Star Citizen itself is my answer... I remember reading an article in Popular Science about it [0] when I was a kid, and specifically the sentence about "For example, designers modeled each ship’s landing gear to retract without interfering with the hydrogen fuel system that feeds the nuclear reactor." That sounded like the coolest thing ever.

So, now that I've gotten eight years older but still haven't seen the game release, it makes me kinda sad.

Relatedly, another PopSci article [1] promised that flying cars would be available by ~2015. That never happened either :-(

[0] I read it in print, but here's the online version: https://www.popsci.com/article/gadgets/space-game-gets-real/.

I, too, wish Star Citizen existed. It currently doesn't, despite periodic appearances to the contrary.

LevelCap has done some great star citizen videos recently, just him and some friends playing the game. If you're interested in the current state check out his channel:

https://youtu.be/ONYFCKdrPLs

Star Citizen was the first thing that came to mind too! I "pledged" in 2017 as a teenager and now I'll be graduating college next year. Unbelievable how poorly the game's been managed.

WC: Privateer is a little bit like that, especially if you played the WC (wing commander) games first. Moving from a military, "we have budget for everything" (ammo, missiles, fixes) to a "oh, should I fix my auto pilot or buy an extra missile?" setting feels a little bit like that.

Plenty of low-brow there as well, and basically being forced into the plot against your will is very on-point for a "I just want to make a buck" character.

Yeah - Privateer 2, the darkening got me into the whole genre. Five CD-ROMS in a multi disc case, Clive Owen, Mathilda May, Jürgen Prochnow, John Hurt, Christopher Walken, Brian Blessed and Amanda Pays and Dani Behr playing in the cutscenes. If you could have walked around the space stations and planets in3D it would have been as close as it gets to this.

I could see something like this being REALLY cool in VR.

Elite Dangerous supports VR but everything is too clean. You need that layer of dirt and wobbly landings for authenticity.

(Disclaimer - I've only played all of like 15 minutes of ED in VR)

In this same vein, I want a modern remake of Escape Velocity with the high quality choose-your-own story arcs, but multiplayer. The graphics could be absolute garbage and I'd still play it daily.

I think Mount & Blade: Warband is a bit like that, but in a medieval setting, of course.

Fwiw Endless Sky is a pretty good remake of EV, though it's fairly linear and single player.

Unfortunately development has been paused for over two years now. But yes, outside of Arpia + some other total conversions for older EVs, this is really the only thing out there that directly scratches the EV itch.

The closest contenders IMO are StarSector, the X series, Free Space 2 with extensive modding. Then many games that are similar to those 3.

I have still yet to find a space game holistically more enjoyable than EVN though.

Hmm, paused by the main dev? Probably yeah, but community continues to develop it if you check the discord group and git commits. There's some model/sprite rework and the coalition campaign that they were working on the last I checked.

Try the new Rebel Galaxy game. It does blue collar space game quite well, even if it didn't end up being my cup of tea

Thanks for the referral. The trailer sure looks like something I'd be into.

Not a video game but there's a board game called Galaxy Trucker that ticks a few of these boxes--low brow, space trash, best effort ridiculousness.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/31481/galaxy-trucker

You're describing the game X4, minus the land combat.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/392160/X4_Foundations/

I played the X series since X2, I found the latest X3 (TC, AP) more enjoyable than Rebirth and even X4. X2 had the landing part (quite annoying, in reality), X3 had the fun, later games had better graphics but not the same immersion. Unfortunately the universe is quite limited, even with 100 sectors, and very static endgame.

I'm imagining the 1970s but in space, like a Heavy Metal[0] video game.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_Metal_(magazine)

Space Station 13?

Ostranauts definitely gets the "flying heaps of scrap" and manual landings down. Last run my first ship was a converted cargo container with no life support.

Problem with the space heap of scrap aesthetic is that in real life space, even aside from all the other problems you need a lot more radiation shielding than that to survive outside low Earth orbit.

Not if you know how to cure cancer ;)

Sounds like Space Quest but with modern game play.

This is what i want!! Space quest with Botw gameplay!

Lol... very much so!

> trading

How can that be enjoyable though? You're just hauling cargo from point A where it's cheap to point B where it's expensive. Even in Eve's player driven economy it's a grind.

> exploration, space and land combat and great characters and stories and I'd never stop playing it

Completely agree. I really enjoyed exploring planets in Elite Dangerous.

This is basically the Star Wars aesthetic, I hope we get a nice non-MMO open-world Star Wars game again. We probably will.

This is the exact vibe Anachronox (2001) had.

It's 86% off on Steam right now: https://store.steampowered.com/app/242940/Anachronox

But it's not a space combat sim, it's a sci-fi RPG.

I really enjoyed that game. Tons of personality.

Sounds like an infinite procedurally generated VR game of Red Dwarf.

But not this https://reddwarf.fandom.com/wiki/Red_Dwarf_XI:_The_Game

Beyond good and evil 2? If it ever goes out...

Holding my breath...and turning blue.

X4: Foundations, gets closest to this for me.

With a sidekick called... Murty?

reminds me of battlestar gallactica and landing without clamps