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What are the best space combat simulation games for PC?

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29 Games Considered

Best space combat simulation games for PC	Price	Steam Rating	Genre
-- Elite: Dangerous	$29.99	Very Positive	Space Sim / Open World / MMO
-- Kerbal Space Program	$39.99	Overwhelmingly Positive	-
-- FreeSpace 2	$9.99	Mostly Positive	Space-shooter, 6DoF, FPS
-- House of the Dying Sun	$19.99	Very Positive	-
-- Oolite	Free	-	Space trading and combat game

Elite: Dangerous

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Top Pro

Exploration at every level of detail

Full exploration of the galaxy is planned, allowing you to be able to jump from star system to star system, and fly around within a solar system from planet to planet, eventually going all the way down to a planet's surface at a 1:1 scale in a later update. Planetary landings will require a lot of details to be developed and designed, but you can still see the level of detail shift in action when flying into a planet's rings, where getting close enough show the individual asteroids within, which you can then interact with through mining, or by having a battle among them. See More

Top Con

Really complicated to learn

Looking up faqs and trade routes from first hand users will be the norm for figuring out many aspects of Elite: Dangerous. On top of this notes will have to be taken, which is made more difficult by the fact the game does not support in game not taking. So a pad and paper is recommended to remember all of the minutia of the game. See More

MellowChloris's Experience

The learning curve can be intimidating at first but with the updates that Frontier has delivered and the attention to detail within every star system this game has a lot going for it. Whether you are looking for exploration, trade, piracy, faction combat, bounty hunting or just plain escapism Elite delivers an experience that will change the way you see the cosmos. It's breath-taking. See More

Specs

Steam Rating:Very Positive

Genre:Space Sim / Open World / MMO

Co-Op:Multiplayer

Controller Support:Full

Top Pro

Very realistic representation of space & star systems

Elite Dangerous uses publicly available real world star maps that we have of the Milky Way consisting of 150,000 star systems. Although in the current beta, full access to the entire galaxy is limited, in the final game, you will be able to visit any of the 400 billion stars in our galaxy on a 1:1 scale. Stars that we do know of are properly mapped in place and are of the correct type given the information we have about them. Stars we haven't collected data on are procedurally generated which allows you to explore any of the 400 billion of them. Star systems are intelligently simulated using the "Star Forge", a generator that simulates the creation of a star system forming from its nebular cloud to determine what celestial bodies appear and what orbits they have. This feature leads to many varied and unique star systems possibly with planets that can co-orbit around each other, or with binary star systems, and infinitely more possibilities. See More

Top Con

Boring

It is more a simulation than a combat game. See More

Top Pro

Built with future expansion in mind

When Elite Dangerous come out, development won't stop. To build a game with the huge scope of Elite Dangerous, not all of it can be done at once, so the developers have adopted an approach of incremental improvement. Various game play elements are being designed as a foundation for later features. For example, although planetary landings aren't going to be available until a later update, the engine has been designed to be able to support going from lightyears away to meters away. See More

Top Con

Launcher issues

I bought the game on multiple stores and were never happy how the laucher and the account linking worked. See More

Top Pro

Great Oculus Rift integration

Elite Dangerous has very good integration with the Oculus Rift thanks to its cockpit view only gameplay philosophy. All ship UIs are part of displays that appear on each side of you that appear when you turn your head, so accessing the navigation or ship menus happens seamlessly just by looking in their direction. The game also uses the direction you are looking in for targeting, so your lock on target is whatever you're head is pointing at. By sitting in the cockpit of a ship, you are given a stationary frame of reference that helps prevent motion sickness associated with movement in game when you aren't actually moving. See More

Top Con

"Mile Wide and an Inch Deep"

The game has a serious problem with depth and requires the user to repeat the same few fun actions over and over again. The world is massive and beautiful but feels empty. The game gets stale quickly despite being visually stunning. See More

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FreeSpace 2

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Steam Rating:Mostly Positive

Genre:Space-shooter, 6DoF, FPS

Oolite

Specs

Genre:Space trading and combat game

Freelancer

STAR WARS: Rogue Squadron 3D

Top Pro

GIve a great sense of taking part in the StarWars universe

From the fantastic voice acting, the cinematic sequences to the licensed music and sound effects, this game gives off a great feeling of taking part in the universe of Star Wars. While there has been many games that have held the license, this has been regarded as one of the better titles for some time, which shows with the care they took in presentation. See More

Top Con

No graphical options

The game is basically a straight port of the N64 title, meaning there is zero graphical settings to be found other than resolution (which is broken). So for those looking for a more polished title that would allow them to take advantage of PC centric graphical settings, this may not be the game for you. See More

Specs

Steam Rating:Very Positive

Top Pro

Medal system allows for plenty of replayability

Each missions has a bronze, silver or gold medal that can be earned by completing the stage and certain tasks contained withing under a certain time limit. With gold being the toughest to earn, there is plenty of reason to revisit stages in order to earn the gold medal. This means hours of extra time spent with the game. See More

Top Con

Mouse and keyboard controls are very poor

This game was originally designed for a controller, which shows when trying to play with a keyboard and mouse. While this port does offer keyboard controls, they work so poorly that it makes the game almost unplayable when using this control scheme. See More

