[NGTM-1R]

O.R.B. had a great story, decent gameplay, but it was...silly, in some respects. The limiting resource cap made the missions something of a puzzle. I never completed the Malus campaign. I did, once, complete the Aleus one, after hours, nay, days of repeating the final level.

[General Battuta]

It was a really unforgiving game. Which was compounded by the fact that it was incredibly slow.

[Vidmaster]

exactly. Horrible and boring.

Play Homeworld folks. Play the sequel. Play Nexus: Jupiter Inccident. Play Haegemonia. Play Sins of a Solar Empire.
Play Master of Orion. But stay away from ORB. Crap (no offense intended NGTM).

[Fury]

I was entertained by ORB. Played the first campaign through twice and the second once. It was slow and a bit difficult at times. But I focused on the best capital ship available at given time, no fighter support. Those beams on caps took care of fighters rather well.

Sins of a Solar Empire I couldn't get into, I ditched it. Hegemonia was great, as was Nexus. Oh god, I'd love a sequel to Nexus or even a similar game. A tactical fleet simulation just makes my skin crawl with excitement.

[Scotty]

For some reason I hated Hegemonia.  Could never find anything.  Nexus:  The Jupiter Incident I think takes the cake for best Space Sim story (aside from some parts of FreeSpace).  It also had pretty awesome battles, once you got shields (and the guns that go through shields).  Master of Orion I think is the god of turn based space sim (I LOVED the second one), but the third one didn't take off the same way.  Haven't played Sins, but I have a friend who has it, I'll try to get over there sometime soon.

Once again, my problem with O.R.B. was the pop cap.

[NGTM-1R]

Sins is...playable. I'm not terribly into multiplayer (haven't since Grand Theft Starship...uh, Homeworld) so the game's appeal is mainly lost on me. GalCiv 2 and expansions did it better, but have a horrible habit of crashing out in terror of high-activity large-galaxy maps.

[General Battuta]

I absolutely loved Nexus. I should get a copy off Steam -- my old box is missing a CD.

[Vidmaster]

Nexus is available through STEAM too     Whoa.

Yeah, there was that sequel planned but it got canceled. So far, Nexus stands a THE de facto best Space RTS Game. Comparing Homeworld 2 and Nexus isn't exactly fair since Nexus is still a different Genre but hell, Nexus is still the better of the two.
Homeworld2 and Nexus represent the pinnacle of Space RTS Gameplay so far.

Another sleeper hit is Star Wolves by the way, Mixing Fleet Simulation with RPG elements. Sequel wasn't that great but still playable.

[haloboy100]

Sins is...playable. I'm not terribly into multiplayer (haven't since Grand Theft Starship...uh, Homeworld) so the game's appeal is mainly lost on me.

I never play online. Ever. And I still really liked sins. It doesn't really have anything paticularly special to offer, but I found the whole spectacle really engaging. The space battles look like crap, though, if you have two massive fleets going at it. Neither of the ships move and they sit there lobbing lasers at each other while the frame rate gets raped.

[Vidmaster]

yeah but Sins isn't actually setting it's focus on the Space Battles. In fact, those are simple and don't require attention, the AI is programed in such a way that once engaged, a fleet can handle itself pretty good.
That is a necessity for a 4X RTS 

[deathfun]

What about Tachyon: The Fringe?


Am I the only person in the world who has bought that game?

[SpardaSon21]

I have Sins.  Its okay.  Like Vidmaster said, tactics are meaningless in Sins due to its scale.  Of course, it does have several mods in the works for it.  There is a Star Trek TC which has some of the team from the HW TC, a Star Wars TC (made by EvilleJedi, guy behind Warlords for HW2), there is The Last Stand by a guy known as ManSh00ter which aims to be an unofficial expansion for Sins, and there is 7 Deadly Sins, which can only be described as Sins's Inferno.  I really can't describe 7 Deadly Sins properly as its size defies description.

And if 4X games are being mentioned in all of this, Sword of the Stars and its two expansions need to be included.  It has excellent gameplay, incredibly diverse factions (they even have different methods of FTL travel), and it has some of the best real-time space combat with Newtonian physics and real-time projectile tracking.  And the dev team for Sword of the Stars worked on HW, HW:C. and the original Ground Control.

[General Battuta]

They did? What studio was it? If so, they've got a magic touch.

And yeah, I really enjoyed Tachyon.

[phatosealpha]

Tachyon had it's good point and it's bad points.  The ability to wander around systems was utterly pointless, and there wasn't much variety in terms of weapons.

On the other hand, it had that Sistine chapel mission, which is worth the $20 I paid way back when by itself.




And Sins....well, I just don't have much faith in Stardock.  Galciv was OK, but a little monotonous and didn't even feel like an improvement over the ages old Master of Orion 2.
Sins itself decided to horribly destroy any hope I had when my first game was a straight line galaxy with only 1 path through, and pirates dead at the center - pirates, who because of the way
the game functions, became the most powerful empire in living history.  I couldn't win or lose, because neither side could make it through the battle of endor fleet the pirates had just hanging out.


O.R.B. ..... talk about bad design.  The later missions you can bring a super-battleship through.  A super-battleship which eats up your entire pop-cap so you can't even build constructor units to get more pop-cap.  Wonderful.

[Davros]

What about Tachyon: The Fringe?


Am I the only person in the world who has bought that game?

no I bought it too...

and loved it

[karajorma]

What about Tachyon: The Fringe?


Am I the only person in the world who has bought that game?

I liked Tachyon but I never completed it. You might want to check out Fringespace though. They're the forgotten TC.

[Fury]

Yeah, there was that sequel planned but it got canceled.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PC4y2T0-skM

[Androgeos Exeunt]

Does Terminal Velocity count?

[TrashMan]

They did? What studio was it? If so, they've got a magic touch.

And yeah, I really enjoyed Tachyon.

Kerberos productions.

If you do get SOTS (and expansions) do try out my big mod for it - I re-did the human race from ground up. I think I made over 100 models for that mod alone.
http://www.kerberos-productions.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=6945

[JVLK]

Everyone should try out this game.

http://starwraith3dgames.home.att.net/evochronlegends/index.htm

Very awesome game, it's like elite+ if I dare to say so.
Best part is that it's a one man devolopment and that this guy listens to his customers and brings out patches with a lot of improvements almost every 14 days or so. 

Everyone who likes elite or x3, freelancer etc should download the demo which is a whopping 50mb 
http://www.starwraith.com/evochron_legends.exe