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PurplePanda’s Space/Construction Game list This list is being created for anyone who or wants some DU-ish games to play between tests or until DU releases. All of these have been chosen by me through “extensive” research that I did an hour ago, as well as some personal favorite of mine. Hope you enjoy some of these games, I think some of them are definitely worth a look! (Note all reviews will be from there Steam pages) Out Now Avorion - Early Access A procedural co-op space sandbox where players can build their own space ships out of dynamically scalable blocks. Fight epic space battles, explore, mine, trade, wage wars and build your own empire to save your galaxy from being torn apart by an unknown enemy I’ve seen this game around for a little bit and although I’ve never played it myself, I find the aesthetics and mechanics look fantastic. For me it really puts into scope how big the universe is and how there is so much more out there, but less in an existential way, and more in an curious way. All Reviews: Very Positive Recent Reviews: Overwhelmingly Positive. $22.95 AU https://store.steampowered.com/app/445220/Avorion/ Astroneer - Fully Released Explore and reshape distant worlds! Astroneer is set during the 25th century Intergalactic Age of Discovery, where Astroneers explore the frontiers of outer space, risking their lives in harsh environments to unearth rare discoveries and unlock the mysteries of the universe. In this space sandbox adventure, players can work together to build custom bases above or below ground, create vehicles to explore a vast solar system, and use terrain to create anything they can imagine. A player’s creativity and ingenuity are the keys to thriving on exciting planetary adventures! Once again I haven’t actually played the game but I’ve seen it from time to time and the aesthetics are simply whimsical. I also watched a very interesting and entertaining documentary about it and the company’s creation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfUjl4owxTQ All Reviews: Very Positive Recent Reviews: Very Positive. $29.99 AU https://store.steampowered.com/app/361420/ASTRONEER/ Star Made - Early Access The ultimate space sandbox. Participate in epic fleet battles, form alliances, strive to dominate entire galaxies and harness the universe’s resources for your industrious empire or the destruction of others. Customize your experience, the universe is yours! A voxel-based 3D sandbox set in the never-ending darkness of space. Create your own ships, explore new galaxies, stars, and planets. Discover and salvage space stations, fight against pirates or opposing factions in multiplayer. Equip your ships with completely customizable weapons and conquer the galaxy. Trade and make a fortune, mass produce materials in gigantic factories. Design your very own space station. Create warp gates and network the universe at your front door. Star made is probably the game I have sunk the most hours into (although not that impressive), and I’ll admit I had a lot of fun doing it but the game has kind of stagnated. Personally, I think it is a good game but updates now rarely come out and the community is all but dead. If you enjoy playing by yourself and are able to see past some of its problems, I do believe you could have a genuinely enjoyable experience. At the very least it could be useful for prototyping ship ideas. All Reviews: Mixed Recent Reviews: Mostly Positive. $Free. Download the demo it’s the full game. https://www.star-made.org/ Interstellar Rift - Early Access Interstellar Rift is an open world Starship Simulator with an emphasis on ship construction and multi-player interaction. Players can explore and conquer the galaxy with their own custom designed and constructed a starship. Space is vast, but you won't have to face it alone, other players will be able to join your crew, and help out, or build their own rival fleet and fight you across the galaxy. I don’t own this game and have only recently learned about it but from what I’ve seen (and read) it incentivizes ship creation and allows for immense amounts of creative freedom. All Reviews: Mostly Positive Recent Reviews: Mixed. $26.95 AU https://store.steampowered.com/app/363360/Interstellar_Rift/ FTL: Faster Than Light - Fully Released In FTL you experience the atmosphere of running a spaceship trying to save the galaxy. It's a dangerous mission, with every encounter presenting a unique challenge with multiple solutions. What will you do if a heavy missile barrage shuts down your shields? Reroute all power to the engines in an attempt to escape, power up additional weapons to blow your enemy out of the sky, or take the fight to them with a boarding party? This "spaceship simulation roguelike-like" allows you to take your ship and crew on an adventure through a randomly generated galaxy filled with glory and bitter defeat. I don’t know much about this game and I have never played it, but I know it’s a classic and that it’s a classic for a reason. Definitely worth a try if you haven't yet. All Reviews: Overwhelmingly Positive Recent Reviews: Overwhelmingly Positive. $14.50 AU https://store.steampowered.com/app/212680/FTL_Faster_Than_Light/ Cosmoteer - Early Access Cosmoteer is a starship design, simulation, and battle game. Design a fleet of ships by placing individual modules including weapons, shields, engines, and hallways. Battle A.I. starships to earn bounties or test your design skills against other players. A dynamic crew and combat simulation make every design decision important and interesting. This game is one of my recent favorite, hands down. I find the way how the shipbuilding and 2D elements blend to be thoroughly enjoyable. There is a large amount of flexibility when it comes to the construction of your ships and I find it deeply satisfying when I pit two of my creation against each other, using there A.I to efficiently decimate the other party. I highly recommend this game, whether you're into pitting your creations against other peoples ships or your own (or the bounty hunter campaign). Plus there's nothing to lose, it’s free!!! (There's also a relatively large modding community). No Official Reviews. $Free (at least for now). https://cosmoteer.net/ Space Engineers - Fully Released Space Engineers is a sandbox game about engineering, construction, exploration, and survival in space and on planets. Players build space ships, space stations, planetary outposts of various sizes and use's, pilot ships and travel through space to explore planets and gather resources to survive. I don’t have much to say on this title as I have played it only on occasion, it’s a very well know game with a good single player mode. The multiplayer has been notorious for its issues but it does work to some extent (from what I’ve seen) and it was known for its insanely long alpha