Yup, it's me again, asking for game recommendations. I've been searching for ages for a fun, deep, and entertaining naval combat simulator/game. Ideally one in which you command a fleet of ships, be they ships of sail, or spacecraft, and blast your enemies to bits. I'm a huge fan of the games-workshop title Battlefleet Gothic, (a tabletop miniatures game), and would ideally like to find a computer game with similar mechanics. Different classes of ships move differently, have different weapons, firing arcs, ranges, terrain effects, etc. Time period doesn't matter to me. I love history, and I love sci-fi. So be it the age of sail, or spaceships blasting each other apart with lasers, I want to hear about it! RTS or turn based, I don't care!
Specs are of no concern. My new PC can run just about anything.
Games I've tried and enjoyed/disliked:
Gratuitous Space Battles: This is a really addicting game, but ultimately very shallow. You design ships, (a HUGE plus), but there's no real strategy to it aside from picking guns/armor, and mounting them anywhere you feel like it. You then deploy your fleet, and watch as they mindlessly drive towards each other and shoot. No control over them whatsoever. Fun for a few hours, but ultimately lacking.
Nexus: The Jupiter Incident: Pretty cool single player, and your fleet carries over with you between missions. I had fun playing through this game, but it lacked multiplayer or a good skirmish system. It was also really basic in ship design. This weapon only hurts shields, this weapon only hurts hulls, this weapon can only shoot big ships, this weapon can only shoot little ones, etc. The controls were also horrible. There was no "move to location" command. In order to move your ships, you had to direct them towards an actual object. So the missions all conveniently had probes lying around so you could move.
Homeworld Series: These are great games, and very fun single player. Zooming in on one of your destroyers and watching it pummel an enemy ship from far away is like watching the battle scenes from Battlestar Galactica. Fucking awesome. However there's no real multiplayer anymore, (the game's like 12 years old), and the AI is downright dumber than bricks. That said, I've never found a better 3-dimensional space combat simulator. Awesome game, just not what I'm looking for at the moment. I want something with strategy! Forming a battle line, getting faster ships behind the enemy where they can do more damage, fighters flying CAP to protect vulnerable ships, etc. Not just "I have the most ships and a-move into you and win"
Empire Total War: Obviously only speaking about the naval battles. The naval battles in this game are actually pretty fun... but they get old so fast. You've got no control over the make of your ships, and obviously the rest of the game is lacking, (campaign map, land battles, etc)
Hmmm... I can't really think of many more games I've played. I've heard good things about Sins of a Solar Empire, but I've also heard really bad things. Anyways, I'm all ears for suggestions. Hopefully somewhere out there is a game I've never heard of that's just what I'm looking for.
Or maybe I'm better off just playing BFG online via vassal, lol.
Try this classic bad boy out for some lols! Turn based movement differnet ships have different speeds fastest ships get to go first. after ships move they can "engage" in a real time battle where the boats do a run by of each other you have to aim and fire the cannons and torpedoes and can damage different parts of the other persons boat. weapons satellite engine etc. these damages have real effects beyond the battle. and can be repaired for a time commitment. There are resource objectives and escort objectives as well. I had so much fun with this game for so long! its terrible tho so only play if you have an emulator and a free afternoon.
As a long-time modder of Sins of a Solar Empire I can tell you it's terrible. Homeworld is pretty terrible on the modding front as well, but sins is the worst in terms of gameplay by a longshot. If things like dumb fighter AI in homeworld make you mad, SoaSE would give you a hernia. The combat system in particular is extremely bland.
X3: Terran Conflict is about as deep as you can get outside of EVE I suppose.
/e
Also, Freespace 2 is not on your list. That was definitely the best space-based game I've played so far.
I haven't gotten around to playing this yet, so it's not exactly a recommendation, but AI War is apparently a "big thing" right now, I've only heard positive things about it.
The PTO games are rather good if you want some sort of ship battle simulations, they also have planes. Really fun games though, I used to rent them all the time. I only played the first one though. They are for the SNES so probably best to use an emulator.
On July 07 2011 02:18 IskatuMesk wrote: As a long-time modder of Sins of a Solar Empire I can tell you it's terrible. Homeworld is pretty terrible on the modding front as well, but sins is the worst in terms of gameplay by a longshot. If things like dumb fighter AI in homeworld make you mad, SoaSE would give you a hernia. The combat system in particular is extremely bland.
X3: Terran Conflict is about as deep as you can get outside of EVE I suppose.
/e
Also, Freespace 2 is not on your list. That was definitely the best space-based game I've played so far.
Hmmmm... X3. I played X2 years ago. Do you still need a joystick to really be able to enjoy the game? The controls were horrid with a mouse/keyboard.
