What's the best space game out right now?

What's the best space game out right now?

I'm interested in EVE, Stellaris, and Elite Dangerous. Any of them worth their money?

MMOs are dying and unfun

Stellaris is the best

\secret\When they finish it with tons of DLC in 6 years \secret\

I'm playing Stellaris right now and it's pretty awesome. Be prepared for loooong campaigns though. I've played 100+ hours and still haven't finished one game.

Stellaris is pretty fun if you're into grand strategy

If you're going to buy stellaris, don't buy the DLC, unless you plan to play online with randoms. DLC can be easily pirated. but if you're scared of using creamapi you might want to buy it on a second account. Nobody got banned for creamapi yet and the shit has been available for 5-7 years already.

Stellaris is 4X

I wouldn't call Stellaris grand strategy, it has some elements, but not a lot of them. I think Stellaris is fun as long as you want to roleplay and accept the fact that the random can and will fuck you up someday. Not every game is winnable, not every start is favorable. Mods can tilt the balance even more, which I really love.

I haven't looked into it all too much, but is it like civ5 where I can be a science bitch or a war monger?

I'm really in the mood for exploring and discovering new aliens and stuff so I'd probably go a diplomatic route. Not sure if thats possible in stellaris.

Yeah I don't mind pirating DLC.

it's technically both at this point

Been playing stellaris since the weekend. Very fun game and this is one of my first 4x games.
The space setting makes it for me , but there is a bit of a learning curve as I'm pretty sure I've already lost the game but still having fun trying to figure it out.
I say go for it, the base game was $20 on greenmangaming the other day.

Utopia DLC is some bullshit. $20 for megastructures and a few different civics? The 1.5 patch implemented 90% of the DLC anyway.

Sounds like every Paradox DLC. I dislike their practice of fracturing the game into tons of DLCs, but most of the features come from patches, not the DLC themselves. DLC are usually just sprinkles on top.

You certainly can go full diplomacy route. Two of the victory conditions are either have most of the galaxy part of your federation or as vassals, the other is full conquest. Good luck building federations if you went Xenophobe as one of your racial traits though.

Yeah, it's a lot like civ, with pops that work tiles, and tech costs that scale with population and cities (planets)
You can play diplomatic, but don't know if it's doable to win that way in the current version. The ascension stuff has a tree for diplomacy, so there's that now

Have you reached an end game crisis yet? Don't want to spoil too much but pepper your angus, you're in for a wild ride.

>a Fallen Empire awakens
>soon after the Unbidden enter the galaxy
>they appear right next door to the Awakened Empire
>Unbidden immediately get steamrolled
hah

Tfw you play 100 hour campagin. Update comes out. Forced to choose between shiny new gimmicks or losing save game

>life is suffering

>Not sure if thats possible in stellaris.
That is possible and actually desirable. Not everyone is going to like you just because not everyone can, but most games will feature federation-building bullshit. But, then again, if you're unlucky you might end up in a war-torn piece of the galaxy.

Something that disappointed me with utopia was the lack of content if you became synthetic. If you do the mind over matter and start the shroud thing lots can happen but if you go robotics it's pretty bland

Bullshit, lots of power creep feautures get disabled if you don't own the DLC, makes it feel like a P2W game.
All DLCs should have been like Res Publica, and tied to a single country/government type, that way you can buy it when/if you decide to play some country, and enjoy new mechanics and flavour.

These are all different genres of games just set in space.

EVE and E:D require massive commitments to get anything of worth out of them and still aren't very fun.. Star Citizen is just pretty to look at.

Stellaris is alright, but Paradox is going to keep shitting out DLCs back to back so you might as well wait for a GotY version. Have a look at Distant Worlds, Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion or Endless Space 2 releasing soon.

Endless Space 2 soon™ if you're into 4X.

Stellaris is just a casual version of Distant Worlds. It's not a good 4X, not good grand strategy, nor does it even have the amount of flavor events and roleplay options compared to Paradox's previous games. Doomstack combat still isn't fixed, internal politics are pretty much non-existent even with factions since their demands are so easy to meet and forget about altogether and diplomacy boils down to either warring or ignoring your neighbors depending on if you're an expansionist or not.

If you want good space combat and haven't played Freespace games yet, get graphics mods and do it now.

I never understood why people don't complain more about the shit Paradox does with DLC.
Everytime there is talk of Total War or Civ people flip their fucking shit about how half the game is DLC yet Total War has never fucking ever asked 5 bucks for unique Portraits of Factions that have already been in the game since launch.

That's like the definition of pushing out an unfinished game and asking you to buy the DLC to fix it.

