I've only just found out about this game today, which is a shame since it's no only a few days from the end of its Kickstarter campaign and sounds like a serious candidate to the succession of Wing Commander/X wing games.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/732317316/starlight-inceptiontm

To copy and paste the kickstarter page "Starlight Inception is the rebellious stepchild of Wing Commander, X-wing and Freespace2, taking a fresh approach to the classic space combat genre."

It's a mission based game with full controller support, cockpit views, system management etc. In addition to classic missions, some involve a tower defense like concept where in addition to dogfighting, you also get to place defense around your mother ship to repel attacks on it (if I understood rightly). It also has a competitive multiplayer mode (deathmatch, CTF, defend the mothership).

Its leader is a 3D modeler that worked for Lucas Arts on some great games such as Jedi Knight, he was in this studio during its golden age that I often miss, so I thought I'd chip in and support it. In a recent update, it was also stated that concepts artists that have Star Wars and other great space combat franchise on their CV have joined the team. It looks like a solid project that deserve the help, but with only 5 days to go and not yet half of the target reach, it will need all the attention and publicity it can get now if it is to happen.

If you are a fan of the genre and frequently cry on the lack of new games, you probably want to check this one and give it a change to happen!

PS: as a discovered this game, I also found another one on kickstarter that I decided to support: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/digitilus/skyjacker . It instead is a sandbox game with a space pirates theme, multiplayer coop etc, worth checking too, a lot of content is already visible, and it looks good! They have a good website too: http://www.skyjackergame.com/spaceships/

Starlight looks great. Skyjacker (lol) not so much....more like Insects In Space.

Thanks for these links.

No capital ship to control... I am not interested in fighter crafts in space which is a nothing more than Hollywood fiction.

If you're into capital ships, there's another Kickstarter project in which you can build spaceships by assembling various modules, up to really massive ones. Check http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/seanpollman/kinetic-void/ . The advantage with this project is that the developers already have a demo of the ship builder available.

Personally, I'm a fan of space combat games in all flavours. I enjoyed X3:TC a lot, but sometime I miss a mission based campaign in a fighter in the same vein as Wing Commander, X-Wing games, Freespace, Starlancer... I hope we see some new iterations of the genre!

I've gotten to where I prefer large ships in more of a strategy game. Most space fighter games are just flight games minus physics and just don't pull off the fun anymore.
I need to check up to see if that Nexus 2 project is going forward.

Well, Starlight has been founded! That's one more space game happening.
It's true that fighter based space games sometime feel dry compared to flight simulators, but I don't really take them for "simulators", I'm more after the atmosphere and maybe a simpler sort of action. I find that I still enjoy them at all. I recently re installed Freespace 2 and a lot of mods and really like it as much as I did back when it was first out.

Anyway, for those more interested in capital ships and at bit of strategy, Kinetic Void has some potential. Not only you can build your space ships entirely in a modular system (there's a demo anyone can try for an early version of it), you'll be able to build carriers and give commands to the fighter on board (and you can design the fighters as well of course), as well as being able to give commands to the different weapon systems / turrets on the capital ship itself.
There's also their new idea to apply the same modular design to space station: you get to assemble whole space stations using modules, and have to take into account crew management etc. I really like the idea.

Kickstarter link is here: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/seanpollman/kinetic-void

The campaign has still some time to gather the required funding (a modest 60K) but is already well advanced in its development as one can see from their project presentation. A small $10 pledge will get you the full game and any additional content after release. I'm a backer of course!

while i enjoy the customisable ship yard, its still your samey space ship fighter that behaves with 0 inertia and no newtonian physics.


So a miss for me.

It's not the case at all: the game is powered with a physics engine, and objects obey newtonian physics, space ships too. The ships use a "Kinetic Field Generator", which alter the way they move and respond to controls - it can fail, or be turned off, and you'd fall back to pure newtonian physics. Also, objects having newtonian physics means that you can push an object such as an asteroid and use it as a weapon, for example.
See the flight mechanics update: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/seanpollman/kinetic-void/posts
I feel that some of you are discarding these projects without giving them a look or much of a chance.

Anyway, these models suits me well, I'm a scientist by profession, and I enjoy a bit of fantasy in my space universe when my working day is over :p