What are the good space games to be had?

[CaptHawkeye]

Frankly MMORPGs are ruined to me by a lack of significance PvP or an enviornment such as EVE where people make the game. What's the point of playing a game with a concept such as "mass multi play" when you spend most of the time playing bots?

I mean, that's probably the reason the only two MMOs i've ever enjoyed were Planetside and Battleground Europe. When they "massively multiplayer" they aren't bullshitting you.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Aren't both of those also MMOFPSes where players spend time battling for land and resources and they get back into the fight pretty quick when they go down?

[CaptHawkeye]

Uhhh.....yeah. What's your point? Are you saying you think it's *bad* when the game minimizes downtime as much as possible?

[phred]

Jumpgate, Taikodom, of course both of those are full time PvP, and Jumpgate is currently lacking in the support department...

There's always Flatspace, Evochron, etc if you're really desperate.

What was Evochron? I'm sure I at least checked it out, but have no memories of actually playing it..

[Stark]

Evochron Renegades is an Elite-em-up I think; I couldnt' get past the 318 keyboard shortcuts to play for long.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Uhhh.....yeah. What's your point? Are you saying you think it's *bad* when the game minimizes downtime as much as possible?

Quite the opposite, actually, though I think Stark is very much in favor of punitive downtime.

[Stark]

Fuckoff, shit-for-brains. EVE has no downtime at all; you can't be debuffed, knocked out of the game, or even xp penalised (unless you forgot to update your clone). Since you level offline, downtime is nearly MEANINGLESS in EVE.

Oh wait, you're butthurt because your ship can explode.

Space Rangers 2 has punitive downtime!!!!

[ShadowDragon8685]

Fuckoff, shit-for-brains. EVE has no downtime at all; you can't be debuffed, knocked out of the game, or even xp penalised (unless you forgot to update your clone). Since you level offline, downtime is nearly MEANINGLESS in EVE.

Oh wait, you're butthurt because your ship can explode.

If your ship explodes, moron, you're out the ship. At a bare minimum, you're punitively down the time it will take to cover the replacement cost of the ship. But, if that ship represents the vast majority of your wealth; if you just bought it, if you're a newbie without much in the way of resources beyond the wealth required to buy your ship - then you are fucked. You know what you get? A starter frigate; that's right, the absolute worst fucking PoS in the game. You're screwed. You can't do shit, you have to either beg money or a ship an gear from someone, or go out there and start grind-mining to get back up.

Yes, that is punitive downtime.

[Stark]

You mean, those ships that generally cost absolutely fuck all unless you're in hardcore PvP or high end mining?

Man, last time my $250k rifter got popped I just got another of the half-dozen I had in storage. OH NOEZ TEH DOWNTIMEZZ

It's a basic rule that you don't expose assets you can't afford to lose. If you have 99% of your wealth tied up in one ship in EVE, you're a complete moron, and even then it'd be trivial to get more because you have higher skills/friends/etc or even insurance.

Oh wait, we're talking about YOU!

I've never even HEARD of anyone going back to basic mining after losing a ship. Even a decent pirate ship is only a few million bucks!

[Covenant]

I'm someone who finds Eve to be the purest anti-game yet made, an yawning void into which positive emotions are wrenched and strangled at some kind dank hole of despair. I couldn't play that game for fun even if it were for free, and just about every decision they've made I will decry. EXCEPT the low-sec situation.

Shadow, the low-sec space is dangerous because that's the point. If you don't want to be blown up you shouldn't go into that space. It's the world's best defense against ganking. I agree with you that Eve is about the farthest thing from fun I could possibly imagine, but that's because I legitimately don't like many of the core concepts a MMO is working off of. Screeching that there should be more RP and lower death penalty is off mark because you're describing a different genre of game, one that already exists.

I suppose the biggest difference is that I don't care at all about the fatnerd cred of forging an empire or if my name goes down in history as the baddest pirate or biggest businessman in all of World of Spreadsheetcraft. I just want to play the game. But if you DO want to be 'known' as something, you NEED risk to allow for that notoriety to mean something, and for it to be established by skill, and furthermore for someone to eventually unseat the reigning Most Badass Pirate or something.

[Nephtys]

Really, losing a ship is not that bad in EVE.

For one thing, for all Tech 1 ships, getting killed has you instantly getting a 65% IIRC Refund IN THE MAIL as basic insurance for all ships. So yes, even if you lost a 105 million ISK Raven, you've just been paid 70 Million back! You actually only lost 35 and the cost of modules, most of which are going to be pretty piss cheap unless you're fitting all Tech2 or better, in which case you don't care anyway because you'll have money. And if you're really sure you're about to die in the next like.. 90 days or whatever it was, just buy the damn Insurance.