Ever since launch it's clear there's someone there who's a big fan of psionics

>endless space
>not casual
only good thing about endless series is pretty visuals

>\secret\

Thats a pretty common complaint

Maybe in 3 years they will sell us more synthetics content as 15 dollar dlc

It's because the biggest autists just pirate it

Distant World is the most bloated 4x out there

>caring about cosmetics

personally I can't wait for the trade and espionage DLC

How the fuck do you remove factions. I've been supressing these tree hugging fags for a decade and they still continue to attract my pops. Now half my country is pissed off and rebelling because I refuse to adopt a pacifist ethic.

How do I fix this? All I see is mods to remove favtions entirely.

Why even have faction portraits or unique ships in the first place then? Just give every faction the same silhouette and charge money afterwards for the people who are dumb enough to care about visuals, right?

Cosmetics in gs are the most retarded thing, I've pirated all the unit packs and can't even tell, because you need to be zoomed in to notice.

And the retards raised hell with the HoI playerbase because they wanted to force unit models instead of counters to sell DLC

I Think it is because they are very open about that this is their strategy. Its not like they say "this is the final version"

I have not I'm still very early but this faggot nation next to me immediately declared me as rival so I feel like I'm gunna die soon

I know that feel bro. Played 60+ hours on large map, going well, empire in good position, crushed AI rebellion then update hits. Suddenly my empire is now fractured into 6 different opposing factions that can't be appeased by any means since faction mechanics got reworked.

Stellaris is the best out there, after the latest DLC patch.
It's because Paradox keep working on their games for years, and most of their DLCs add new mechanics and ways to play. They don't cut content from the game to sell later or make 40$ eye candy DLCs.
Sure their game get expensive as fuck with time, but just buy on sale or even pirate it.

they are great "basically free customer money DLC" for every dev out there. Also keeps art stuff busy
but people tend to not bitch about them cause they are pretty harmless.
what is bad about Paradox is while they update base game with new stuff, sometimes that new stuff doesn't work correctly until you buy actual DLC which was intended to use that new stuff.

How good is endless space 2? Anyone own it?

I've tried playing endless legends and endless space a few times but always get overwhelmed or slightly turned off by random features of the games.

>and most of their DLCs add new mechanics and ways to play. They don't cut content from the game to sell later or make 40$ eye candy DLCs

I wouldn't worry about that bro, the game will generally plop AI empires with opposing civics near you in the beginning. They won't attack you though unless they're fleet strength is superior or greater to yours though. It can be a pain in the arse when you try to expand. I generally start a war with them, put one cede planet war goal in and quickly occupy a few of their planets with army's. That way you can get free already colonized planets and can enslave/purge/integrate their pops. Just make sure they aren't allied with any big boys first though, I've made that mistake and got butt fucked by an advanced AI start.

I'll comment, while contributing almost nothing to the discussion. I own it, just like I own every other their game, but I have not played it. This is some arcane fucking bullshit, I also own everything for EL, but couldn't play after tutorial. I want to support them, but it feels that I need so much time to play this, when I can just play fucking rainbow six. Eh.

Not trying to paint Paradox in a bad light here but what you said is basically what all those other games people complain about do as well: Faction and Unit DLC that add new Mechancs except Paradox also sells purely cometic stuff that doesn't change gameplay at all like the aforementioned Banners and Portraits or the Inesctoids.

it's still in alpha and last time I checked the combat was still extremely bare bones, n addition to other problems

>Random features
What, specifically, do you mean by this? Because it may just turn out the genre isn't for you.

> Not sure if thats possible in stellaris.
Diplomacy in Stellaris has less depth than in most 4Xs, and that's already a very low bar.

Alright because they decided to colonize a world around a system I already had a frontier outpost and a bunch of mining things so I was pissed.
I'm gunna nuke those fuckers.

Wrong. DLC should improve and expand base mechanics. Stellaris needs a sophisticated trade system, secret service stuff and so, instead we get boardgame-like features like Civics.

I've played a lot of Stellaris when it came out, new DLC is out apparently greatly improving the game.

Haven't played it yet, been on break but once I get home I'm playing the shit out of it, it's good fun.

If you're not into getting stuff full price I'd definitely recommend picking it up on sale

Those are comparatively cheap and not presented as proper must have dlcs.
It's a way to support devs if you feel like doing it. Or again, easily pirate it.
Or you can be a shit stain like is.

Master of Orion 2

He's not wrong here. What is wrong with Paradox is the fact that they sell a barebone game they have tons of plans about. They don't cut something they've made, they've just don't make it at all, preferring to sell it 2 years later after 5 major expansions.

I haven't noticed that with the 1.5 banks update. You just don't get 2 civics (hivemind and I forget the other) plus megastructures. I haven't noticed anything game breaking in my current play through and the new factions system is a nice diversion from the mid game which can be kinda grindy.

