Looking for a spaceship/sci fi game to play. Any thoughts?

Not first person, but Starsector is my go-to for my SciFi fix. Trading, pirating, smuggling organs and selling them on the black market, exploring star systems for suitable planets to establishing your own thriving colony...there is a ton of options and something for everyone.

https://youtu.be/acqpulP1hLo

Oh nice, this totally reminds me of Escape Velocity back in the day. Looks like an updated version. I love it.
- Starsector is closer to a strategy game version of escape velocity. A game closer to what you're envisioning would be Endless Sky
That looks super cool! Not OP but thanks for the recommendation!
You. You did this to me. I've been playing this practically non stop for two weeks now.
I'll check this out! Thanks :)
Like I need more space games to add to my already growing list!
I hadn't heard of this before. Seems really fun. I'm going to have to try this out.
I picked this up based on this comment and it’s really great, thank you for the recommendation!

The biggest competitor to Star Citizen right now is Elite: Dangerous. I've played it a lot and it's pretty good. You can play solo or online, too. It can feel a bit slow and it doesn't hold your hand when it comes to learning how to play. There's combat, trading, and exploration. Also pretty active communities online.

If you want to go back in time a bit, there's also the X series from Egosoft that's spanned back many years. There are a few installments and more is being developed. These games are definitely more colorful in several ways than Elite: Dangerous. More of a focus on the Rule of Cool than trying to be real sims.

Haven't played Star Wars: Squadrons, so I don't know the state of the multiplayer side of things. It does offer a solo story mode, apparently. May be worth looking into.

Every now and again I'll think about games like Freelancer, Freelancer 2, X-Wing, and the Wing Commander franchise for straight sit-in-cockpit combat action. Those are very old- early Mid 1990's to early 2000's. If you feel like something retro and can run them, those are options. I wish we had more games styled after those early space sims.

I have to second the Elite Dangerous vote here. Especially if you find an online community to play with. It is part space flight sim, part trading and now part fps. It has its problems, but the expansive scope of it always amazes.

Groups like The Buur Pit are new player friendly and will help a new commander learn. Game can also be had fairly cheaply on its frequent spelials.
- Elite Dangerous has been on the downswing for a while now. May not be the greatest time to dive in, when at least their biggest fans on YouTube are talking about chances the company will stop development.
- Any tips/thoughts/input for a new ED player then? If I were to give it a go. I don't know a whole lot about the game but I do have HOTAS/HOSAS setups I can use. One better than the other?
Star Wars: Squadrons

This game was infuriating for the enormous wasted potential that it was. From the day of launch they said they were planning to never update it, add to it, or expand it.

It could have been the successor to X-Wing/TIE Fighter, but they starved it from the beginning. The multiplayer was bad and they only had a few servers in the US, so it was too laggy for everyone overseas.

The game could have been something great, but it was dead out the door.
- If you haven't already, it might be worth checking out TIE Fighter Total Conversion. It's a fan remake of TIE Fighter built on a massively modded X-Wing Alliance engine that works well on modern computers. It has a pretty faithful recreation of the original TIE Fighter (plus collector's CD content) campaign, and a reimagined version of it using things that weren't possible in the original game engine. https://www.moddb.com/mods/tie-fighter-total-conversion-tftc
  
  You'll need a copy of X-Wing Alliance (available cheap on gog) to run it.
- Idk, I'll take a short and sweet tie fighter tribute with modern graphics over a microtransactioned live service game any day of the week.

X4: Foundations?

I have this but the controls felt super weird when I tried it out of the box. Any rebindings you'd suggest?
This game is simultaneously the most jank yet most complex space game I've ever played. Love it.
Seconding this. This game is deep and amazing. You can literally run a space empire in it with enough work and time.

There's always No Man's Sky, I haven't played it for a year or so but I know they have added a ton of new stuff in the last few updates. Maybe not completely fulfilling, but could kill some time pleasantly

I always give it a go but the loop winds up losing me within 10 hours of play or so. Love the art and idea behind it but struggle with the gameplay :/
- Someone once described No Man's Sky is as "wide as the sea, deep as a puddle."
  