Don't fly what you can't afford to lose. That's EVE. And don't fly with an untanked T1 Transport with anything worth suiciding to go after. That's really basic kinda precautions.

Really, nobody is unable to fly a ship in EVE. The heavier types of Battlecruiser (IE, Drake, Myrmidon) are a measly ~26 Million, and are very potent. An Interceptor is 6 million. It's literally impossible to knock someone's bank account down to under that level unless they really screwed up.

[Covenant]

You gotta remember, the kinds of buffer zone shit you're talking about doesn't apply to newbies. And Eve is one of the least friendly games to newbies. As has been said elsewhere, you start the game with basically nothing and since newbies are infiltration risks and also mostly useless there is a big disincentive to letting them join anyone of consequence. Some even have lengthy or bizarrely detailed background checks on players looking to join in.*

All this adds up to very slow play with huge reasons not to do the things that some people find the most fun. But for all those people who have always whined about PVP having no consequences, or wanting the freedom to build a little empire or for your conquests to actually be reflected in-game... well, here you go.

*(there's exceptions and ways around this, but as a general theme you're not usually well off as a new player)

[Stark]

EVE's early game isn't quite the grindfest it was, and all MMOs have the stupid tricks you have to be told or learn the hard way. New players now bootstrap up to decent play far, far faster; the tutorials give you like 10M and three or four ships.

[Covenant]

Holy shit, really? That's crazily better than it was. I'm sure I would have had an entirely different experience with that kind of a newbie start. I still apologize for nothing bad I say about Eve, simply due to stubbornness, but that's a really great step towards making the game much easier to get into.

I've said before that Eve shoulda' been the basis for a Superhero Game. What better environment for a superhero game than a world full of raving psychopaths? Eve doesn't have PvP in a gamer sense, it has muggings and murder. All it needs are a few white knights who don't get obliterated instantaneously.

[Vympel]

No wonder lowsec is full of people who behave very much like the stereotype of the American wilderness lunatic cult; clutching guns and shooting at anyone and everyone first, asking questions never. I lost interest (the second time; the first time I quit because college was getting too hectic) after my guild convinced me to come out to their lowsec areas and I was coerced (at gunpoint) into blowing up some poor noob asshole who'd blundered into lowsec by one of the guys. (I was flying a frigate, the other guy had his twinked-out PvP destroyer, jammed the other guy so bad he couldn't hit shit, and told me that if I didn't blow the other guy he'd pod me.)

Wait what? Really? Whenever anyone talks about EVE, my eyes glaze over because it sounds like a big crappy suckfest of incomprehensible spreadsheets, but this stood out. Why the hell did they make you do that?

[Stark]

Tell me about it. I tried another trial about six months ago and wasn't grinding around for 10k L1 missions for days, it's nothing like it was when I played first about 3 years ago. The game is still massively boring, of course, but it gives the noobs a much easier time of it, and even actually explains how the game works. I remember basically being dumped in the game with 100k lol.

[PeZook]

Wait what? Really? Whenever anyone talks about EVE, my eyes glaze over because it sounds like a big crappy suckfest of incomprehensible spreadsheets, but this stood out. Why the hell did they make you do that?

You should be thankful the guy has a boring MMO to vent in ; In real life, he'd be kidnapping college students and forcing them to eat dirt while he masturbated.

[houser2112]

There's always Flatspace, Evochron, etc if you're really desperate.

I'm playing FlatspaceII right now, it's a fun little game. The only complaints I have are:
- lack of support for multiple boresighted guns
- equipment doesn't automatically carry over to a new ship, requiring you to sell your equipment off (for half price) and repurchase (for full price) after you buy your new ship.

[ShadowDragon8685]

No wonder lowsec is full of people who behave very much like the stereotype of the American wilderness lunatic cult; clutching guns and shooting at anyone and everyone first, asking questions never. I lost interest (the second time; the first time I quit because college was getting too hectic) after my guild convinced me to come out to their lowsec areas and I was coerced (at gunpoint) into blowing up some poor noob asshole who'd blundered into lowsec by one of the guys. (I was flying a frigate, the other guy had his twinked-out PvP destroyer, jammed the other guy so bad he couldn't hit shit, and told me that if I didn't blow the other guy he'd pod me.)

Wait what? Really? Whenever anyone talks about EVE, my eyes glaze over because it sounds like a big crappy suckfest of incomprehensible spreadsheets, but this stood out. Why the hell did they make you do that?

