Fave Space Games

another fun 8-bit game similar to Air Fortress is Layla. explore the interior of 8 asteroid fortresses in a Metroid style, with inbetween flying stages that play like horizontal Galaga bonus stages.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9dV5Yj4QuI

oh wow reminds me of wonderboy iv, nice boots too

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=230601096692&ssPageName=ADME:B:EF:US:1123

man, i would really love an updated colony wars/wing commander-style game

what's megatraveller like ?

It's unbelievably massive & detailed - it's still the gold gold standard for character creation, for me.

i have that jacket btw, would buy another but it's SMALL

3. Hard sci-fi space combat that resembles submarine warfare but with lots of slug weapons! Ship "gravity" entirely dependent on constant acceleration!

― service desk hardman (El Tomboto), Tuesday, January 19, 2016 7:51 PM (1 week ago)

are there any good hard sci-fi space combat games?

i am thinking a cross between a flight simulator and star control ii

ever played i-war/independence war? no star control 2 in it to speak of but an interesting hard-physics capital-ship combat sim where you move from nav to weapons to engineering to comms on your giant bridge while failing to avoid missiles; it contains some of the only post-x-wing spaceflight-sim ideas and has a flatteringly vertical learning curve.

unfortunately there's no galactic free-roam, just a bunch of missions, and the story is boilerplate and the voice acting is very bad. star control 2 was a strange miracle in all these depts.

whoa! sounds cool

a lot of my thing about star control ii is the interesting physics of the melee

i like the fuel mechanics a lot

i like the ship of evil capitalists where you can feed crew into the furnace for fuel bursts.

in the single-player i pretty much always used the ship designed by the race of cowards with the rear-facing heat-seeking torpedoes

yeah the variety of ships was really something

I-war looks pretty excellent

for me it was a little like scratching right next to an itch, but it's def worth playing.

the game i want to play is the one described in the opening chapter of this parody of goosebumps--

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/510Y8K9K56L.jpg

--which was either written by someone w a very dim grasp of what computer games were actually like in 1997 or by a total visionary, because the two friends seem simultaneously to be commanding vast opposing armies in a complex galaxy-wide campaign of such granular detail one kid has had to outfit his platoons with special suits to process the atmosphere of one of his friend's planets AND ALSO inhabiting first-person avatars as i guess the physical emperors of their states, aboard giant capitol ships with decks and ladders and bulkheads and enemy boarding parties, ships they are also apparently commanding, so apparently it is also a flight sim, with, we assume, newtonian, if not in fact quantum, physics. that's my game. i-war got the capitol ship part.

around the same age i pored over the comically thick manual of this

http://iv1.lisimg.com/image/1494913/634full-star-fleet-ii-krellan-commander-cover.jpg

which i'd gotten, complete, from the library book sale and which was on 5'1/4" floppies and which couldn't be coaxed to run even though we did then have a 5'1/4" drive. that was the most amazing manual. i'm sure the game it seemed to describe doesn't really exist.

yes, that's right, five-foot floppies, gather round, kids

Game and Manual here: http://www.krazyawesome.com/videogames/star-fleet-ii-krellan-commander.html

commanding vast opposing armies in a complex galaxy-wide campaign of such granular detail one kid has had to outfit his platoons with special suits to process the atmosphere of one of his friend's planets AND ALSO inhabiting first-person avatars as i guess the physical emperors of their states, aboard giant capitol ships with decks and ladders and bulkheads and enemy boarding parties, ships they are also apparently commanding, so apparently it is also a flight sim, with, we assume, newtonian, if not in fact quantum, physics.

yeah but do the ships have bathrooms, though? Otherwise the title seems moot

3. Hard sci-fi space combat that resembles submarine warfare but with lots of slug weapons! Ship "gravity" entirely dependent on constant acceleration!

though a straight action game Colony Wars on PS1 ticks a lot of these boxes. You had the sense of the massive scales involved in space, and the massive distances required to slow down or change direction, and the battle advantages of certain angles of drift, from which you could strafe targets etc

DLH: Interstel also made Starflight. i unearthed the manual/disks last summer at my parents' house (note copy protection override hack in evidence):

http://f.cl.ly/items/2b251A1F0r0Z2s0S340m/starflight.jpg

just look at those guys. i studied that photo for hours.

yeah but do the ships have bathrooms, though? Otherwise the title seems moot

this was all an irrelevant opening fakeout. after that it was suburbia and aliens were coming thru the toilets i think.

thanks forks! i think i tried it from home of the underdogs somewhere in the mid-00s but never got that running either, not sure if it was "v1.5" or not. the manual, anyway, remains glorious:

If you have just purchased STAR FLEET II or have never played the game before, please read carefully Sections 2 and 3 of the Star Fleet Officer's Manual, Volume 2 (the companion volume to this book) before you attempt to load or use the playing disks.

the companion volume!

starfleet looks great. to be one of those men. my elvish-to-dwarvish copy-protection code wheel for pool of radiance is a treasured possession, but it's not space.

flight.

btw for seriously hard sci-fi, this piece is hard to beat

http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/02/the-audacious-rescue-plan-that-might-have-saved-space-shuttle-columbia/

I always thought Homeworld was beautiful looking. Pity I sucked at it.

The 5th Gen poll reminded me of the game Star Control 2 and I had a huge rush of long-unaccessed memories flood into my brain. It has to be in my top 5 of all time... the music, the melee, the genuinely funny plot, I still feel creepy feelings about the VUX (and the mysterious Androsynth genocide), the Druuge and their slave trade, and the bizarre Mycon.

My first play through was mildly stressful, watching the Pkunk try and reunite with the Yehat once, twice and then finally a third time and I was deprived of my favourite melee ship and had to restart

The second time was enormously stressful... I was a diligent miner and took my time until the Kzer-Za sphere of influence suddenly started waning and winked out and the Kohr-Ah began their cleansing-- again, a restart

I definitely needed a walkthrough and definitely used a "here are where the good planets are" guide... there are few games that have enthralled me as so deeply as this one

theres a very good free fan-made remaster of that game if you want to play it again http://sc2.sourceforge.net/

Oh yes, I played through that remake! It's excellent