I agree with some posts above for the X series. Contrary to Freelancer (and its little brother Starpoint Gemini), there is a vastness and a real sense of proportions in the Xs, and it is very contemplative. Planets are huge, space stations are huge, everything is huge and despite the borders of each system, I really have the feeling than I am in Space.

One thing is missing though : a system where there is NO planet, and nothing, where we could be in the middle of absolute nowhere somewhere in deep dark space.

I'm quite familiar with Eve Online. I've flown with some of the best back in 2007-2009. It is a wonderfully dangerous sci-fi setting, if entirely because of other players being ruthless. The scale of space is rather large for a game actually, the distance between planets is so vast you can't even see them against the starscape. Only the sun gives you any sense of direction. All good.

Warp Drives trivialise these distances however and makes space feel like a going for a drive. Everything is less than a minute away. Did I just travel a kilometer or 3,000,000,000 kilometers? Did I enter an entirely different star system? Doesn't matter.

That said, I will never forget volunteering to help escort a large freighter through lawless and contested space. A trip passing through some 40+ systems. It took 6 hours real time and I could not take a break as I would never be able to catch up with the convoy again. It sure did feel like space was never ending, and we were nervous as hell for most of the trip. Every time we ran into other players we had to halt for several minutes waiting for them to leave the system or figure out if they were setting up an ambush.

We made the trip without firing a single shot. Everyone we ran into were as scared of our numbers as we were of them.

(Also: Yeah, I'm quite depressed thinking about how we won't even reach the Oort Cloud in our lifetime. Space is too damn big, how do astrophysicists and the like not get depressed as hell? Seeing the universe like that makes it all seem so pointless, and us so insignificant.)

NEXUS: The Jupiter Incident starts off that way. There's a little bit of FTL in there, but it's not like Star Trek or something. That game's held up pretty well; there's a 1.03 patch that just recently hit on Steam, and it helps with UI scaling which is a big deal at resolutions above 1920x1080, so if you play at high resolutions, see if you can get that patch (the GOG version is currently 1.02).

Frontier: Elite II

quote from wikipedia: "Frontier operates on a very large scale compared to previous games, and most games since. It is, for example, possible to do realistic gravitational slingshots around supermassive stars and large planets, and in the same engine fly close enough to the ground to read the (accurate) time from the face of a clock"

No Man's Sky, which has gotten a ton of bad publicity (not entirely deservingly in my opinion) might be what you are looking for.

Size-wise, the universe is more or less infinite. However, traveling between star systems takes only a few seconds because you hyper-jump. Within systems, though, it might take upwards of five minutes to fly from one planet to another. In terms of gaming time that feels like a lot, and that's if you use the fast engine. If you use a normal one it can take hours, though there isn't really a need to do this.

Another potential benefit is in that it isn't "hardcore" as you said. A casual player who is into infinite travel will be happy with it. I must mention, however, that the game has no goal or end other than what you set for yourself. This was one of the criticisms brought up against it.

No Man's Sky? Hard pass.

Doesn't matter if the universe is practically infinite if everything is clustered together and space feels crowded rather than vast and creepy.

For those of you who fondly remember Firefly, there is a scene in which a character is clinging on to the skin of a ship. He briefly turns around to stare into the vast emptiness and is overcome with vertigo and dread. Space is hella creepy. It's just too big to comprehend. Nothing in our earthly life compares, we have no reference to work with.

I should mention that games like Master of Orion fits the bill I've drafted. Each game turn feels like a significant amount of time and the distances between the stars do feel significant as journeys can take several turns to conclude. Yes, the FTL speeds are extreme and the stars are a lot more densely clustered than in real life, but it is still big enough that the size of the galaxy impacts the experience.

Rebel Galaxy feels vast, and will take you forever to get anywhere without activating the heavier engines.

If you read the first post, you'd see I actually already dismissed Rebel Galaxy precisely because it's star systems are tiny with everything clustered together. Often times, planets spawn close enough that you can glide on over using just afterburners. I enjoyed the game, it is fun, but it isn't the kind of sci-fi I'm looking for. It feels like mashing plastic toy spaceships together, it doesn't feel like an actual place/universe.

I suppose. I glanced over the OP and only saw two games listed, managed to miss Rebel Galaxy.

There was another game I was trying to remember but gave up trying to find, which I only explored maybe 10 sectors out of thousands in the period of several hours and... well... I kinda gave up on it. Hmmm...

Independence War 2

It takes place in a realistically modeled star cluster. It's not Earth's solar system so things might be closer in that star system than here - but the distances are plausible.

heh, I might have just found the next couple games I'll be playing... Hopefully reviewing.

Elite Dangerous definitely has some large scale presence to the game.

Sure, you can jump from one star to another, if you've got a ship powerful enough you can jump even further, but then you also have to head to the planets/space stations.

I recall doing one quest where I headed to a new solar system. When I got to the main star, skimmed it for fuel whilst looking on map to mark my route to space station, when it hit me.

I had to travel over 235k light seconds to get to it.

Flying in a straight line to that station, took me over 20 minutes (& a lot of alt tabbing to browse forums hehe) whilst occasionally enjoying the view & checking for other players/npcs in the area & audio always on to make sure wasn't attacked.

I've not even contemplated heading to Beagles Point, which is 60,000 light years from Sol (hell, not even made it to Sol hehe).

/thread

huh?