Oh, man SUPER CRATE BOX most certainly belongs on this list. This game is awesome fun.
EDIT: I am a bad man, I forgot to plug Free Orion, the open source 4x space empire game.
[](/sunsetsneaky) Sunset Shimmer takes over the galaxy. This is the best life for everyone.
[](/sp)
[](/rsgpopcorn) Actually, the last time I played the game I named my empire "Glimmerquisition," my homeworld "Our Planet," and all my ships variations on "Equality" and "Sunburst."
R.I.P., the good ship "Sunburst's Beard." A finer frigate I've never seen.
I am also curious about a comparison.
There is also FreeOrion that seems to be alive; and Thousand Parsec is probably still playable, even if its production stopped.
...then there were/are some first-person 3D games of similar vibe, but not necessarily pure 4X. I can dig them up if anyone is interested.
Used to play Naev quite some years ago, anx might pick it (or something similar) up again.
[](/party) Definitely Dwarf Fortress, especially if you get into modding. You can add all sorts of your own fantastic creations into the game, either as antagonists or even as playable entities.
Free Orion is also pretty customizable; I may or may not be playing with my originally created alien races in it right now.
You could have a look at Free Orion, starting with the philosophy and then digging into details in endless forum threads.
I hate MoO2 for being so fucking perfect it hasn't been improved since then.
All my prayers go out to the FreeOrion project, it's our last best hope.
Favourite single player game is FreeOrion; it's a very addictive 4X game and it's free software! :-)
Thanks! :-)
http://www.freeorion.org/index.php/Compile_In_Linux
Dependencies (11)
boost
bullet
freealut
graphviz
libogg
libvorbis
ogre
python2
sdl
cmake (make)
subversion (make)
For a time, i had big hopes for FreeOrion, but for now, it's not that great.
But it's not like were that short on 4X space games. Endless Space, Sins of a Solar Empire and StarDrive are all quite decent.
I haven't played the newest one, so I can't really answer on that; but the first one wasn't really like that.
It's based on an older game called Masters of Orion, a popular 4X game. There is a version of MoO called FreeOrion that is open-source and free; it should give you an idea of what to expect in Sins of a Solar Empire, although with not as pretty graphics or much of the things that make Sins a unique contender in the 4X genre.
Oh yes, that would be wonderful, though I think actually besting MOO2 is a tough challenge. Even just a refresh of MOO2 for modern PCs would make me happy.
I suppose there's also FreeOrion, which claims to be "inspired" by the MOO games, but also claims not to be a clone or remake of them either. I've never played it, though. Maybe I should crank it up to see if it's any good.