I'm more looking for big ship-of-the-line type combat. I'll check out freespace though, thanks!
On July 07 2011 02:18 IskatuMesk wrote: As a long-time modder of Sins of a Solar Empire I can tell you it's terrible. Homeworld is pretty terrible on the modding front as well, but sins is the worst in terms of gameplay by a longshot. If things like dumb fighter AI in homeworld make you mad, SoaSE would give you a hernia. The combat system in particular is extremely bland.
X3: Terran Conflict is about as deep as you can get outside of EVE I suppose.
/e
Also, Freespace 2 is not on your list. That was definitely the best space-based game I've played so far.
Hmmmm... X3. I played X2 years ago. Do you still need a joystick to really be able to enjoy the game? The controls were horrid with a mouse/keyboard.
I'm more looking for big ship-of-the-line type combat. I'll check out freespace though, thanks!
Most games support USB XBox 360 controllers if you can get your hands on one.
Lemme know if you get into EVE, I can hook you up. Plus check the TL EVE thread.
It's not really a naval combat game, though. I will get you a good game. I know I have one at home off the top of my head, HOWEVER I can't think of what the hell it's called..
Basically you micro a small group of ships, and you have to broadside your opponents who are trying to get away, you can aim for different parts of the ship, that sort of thing...oh god damnit what was that game called...ARGGHH
Hahaha, holy shit this game actually looks pretty good. Not the one I was thinking of, but Eskimo-Alex, we should start a TL fleet on this game and mess some shit up.
On July 07 2011 02:53 Tin_Foil wrote: I was going to say homeworld, love those games. I remember it having a good deal of stategy though. Was a long time ago.
Did you ever play the old table top game, Man of War? That's a fun ship game.
Never got into MoW, but I've read through all the rules and such. No one at any of the gaming stores I've ever been to has played it. Just like the starship troopers game. Fucking *fantastic* ruleset, but NO ONE plays it.
I still feel that BFG is a better game than MoW though as far as tabletop navy games go. (Also GW hasn't supporting MoW in like 15 years lol)
I actually kinda like Sins of a Solar Empire, but never got horribly deep into it.
My best suggestion would be Sid Meier's Pirates (the remake newer one), however I don't think the level of depth is as high as you're looking for. It is a whole lot of fun for a few days though.
I can echo the love of EVE online... But it does kinda feel like a huge commitment, as it's a super super super deep game. I'm not quite sure the 'fleet command' aspect you're interested in is very applicable unless you play a lot or are very social within the game, joining large corporations and stuff. You're not gonna be jumping in and participating in fleet warfare for quite a while, most likely.
I had a lot of fun with this game. You can play as either the Rebels or the Empire. There are different game modes for this RTS, but I'll only go into the "kill/conquer the HQ". The battlefield is a system of galaxies. You do combat with both ships and characters. This game is real time, not turned based, and the scale is pretty large. I'll quickly run through each major part of the game.
Resources Your two resources are raw materials and maintenance. Raw materials are mined directly from planets with miners (not people, machines) and refineries process it into maintenance.
Planets These are your basic "resource". Each planet has two bars on it, one bar denotes how much raw material it has and the other bar denotes how many major buildings it can hold. Major buildings include construction facilities, troop facilities, shipyards, and miners/refineries. I don't quite remember if defenses do or not. Each planet is capable of holding all three "production" facilities. Each planet can only have one job per facility type no matter how many you have, but you can queue up tasks and the more facilities of a type finish a job faster. Each inhabited planet also has a diplomacy slider on the bottom. One side of the bar is red, denoting the planet's loyalty to the Rebellion, and the green side denotes the planet's loyalty to the Empire.
Transportation Everything is capable of moving from planet to planet, but many things have rules. The further the planet the longer it takes. Each production facility type can choose a planet as a destination for the product. When finished building the product will be automatically sent into hyperspace to the planet. Buildings cannot move after this initial move, but troops and ships can.
Construction Facilities These build other buildings. The more you have on a single planet the faster it builds.
Troop Facilities These build troops. Troops take no part in fleet battles, but are required to take over a planet along with subduing uprisings.
Shipyards Builds your "big ships" such as Star Destroyers, Corvettes, and the Empire can even build Death Stars. Each side gets some of the same ships, but research different ships. Also builds fighters such as the X-wing or TIE Fighter.
Getting Planets As stated before, the inner planets are inhabited, and most start out neutral. Each side will generally have a few planets in each of the inner galaxies. The rest can be won over with diplomacy or occupation. Your actions on one planet can and often do affect the other planets' view of you. If you win some planets over in the same galaxy with diplomacy some might join your side with no further action. I mentioned the diplomacy bar earlier. You don't have to move it much towards your side for the planet to come under your control, but you want the bar to be completely your color to prevent uprisings. Remember, each move your opponent makes in a system can also affect your planets.