I honestly didn't even know that it was in Early Access and apparently releases in a little over a month. I played both Endless Legend and Endless Space. I enjoyed both games enough, but I felt like Endless Space dropped the ball with all space ship looking basically the same and the difference in general between the races being negligible (in contrast to EL where you basically play a different game depending on your race). I hope they mixed it up for ES2 because at least in theory I am much more interested in Space 4x.

...

So it's okay when Paradox does it?

Eve is a collection of minigames with so little depth that they're mastered within 15 minutes. Stellaris is a blunder and ED is never coming out.

Just make sure your main fleet has at least 1.5k fleet score before you attack otherwise you won't be able to take down one of his star ports.

I can't quite remember. I have really only played total war: warhammer and civ 5 for both 100s of hours. However, when I bought endless legends, which looked very promising, just felt off to me. The techs you research didn't make a lot of sense to me, and figuring out what exactly to do was annoying in comparison to learning in other games. I'm not quite sure what it is, but I've had problems with it and I've tried playing it over and over..

I'm not saying Stellaris 1.5 breaks, but I recall people had this problem with other older Paradox games

And the best tho.

I dislike the territorial control mechanics of the game and flaky combat, though I wish Stellaris had some of the neat features of it.

That doesn't sound much like random elements. It sounds like you just don't really know what to do.

Generally speaking:
Production>Science>Food>Dust
Is my priority. You can't build all your fancy science shit without a smooth production line, but staying ahead of the curve can really win you the game. In a similar vein: higher city populations will allow you to not only produce stuff faster but change on the fly, food can make everything. Dust is just good. This can change drastically depending on what faction you're playing as, however. Broken Lords love dust so fucking much.

As a rule of thumb you want to try and expand every time you get the chance to reallocate your influence points.

Can CreamAPI fuck up your actual steam account?

Same, I played Endless Space yesterday and the tech tree just seemed weird to me, leaving me scratching my head

My guess would be yes, though there hasn't been a single case of it yet, because valve doesn't give a shit. But they might. Or may not. Maybe they just don't know. Who knows.

Stellaris is ok. Most of the advantages it has over other games is a good bit more competent AI and decently varied end game crisises. Compared to everything else also a lot of roleplaying and events.

Distant Worlds 2 is pretty deep and watching civilian ships travel around hauling goods is chill. Also the best resource system. The problem is the AI is pretty damn shitty, the only challenge is Shakturi, really, which is the only one end game crisis the game has if you compare it to Stellaris. Also ship/station building is fun. Tech tree is kinda meh though and weapons are unbalanced. Worse diplomacy than Stellaris.

Star Rulers 2 I barely played but disliked quite fast. The entire planet system is about colonizing planets with low tier resources (only 1 per planet) and telling them to export those to another planet so it can grow bigger. Then level upping a planet with a higher tier resource the same way so your chosen planet can grow even bigger again. I've always liked growing tall so it was an immediate minus for me. The ship design system is pretty interesting though, and diplomacy is some weird card game.

I myself am having a lot of fun with Stellaris recently, but beware, you've got to mod it A LOT in order to get the optimal gameplay.

Any tips for a beginner in Stellaris?
I'm always blocked from expanding by bigger neighbouring empires and after colonising as much as I can there's nothing to really do.

>the one time Stellaris went on a sale with decent discount is when I've already spent my money for that month

I just wish there was something that could let me know when something is going to go on sale a few weeks in advance.

>The techs you research didn't make a lot of sense to me
It's pretty straightforward. You just research whatever you want depending on the current needs of your empire. Instead of stricter tech tree all techs become available for research once their related Era is unlocked.

FIDSI also works the same as any other 4X: food increases city growth, industry creates units and buildings, dust = money, science is for research and influence is for diplomatic actions and enabling empire wide passive effects every 20 turns. Luxury resources also activate positive empire wide effects whereas strategics are used for buildings and units.

You should focus on completing the main quest of each faction, as they both lead you on how to play them and unlock unique tech powering their specific playstyle even more.

>I'm always blocked from expanding by bigger neighbouring empires and after colonising as much as I can there's nothing to really do.
That's the main problem with the game. Either you stay in your little hole while building tall and not interacting with the rest of the universe (made easier by Utopia additions) or you turn militaristic expansionist super-blobber yourself.

No Man's Sky

Stellaris was shit dont bother it turns into a game of tag lag fest at the end.

Eve is a spread sheet simulator and is no way in hell fun.

Elite Dangerous will be fun for you till you realize there's nothing to do beyond trying to get money to get a bigger ship to get money to get a bigger ship.

Star citizen isnt out yet but looks promising.

Kerbal Space Program is hella fun and has good mods for it.

Space Engineer is fun but doesnt feel complete and still being worked on but is out to play.

