Plenty of good suggestions here, but I am saddened by the lack of Elite and Nomad in this thread.

Elite runs on pretty much anything, all the way down to an abacus if that's all you've got. :D I do believe it is freeware, now, released by its author into the public domain.

Nomad is a spiritual successor of Elite, albeit one with better graphics (and an odd fascination with argyle socks).

Further, I could recommend the Independence War series, which are available here on GOG, although the second might be more to your tastes. If you'd like something a little more strategy-ish, Nexus does a fantastic job providing you with the "sensawunda" that epic SF can bring on its audience. Haegmonia is a similar game, although somewhat inferior to Nexus.

(Edit: I can see in between starting to write my answer and actually hitting the "submit" button, someone mentioned Elite. This warms my curmudgeonly heart.)

(Edit the second: And I completely forgot to mention BattleCruiser 3000AD. For all that it can present as a hot mess of garbage on some computers, it's quite a game if it runs well on yours. At least give it a looksee. Also freeware.)

That's me. Head of PR & marketing for GOG.

Since y'all are collectively both our public and our market, I figure it behooves me to hang out in our forums when I've got a few minutes and chat. While I can't hope to keep tabs on all of the forums, I'm at least trying to keep up on the threads in General Discussion and The Witcher 2 at the moment. Hopefully my blue text will not end up squelching any conversation.

So this entire post is entirely off-topic. Apologies in advance to Runehamster.

A certain level of circumspection is still required from me, since a great number of things that we're hoping to come true are 99% sure but not guaranteed to happen, so I'll simply say that you'll see what we're up to soon. :D

Well, I'll be happy to clarify: Yes. We use 'em both, although it is generally pronounced as individual letters.

It really is a fun game. One of the stranger facts about me is that I own about half of the GOG catalog, but I bought 'em when they were new. NOMAD, while not a GOG title, is another one of those classic games that I've been carting around on CD for something over a decade, playing every few years. It is not, by any means, the best space exploration game, but it has more charm than virtually any other entrant in that genre.

But those Phelonese, man? To heck with them and their argyle sooks, man. To heck with 'em.


Thanks!

..and with that, my apologies for threadjacking. I'll hand it back over to you guys. :D

I bought Haegmonia, oh, four or more years ago and enjoyed it. Got Nexus a year or so after that and realized that, while Haegmonia is a good game, there's really a much better story behind Nexus.

That freaking Gorg battlestation mission ticks me off more than any mission in Haegmonia ever did, so you gotta take the good with the bad, I suppose.