Hi Mavrospete

Welcome to the SSC. 🙂

As to your question, it depends on how realistic you want the landing to be. You can (sort of) land on planets in Freelancer by way of cut scenes. But for out and out realism only Frontier Elite 2 and Elite 3 have so far done this any justice. Both of these gaming greats have re-makes underway. In Frontier's case there is Pioneer and in Elite 3's case there is FFE3D. Have a look in the download area of the SSC for FFE3D here downloads.php?cat=37

and for Pioneer, have a look at it's sub forum here pioneer-f35/

Have fun, hope that helps you.

Actually i'm looking for a realistic approach. I read on the net, about Orbiter 2010 and The Tomorrow War and Parkan 2. Any opinions on them? Are the Pioneer and Elite remakes ready? Actually I've already downloaded Pioneer Gold 1.03 and I find it a bit unplayable for my eyes.

Both the Tomorrow War and Parkan II are not really 'realistic'. Haven't tried Orbiter 2010 yet but my guess that would be the most realistic experience for you. The Precursors and Evochron Legends also have space to planet game play as well.

I think we have our Pioneers mixed up here, sorry for not being clearer, this is the one I meant showing an early build on video 😳 pioneer-f35/pioneer-youtube-t1185.html.

It is an elite 2 re-make and is still a work in progress, but its getting better and better with every alpha release thanks to the efforts the development team and some of the members on here. FFE3D is playable right now, but there may be more updates appearing for this soon if rumours on the Russian boards are correct.

Orbiter is a great choice if you want your landings to be as hardcore as they can be. I have Parkan 2 and it doesn't do actual landings, but you can at least get out your "banana" ship and move around on the surface. 🙂

Will parkin 2 work on vista?.

It worked on 7. 😉

Geraldine and Facrodev are right. Orbiter is the most realistic one you will find.

Orbiter 2010 is much the same as Orbiter2006. You can download some better graphics for it though with some nice shadows. The updated graphics are maintained by Artlav, and also come with his wonderful planetary terrain generation engine.

As Geraldine mentioned, Pioneer is a remake of Frontier Elite 2.

I may be a little biased towards Pioneer but I really like it 🙂

Ever since I flew across my first alien world and watched my first tri-star sunrise from the edge of an ocean I was hooked 🙂

So FF3D is Elite 2 Remake? The one shown in the video?

No, that is Pioneer. It can be found here http://pioneerspacesim.net/download

FFE3D is the Elite 3 re-make and can be downloaded as a complete archive or in multiple parts here downloads.php?cat=37. This FFE3D shown below

Yeah, Basically it goes like this:

If you like cool looking ships then you download FFED3D.

If you like cool looking environments, then you download Pioneer.

If you like to modify your game, then you download Pioneer.

Maybe in 2011 we will see this one go into a alpha/beta state 🙂

Hah! Yeah, seems that way to me. Awesome videos.

And don't forget Battlecruiser Millennium Gold.

Check out Evochron Legends, or Evochron Mercenary:

http://www.starwraith.com/main/go.htm

These are great space sims in the genre of Elite or Freelancer. Totally open-ended.

Hi,

I can't believe no one has mentioned Ad Astra ( http://www.a-astra.com ) yet. It lets you land on really beautiful planets that even have wildlife flying around or running around on the surface. I really like some of the planetary considerations the author has added. For instance: you should have second thoughts about engaging in combat in the planetary atmosphere, because if you get a wing blown off in space, you could survive, but in the atmosphere you will corkscrew into the ground. Also the universe seems very alive. It's loads of fun to watch a big battle from a distance and then make a little money by risking a run into the middle of the battle to salvage a ship. It's a great little game (and free) that has kept me entertained for many hours.

Cheers,

Logan5

Ad Astra has a TON of potential but the users here tend not to play it because of the shape of the spaceships most likely.It also has a hard to use interface and some bugs, but what great game doesn't

How have I not heard of some of these???? Oh well, my weekend is blown, I was planning on accomplishing something, now I'll just be playing games the whole time .

Well, I have been looking for such a space sim also for quite some time, if I can reccomend a few, here they are.

-Evochron Mercenary: A great game if you liked games like Freelancer, you cannot get out of your ship but, can fly down to any planet seamlessly for trading at the cities or mining etc. The game features a hangar to design and store ships and features to build some basic structures. A brilliant game and the latest in the Evochron series.

-Parkan II: I have not played this one much yet, planets include on-foot combat and vehicles and some variation. Your ship's design takes some getting used to and planet maps load upon entry and are quite small.