  That sums it up perfectly for me. It's a gorgeous, immense game with nothing of substance to do. I've tried returning to it several times, and each time I get bored in a few hours.

Gotta mention FTL: Faster Than Light. Not a 6dof game, but great fun commanding your crew and navigating some fun encounters.

Outer Wilds and Subnautica don't have ship fights but they give off a similar feel to star citizen/ no man's sky (to me).

https://store.steampowered.com/app/753640/Outer_Wilds/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/264710/Subnautica/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/848450/Subnautica_Below_Zero/

How do those games have a similar feel?
- Outer Wilds has 6dof in your spaceship. It has modestly accurate spaceflight, though everything is on a tiny scale. You can fly from planets, into space, match velocities, etc. It's a game about exploration and mystery without any combat, though.
- I like how the games allow the ability to freely move in and out of my ship and the game worlds offer a good amount of exploration. And it might sound silly, but I like being able to perform maintenance on my ship.
  
  Again, this is just my thoughts on it and might not give off the same feelings to others.
Outer Wilds is just a game I couldn't get into. I realise I don't like the repititive nature of time loop games if there's no fast forward like how they do it in movies, where they eventually only show the significant differences between each loop.
- That would be weird for Outer Wilds. It's not really a game about figuring out a complex sequence of events that let you get the correct solution to the time loop, the way so many time loop stories are. There are a couple locations that can only be accessed early or late, but those locations only contain information; once you've reached them you have no need to go back on subsequent looks.
  
  And since the game is about exploration, it doesn't really feel repetitive (at least it didn't to me), because you're always looking for something new

I'm currently loving a bunch of games in the factory building genre so can I offer you some Dyson Sphere Program in these trying times?

Imagine factorio but you're in a mecha suit building factories spanning multiple planets eventually multiple stars, to build exponentially more complex resources until you're able to shoot swarms of dyson reflectors and eventually build a rigid sphere in orbit.

Still in Alpha after several years, but exquisitely polished, runs fine on legacy machines, excellent responsive dev team, combat is being added soon.

Tried DSP but it lost me within the 2 hours of a return window for Steam. Been loving Satisfactory for factory builders!

I was just browsing Steam and found SpaceBourne 2, which I mentioned in another Freelancer-related thread. But it looks pretty solid/promising, based on the reviews. I wishlisted it, but can't personally vouch for it.

Yea, I saw that too. Wish listed it, but it looks very very early in development.
Pretty nuts it's only made by one guy
That looks cool as hell, definitely going to be checking this out.

If you're into colony sims, check out Space Haven.

I mean, Hotline Miami in space still counts?

Heat Signature

Launch Everspace 2 (especially since you've kickstarted it), it's a great one of those and not as intimidating as something like Elite Dangerous. Although, if you want to go deep, that's the way to go..

I've been super curious to try Everspace 2 since it removed the rogue-like aspects of 1, which were tedious, but reviews have been hovering around 70%. Waiting for a good sale, personally.
It’s on GamePass as well, so that’s a good place to try it out.
It's on the list! Gonna beat Jedi: Survivor first and then I've got a work trip so it'll have to wait a bit
Came here to recommend Everspace 2 and Elite Dangerous. I grabbed ED on a special for $20 and I've done about 200hrs. The freedom in Elite Dangerous is crazy.

For your space reading adventure I love Escape Belocity: Nova. It's very old but I've had so much fun with it if it's runnable on new machines.

Endless Sky is a free/open source game in the spirit of Escape Velocity, I recommend checking it out if you're a fan of the Escape Velocity series.

Also there's an Escape Velocity remake called Cosmic Frontier which has been in the works for many years which I recall hearing had the original developers blessing to use their assets.
- now Endless Sky looks interesting. Thanks!
Oh man I loved those games and I never hear anyone talk about them anymore! They were so fun. I found out about them because someone installed the shareware version of the original on one of the Apple computers at my elementary school. I remember when EV: Nova came out and the ships finally had engine glow it was a HUGE deal.