The other way to get a planet is to occupy it with troops. This will generally cause other planets in the system to have their diplomacy slider go towards the other side. If an occupied planet's slider is more to the enemies side uprisings will occur. Uprisings gradually destroy resources and production facilities on the planet as well as troops. On the troops tab of a planet there is a number indicating the minimum amount of troops required to prevent/subdue uprisings. Special characters can also deal with uprisings.
Combat There are multiple types of combat, but they are all initiated by moving one or more fleets to an enemy planet. If the enemy has a fleet of his/her own at the planet you will immediately engage in fleet combat. Once you destroy the enemy fleet or it retreats you establish a blockade on the planet. The blockade freezes production and resources on that planet. To take over the planet you must perform an assault. Fleets can carry troops, and different ships carry different amounts. To assault a planet your troops must win a battle against the troops on the enemy planet. When they have no troops left you get the planet. This often takes multiple assaults, so you may have some diplomacy cleanup on your hands for the neighboring planets.
You can also choose to bombard a planet. This is useful if their troops outnumber yours. A bombardment can soften up the enemy troops, and if you bombard enough you can completely eliminate their troops. There are multiple types of bombardments too, but you'll pick up on them if you decide to play. There are also defensive structures that can limit the damage of a bombardment and potentially punish it by damaging or destroying ships. This can be dealt with by sabotage missions of special characters and some troops.
Fleet combat Your fleet is organized into task forces, and your fighters are also split up into groups. When you enter a fight the game is "frozen" while you pick what kind of targets each task force or fighter group will attack. You can have them target either ships or fighters. You can also have them defend targets of your own. If there is a Death Star on the field you can only kill it with fighters and it gets a free kill on one ship at the start of the battle. It can recharge its laser.
Special Characters I've been mentioning these guys quite a lot without explaining their roles. Special characters are basically main characters from the movies or books. All of them play important roles in winning. There are four general types of special characters.
You have your combat characters that are good at sabotaging enemy buildings or destroying troop units. These characters missions operate in secret and cause no diplomacy swing on planets. Jedi fall under this category and are also good at stopping saboteurs (sensing with force or something).
Diplomacy: These characters are good at diplomacy, not much more to say.
Research: These characters can research better troops, buildings, and ships. The character must be on a planet with the production facility of the type to conduct research. Most research characters can only research one type, but one of them can research all three for each side.
Recruitment: You only start with a few characters. The main main characters recruit more special characters over time as long as you assign them to the mission. These are your Luke Skywalkders, Mon Montha, Darth Vader, Emperor Palpatine. Recruiters are generally the best at diplomacy too.
Characters can overlap in categories, and all characters can be assigned to all types of missions, but they may not be good at it. Characters generally don't die, they get captured. You can rescue them, but you may also kill them in the process.
All in all really fun game. It is pretty old, but one of the better ones I've played.
On July 07 2011 02:18 IskatuMesk wrote: As a long-time modder of Sins of a Solar Empire I can tell you it's terrible. Homeworld is pretty terrible on the modding front as well, but sins is the worst in terms of gameplay by a longshot. If things like dumb fighter AI in homeworld make you mad, SoaSE would give you a hernia. The combat system in particular is extremely bland.
X3: Terran Conflict is about as deep as you can get outside of EVE I suppose.
/e
Also, Freespace 2 is not on your list. That was definitely the best space-based game I've played so far.
Hmmmm... X3. I played X2 years ago. Do you still need a joystick to really be able to enjoy the game? The controls were horrid with a mouse/keyboard.
I'm more looking for big ship-of-the-line type combat. I'll check out freespace though, thanks!
Well, I don't personally know of any games besides Homeworld with decent capital combat in terms of strategy space warfare. I've long been waiting for one to appear, but it seems more likely I'll have to build something in the UDK myself to sate that hunger.
As for X3, I have no idea. When I tried to play it it was unstable. I don't have a joystick, so yeah.
You may want to try Navyfield. I was addicted to that game for ages. It's an MMOG, so the grind is pretty rough, and there's not a lot of strategy involved until you get up there in levels/hardware, but it's fantastically fun if a bit unrealistic lol. Nothing like 32v32 giant naval battles though :D
You basically choose a faction (UK/KM/IJN/US and now they have FR and RUS as well) each with their own pros and cons, choose a class from that nation's ship tree (endgame is basically battleship [BB], carrier [CV], or sub [SS]) and have at it.
