What's the new Wing Commander?
 

Well, more the like the new Descent (1995). Or the new X-Wing. Or... whatever.

Broadly speaking, what's the currently popular space combat simulator that runs under Windows, and supports joystick input and internet-based multiplayer gameplay? I can't find a single title aside from Eve: Valkyrie, and I don't have the CPU / GPU horsepower to drive a Rift properly.

OMG Descent!!!!

I loved that game!

I think I played Descent 2 and or 3, mostly the multiplayer.

Not sure what the new one is, or if there even is one. I feel that is an older game genre.

Did you ever play Descent free space, I think it was called? I have many hours on that game.

Exactly. That, but multiplayer via the internet, and in a desktop PC form factor, and without being abducted by aliens and replaced by an android which inappropriately touches my girlfriend.

So, something completely different.



True story: as a kid growing up in Florida and Puerto Rico, I had no concept of the idea that places like southern California existed. My world was one of 99% humidity, in which an arcade cabinet could never have survived outdoors. It was that, and not the CGI flying cars and talking lizards, which seemed most implausible to me about the film.

After I got a real job and started traveling to places like Buffalo, Toronto, Chicago, etc., I discovered that there existed machines whose sole function was to add humidity to the air inside a building. Blew my fucking mind.

Joe, do you not Star Citizen? https://robertsspaceindustries.com/

This is the multiplayer space sim to rule them all.

Somewhat simpler is the Descent descendant, Descent:Underground, at https://descendentstudios.com/
It's founded (in part) by Eric Peterson, who worked with Chris Roberts in the Origin glory days, and was part of the founding team for Star Citizen but didn't want to move to the core hub in SoCal from Austin, and so had to move on.

Edit: if you don't have the computing gusto for VR right now you may not be super happy with Star Citizen, as it's being designed to take advantage of not just current but future hardware.

Well, damn. Rephrase the question then as "What's the new Wing Commander, that everyone's playing, that runs on decade-old hardware."

With Space Sims you have a choice. Circa 1995-2000, or now. Pretty much in between was a black hole. There are still freelancer servers out there if you want to.

In the in-between space there is the X3 series, which with the Litcube's Universe mod provides a very satisfying "I'm going to galactic overlord the shit out of this motherfucker, and kick some major alien ass" single player experience, but you specified multi player.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1467726749

But yeah, I was kind of hoping to find whatever the new hotness was about 5-10 years ago that's still in use today. Sort of like TF2. But you're essentially confirming what I suspected, which is that pretty much nothing happened after Descent until just recently.

Which kinda sucks.

I have happy memories of Tie Fighter.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1467727253

I liked the Wing Commanders a lot, loved X-Wing and TIE Fighter, but never understood the fascination with Descent.

But yeah, the "vehicle combat sim" genre has been dead for ages. Star Citizen promises to be what you want, but it's not out yet and a lot of people seem to be dubious that it's going to actually deliver what it promises. It's also unlikely to run on ancient hardware. There are vehicle elements in some of the FPS games (the Halo series on Xbox in particular), but that's not the same thing.

The other problem with the "play 5 year old games" approach is that if you want to play multiplayer online games, you need to play what other people are playing *now*, not what they were playing 5 years ago before they abandoned it and moved on to shiny new things. Also, yeesh, was that comic really from 2008?

There is an "in-cockpit" view for Kerbal Space Program, so if you want you can play it from a first-person perspective... :)

--Ian

Which is why I used the TF2 example. It was released in 2007, and went F2P in 2011, and yet it still has a huge number of active servers. There are 59,000 people playing it right now (at 1:00 pm on a Tuesday),

Don't get me wrong- I'd love to play whatever the new hotness is with a Rift and such. But I'm not gonna sink >$1,000 into upgrading my PC just to play videogames.



July 6, 2009: 606: Cutting Edge - explain xkcd

Star Citizen and freelancer both use the much nicer mouse controls over the joystick. Dont get me wrong I played the shit out of x wing and later in life wing commander but the mouse works as a much nicer control all the time, especially when you're kind of just cruising around between fights.

But space dogfight simulator isnt a game that exists right now.

Take out the dogfight and the joystick control and you also open up elite dangerous. Maybe strike suit zero?

If you just want to get your space fighting done in something pretty and can do without the joystick, mp, and dogfights but dont want to have to drive between things like a sandbox there's nexus the jupiter incident, but thats just a ridiculously pretty 12 year old game compared to something modern.