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[Delta Foxtrot]

My suggestions are quite heavy on the space battle aspect, but here goes.

Freespace 2 (and arguably 1, though I haven't played it).
You control a single fighter (or in some missions a bomber) in charge of a small squadron (~4 ships total) while the largest battles feature several capital ships and fighter/bomber squadrons on both sides. The squadron leader aspect is fairly superficial which allows you to concentrate more on the awesome WWI-esque dogfighting as you battle enemy fleets, raid convoys, protect your own, etc.. It's not that realistic: your ship will slow down and eventually stop if you stop accelerating, dog fighting ranges are ~50m between opposing fighters, but it's bloody good fun nonetheless. FS2 has the added benefit of a long lived and skilled modding community.

Another one is Babylon 5: I've Found Her. It's a freeware game with fairly realistic space combat, you keep going faster and faster as long as you accelerate, and to slow down you need to apply thrust in the opposite direction. This actually makes it a bit more difficult to pick up and fly if you're used to more arcade styled games (such as FS2). The game and world is based on Babylon 5 TV-show, and while the released campaigns take place before the series, you can consider the game to offer some amount of spoilers if you haven't seen the show but intend to see it some day (which I heartily recommend). At times more slower paced than FS2, as I remember it involving a couple of trips to hyperspace (a trippy experience as anyone who's seen the show can attest) on autopilot, though those are few and far between. Download link and download/installation guide.

Both feature a fairly decent story to boot.

[Girlinhat]

Kinetic Void is a game in-dev that's got a thread floating around B12 somewhere.  Very nice, the newtonian style flight is very fun to abuse.

[Sensei]

I'm assuming you mean games where you directly pilot a ship?

X3:R (as people have already said) is a great 3D game, especially with a joystick.

Star Control II/The Ur Quan Masters (UQM being a remake of the ancient SCII, for modern computers) is a great choice if you like top-down spacey shooting with a keyboard.

[Scelly9]

he game is fun but

i get alot of connection losts ( for no reason)

and the ships are TOO DARN EXPENSIVE!!

I MEAN 13 DOLLAR FOR 1 SHIP!!!

ARE THEY CRAZY!!

If this game is full of micro transactions I will be disappointing.

[MonkeyHead]

Gratuitous Space Battles.

Or, on the original Playstation find Colony Wars or its sequel - Colony Wars: Vengance. Dont bother with the third in the series though.

[Chattox]

Games where you control a ship, or a fleet of ships, but not an entire space-faring civ.  Space battles, exploration, but mostly battles, that's what I'd like.

It would be awesome if the game were free, but hey, as long as it's not extravagant, I'll think about it.  Any suggestions?

If you feel like going unplugged, there's a board game me and my fiancée have just started playing called Starmada. Seriously awesome game, it's more of a ruleset that can be adapted to any sci-fi universe that has ships that shoot guns. Mass Effect, Halo, Star Wars, Warhammer 40k, Dune, you name it. You can also make your own and design your own ships from scratch.
The rules seem daunting at first but if you push through you'll find they're actually really simple once you get the hang of it. And there are bazillions of optional rules you can add in like cloaking, teleporting boarding crews, morale, hull breaches, weapon attributes etc.
The very core game is a simple, highly tactical experience which you can make as complex as you like with these optional rules, or just stick with the "essential" Starmada ruleset.

[Girlinhat]

he game is fun but

i get alot of connection losts ( for no reason)

and the ships are TOO DARN EXPENSIVE!!

I MEAN 13 DOLLAR FOR 1 SHIP!!!

ARE THEY CRAZY!!

If this game is full of micro transactions I will be disappointing.

...what game?

[BuriBuriZaemon]

he game is fun but

i get alot of connection losts ( for no reason)

and the ships are TOO DARN EXPENSIVE!!

I MEAN 13 DOLLAR FOR 1 SHIP!!!

ARE THEY CRAZY!!

If this game is full of micro transactions I will be disappointing.

...what game?

Moon Breaker. I have read really bad things about it.

[Flying Dice]

Starfarer all the way.

It's sort of like Mount & Blade in space; you start out with a little frigate and as you win battles you'll gradually be able to buy larger ships for yourself, better weapons, more ships for your fleet, etc. You have a fairly high degree of ship customization; each class hull has a set number of points which can be allocated to mounting weapons on hardpoints, adding enhancements that improve various aspects of the ship's performance, etc. It's still in development, but for the reduced price they're selling it for, the current version is more than worth it. There is a partially implemented campaign, currently limited to a single star system, as well as a number of standalone missions and a decent modding community.

[neotemplar]

I'll say this about the X series of games.  They look awesome, have awesome potential, but require an absurd level of time sink to get to anything resembling fun. 

If you're up for a very unusual and pretty good take on fleet battle space games, try out Infinite Space for the DS.  It has combat reminiscent of the even more unknown Ring of Red for the PS2.  Actually now that I think about it they are more similar than I had previously considered.

My fav space game though is Escape Velocity Override.  However don't let them fool you that the Mod for Escape Velocity Nova is the same thing as Override.  It has totally different AI and thus plays nothing like the older games.

