Hi all,

Long time lurker here.

Looking around for another capital ship combat game and coming up empty.

I've played the life out of SFC, SFC2 and orion pirates, Klingon Academy, played HW1&2 and several mods, Jupiter Incident, and Sins of a Solar empire. All those were good, but several, especially the newer titles, provide alot of stuff I just dont want to deal with (ala economics). SFC and KA are the closest to a perfect game in this respect, in teh sense of just taking your boat out to do battle, but its showing its age.

I've tried Gratuitous Space Battles and that was enjoyable for a couple days, but it ran out of depth for me real fast.

I've gone thru the list of good titles stickied here, but most seem to be fighter cockpit games, and am keeping an eye on the ST Online thread and other MMO titles like black prophecy and Eve Online. But an MMO, like the RTS titles, just bring too much "other work" to the table that I have to wade thru before getting to the good stuff: big ships slugging it out.

(I also spent alot of time in FSP, Jutland, and NavyField but am looking for a space fix atm)

Any help or suggestions appreciated.

Starshatter: The Gathering Storm has cap ship combat. You have to gain rank by piloting a fighter before you can transfer to one but you'll get access to frigates, then destroyers then carriers with their own fighter wings.

The game is discontinued though so it may be hard to find.

Check out the Kobayashi Maru mod for Bridge Commander:

http://www.bckobayashimaru.de/ws/index.php

I have very fond memories of Klingon Academy. The full motion video clips were nice and it was absolutely great getting to see Christopher Plummer and David Warner reprising their roles from Star Trek VI.

Indeed - it was especially fun to blow holes into ships or blow entire sections off, revealing the burning inner decks. Very well done game.

If Activision ever decided to make a Klingon Academy 2 (NOT dumbed down) I would definitely pay good money for that.

Sword of the Stars- very underrated game. It's got the ship building of GalCiv and Nexus, and the combat of Sins of a Solar Empire.

^ I agree that Sword of the Stars with expansions is quite a good game for capital ship combat. Armada 2526 is a recent strategy game with capital ship combat and Distant Worlds is in development and looking good. Check out Matrix Games for information on both.

You might try Genesis Rising if you can find it. That has organic space craft in it where the upgrade path for ships involved modifying the ships DNA rather than adding technological parts to it. I never got into it because all the action is on a single plane and I got spoiled by Homeworld and Nexus's full 3d combat environment.

You might also try StarTrek:Legacy. That has a sort of hybrid 3d/2d moment system. The primary restriction being you can't loop a starship.

Thanks, going to give each of those a look. Also found a couple places to pick up a copy of Starshatter.

Just remembered another old favorite. Star Trek:Deep Space Nine, Dominion Wars.

And take a look at Battleships Forever. It's Freeware. http://www.wyrdysm.com/games.php

The game certainly has it's shortcomings, but I'm still a huge fan of it. I love the variety of ships of all eras and controlling your own small fleet of complimentary ships. My only wish is that they had given us actual Klingon, Romulan and Borg campaigns, but at least you can run all of their ships in the quick missions and MP. Very satisfying game (other than that asteroid blasting mission!)