Star Ruler was released a couple of days ago and sounds promising. Like what MOO 3 should have been.
Just another post to mention that if you never played Tachyon:The Fringe before and you like this genre, you owe it to yourself to find it and play it. It has the soul that Freelancer lacked. About the only knock I’d put against it is that the region the game covers doesn’t feel particularly expansive (though that’s like saying Firefly isn’t as good as Star Trek based only on the size of its world).
I might cautiously recommend Space Rangers 2, which is about 5 years old now. The “space combat” is only a portion of the game, and it’s a fairly simple top-down style. You can also play an old-school ‘arcade-style’ game (and some text adventures, and an RTS on the planets). The game may be fairly accused of being a blend of several decent but not great different games. It does have a very realistic feeling open-ended game world, though. Your role in the galaxy is as big as you want it to be.
Am I the only person who has played the two greatest space combat sim games EVER?!?!
X-Wing and Tie Fighter. Hellooooo?
You’re in luck. Both Elite 2 and Elite 3 are being remade!
Elite 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CyM0_7lf_I
Elite 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7ip5orUlDM
Neither project is completed, with the Elite 2 remake still being at a very early stage, but they’re improving.
Hopefully they could grow into something amazing
These things never really pan out but i wish them luck.
I had serious issues with both those games.
X-wing was fundametally silly on a lot of levels, though the one that I will always remember is being able to disable a Star Destroyer with a few shots from a Y-wing Ion cannon.
Tie Fighter was entertaining until you stopped flying Tie Fighters and started flying ridiculous ships the game designers made up so you didn’t have to fly a Tie Fighter anymore.
Both games suffered from ridiculous issues with the energy management system (Best way to charge your shields? Route power to your weapons and then manually shunt it to your shields! Directing energy straight to your shields was ineffective at best.) and a lack of variety in opponents (Yeah, yeah, I understand, it’s a game based on Star Wars, and each side only had a couple different types of fighter.) . I gather they fixed some of these in later installments in the series, but if you’re talking about the originals, as far as I’m concerned, they got by strictly on the “Oooh, I’m flying an X-wing.” factor.