[jr2]

Eternal Silence (You will need a free Steam account.  No, you will not need to spend any money or buy Half-Life 2)

Anyone heard of this?

From the Storyline section of the site:

The Origin War

In the final war on Earth, two sides struggled against each other in a desperate, climactic battle far above the planet. One side, realizing defeat was near, detonated a prototype superweapon planetside.
Earth was consumed entirely by the mysterious weapon, leaving no trace behind.
The weary survivors, victors only in a hollow sense, set forth in their military vessels to the nearest habitable system. On their backs rested the burden to rebuild human civilization from a small colony on a hostile planet named Neo Terra.
550 years later, another major war, the Nova War would besiege humanity. In a disturbing parallel to the Origin War, the superweapon that destroyed Earth would be pieced together from the ashes of history, in a secret project codenamed Eternal Silence.

United Terran Forces Background
Neo Galactic Militia Background
Planet Profiles

Eternal Silence Story

Table of Contents

Prologue A
Chapter 1: Everett (PDF Download)
Chapter 2: Aethra
Chapter 3: Mouser
Chapter 4: Gunsmith
Chapter 5: Traitor
More coming soon...

Story written by Rex "X-Ray" Riepe

Eternal Silence Short-Stories

Dr. Lewis Notes
The Arlon Incident
More coming soon...

Short Stories written by Alfred "GMan" Goodrich

[General Battuta]

I played this when it was a big deal something like three or four years ago.

It's okay. Played a lot like Battlefront 2. Died out pretty fast.

[Dragon]

Is that singleplayer or MP-only? Anyway, it does look interesting.

[General Battuta]

MP only last I knew.

[Dragon]

It sounds like it has a potential for a good SP campaign, and the ship designs are interesting. But if it's MP only, I'm not going to get it. I'm not really playing arcade space sims for shooting things with lasers, but for story.

[General Battuta]

It had some pretty serious netcode issues in the space combat.

[jr2]

Looks like MP-only, but very moddable.. *shrugs* yeah, that kinda kills my joy, too.. I wish they had an SP mode.

However, on the plus side, gliding (called "cutting" engines) works, and you have full thruster control.  It feels very similar to FreeSpace, with an Afterburner (called Boost), weapon energy, missiles, etc, etc.   Tri-chording also works.    (The speed gauge is inaccurate whilst doing so, but if you release all except your forward thrusters, your speed will suddenly show above max before slowing back down. Haven't tried it in combo with boost and cut engines, but we'll see.)

[Nuke]

ive always called gliding "normal flight". seriously thats just how things work in space. sure you can use force (thrusters) to make your spacecraft fly like an aircraft or a submarine, but that burns a ****ton of fuel.

[MatthTheGeek]

Obligatory "REALISM ? IN MAH GAME ?"

[jr2]

Frictionless flight?  What about the drag from teh subspace fluxx on your trans-dimensional hyper-ion plasma drive??

[Mongoose]

Obviously the luminiferous aether would have to exert some sort of influence.

[General Battuta]

the oberth effect is ****ing weird