Yes Kali! Was on it all the time!

Knew about the new Descent a few days ago on BluesNews. Pretty pumped to try that. Hard to a get decent AAA space sim game these days. I played the MechWarriors game to death. So cool to control those giant mechs using a HOTAS setup.

I didn't finish Myst, just wasn't interested. But Rebel Assault, that was cool as heck back in those days. The Star Wars experience was so immersive even though the controls were simple. C&C was campy fun too. I played each and every Wing Commander, TIE/X-Wing space sim games there were. Descent & Homeworld...

Can you guess I'm a sci-fi fan? X-D

Funny video and the bad harmonica version of the Jurassic Park theme is hilarious however.... the game is actually really damn fun!
It's really a true space sim without much of a story line. A rough comparison can be made to Minecraft (before single player story came out) only many MANY orders of magnitude larger. Or really any great sandbox game out there without much story.
If you like space, sci-fi, exploring, and discovering, then this game is for you. One of my only wishes for this game is for a true multiplayer component, but for now it's Zen and the Art of Space Exploration. Soundtrack by 65daysofstatic is incredible, and only barely surpassed (for me) by the Eve Online ambient soundtracks.

@Jinx

I am a bit confused. Earlier you used the word "conned" to describe the game, now you say it's not a hoax.

Aside from that, you certainly have voiced legitimate concerns. I'm also sick and tired of the usual pre-order business model. I decided that after playing the utter mess that was the Halo: Master Chief Collection for Xbox that I would never pre-order a game again. It's one thing to buy a game on day one, but yeah, in the usual sense, pre-orders need to die.

Thing is though...this is a kickstarter, thus the rules are different, by it's very nature, you HAVE to sell promises and pre-orders, or at the very least, contribution promises/swag/perks/etc. It's an alternative to going to a publisher and begging them for money to make the game and risk having the publisher exert creative control over the game/product/etc and whatever other compromises a publisher might force a developer to make. How many games have been utter shite because the publisher meddled and forced a game out before it was ready. Too many.

With kickstarters, it's the other way around. Backers demand that a game not be released before it's ready, but now the hype train has to start chugging along WAY earlier than a publisher-backed game in order to generate interest, because now the publishers are the backers and this is happening long before a game even gets to an alpha stage.

There is a risk with any kickstarter. If it was anyone other than Chris Roberts, I doubt I would have backed it. I backed the Shadowrun games mainly because it was being run by the guy who created the game originally and that turned out to be successful...twice. I'll be going for the hat-trick with the Battletech game they're working on now. Chris Roberts and Jordan Weisman both have solid reputations and have demonstrated they can make solid games. If it was Derek Smart or someone relatively unknown, I doubt I would have backed.

I find it interesting how the detractors are coming from various levels. Some of the detractors seem to be against kickstarters in general. Some seem to be against SC specifically and I think others are simply against it just because they want to see something ambitious crash and burn....and then there's Derek Smart who seems to have a personal, unhinged, vendetta against Chris Roberts.

Regardless of how successful SC will or won't be. SC is still a niche game by the very fact that it's a space sim. Even if it is a complete and total success, it's going to be a very complex game with a crazy amount of information to absorb and it will be difficult to be good at it. It is not for the casual gamer. So it will never reach mass appeal or become a widely recognized franchise like, say, Halo or Call of Duty. I think that is part of the appeal. A couple decades ago, publishers as a whole gave space sims the middle finger, but now thanks to crowdfunding, space sims are making a comeback.

Roberts has clearly tapped into something or people wouldn't be giving him money. He originally only asked for 2 million dollars, so even he didn't think it was going to be this big. (Europe is going absolutely bonkers for Space Citizen, they're way more into SC than we are in America)

I never got into the TIE Fighter or X-Wing games, my space sim experience of that era was all Wing Commander.

BUT, that video made me incredibly nostalgic for Star Wars Galaxies: Jump to Lightspeed, the space sim expansion to the MMO. Actually had really well modeled craft, customizable component loadouts, etc. I miss SWG a lot, and JTL in particular. Guess I'll wait a few more years for SWGEmu, right now the ground game is fairly solid but JTL is still in the pretty distant future.

I'm a SC guy, but upvote for any resurgence of the PC Space SIm.

My recommendation, from cheaper to more expensive:

Thrustmaster T-Flight HOTAS, Saitek X-52 or Pro, CH Fighterstick + Throttle, Warthog.

Only the Thrustmaster (but not the Warthog) and Saitek stuff will have a twist rudder axis, which is a convenience for space sims. I hear good things about the HOTAS-X, and in the States it's only about $50 or so, so it's cheapest by far but wants a bit for buttons and HAT switches.

Personally, I'd go cheaper on the control setup if it meant you could also afford a head tracking setup like a TrackIR (ideally) or an ED Tracker.


I have a bunch of this stuff because I'm a flight sim nerd, but for Elite Dangerous I use the throttle from a Saitek X-65 and a Logitech Extreme 3D stick.

All ships have rotational inertia, provided you turn off flight assist mode. Without flight assist, you can fly with close to full Newtonian movement, with some exceptions that were made to keep combat fun. (For example, there is a speed limit cap, to prevent dogfights from degrading into high speed flybys.) This means that with flight assist off, any movement you make, you must make a counter-movement for to stop. This includes all 6 degrees of movement, from translational to rotational. Often, players will disable flight-assist to get into an advantageous position when maneuvering, then re-enable it so they can aim more easily. There are a few, VERY good players that can fight with flight-assist off completely, and it's a sight to behold:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwVYc_iPAvg

In any case, E:D is looking very promising, despite getting a lot less attention than Star Citizen, and even No Man's Sky. Of all the upcoming space sims, this is the one I'm looking forward to most.

It works beautifully with TrackIR. The UI is truly built for a HOTAS + [TrackIR or Oculus Rift] setup. I've been playing it since alpha and this is the real deal. The Star Citizen folks have their work cut out for them, even if they have 10x the budget. As a long time space sim fan I hope both games achieve greatness though.

Elite: Dangerous is a space sim while Star Citizen is a helmet sim. Two completely different genres.

I'm eager to see the space sim come back, but I feel the Star Citizen developers are really focusing too much on graphics and "immersion" where gameplay should come first. Compare it to Elite: Dangerous, which started production at the same time but on a smaller budget, and yet at this point in time, has a multiplayer alpha that is amazingly fun to play and shows huge promise for the rest of the game to come.
I want both to succeed, but I'll definitely be spending my money on ED first, and waiting for Star Citizen to flesh itself out later.

I just realized I haven't really played a space sim since the days of X-Wing and Wing Commander, might be time to remedy that. My first gen USB Saitek X36 flightstick and throttle have been in mothballs for so long I wonder if they'll still work.

Star Citizen, Elite: Dangerous, X Rebirth - it is a good age for Space Sim fans.

Don't hold your breath waiting for TIE Fighter. As far as the rest of the industry is concerned, the space sim genre is dead. Doubt Lucasarts would ever give up the IP to let it be crowdfunded.

It's undoubtedly pretty, but I'm unsure of it's usefulness in games. There's a whole bunch of rigid bodies interacting, but no deformation, and given that most games tend to model people, that's kind of a problem.

Would probably make for an awesome space sim though.