Astroneer is fun for like an hour but there isnt much to do in it yet

Osiris: New Dawn reminds me of Ark survival but for space, it's in early access and looks nice and is fun for a bit but is also lacks b/c its still new and early. Lots being added from what I read. havent't played since October last year.

No Man's Sky was fun for a while I heard its hells cheap now because of all the negative reviews. Its still being updated as well I hear.

Strike Suit Zero/Infinity was a fun 3d mech space shooter.should be cheap its been out for a long time.

Mass Effect: Andromeda was pretty bad ass

If you want RTS games there are a bunch of space or high tech ones out there.

Dig around on steam there is a Curator on there that looks at nothing but space related games called Space Game Junkie. They have TONS of space game reviews

Oh thank you a lot. This actually motivates me to play it a bit more :)

stellaris is fucking garbage

money is better spent on eu4 or ck2 or hoi4

The game does it on purpose, get the non-clustered starts mod, which spread civilizations randomly accross the galaxy

>download Stellaris DLC
>the game has been updated again, making the dlcs useless

fucking hell, creamapi is more hassle than it's worth.

You can also an option when you start a new game to randomise AI positions so the game is less likely to plop an AI right next to you. Playing in spiral arm galaxies helps prevent annoying neighbours too.

>Mass Effect: Andromeda was pretty bad ass
What did he mean by this?

that means Good in English user

It means he has horrific taste and his opinion should be immediately discarded.

You get a chance to make Stellaris not garbage, but you can only choose one of these
>improved combat mechanics so it's not just deathstack vs. deathstack cat and mouse mini-game
>fleshed out internal politics, trade and diplomacy so you constantly have something to manage instead of just staring at the screen, especially if you want to play non-expansionist
>shittons more random events and quests so they don't just dry up altogether after anomalies disappear from the game, more flavor to gutted Mechanical and Biological paths as well

Internal politics definitely, events always run out eventually and they're all either jokes or some + or - to some resource.
Unless it's some more complex content like the late game psionics stuff we have, then I would pick that

>Unless it's some more complex content like the late game psionics stuff we have, then I would pick that
I'm still mad that Mechanical doesn't even get new responses from AI Rebellion, whereas Psionic gets dialogue both from the Scourge and Unbidden.

The "cosmetic" portraits are pretty important for CK2 though. I mean a huge part of your game is interacting with characters from all over Eurasia

Combat is pretty simplistic but you can defeat fleets more powerful than your own by finding out what they have equipped and directly countering it. Missile/Fighter heavy fleets can be countered with point defence, making the almost useless, fleets that spec shield heavy can be wrecked with mass drivers ect. My biggest gripe is defence platforms and star ports are still useless for defence. You're better off just filling your planetary defence army slots with assault armies and even then they can still roll you because the aggressor can field unlimited invasion forces whereas your planet has limited defence slots.

As long as combat isnt like on release (infinite evasion dominating everything) I'd take more random events
And whatever happened to the great worm worshipping event? I cant seem to get it in the new update

I'll also add that being able to research some sort of warp disruption tech for your ships that make retreat impossible or extremely costly (unless you have jump drives) would eliminate the stupid cat and mouse games the AI play.

There is an option to try EVE for free. Keep in mind that it is an MMORPG and doesn't try to be something else.

Remember the old loophole, reentering a system with a black hole until it triggers the event? No longer works. It's now a 1% chance event IIRC. You might or you might not get it in your game. There's no guarantee.

Sins of a Solar Empire still trumps Stellaris in it's current state.

Combat is better, research is better, developing your colonies is slightly better, even DIPLOMACY is better, which is sad because diplomacy is supposed to be Paradox's strong point.

AND Sins just got an anniversary optimization update which allows it to utilize more RAM so the performance problems are much improved.

So I would recommend Sins: Rebellion for now OP...at least for a couple of years until Paradox improves Stellaris with DLC.

Distant Worlds Universe is my favorite space 4x but its learning curve is pretty steep, Irecommend you watch tutorial videos for that one.

And since you like EVE I'm going to assume you like economic games. I recommend Offworld Trading Company. It's a fast-paced RTS...with no units controlled by the player. It sounds weird I know, but the gameplay comes from resource production and a free market economy where prices fluctuate, plus a black market you can use to sabotage your opponents anonymously

>fucking Sup Forums

I bought sins but lost my copy since I had it on disk. Shit sucks.

...

>its hells cheap now because of all the negative reviews
It's still $60

Every expansion will focus on a different aspect of the game, so hopefully we'll get all of them.

New expansion soon adding Jupiter's moon Io

I played it when it came out and it was pretty shit
Best ones
>Masters of Orion
>Galactic Civilisations 2
>Endless Space (good for new players, it's on sale for like $1 now)
>Alpha Centauri
And probably more