I play an IJN carrier and it's loads of fun sending fighters and bombers to kick ass lol
Let me know if you're interested, I can probably set you up with some things if I get into it again :p
I'd be down. Apparently the NA version of the game has some sort of hackshield failure that made everyone migrate to EU...Looks like fleets are like guilds/clans etc that we can join?
On July 07 2011 03:02 Torenhire wrote: Hahaha, holy shit this game actually looks pretty good. Not the one I was thinking of, but Eskimo-Alex, we should start a TL fleet on this game and mess some shit up.
/snip
Well when I entered this thread the first thing I thought about was NavyField. I played that game for maybe 3 years, put over $100 in it probably. It was amazingly fun, but it's incredibly frustrating too. After level 10 the learning curve is extremely steep, and there are loads of bugs/weird things in the game that you have to get used to. For example, the physics are weird (shell speed is not relative to your move speed, so people who are chasing are at a disadvantage in terms of range), the piloting is wonky (you always turn a bit northwards after each move command), the auto-aiming system is terrible (it is very very common that it will spazz out and refuse to follow your commands, I don't know if this is deliberate or not). Once you learn manual aiming (which is quite hard to get used to, gotta memorize angles) it can be a lot more intense. Sometimes the naval battles are huge but usually it's just 30 guys vs 30 guys in a wild melee with no real tactics. Also there's no collision detection so sometimes your destroyer accidentally drives on top of a battleship on your team, and if your teammate fires (since he rarely is looking at his own ship), you get annihilated instantly. If you get up to a high level it's very fun, but it's a crazy grind too.
Some ships are acknowledged to be very underpowered or overpowered, and if you pick certain tech trees you can grind forever. I know that once I got my Portlands-class Heavy Cruiser I had to give up after spending weeks grinding a few levels at a time, with no end in sight since the next level battleship was still 15 levels away.
Definitely not for the faint of heart. If you want to just 'jump in and mess things up' it will take months.
I've never paid to play Navyfield, but its pretty fun with friends. Goes by pretty fast if you can take advantage of all the exp events (basically every major holiday). Haven't played since before they added FR and RUS navies, I just remember I have an Akagi class CV. If only I can remember my login...
I used to play Fleet Command quite a lot and I enjoyed it pretty much. It is a good recommendation if you like realism. (Did also play Sub Command which is a submaine simulator, but that was a bit to difficult for me at the time)
The game is exactly what I always wanted from Star Wars video games. You're the pilot of a spaceship that shoots lasers and warheads at other spaceships in a first person, 3D environment of space dogfighting.
To unlock true baller status, try to find an old PC joystick for an even more awesome experience. I was fortunate enough to have one of + Show Spoiler [these:] +
The other game I played the hell out of that fits this description would be Rogue Squadron, which is similar to TIE Fighter but on the rebels side. I still have my N64 cartridge for it, but I'm fairly certain there's a PC version as well. + Show Spoiler +
Just look at all those ships shooting lasers at each other!
RS is less of the giant space environments, more a mixture of different planets with both enemy ships and ground vehicles, buildings, and people. Also, RS came out in 1998 so it has to be good.
I suppose it's worth noting that neither of these really has a multiplayer that I'm aware of, but provided you're looking more for something where bad guys explode as opposed to tournament worthy competition, they're still excellent.
I played the shit out of Tie Fighter, X Wing, and all the other related games. They were awesome!
My brother and I used to do sorta like co-op mode. He'd control the joystick and I'd use the keyboard, (cause we were like 8-10 and doing both was hard)
That's more of a flight/fighter sim. You fly around in one little tie fighter. I want to command a fleet of star destroyers, ^.^
On July 07 2011 05:43 Haemonculus wrote: That's more of a flight/fighter sim. You fly around in one little tie fighter. I want to command a fleet of star destroyers, ^.^
That is what the game I posted earlier this page is all about.
Seawolf was a great game. I don't think it's ever been released as freeware, but you could probably find it floating around as abandonware if you looked a bit. Runs very nicely in DOSBox. Submarine combat at its best!
Victory At Sea seems to have the longer game time (I have been playing for days and have used a bunch of ships) and is part RTS part sandbox campaign (Over the pacific, atlantic and Med). While battlefleet is cheaper but only has a small amount of ships but is turn based if that's more your thing.
EPT
![[image loading]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/7a/Corsairs_Coverart.png)
![[image loading]](http://images.wikia.com/starwars/images/6/63/Star_War_Rebellion.jpg)
It is pretty old, but one of the better ones I've played.![[image loading]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/7d/Swtiefightercd.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lf2pzzjCAo1qa6i88o1_250.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/b6/Star-wars-rogue-squadron.jpg)