Try Everspace. It's a roguelike space shooter. Controls feel very free and intuitive. There's also a sequel that's out now that's more of an open world space RPG (same shooting mechanics but not a roguelike). But you can try the first game for only 4 dollars and see if you like the combat.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/396750/EVERSPACE/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1128920/EVERSPACE_2/

I was kinda disappointed by Everspace. I like roguelikes, and like space games, so it ticks my check boxes. I was really hoping to like it, but it just felt repetitive and grindy to me. But YMMV.
- I felt the same way. Thought I'd love it, but only played it for a short while.

Rebel Galaxy is an exploration/open world-ish space game with weird controllers but a pretty fun gameplay. You get to fine-tune different classes of ships with a variety of weapons, shields, engines, etc. while completing missions to earn money and earn reputation with different factions.

It's basically Sid Meier's Pirates, but in space and with a modern look. I found it highly entertaining.

Is Rebel Galaxy Outlaws good or just the original?

If you like sandbox building, Space Engineers. There are so many good mods to give the game some life and nothing is more satisfying than building your own ship from materials you mined.

I've got like 300 hours in it
I initially though Space Engineers sounded "meh" after having played things like NMS and E:D, but ... I really REALLY enjoyed it!
- If space engineers were to get a more cohesive solo/coop survival mode without having to juggle fifty possibly incompatible mods it'd be a real killer app. There's potential there, but there's a bit too much manual scenario/server setup and once you get started there's not really a lot of progression outside surviving long enough to get a basic smelter + dirt drill system set up.
  
  That said, I recently had a surprisingly good time with the Wasteland Scavenger mod, which sets up a pretty unique scenario where you have to salvage a lot of components from POIs, you can't build things like tanks or thrusters yourself, but you find them lying around in bases and wrecks.

I'll second the recommendation for the X series from Egosoft and the latest X4 has had a number of expansions that make it worthwhile, it's made by a small team and is a bit fiddly at times but it's definitely worth a shot.

I can't help but feel that all of us old timer "why won't they make another Tie Fighter?" guys did not show up when they did exactly that on Star Wars Squadrons.

But also, hey did you know they made another X-Wing/Tie Fighter game called Star Wars Squadrons? That happened.

Squadrons was kind of boring in my opinion. Lots to love in the gameplay itself and all the details, but by the end of the campaign I wanted to be done and haven't thought about it since. It would be a great buy for $10 though.
Played the shit out of Squadrons. Multiplayer was fun, story was fun. For whatever reason it breaks my PC now when I launch it so it's on hold for me
Um, old timer here and squadrons is a different genre than tie fighter. One is a single player campaign, the other is a multiplayer game. Squadrons was nothing like x-wing imo. If space battles were a sport, squadrons would capture that level playing field. If you're looking for the experience of being a Jedi pilot who turns the tides of battles, squadrons isn't it.
I played Squadrons on day 1 and quickly got sick of it. Also that drift maneuver, wtf? It ain't no X-Wing or TIE Fighter.
I absolutely did, and did not like it. It's far faster paced, which I guess isn't surprising since it's basically came about from Battlefront 2's space battles, and isn't as thoughtful compared to the X-Wing line.
- Heh. I've weirdly had people tell me they didn't understand why it was so slow, especially if they hadn't played the original Tie Fighter.
  
  I'll say that I don't know if I'd want a modern game to be paced as the old ones were. We can talk about the mission design and other elements and I'll hear you out about the differences, but I wonder if there's some rose tinted glasses type of thing going on as well.

If you're into classic 6DoF games, then the Descent series (including Freespace) and Forsaken are go-to plays for me. We're talking late 90's/early 00's, though, so take that with a grain of salt.

