I'm looking for starship combat games - and by starship i dont mean flight sims, i mean full on capital class vessels beating shit through each other. i want a game with a proper damage model and, if possible, customisable ship setups. dont care if it's 3d or 2d so long as battledamage is visible, and i'd like a playable 3rd person view of the ship while fighting. oh, and if it's your general story driven game, i dont want to have to play for 20 hours before i can move from space taxi to a battleship :)
is there any such beast? :)
(trying demos of Starship Kingdom and Star Force Rogue Universe right now :) )
* Starship Kingdom is little more than Risk. (the combat is about as riveting)
* Star Force Rogue Universe was an unexpected gem, not what i was after but a good freelancer style game - needs a joystick though. even on easy it's almost impossible to kill even one enemy ship with the a mouse
* Nexus the Jupiter Incident is indeed very cool - not quite what i'm after but close - capital ship combat must indeed be ponderous which nexus manages well for the big ships. This game would be spot on if there was a way to limit yourself to having control of just one ship and having to manage damage across it (think the Silent Hunter series of games) while being able to target specifc areas of enemy ships.
* freelancer bored the hell out of me long ago (which is wierd because i loved Escape Velocity), but i'll try it again and see if there's any capital ship cheats floating around.
* X3, i havent tried yet as i wasn't in the mood for going through manymanymany hours of combat using a fighter interface i dont like (same issue with freelancer) before i could get to monsto ships. I notice there's cheats to get a script editor running though so i might look into that.
X3: Terran conflict Excellent shooting, stealing, pirating, trading, creation of homebase and stations, fleet compatible standalone non netted single player game ive come across.
Freelancer has some really awesome mods so you can play as the other races as well ^_^ Seriously this game pwnz all Space Sims IMO X2 would have been better if it had a multiplayer function.
freelancer had nothing on freespace - freespace 2 even had better graphics =) ..not to mention the ship designs.. i mean who created those?? did they get the same bloke that did the designs for [ame=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Super_Dimension_Cavalry_Southern_Cross]Southern Cross[/ame] : http://images.google.com.au/imgres?imgurl=http://www.robotechresearch.com/picture_archive/Southern_Cross/Mecha/Spartas_Hovertank/large/Spartas_Hovertank_27_large.jpg&imgrefurl=http://rockettubes.livejournal.com/107420.html&usg=__M8RyM6maKYMdaODDbWbyxqjVad8=&h=480&w=640&sz=27&hl=en&start=21&tbnid=9cfJKFPq4JCOlM:&tbnh=103&tbnw=137&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dsouthern%2Bcross%2Bmacross%26start%3D18%26gbv%3D2%26ndsp%3D18%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Doff%26sa%3DN
wellp - X3 is good and all, if you want to spend forever flying between jumpgates to talk to people in other systems when logic would suggest you should be able to just CALL through the gates.
combat with capital ships - while it should be fun, is up there with paying someone else a **** ton of money to go have fun in another country on your behalf, then looking at their photos on flickr. You have to move between different sections of the ship to take control of a limited number of guns at any one time - again - boring.
damage is NOT reflected in pieces being shot off enemy ships, and doesnt even bother to go so far as scorch marks! there's no splash damage when a capital ship explodes, and I still cant find where i tell my fighters to fricken well undock from my hangar bay!
X3 is a nice game, good trade system (though you can't drive up prices for things by destroying shipping), combat in the smaller ships is fun and some of the battles feel like freespace (which is a good thing). I havent bothered building anything yet because as stated, i just want a decent capital ship combat experience - so far no dice.
Star Trek Legacy is my next attempt. Failing that I'll ****in well build my own :P
no no - you misunderstand, i dont want fighters (was just annoyed there was no intuitive method of unleashing your 40 ships from your hangar bay) - i really just want decent capital ship combat with good damage modelling :)
In X3, you purchase different softwares from stations that allow deployment of entire fleets and recall entire fleets to hangars. Carrier command software, sector and universe patrol, and other less legal (pirate capture and retrieve) enhancements make fleet management far easier. I agree that capital ship damage modeling isnt there, at all, and thats a shame. And you can alter prices massively, but like any economic instabilty requires time and patience to get right and produce massive profits for wares you solely produce. Freesapace 2 was an excellent game as well, although the capital ship deformation only happened as the ship went through its death sequence.
Let me know if you find something that fits the bill, id be interested as well ;)
yeah i cheated my arse off in x3 to get the cap ships, all software loaded as well - i had no trouble getting ships into the hanger - it was getting them out again i couldnt work out (maybe they knew i was sending them to their deaths? =) )