-Universal Combat Collector's Edition: This game came a long way and still feel somewhat "crude" however, if you can get to grips with this one and take on the steep learning curve, it can become very enjoyable and packed with features, planet surfaces are vast and the game has several on-foot weapons, land vehicles, fighters, shuttles and capital ships to drive/pilot. The game has several bugs and flaws to get around.

The Precursors: Another brilliant game that may feel to focus more on land combat than space combat and has been made with a more RPG shooter style in mind, nevertheless, this is a great game packed with quests and features to keep you busy for a long time despite several bugs. An english version has become available I believe but, is only available on Steam so, if you value your privacy and security, steer well clear. You can still get a retail copy of the game as there is a proper english translation patch for the game, retail versions is quite scarce though.

I would recommend you give Evochron Mercenary a go first, the game is only about 220MB to download and can be converted to the full game without any additional downloads if you like it. It is truly a brilliant game taking into account it came from a one-man indie developer. It is really difficult to find a decent space sim with interactive planets as space sims are also falling under the MMO gauntlet these days and offline players are left in the dark, Infinity, amongst others, is a good example of this trend. As I also have been a RPG gamer all my life, I have watched one of my favorite genres taken away from me by MMO schemes, I fear space sims is going down the same black hole. Many people like myself, enjoy playing games offline alone or amongst a few friends, if I want a direct social experience amongst a crowd of people, then I go out to the local bar or club. If MMO developers can just give us some offline capability, we would be very grateful.

Hey there, i am new to the forum as well 🙂

I am currently looking for almost the same as the OP. I messed around with Evochron (when "Legends" was the most recent release) and liked it, but found the non IDS combat quite challenging (got no Joystick/gamepad that would run with my new Win7 64 machine) and also missed the ability to fly capital type ships. So i got me X3 Reunion/X3:Terran Conflict when it was on sale via Impulse. Now, these games in theory allow you to fly capital ships, but other than that, are very hard to learn und the UI is beyond uncomfortable, and "space" mostly consists of background art... no free exploration, a sector simply is the area between 2 or more jump gates - disappointing.

Besides, i really like online gaming, but the only real consistant universe space MMO that comes to mind is EVE - and i have heard horror stories about EVE's skill system and when checking out the EVE forums, i learned that EVE not only is a game, but apparently now a science too - didn't know 90% of the terms they were using there 🙂

Infinity - The quest for Earth really would be almost everything i am asking for, and then some on top of it. Are there any games out at the moment that take a similar approach as Infinity (besides EVE)?

EVE is indeed a science, a second job. One can only play it if they really have a lot of time to kill, as it rewards the hard-core much more than the casual. I enjoyed it while I played it, but after a while I just didn't feel like getting bogged down anymore.

I took Logan5's advice and gave Ad Astra a go, great game actually and the best alternative for Infinity. Ship models look bad to be honest, planets look great on a high-end machine with clipping distance for vegetation on max, especially in low orbit with cloud details. Ship models can look a lot better with more varied textures, the game has built in editors for everything from ships to plants and animals to textures. If we can build up a decent modding community for the gamd, users could come up with some interesting ship designs.

I guess i am too spoilt by the games i used to play. I looked up Ad astra, and the site and screenshots made my eyes hurt tbh : (. After i tried to move on from my savegame in x3:tc for 2 hours, with nothing but frustration in the outcome (seriously, what retard game designer enables it for an M4 pilot with starting weapons to be offered a mission that sends him off against a capital ship and 20 escorts all alone? Makes me just want to yell out: "What is your major malfunction? ..."), i think i'll save up a bit and get Evochron Mercenaries.

Yeah Ad Astra's visuals does'nt look that good, maybe its because I got used to the graphics, still think planets look good though. I also want to get Evochron Mercenaries and I can't wait for payday next week, I wanted to get it since playing the Renegades demo and since playing Mercenaries on other people's PCs I've been itching to get it myself. I just hope I can do the wire transfer from my country as there is no retail version for the game, I dont mind driving the extra distance to the bank for nothing, its because I really want to get this game for myself, the full game that is, not just the demo.

You can download and pay for Evochron Mercenaries via the games website, Gamersgate or Impulse, to name a few. At least Gamersgate and Impulse also accept Paypal as a payment option, i don't know about the games site itself. Would probably make the most sense to buy it directly, since that hopefully means the developer gets the most out of it.

Anyway, after some like 9 hours (plus probably another 4 hours i spent getting killed) in the X3:tc universe, it really started to grow on me - now it's addictive as hell! =)