What about Freespace 2? I see it on sale on GOG right now for 20% off
- Freespace 2 is a classic and one of the best space sims ever. Make sure you install the fan updates:
  
  http://www.fsoinstaller.com/
  
  Oh, and you need a joystick for it (or at least used to).
- @ThunderQuack
  
  @darksabre76
  
  I was looking for this game. Spent some many hours playing growing up. One of the best space sims ever
Sublevel Zero is a rougelite of the Descent concept, it's quite nice imo
Forsaken is a name that drags up old memories. I bought that game on the N64 from a flea market stall when I was probably 12 years old. I hear there's a better version released for PC though I never owned it.
- I only ever played the PC version and it took until much later in life to hear it came out on N64. I couldn't go to that version, it just didn't play as nicely.

Probably not what you are looking for but I found myself enjoying the JumpLight Odyssey demo yesterday. Has a very 1970 Anime vide ala Star Blazors.

I tried the demo, pretty fun. Like a more involved and proper starship simulator, with FTL's chase mechanic.
This looks interesting!

have you played the star ocean games?

the focus isn't on the ship, but it's very much a space/scifi focused game.

If you're willing to wait, I don't think we should leave the upcoming Bethesda IP, Starfield out. It's due in September and from what little I've seen is a real competitor for Star Citizen.....

Except it will be complete.

I've already paid for the deluxe edition...
- What have we said about pre-ordering games? xD
What, no, it's more of a RPG, Star Citizen's scope (and flight model) is far more involved.

And it being Bethesda, no, it will not be complete. Expect lotsa bugs.

Stellaris! It's a game like civilization, but in space. I have hundreds of hours in and it has been responsible for many nights of me staying up late than i should. Constant free updates and many options for paid dlc to expand your options.

I'm hopeful for Starship simulator. It is not out yet, but it looks promising. I've always wanted a game with a ship with a working crew you interact with or become a part of. I have not ever found anything good enough.

I enjoy X4, but I actually though the exploration aspect in Rebirth was better (unpopular opinion I'm sure). I do like how you can give your captains orders and then just hitch a ride and see how it goes.

Everyone always says FTL, which is fun, but the crew don't really have roles or personalities. They are there and they man the ship, but that's it. And you're always in a rush to do anything which always just ends with a space battle.

Similar for Space Haven. If the crew has assigned departments and ranks rather than just assigned tasks I think it would be closer.

How about Empyrion - Galactic Survival? Kind of like Space Engineers but with better singleplayer content.

While not a flight sim I'll give a recommendation for Hardspace: Shipbreaker. Spend some time salvaging old spaceships in zero-g.

Eve Online (I have not played Eve)

If you like the idea of building your ship and then using it to blast pirates into little pieces, you could give Avorion a go. It’s currently half price on Steam and is a bit Minecraft in space. It had no player view though, everything is done from space craft from mining to trading to combat.

Combat mand flying feels like The Expanse if you have seen / read that.

Definitely get the Mass Effect Trilogy. You could probably play through the whole thing before starfield comes out if it hooks you like it did for me.

@ThunderQuack is Eve Online still around that used to be fun

I tried it a few years ago but couldn't complete the tutorial because organizations left no mining rocks around haha
Eve is still there as long as you're willing to be social and play regularly. It's a brutal game solo. Having a regular fleet to roam with or to provide protection is essential to making any money. Solo players are basically just food.

If you want something smaller scale but fun:
Transcendence. https://store.steampowered.com/app/364510/Transcendence/

Also, "Strange Adventures In Infinite Space"
and the sequels to that. The sequel (Weird Worlds) is on steam.
Very short and silly, but fun.

Not exactly in the same vain as 3d game but Endless Sky and all the Escape velocity games. Escape Velocity is the grand daddy of all space games, and was even pseudo 3d when that was a rarity for games.

These aren't necessarily top-tier games, but if you want some more unique recommendations: Duskers, Objects in Space, and Rebel Galaxy

J.U.L.I.A.: Among the Stars