As far as starfarer goes, it looks like it has a great Escape Velocity style combat engine but it totally lacks the charm points that made me love Override.  This is probably because it is in alpha still but I just feel no draw to it.

Moon Breakers is pretty ridiculous about its pay to get stuff mechanics, however the map design for asteroid fields is very nice and everyone else that makes 3D space games should take note that a space map doesn't have to be just void and randomly placed objects that are too far apart to provide cover.

I also got that Black Market game from a bundle sometime back.  It's ok to play but like starfarer lacks any real sense of mission, exploration, or living universe.

[Matz05]

Transcendence all the way!
It's like a top-down 2D real-time roguelike with very high modding ability (all the data and a lot of the logic is in nice modular little XML files, the stock one is compressed/whatever but an updated version of it shows up on the modding site immediately)
Last time I checked, it had a very active modding community (Xelerus.de or something? Some German server, but the site is a huge English-language database of mods)

Did I mention it's free? You really have to check it out. The roguelike elements (permadeath not enforced, but if you cheat death without an in-game justification (returning to the last save point), it makes a note of it), ship customisation, and the way mods can be combined at will (with a very few exceptions) combine with a fairly engaging story for a game with so much procedural generation. I can gaurentee that you will not see everything on your first playthrough!

...Hey, I just talked myself into playing it again! I wonder what the latest version is...

[sambojin]

There's a campaign being set up for Battlefleet Gothic in the Games Workshop Specialist Games discussion thread. It's all about big fleet battles in the WH40k universe, with some quite interesting gameplay mechanics (fire arcs, fighter carriers, torpedos, boarding actions and super weapons are all present). It's a bit abstract in the sense of the dice rolling and firepower charts, but it is quite a good little strategy game. The bay12 campaign will be played in Vassal (a boardgame emulator), so it's all for free. Plus you can slang off at your opponents on this very forum if you like

One of my other favourites was TIE-Fighter. TIE-Fighter was a good little game for flying a fighter in a battle group in the Starwars universe. Scripted, linear campaigns, but quite fun ones. There's also a mission editor on the net somewhere, and probably quite a few fan made missions for when you've completed the normal game. There's also an add-on pack that ramps the difficulty up quite a bit (Defender of the Empire?). I don't really think Lucasarts has made a better Starwars game than TIE-Fighter. Super-gouraud-shaded-cool. Dosbox will probably run it for you quite easily.

[Blaze]

There's a few flash games out there that may ease the hunger until you find a real one.

Void Combat, Trading, and some Exploring space game. Plays with your keyboard to control and mouse to aim. Some RPG elements with the standard "allot XP the raise X skill level". Plenty of ship customization,  equipment and ships are generated randomly, so check the shops often to keep yourself properly equipped.

You start on the NW portion of the map and enemies progressively get harder as your head further Southeast.

Oh, and the default name is Jameson, and there's a rank bar that starts are "harmless" ala Elite.

Starfighter: Disputed Galaxy,A formerly multiplayer game. Pretty much entirely combat, kill enemies to earn money and unlock new ships. Each ship different stats such as shields, turn rate, speed, and equipment slots. What you can outfit on your slots depends on what slots you have. Your starting ship, for example, has two weapon slots and 1 utility slots, compare with the dedicated minelayer ship, with 1 weapon, 1 utility, and 6 mines, or the dedicated long-range bomber, with 6 weapons, 1 mine, and 1 "large".

Game starts out easy with just 10-shield drones and 50-shield heavy drones with the occasional fighter class armed with ranger cannons and photon bombs. As you go up in rank, you get tougher ships with more expensive weapons like plasma cannons and thunderbolt torpedoes.

There are aliens and human "races" but they don't differ all too much, their ships are more or less equivalent; aliens have a few different weapons compared to humans though.

[Itnetlolor]

I'm assuming you mean games where you directly pilot a ship?

X3:R (as people have already said) is a great 3D game, especially with a joystick.

Star Control II/The Ur Quan Masters (UQM being a remake of the ancient SCII, for modern computers) is a great choice if you like top-down spacey shooting with a keyboard.

Yes, I was looking around to see if this would be mentioned, and so far, it's the only other time it was mentioned. I'm in agreement to this game, it's one of the greatest sci-fi experiences to ever grace the computer screen.

Get it. Be a *happy camper*.


The X-Wing series was pretty awesome too. Tie Fighter has, by far, the best story; but if you want to orchestrate a crap-ton of battles (skirmishes and melees), have tons of ships to include in battle (up to 12 ships per team, or 8, or 6, or 4, or 2, or 1; and with a bit of modding, pilot Star Destroyers and such, and have starship vs. starship matches as a starship), and even fly through the Death Star II tunnel, play X-Wing Alliance, and go to XWA Upgrade for graphics more fitting to your graphics card and today's standards. It's still in development, and these guys are awesome.

Darksaber's site (link within) should have a packaged file that can install all the updates as they are/been released for you; sometimes a surprise addition comes along ripe for downloading. He's done a fair share of the upgrade modeling. You gotta compare what the game originally had with the upgraded versions. Be amazed.

[Sensei]

Be a *happy camper*

Fun fact: I actually managed to beat the entire game without ever encountering the Orz.