What about space combat sims?

[+SayethWhaaaa]

Freespace 2 and it's mods, including B5 and BSG, is still considered one of the best space shooters out there.

 

No question, hands down. It's easy to play, fun in multi, has unbelievable depth to it in its vanilla form let alone in it's modded or modern guise, you can mod the absolute piss out of it with only a cursory glance at the FRED manual. X3's looking pretty sweet too, although the lack of multi is a bit of a shame and Eve online seems much the same, although I hear the bell curve is a bit steep. Colony Wars and Colony Wars 2, though looking dated now, are still a blast to play.

 

It's a real shame space sims aren't as popular as they were back in the late 90s.

[+Gr.Viper]

Hmm.. Colony Wars got me interested... all 3 of them.

[+bobrock]

Freespace looks like a terrific platform. I'm keeping an eye on both Wing Commander Saga and Galactica mods. They're community based projects and will be released (some day...) for free, I think there are also betas available.

I do remember fondly the Wing Commander days on my first pc...

[Von Paulus]

I've been following Diaspora (Galactica mod for Freespace) for a year and unfortunately there's no beta yet. But it's looking good.

[+Fates]

One that you may find some interest in following is http://www.moonbasealphagame.com/

 

This game is based on the same platform as America's Army.

 

“Moonbase Alpha” is the first game in NASA’s Learning Technologies project. Like the Army, the space agency plans to continually develop the game. The intent is to grow the prototype into a massive multi-player game called “Astronaut: Moon, Mars and Beyond.”