You should try Ascent - The Space Game, it have 30 days trial (from here you can buy it from Desura if you like ite, it have premium but it cost just 0.99 $ or was it € in month to get some extras, you will get 1 month premium when purchasing it in desura. It have planet landing, colonizating, mining, farming, fighter dogfights and more coming 😀

You should try Homeworld or Homeworld 2, those fit the description very well (they're more RTS than flight sim)

There's also Gratuitous Space Battles, but the strategy on that one's fully focused on how you prepare the fleet before going in and the rest is automatic, might be nice to try anyways.

you only get to fly one ship in XRebirth although you can have a fleet of ships, the older X games start you off in a small ship but let you buy bigger ones as well as letting you build up a fleet of ships.

Their also Flotilla http://blendogames.com/flotilla/ and S.P.A.Z .  http://minmax-games.com/SpacePiratesAndZombies/SPAZ1.php or both can be found on Steam, GOG ect.

I can comment on the X games.

X:Rebirth is considered (rightly) the worse, by far, of the X-Universe games. It is very pretty (need quite a PC to run well), but buggy and extremely dull, it also lacks content, and part of the existing content is downright insulting (station interior especially).

X:TC and AP are much more complete games by themselves. I have numerous save games clocking not in hours but in months. It also has a very large modding community that has produced basically anything you'd want from a space sim, from little tweaks, better AI to full blown total conversions. However, the learning curve is extremely steep: simply put, the user interface is bad.

Originally, X games are mainly trading games. You can, of course, buy battleships, carriers, and other military ships. You'll need them to protect your trading routes and some of the best locations to make a profit are located in locations where a military presence is a must. But, it's not the main focus of the game. As said earlier, some mods can fix that.

Also, in the RTS genre, Distant Worlds. It's widely considered as the best space strategy game. It's more complex than the ones your listed, but it also features managers that will run parts of your empire while you concentrate on / learn things you're interested in. It's far from pretty, though.

Cheers,

SK.

Thanks for all of the suggestions!  

I had been looking at Distant Worlds for some time and was not sure if I wanted to get into another "epic" empire builder, but it may have to happen.  

Someone had mentioned the Homeworld games (Homeworld 1 changed my life :))  

Just a bit of warning, Distant Worlds is very interesting but the UI is a disaster.  Prepare to be frustrated.  

I actually held off on buying it because someone else told me that.  

Star Wolves

StarSector

As LGM Games Community Manager, first I wanna thank you for your support tanga6005. It means a lot to us and we appreciate it.

As for recommendation, I would suggest checking Limit Theory, it should be released in early 2015 and the whole game is done by one genious - Josh Parnell. I'm really amazed by the work he's done so far.

His last dev diary: 

And don't write Starpoint Gemini 2 off yet, we will continue to implement new features. Yesterday we introduced random triggered wars that can engulf whole sectors and we optimized a game even further for mid-price rigs along other features, updates and fixes. 😉