Top Pro

Expansive content

Even though this is an older game originally released for the Nintendo 64 back in 98, the amount of content is quite good as there is a plethora of missions available. Escort/rescue missions, dogfights and bombing runs make up some of this content, all of which take place on many different worlds or space set pieces, all of which take place in the cannon universe of Star Wars. See More

Top Con

In game resolution settings may crash the game

While there is a setting in the game to adjust the resolution the game is played in, changing this setting may make the game crash when a mission is launched. While this setting can be changed in an ini file which will not make the game crash, having a broken option in the game shows a lack of polish. See More

Top Pro

Easy to learn and play

Rogue Squadron has very accessible controls that allows for the game to have a bunch of differing missions due to how easy it is to fly the ships. More akin to Starfox over Star Wars flight sim titles such as X-Wing, allows for arcadey controls that is no where near as punishing as other sims. This means the game can be more accessible for any type of player. See More

Top Con

Controller settings need to be tweaked

In order to get a controller working properly with the game, one will need to go into the settings of the game in order to change some options. Basically out of the box controller support is pretty poor, though once tweaked the controller will work fine. See More

X3: Terran Conflict

Specs

Steam Rating:Very Positive

Rebel Galaxy

Specs

Steam Rating:Very Positive

Everspace

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X Rebirth

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Steam Rating:Mixed

Evochron Legacy

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Steam Rating:Very Positive

No Man's Sky

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Top Pro

Endless procedural generation

This game procedurally generates almost everything. Your spaceships are procedurally generated, so are the planets, moons, every animal on these planets, the resource nodes, trade routes, languages, etc. When discovering new species or planets, players get to rename these and leave their mark on the galaxy. See More

Top Con

No clearly defined missions

The objective of the game is to ultimately reach the center of the galaxy. However, the player is completely free and unguided from the beginning. You figure it out for yourself as you start mining, crafting and upgrading your ship and gear. This game doesn't have a big story to tell. See More

Specs

Steam Rating:Very Positive

Genre:Action-Adventure, Survival

Top Pro

Freedom to choose how you want to play

Ally with factions, trade or just be a pirate. When trading with NPC aliens, you build up a positive reputation with the faction they belong to. Alternatively you can also be hostile and attack trade ships, or even be attacked by NPC pirate spaceships. Both can be ways to get what you need, so do whatever suits your play style. See More

Top Con

Expensive

No Man's Sky is a pretty big production for an indie game as the team of devs and artists consisted of 14 people in the later stages of development. The game stands out above most indie games in size, features, technology and graphics. Along with the amount of enthusiasm from the gaming community, this has allowed the studio to set the launch price at $60 (or €60). See More

Top Pro

Good graphics

The art style of this game is very colorful and saturated and uses hues in a way that it gives you an otherworldly feel. Graphics like these tend to remain good for a much longer time than classic 3D graphics. See More

Top Pro

Massive galaxy to explore

Thanks to the fact that the entire galaxy of No Man's Sky is procedurally generated, the amount of planets to explore is almost endless. The number of planets would be 18,446,744,073,709,551,616. However, the fact that 2 players managed to find each other in game on the first day, seems to make this number quite questionable. See More

Top Pro

Seamless space to planetary flight

Diaspora: Shattered Armistice

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Genre:Space combat game

Darkstar One

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Steam Rating:Very Positive

Star Citizen

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Top Con

Maybe too big to be real

The game want to be the biggest Space game ever. I want everything and maybe Will not be able to deliever. See More

Top Pro

Over $73 million in funding

A game with the huge scope of Star Citizen will cost a lot of money to develop, and through multiple campaigns, Star Citizen has raised a huge amount of money to make that happen. More money means more developers, and designers which can lead to a ton of features. See More

ImaginativeKastytis's Experience

Scam Citizen See More

Top Con

Long waiting

The game Will be released in 4 or 5 years. See More

Top Pro

Includes a singleplayer mode, called "Squadron 42"

Squadron 42 is a single player campaign that takes place in the in game universe that allows players to play offline. See More

Top Con

Incomplete; might never come out

The alpha is playable but very buggy; it supposedly represents less than 10% of the finished game, which was supposed to be released several years ago (as of 2020) and has no release date in sight. Despite a frankly staggering amount of funding, the developers never hit their deadlines and it's becoming ever more doubtful that the game will ever be released in anything resembling a finished state. See More

Top Pro

Vast, detailed sci-fi world

A long term goal is to have over 400 different star systems in game, most of which will have many planets within them. See More

Top Con

Requires a powerful computer

To be able to run the game you need an expensive pc with high end materials. See More

Top Pro

Ability to command persistent ships and stations

Players will be able to command multi-person ships with other users who will be able to command their own stations on said ships. See More

Top Con

Commercial launch is at an undetermined date

The commercial launch, initially slated for 2016, is now at an undetermined date in the future. See More

Top Pro

Dynamic economy system

The economy of the game and the actions to keep it moving are constantly going on in the background but allows for players to step in and out of it at their leisure in order to take part. See More

Top Pro

A true PC game

It's been stated that the game will take full advantage of PC's capabilities and will not be held back by a need to accommodate a console port. See More

The Babylon Project

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Genre:Space combat game

Wings Of Dawn

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Genre:Space combat game

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