEO of the game about what went wrong and how NOT to launch a new game :D

You would probably get a couple hundred hours out of it at least, in my opinion.

[The Big Brzezinski]

Scrap Mechanic's survival mode, that's about it.

[japp_02]

Evochron Legacy.
A good and less known space game more focusing on combat and ship navigation with Newtonian physics is Evochron Legacy. Seamless planet transitions and landings, you explore the planet from the view of a mech, that's more realistic, a good choice IMO. A good faction and economy system, but missions are somewhat simplistic, except combat missions which are challenging.

[Bif]

Originally posted by ZomBeGone:

Originally posted by Bif:

I've played all of them except No Man's Sky, which I have hated irrationally since I first heard of it. Although I'm not willing to sink time into listing the differences (deeming them too numerous), I will read the thread with interest.

No Man's sky is actually good and you might like it. The whole kerfuffle was blown out of proportion. They just released too soon because of pressure from the market place. There is an interesting discussion from the CEO of the game about what went wrong and how NOT to launch a new game :D

You would probably get a couple hundred hours out of it at least, in my opinion.

Out of respect for your proven good judgment, I will discard my prejudice against No Man's Sky. However, life has gotten busy for me and I have maybe 5 hours a week to play games. Really the only competition to Empyrion is Valheim or Conan Exiles for that small amount of time.

The problem is nobody is willing to hire me to do actual work, so I end up in charge of everything. Which means I have to be there, all the time. That or starve, babe.

[ShelLuser]

I tried No Mans Sky once, somewhat recently too so after the critics stated that the game had "redeemed itself". Each to their own but I was majorly disappointed and ended up requesting (and receiving) a refund. For some reason it's just hardly the same, not even with all the new features and such.

I'm also a huge fan of the previously Elite Dangerous but that game has nothing in common with Empyrion; it's not really a survival game but more so a "space flight simulator" :P

[Ash Wednesday Valentine]

Originally posted by ZomBeGone:

No man;s sky is the one everyone hated. It is a good game, but becomes very redundant after you pass through the first 50 star systems or so. Still a pretty game.

I remember that, but what I'm talking about was cartoony. I think it had dinosaurs in the trailer? I've been googling every generic name I can think of all afternoon because it's driving me nuts. I'd been really stoked for it with a woman I was smack in the middle of a breakup with when it came out, so I never looked past the mostly negative reviews to find out the reason for them.

Originally posted by ShelLuser:

Elite Dangerous but that game has nothing in common with Empyrion; it's not really a survival game but more so a "space flight simulator" :P

Always assumed Elite was an X clone. I basically lived in X3 for 300 hours until my pan-galactic fast food empire got so big I couldn't run the game anymore. Two computers later, I've still somehow never had the desire to touch it again.

[Ash Wednesday Valentine]

Originally posted by japp_02:

Evochron Legacy.
A good and less known space game more focusing on combat and ship navigation with Newtonian physics is Evochron Legacy. Seamless planet transitions and landings, you explore the planet from the view of a mech, that's more realistic, a good choice IMO. A good faction and economy system, but missions are somewhat simplistic, except combat missions which are challenging.

Looks awesome. Definitely picking it up next sale, thanks.

[antmutant]

Originally posted by Thomas Riker:

There's this, Astroneer, Space Engineers, No Man's Sky, and another one (I forgot the name of that game out and everyone hated a few years ago--it's driving me nuts). You played any of the others? What are the differences?

CROSSOUT!!! UFO looks better with old tires =).

[Mr. Pestbird]

for survival and building, but no flying - you could try stationeers. i fell in love with it. its a bit heavy to get into it but absolutely worth it.

[Nostromo]

I already had and have played both Astroneer and No Man's Sky (NMS), before I purchased Empyrion Galactic Survival (EGS).

Wanting to see how EGS compared to NMS is why I recently purchased EGS.

***

Astroneer is good. But, it is a much smaller-scale space & planet survival game. It is in one single "solar system" (with multiple planets and moons). The "terrain deformation" tools are superior to both EGS and NMS (once you unlock the tech, it's pretty easy and FAST to build paved roadways and make bridges, and dig tunnels to the planatary cores). If you also like caves, Astroneer has humongous caves - much, much, much larger than any I've seen on EGS or NMS. The "snap-to" base-building isn't quite like EGS or NMS - because most "tech" is stand-alone; placed "loose" on the ground, and you string "wire" to connect up power between everything..

But the "scale" of Astroneer is much, much smaller than EGS or NMS. So, I'm not sure how well it compares to either EGS or NMS. It's its own thing, and does it pretty well.

***

NMS: I've played NMS for over 2500-hours, and I still like it.

TBH, maybe because I purchased NMS first (Feb 2021) amongst these titles, as I am playing EGS, I find a seem to prefer NMS a bit over EGS.

However, it literally just underwent a MASSIVE "re-balancing" ( 4.0 Waypoint Update [www.nomanssky.com] ), which has the normally toxic forum-base even more toxic due to all the complaining. (I myself am looking forward to the many changes).

So... I haven't yet played it under the new "re-balancing"; however, for me, I think it's going to be fine, and I will enjoy playing it.

***

TLDR:

Astroneer isn't in the same category IMO - way smaller scale.

EGS vs NMS: I like them both, and have no regrets purchasing either.