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I just have to ask; How is the new Elite going to be significantly different from a game like X3 Terran Conflict? It might be easier and faster for him to just license and reskin the X3 engine.

http://www.egosoft.com/games/x3tc/screenshots_en.php

Want EVE, but single player? Check out the X-Series. Very similar, AND moddable. Some of them available for Linux too - check the developer's site's store for those.

http://store.steampowered.com/search/?developer=Egosoft
http://www.egosoft.com/

You could try the x3 series. You start at the bottom, so there's a lot of piloting your own small ship early on, but later on you can own industry chains and warships. And when you get there, the battles can be truly epic.

It's called "X: Rebirth" and is a follow-on to the quite successful X series of games (the current version being X3:Albion Prelude). These are pretty much Elite type trading/fighting sandboxes, but with multiple ships, remote controlled fleets (ie you can buy traders and set them off on autopilot trading for you), fighting (of course, but with wingmen ships or just sent your fleet of frigates or carriers to defend your trading sectors from the bad aliens, robot aliens or pirates), plus missions to keep things interesting - both small "transport a passenger to x", and large "follow a whole set of missions in a series to do something major".

What's a bit special (and controversial in the X community) is that the new game will be based around a single spacecraft (previously you could decide what kind of ship to pilot) but that has different 'rooms' to play from - so your co-pilot can be set to fly while you remote-control your combat drones or play the stock market or whatever.

Read more on the developer's forums

Nobody's quite sure exactly what it'll be like, but I think we can be confident Egosoft will pull the rabbit out, X3 served me very well for over a year, and I still didn't manage to finish all the plot missions. You can buy X3 on steam or impulse (or whatever impulse is called nowadays) for next to nothing, it cost me $10 in a special offer that seems to be repeated regularly.

Yeah, X3: Reunion. The game EVE-Online players go to when they get bored with computer-controlled guns.

Um. X Rebirth will be out next year. Until then there's Evochron Mercenary.

They're pretty drab even for a computer game, the X series looks a lot nicer than that screenshot. See here: http://www.egosoft.com/ Of course, the problem with X is that the entire series of games has the most diabolical story telling and voice acting I've ever experienced. Even worse than Breed! A great example is the fact that they named the alien bad guys the "Kh'aak" and then gave every voice actor an american accent. Kh'aak invasion indeed.

I would love a modern Elite (EVE is almost it, but I would like something that doesn't tether me to the internet).

It's called X3: Terran Conflict, published by a company called Egosoft. You can find an extremely well-written gameplay story here if you want to get an idea of the possibilities.

See you in six months :)

So then don't buy AAA Ports-R-US titles from the Big Boys. There are plenty of good PC publishers that have good games and don't treat their customers like criminals. Introversion is a great independent developer that makes wonderful games including Darwinia, Defcon, and Uplink. Stardock has some good games like Sins of a Solar Empire and Galactic Civilizations. If it is your thing, The X-Series is a good but complex space flight / trader simulation (think EVE Online but only not an MMO). Lastly, if you don't mind Steam, anything by Valve and many of the older and indie titles in their catalog are pretty good. Just because Ubisoft and EA want to screw over PC gamers doesn't mean that they are the only game (no pun intended) in town.

If you want something to whet your appetite there is a fantasticly well written gameplay AAR: Squiddy McSquid's possibly short life.

Spoilers abound (but you need to spoil yourself quite a bit to learn X3 anyway IMO) and it is written for other players, so some of it may not make much sense for someone who hasn't played the game. It should give you a real idea of the possibilities of the game however - the author is an inveterate pirate, which makes for good reading, he is also very, very good at the game; there is no way I could ever pull off most of the stuff there.

If you don't find what you see on the picture you've linked impressive, something is wrong with you.

Of course, that's just a drawing, so it's still just vaporware.

Yes I'm very much impressed by a screenshot from a game: http://www.egosoft.com/games/x3tc/info_en.php

A German setup called Egosoft make the X series of space sim/RPG games, along the lines of the old Elite games, where you can fly around trading, pirating, policing and generally making money and building your own fleet and space stations. Some of the more experienced players got a little bored with doing the same thing over and over so they started playing "Dead is Dead" or DiD games. The one golden rule is that you only save the game when you're done playing, and you only load to start playing. If some pirates "borrow" one of your traders too bad, if you jump into an ambush and your carrier gets badly damaged you'll just have to fork out for repairs, and if you die you have to start a completely new character. The extra edge meant that some people began chronicling these, and some of them have become incredibly popular (Story Guides section).

I'll second this! I've wasted many an hour playing X-3. The latest installment, X-3: Terran Conflict, came out late last year and features some pretty stunning graphics if you haven't played a space sim since the Wing Commander days (check out the screenshots... they're actually in-game with the HUD hidden, not cutscenes). I believe the games are translated (from German?) and can be a bit confusing at first (not just the user interface, but because of some balance issues and the lack of a real plot!), however the series does have a pretty active online following/modding community.

