[MR_T3D]

Frontier.

Screw capships, I'm taking out a bulk cruiser to fight pirates in.

...not local bulk crusiers, mind you, I'm talking about the big coriellian ships here...

[haloboy100]

Frontier.

Screw capships, I'm taking out a bulk cruiser to fight pirates in.

...not local bulk crusiers, mind you, I'm talking about the big coriellian ships here...

OH!!!

I'll admit, though, the only experience I ever got with the capship thing was through the discovery mod in Freelancer, which I actually found surprisingly entertaining. (after cheating in order to afford the outrageously priced Osiris destroyer )

oh, and, speaking of Nexus...

To all gamers who became dangerously aroused every time a capital ship beam cannon fired in "Freespace 2": this game is meant for you. I really hope the developers plan to add content and expand on the game universe in the future, because this franchise definitely has potential.

I'm so getting this game. 

[Grizzly]

B17: Flying Fortress. The original or the revamped 3d version by microprose. I have the latter, the former has exactly the same name.

And yes, it's not science-fiction. But it is a good "capship" simulation .You can be any of the 10 crewmembers a B17 has (Pilot, Co-Pilot, Bombardier-gunner, Navigator, Radio-operator-gunner, and gunners), give them commands (Fix this, patch him up, abandon ship), and actually try how hard carpet bombings are (they use a really ingenious system in a B17, which sometimes allowed me to completely destroy a facility because my bombs where actually on target. Once, my bombs where on target, but I mistook the harbor I was supposed to bomb for a different one).

[Ashrak]

nexus and X2 actually, hated X3 overcomplicated.

[jkalltheway]

To all gamers who became dangerously aroused every time a capital ship beam cannon fired in "Freespace 2": this game is meant for you. I really hope the developers plan to add content and expand on the game universe in the future, because this franchise definitely has potential.

I'm so getting this game. 
[/quote]

You had me at "dangerously Aroused" 

[Ashrak]

Nexus is OK...it's mind-bogglingly slow paced though, and can end up being extremely boring. And it's not really balanced at all.

Case in point of the slow nature of it - I once had to restart a mission because I was unable to complete it. Why? Well, it was two ships vs. one, I had a light cruiser or frigate and my main ship, which is kind of like a heavy cruiser - the enemy had a really weak ship, something like a destroyer. So the enemy was circling my main ship, while my cruiser was firing at it - except the cruiser's weapons did so little damage and fired so slowly that it would drain the enemy shields, and by the time the weapons fired again, they had restored just enough energy to deflect the shot. Meanwhile, my other ship was spinning around it's axis trying to bring it's weapons to bare, but was rotating so slowly that it couldn't turn fast enough to actually fire. I tried everything for about 10 minutes until I finally gave up and restarted the mission from the beginning.

It is fun and interesting to play, and it's a pretty novel idea; just don't go into it expecting an action packed thrillride.

i never had a problem with small ships

[Davros]

If you do get Battlecruiser millenium, remember to put your dog in kennels first...

[jkalltheway]

Bridge Commander is a very interesting concept for a game. With a little more polish, some more updates to its graphics and a few interface changes it has the potential to be really really great.  But its not necessarily what i'm looking for. Like i mentioned before, i'm looking for something like Freespace 2 but with capital class ships, meaning anything from small corvettes to Super Juggernauts. Maybe like Eve Online too, but i haven't tried that

[Vidmaster]

so many here praise Nexus and you are still hesitating  ?

I actually liked the beginning of Nexus most. Unshielded non-sleek cap ships are just cooler than sleek and shielded ships.

The beginning of Nexus is very BSG like, it gives you an extreme feel of desolation. Later, the game shifts to much more complex scenarios and a desperate struggle as main story element, but at least you are not alone. Both are well executed and some new tactical elements are necessary to keep the game interesting, otherwise it would become repetitive after a while. So, therefore I love the beginning AND the rest 
Nexus is great, every single facet.      Just never ever play the lowest difficulty, I once did just because I was curious after all these "Professional" games. On "Beginner", you can just blast yourself through any level but the very last above Earth. Far far too easy.

Multiplayer with unshielded ships is extremely tactical, since you your sensors are so much more effective since your shield is always down. A well timed gunship and fighter assault along with a long-range nuke and that's it.
Close killing is intense too, since your ships relative profile to the enemy has a huge impact then. And who knows, maybe your enemy has a Mass Driver more than you. Or he has mounted Lasers instead of any Drivers, taking out your generator and that's it with your superior firepower 

[Grizzly]

Well.. I-War was 'corvette centric'. Pretty much like heavily armed, armored and shielded dogfighter.

They wanted a realistic 'dogfighter' (although you are flying with cap-ships... sort off) and actually made it believable, and more important, playable and fun. It's completely different from 'the usual' (TIE fighter up to FS2) and yet succeeds...

If you want to combine RTS and space sim, by the wya... Try Starshatter.

[jkalltheway]

so many here praise Nexus and you are still hesitating  ?

Well i wouldn't call it hesitating. Patience folks, patience

[mxlm]

Starshatter lets you directly pilot capital ships with your joystick. So, yes, that's probably the sort of thing the OP is looking for.

Although I never got around to picking up a copy, so I can only say that the demo was intriguing.