I imagine for pretty much the same reason that street gangs make a prospective member murder someone as an initiation. Either way, I wasn't very thrilled afterwards. It wasn't anything like a fair fight; as Covenant said, it doesn't have PvP in the sense that WoW has PvP that usually takes place between consenting people unless someone cocks up royal or there's a high-level player lurking around places where low-level ones have to attack faction-flagged NPCs, thus flagging, so they can gank the lowbies. It was pretty much a mugging and a murder.

It sounds like they've accelerated the newbie start a lot, probably because they realized that there was literally no way for newbies to get to anything good. All the other stated problems still exist, though; EvE is very much a lolbertarian nightmare. It's Space Somalia!

Hm. I'm half-tempted to take CCP up on their next "your old character is still there, why don't you come back for ten days" offer and see what happened to my character. I think when I quit, I might have forgotten to give back a loaner cruiser that someone had given me so I could go mining with the corp. I wonder if they're pissed or if they've completely forgotten it by now?

Of course, I'm docked in lowsec, and their standard response to someone they don't recognize being sighted in "their" space is shoot to kill.

[The_Saint]

Mvoing back to interesting space games I've thought of a couple of others that seem to keep under the radar...

B5: I've Found Her is a Babylon 5 "fan game" with full newtonian physics watching people attempt to play it is hilarious... some figure it out... some run crying...

The Last Starfighter a company made a clone of the game cabinet seen in the movie and released the game as freeware... not a space sim so much as a rail shooter.
A couple of friends and I scrounged some game controllers and scrap and "made" a cabinet .. it looked like shite but then I guess the drunk spray painting didn't help.. anyway moral of that was it was a fun romp down memory lane.

[charlemagne]

high-level player lurking around places where low-level ones have to attack faction-flagged NPCs, thus flagging, so they can gank the lowbies. It was pretty much a mugging and a murder.

Rofl, what? There is no mechanic in Eve where shooting at NPCs let's other players shoot you without penalty in high-sec.

Also, like Stark and others said: unless you're being really, really stupid there is no way in Eve for other players to totally bankrupt you.

If you roleplay your character in Eve totally risk-adverse you're pretty much going against "lore" btw. All player characters are immortal. It is part of the setting and the lore that capsuleers don't really care about how much they die and how many ships they lose, because they're just brought back to life in a new body, and ships, like others have pointed out, are cheap and pretty much covered by insurance anyways (as long as you don't insist on flying what you can't afford).

[salm]

You could take a look at this indy development. It looks like it might turn into something cool if this behemoth is ever finished:

http://www.infinity-universe.com/

[Singular Intellect]

You could take a look at this indy development. It looks like it might turn into something cool if this behemoth is ever finished:

http://www.infinity-universe.com/

That's a gorgeous engine demostration. I wouldn't hold my breath for a gameanytime soon, but it's certainly close to what I'd want from a game.

[CaptHawkeye]

I've seen that game before. It's extremely ambitious especially from an indie developer. Everything about it LOOKS cool, real space physics, cool ship design, no jump gates, procedural planets and space objects like nebulea, gas giants, etc, planetary flight. Trust me, I *want* to like that game. I just can't believe they'll ever finish it.

[ShadowDragon8685]

high-level player lurking around places where low-level ones have to attack faction-flagged NPCs, thus flagging, so they can gank the lowbies. It was pretty much a mugging and a murder.

Rofl, what? There is no mechanic in Eve where shooting at NPCs let's other players shoot you without penalty in high-sec.

Also, like Stark and others said: unless you're being really, really stupid there is no way in Eve for other players to totally bankrupt you.

If you roleplay your character in Eve totally risk-adverse you're pretty much going against "lore" btw. All player characters are immortal. It is part of the setting and the lore that capsuleers don't really care about how much they die and how many ships they lose, because they're just brought back to life in a new body, and ships, like others have pointed out, are cheap and pretty much covered by insurance anyways (as long as you don't insist on flying what you can't afford).

Reading comprehension, much?

I was comparing it to WoW, where the only way to get yourself ganked by high-level opposing players as a low-level player without flagging somewhere is for one of those high-level players to be going out of his way to specifically be a douche and lurk around places where common questlines require an Alliance player to flag by killing Horde NPCs and vice versa (such as the Warsong logging camp in Ashenvale where Alliance players have to go and kill a shitload of Horde NPCs.)

Moron.


As for being "Immortal," you're not, you know. Having a clone brought online with your memories does nothing about the fact that you, personally, are still dead. It just means some wanker is out there flying around with your bank account numbers and good looks. It's the continuity problem inherant in all clone-ressurection ideas.

Also, insurance does no good. You get what, 65% of the hull cost back and 0% of the fitting cost back? If you've spent down to your last Isk fitting out your ship - and I have had to resort to that more than once - then losing the ship might as well be losing the game.