I consider the X Universe by Egosoft games to be worthy successors, and improvements upon, Elite. Damn fine games, and while the original X: Beyond the Frontier is unplayable these days, X2, X3: Reunion, and X3: Terran Conflict are all supported and run fine on Vista, and can be bought on Steam.

It would probably help if I knew who "Egosoft" was.

A games company. They're quite well known in the open ended game play sci-fi genre for games (Wiki link).

If they do remove their DRM, they're pretty much the only company that does.

Stardock also removed the DRM/copyright protection on their games actually.

If you're a big wing commander fan like I am, you will probably enjoy this game -- X3: The Reunion

Ive been playing this game for literally a year now, its alot like Privateer in how open it is and the way the game progresses. Great space combat and collision detection, decent story (but very short), but the open ending is well worth the purchase on Steam. 19.99 i think it is? Any decent rig will run it, but you need a decent box when you have 15 wingmen with you, a carrier and a destroyer attacking the xenon in one of their sectors... has a working economy.. only downside is its only single player.

Be forewarned.. its almost as addictive as an mmorpg :)

Definitely worth a try if you're into space sims.

The modern day equivalent of Elite 2 is the X# games. I was pleasantly surprised with X3: Reunion (http://www.egosoft.com/games/x3/info_en.php). Ok, it wasn't as massive as Frontier was (although it is pretty huge), but I think anyone who enjoyed Frontier, will a least have a bit of fun with X3. It has a similar structure in terms of it's gameplay elements (trading\combat\missions\ship upgrades) and also adds in the ability to build your own space stations. I get the similar sense of freedom I got with Frontier when playing X3.

Amen to that!
I spent countless hours hunting (and being hunted by) Thargoids ;)

By the way, those who loved Elite should check out X3: Reunion. It's close to what Elite would've been in this day and age.
Sure, there's hope for Elite 4 yet... a little more than DNF (though that may just be the optimistic view of an Elite fan talking :P )

Why aren't there more games like Syberia, Myst, The 7th Guest?

There are. Looked at store shelves lately? Everyone and their dog is making adventures like that. Sure, many aren't very good but that happens with all games.

Why not, for example, a space exploration game -- concentrating on the science, economics, and logistics involved, instead of the usual shoot-the-evil-green-aliens theme?

One of the so-called 4X games (Elite and its ilk, these days X3 is popular)? You can do anything you want in those and if you don't want to fight you won't have to (except maybe to fend off the occassional pirate).

The guy's somewhat right- the projects that he lists are quite impressive in that they promise a hell of a lot. However, in my experience with European developers, even if they have cool features or awesome graphics, their game will smack you down somewhere.

X3 Reunion, for example, suffers from high system requirements and it lacks the features that would make its innovative features great (e.g., you can't relocate or dismantle a station after you've built it). Moreover, the game universe makes freeform play almost too overwhelming to enjoy.

Neocron was plagued by seemingly endless bugs that ruined any coolness that any new patch would add.

I will say that some of the coolest games I've played have come out of Europe (e.g., Uplink), but they've had their fair share of duds (e.g., Iron Storm).

...that even in the far future, they still haven't solved the textiles problems that cause women's clothes to shrink for no adequately explained reason.

I'm guessing she's got that gun because she's going back to the boutique to get a refund.

I missed Elite, started with Frontier on the Amiga. Didn't experience the crashing though (not that I recall anyway).

Hardwar was a reasonably interesting game that reminded me of the gameplay in Frontier.

The X series of games could also be worth a look, there's a new one - X3:Reunion - due for release later in the year.

X-Beyond The Frontier
X2
X3 (coming soon)

http://www.egosoft.com/

They exist. They're pretty good, too.

I wonder if someone gave Dana Rohrabacher a copy of X2: The Threat or Vega Strike for his birthday?

After playing those for a few hours I always go outside and gaze up at the sky wistfully.

I hope Elite 4 is released soon.

We should give these games to more politicians around the world - with god mode pre-enabled - and say (lie outright),

`This could be you. Just forget the military and help us get into space.'

A boy's got to have his dreams.

Get 'X2 - The Threat' - it has everything I wanted the original Elite to do (I've been following this game type since I got Elite on the original BBC Micro version).

Awesome graphics, multiple ships (including massive destroyers and carriers), weapons, ship systems etc., trading, fighting, mining.

You can get the playable demo from http://www.egosoft.com/x/xmain.php?language=44&dis play=demo (137MB!)

I just want to play a SW MMOG that isn't a fp based, planet based, character interaction game. I wanted a space-sim, work on space based skills (like scounting, and lasers, engineering, and piloting, and mining, and capitalship systems), and join in massive wars, like the battle of endor.

It's a long wait, but having played X-Tension, and seeing how ambitious both X2 and the plans for XOL are, it just might be worth it.

Having said that, I do enjoy SWG (or I would if my GeForce 3 got more than 10FPS... grrrrr), but it is planet based and will never be a true space empire game. Which means, of course, that I have to kill the Rebel Scum one-at-a-time...