[Fineus]

Cheers to those who recommended Nexus, I've tried it out and am I really enjoying it. The only thing it lacks is the ability to control the capital ships movements precisely... I'd like to be able to move to a destination in space that isn't marked by a waypoint and - yes - I'd like to crash into asteroids along the way if I get it wrong.

[Flaser]

The kind of game I'd love to play or develop would be a realistic space tactical game.

Read the Honoverse series from David Weber for a "navalized" version, or if you're into just a "bit" harder sci-fi (like me) read the Lost Fleet series from Jack Campbell.

What I'm looking at is a game that focuses on fleets instead individual ships. Instead "fixed points" you'd set velocity and heading for fleets, naturally the game would be played on a light-minute scale, and "battle (relative) velocities" around 0.1 c to 0.2 c. You should really read a Lost Fleet novel to get what I mean.

It would be all about timing and getting the right angle on your enemy. If you can brush against the edge of his formation with your own (like a file rasping on the thin edge of knife) you could do enormous damage through your local superiority.

I forgot to mention: no in-battle manufacturing, no "purchasable" reinforcements. Only objectives and a limited set of ships (or fleets) to achieve them.

The whole solar system would be a battlefield. By the nature of things one party will be in the system before the other. We shall call it the "defender" (even if there is no objective to defend in system, for the sake identification we will do so). The one to arrive later will be the "attacker".

If FTL is used to arrive in the system (and this is a given if we speak about interstellar warfare)the attacker will always have the advantage thanks to the light-speed lag. When he arrives, his "sight" will begin to travel in spherical pattern to all in the system. The defender who has already been in the system for a while on the other hand already has a lot bigger "sight print" since it had more time to expand. Therefore the attacker will detect the defender and act as he chooses , while the defender will have to wait for the attacker's "sight" to reach them and can react only afterwards.

The game could get really hairy if we incorporate this lag into commands too. This would mean that the further your fleet is from your command ship(s), the more time it will take to react to a command. This would mean that you would have to give commands in advance and hope the situation that develops doesn't make them downright stupid when the time comes.

This makes the "approach" of the enemy fleets a wild guessing game. If I change course, it will take time for transmission to reach all ships/fleets. When the fleets (probably at preset time) execute the maneuver, the enemy will once again have to wait the light speed lag (which is more for him, since he's farther away) and can react only afterwards.

Let's give a simple example:
I'm the attacker, and I approach in a simple flat box formation with the smallest face of my box facing the defender. Our objective is to eliminate the other fleet. The defender also uses the same formation. As we're only 2 light-minutes away, I give the order for the whole formation to pivot upwards. After a while the defender finally sees this and pivots his formation even further up, so when we "collide" his steeper angled formation will file at the top of my own....but he was suckered. 0.8 light-minutes away I already gave another order to pivot the formation back down.... and now I will file at the bottom edge of his formation, and he sees this too late to reposition his formation.

[Scotty]

Unfortunately, if the battle takes place in an 'arena' the size of an enitire system, battles could take days.  Hell, sometimes the light-lag alone would be hours.  Being an avid fan of the Honorverse and such, I think it would be a colossal mistake to make it into an actual game.  It's too BIG to fit in a game that wouldn't take days to finish single engagements, and any attempt to shrink it would just result in disappointment everywhere.

[Flaser]

Unfortunately, if the battle takes place in an 'arena' the size of an enitire system, battles could take days.  Hell, sometimes the light-lag alone would be hours.  Being an avid fan of the Honorverse and such, I think it would be a colossal mistake to make it into an actual game.  It's too BIG to fit in a game that wouldn't take days to finish single engagements, and any attempt to shrink it would just result in disappointment everywhere.

The solution is simple:
Strategic movement takes place with time acceleration, so it takes a mere couple of minutes.
Once the combatants are within "battle range" (light minutes, which at speeds a closing speed of 0.4 c - both sides going at 0.2 c - translates to 5-15 minutes to cross the entire "battlefield" so to speak).

[Hades]

There is Escape Velocity Nova which is not in 3D, but has many different capital ships to pilot. You can also upgrade your ship, unlike in most games.

[Androgeos Exeunt]

There is Escape Velocity Nova which is not in 3D, but has many different capital ships to pilot. You can also upgrade your ship, unlike it most games.

If you deck the Unrelenting out with all the Sigma Upgrades, a Port and Polish, an Overdrive, an Afterburner and a Vectored Thrust, you can get a Pirate Carrier with almost the same mobility as a light capital ship, and with enough mass space to load up on all the railguns you want.

In the Discovery mod for Freelancer, you can buy and pilot big ships, but it's not easy. I honestly believe that using the Dromedary as a heavy fighter is much easier (which is what I usually do in vanilla).

[butter_pat_head]

I got Nexus because of this thread (protip: If you can stomach it get it off Steam cheaper than most, if not all eBay sellers.  I should have).

I just completed the game on beginner (yep, I wussed out on medium at that first mission against the Gorg.  Took me two days to get to that mission).  It a bit of a breeze but the scripting and voice acting more than made up for it.

Also: BEST CREDITS SCREEN EVER! But I dont know if you need to finish the game first before you can see what I saw.

[darkone]

There are some good mods for Nexus as well so that's a plus as well.