Good space combat sims?

I mostly like space flight games but never really found one that's good yet.

Elite Dangerous is very slow and has a lot of trading and slow menu interaction, just not a lot of time in combat and the combat has very little going on

Eve has just way too little actual fun, play for 2 weeks for an hour of fun maybe.

Star Conflict was fun to start, fast paced combat and nice flight mechanics that allowed for extremely fast dog fights and it was mandatory to use the environmental objects as cover and flying through them made for very fun gameplay, too bad it was ruined.

Earth and Beyond was kind of fun but had a lot of travel and warping which made for boring gameplay

Any suggestions?

Try Strike Suit Zero.

This or Freelancer

^ Freelancer is great. the inspace stuff actually still looks pretty good considering its quite old.

it uses dx8 so if you want to use a graphic injector like sweetfx or enb to improve the colors and sharpness, you have to use a dx8 to dx9 wrapper.

Theres a mod for the game that fixes its interface so it fits 1080p properly, i forget what its called but it works well.

I have these both, but just never got the time to get around to trying them (I loved Freelancer and still play it from time to time):

Nexus: The Jupiter Incident

Dark Star One

Both look promising, but like I said, I haven't played them - too many other games and family keep me away from some.

Where can I buy Freelancer to download these days?

Without digging around, Amazon has folks selling Freelancer (http://www.amazon.com/Freelancer-PC/dp/B000085AHJ)

And the community (europe at least) is still going strong with all the modding, I know of servers with 70-200 people.

From an earlier thread on the topic:

Space Rogue

Wing Commander series

Privateer series (favorite)

X series (except for rebirth)

Freelancer

Tachyon

Freespace series (especially 2)

Darkstar One

Project Silpheed (the 360 game but I mention it because it's -very- remeniscent of SSZ)

Strike Suit Zero/Infinity/Director's Cut

Also, there are quite a few upcomming games like Star Citizen that you can play now. SC has -awesome- space combat, but it's just skirmishes right now. Limit Theory and No Man's Sky look interesting.

Of the games I listed above, Strike Suit Zero is very "arcadey" but it's fast and never boring, plus there's a pretty hefty amount of content between its various releases. Freelancer, Darkstar One, Space Rogue (really old), and the X series are "open universe" style versions of these games so while there's combat you also have the option of space trading, mining, or whatever, although they are set in much smaller universes so expect games that are faster paced than Elite Dangerous, which can admittedly be pretty slow, especially in the beginning.

-Byshop

What about sins of a solar empire? I havn't played it myself but its been mentioned to me in the past

It's not a space sim - it's more in lines of a RTS or 4X (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate) space game - kind of like the Galactic Civilization games.

Freelancer . Nuff said

another vote for the Descent: Conflict Freespace games. great games, abeit somewhat dated, still likely the best Space flight games Ive ever playied. Althrough I am undure about the "sim" part of it.

Might wanna try starpoint gemini 2. Has a lot of positive reviews and from the looks of it seems to be something between freespace and X3 series

@Byshop: Do any of these games not require real cash for ships? I would like to play something like EVE or Star Citizen, but I don't want to have to spend $60+ on every single ship I buy and then use more real $$$ for repairs when I've already spent money on simply buying the game. Seems like a wallet scam to me

Hi mousetm. Welcome to the forum!

Unfortunately this thread is 10 months old so it exceeds the maximum thread age that the rules of the forum allow people to reply to so I have to lock it, but I'll answer your question first:

Eve: Dangerous does not allow you to buy ships for real money. All ships must be earned through in-game currency. Only cosmetic addons can be purchased like decals and interior items for your ships, but nothing that could equate to "power".

Star Citizen -does- allow you to buy ships for cash as a part of its crowdfunding model. Buy purchasing a ship now you'll have access to it during the Arena Commander module that's available now (not the full game but just multiplayer and bot matches and modes) and you'll get to keep that ship when the real game starts. They may still allow purchasing of ships for real money after game launch, but things are unclear because it's pretty far off. One thing they've been consistent on, though, is that nothing purchased through cash will not be available with in-game currency.

If you'd like to create a new thread to discuss this further, feel free.

-Byshop