period, but in total it’s apparently a really good game. All Reviews: Very Positive Recent Reviews: Very. $28.95 AU https://store.steampowered.com/app/244850/Space_Engineers/ No Man’s Sky - Fully Released In No Man's Sky, every star is the light of a distant sun, each orbited by planets filled with life, and you can go to any of them you choose. Fly smoothly from deep space to planetary surfaces, with no loading screens, and no limits. In this infinite procedurally generated universe, you'll discover places and creatures that no other players have seen before - and perhaps never will again. If you know anything about this game, you know about its horrendously rough start and while I wouldn't say all the hate the company was just, after twenty hours of playing I got bored and stopped. But while some of the responses were justified, Hello Games were able to truly turn their disaster around. Although I myself have barely played it since release I intend to soon, that's because in the years No Man’s Sky has been online Hello Game has been constantly updated. If you bought this game and have never looked at it since I highly suggest you give it another chance, you may be pleasantly surprised. All Reviews: Mixed Recent Reviews: Very Positive. $84.95 AU https://store.steampowered.com/app/275850/No_Mans_Sky/ Kerbal Space Program - Fully Released In Kerbal Space Program, take charge of the space program for the alien race known as the Kerbals. You have access to an array of parts to assemble fully-functional spacecraft that flies (or doesn’t) based on realistic aerodynamic and orbital physics. Launch your Kerbal crew into orbit and beyond (while keeping them alive) to explore moons and planets in the Kerbol solar system, constructing bases and space stations to expand the reach of your expedition. K.S.P is another game I would have to list as a favorite game, simply because it is so difficult yet so fun, in all the 40 hours I’ve played I got nowhere, but I got nowhere with style. And I think that's what's so great about it, if you do dedicate time and effort you can go somewhere, you can go to many many where’s. Whether you're a casual player that just wants to play in sandbox mode or colonies the solar system through dedication, this game deserves a look. All Reviews: Very Positive Recent Reviews: Overwhelmingly Positive. $45.99 AU https://store.steampowered.com/app/220200/Kerbal_Space_Program/ PULSAR: Lost Colony - Early Access Team up to operate an advanced starship and explore a randomized galaxy falling into chaos. Each player assumes a role aboard the ship: Captain, Pilot, Scientist, Weapons Specialist and Engineer. Coordination between your crewmembers will be essential in order to survive the perils that await you. I’ve been seeing the game on multiple sites like youtube for the past few years and it always caught my attention. I love the idea of having specialized roles and love how they have been able to recreate that ship on the frontier feel, with only yourself and your crewmates to rely on. If you like playing in friend groups, or just want to feel like you actually are controlling a ship, this game is for you. All Reviews: Very Positive Recent Reviews: Overwhelmingly Positive. $35.95 AU https://store.steampowered.com/app/252870/PULSAR_Lost_Colony/ Planet Nomads - Fully Released Planet Nomads is a single player sci-fi sandbox game of survival on alien planets through block-style building. You are a lone astronaut scientist crash-landing on a strangely captivating planet. Keeping your wit together and securing your basic survival needs that include food, water, and building material is the best start towards figuring out a way out of this messy situation. This game started its development around the same time as the No Man’s Sky hype and sort of faded into the background, and although production continued the product today is quite controversial. Many of the players say that the game failed due to lag, mediocre updates, and eventual boredom while many others really like the game and still support it. If your willing to give this game a chance and aren't adverse to a bit of risk it might be something to check out. All Reviews: Mixed All Reviews Mixed. $28.95 AU https://store.steampowered.com/app/504050/Planet_Nomads/ Elite Dangerous - Fully Released Elite Dangerous is the definitive massively multiplayer space epic, bringing gaming’s original open-world adventure to the modern generation with a connected galaxy, evolving narrative and the entirety of the Milky Way re-created at its full galactic proportions. I don’t actually know much about Elite, I know it’s big, it’s pretty and it’s quite hard to get into it and enjoy it but other than that it’s up to you to investigate and research. All Reviews: Mixed Recent Reviews: Very Positive. $42.95 AU https://store.steampowered.com/app/359320/Elite_Dangerous/ Infinfactory - Fully Released Infinifactory is a sandbox puzzle game by Zachtronics, the creators of SpaceChem and Infiniminer. Build factories that assemble products for your alien overlords, and try not to die in the process. This game is all about industry, so it would be perfect for anyone partaking in Alpha 2 to get some “practice” before or in between (I don’t know how much help it would be). Other than that, anyone who likes to create systems that work flawlessly or like to think logically might like this game. All Reviews: Very Positive Recent Reviews: Overwhelmingly Positive. $35.95 AU https://store.steampowered.com/app/300570/Infinifactory/ Empyrion Galactic Survival - Early Access Empyrion - Galactic Survival is a 3D open-world space sandbox survival adventure. Build powerful ships, mighty space stations and vast planetary settlements to explore, conquer or exploit a variety of different planets and discover the mysteries of Empyrion! As far as I can tell, Empyrion is a game similar to Space engineers with more customization ability for its creations. Of course, there are probably several key differences but I have not played the game and thus do not know. All Reviews: Very Positive Recent Reviews: Mostly Positive. $28.95 AU https://store.steampowered.com/app/383120/Empyrion__Galactic_Survival/ Nimbatus - Early Access Nimbatus - The Space Drone Constructor is an action-packed simulation game. Craft drones out of hundreds of different parts and explores a destructible, procedurally generated galaxy. Build autonomous drones to fight against other players' creations. Do you have what it takes to become a drone engineer? I’ve only played Nimbatus for a little bit, but from what I have played and have seen externally from the game, it is going to highly appeal to those who like using logic parts. While i is an extremely fun game without using them and I suggest you look into the game, either way, the logic parts are definitely one of its strong suites. All Reviews: Very Positive Recent Reviews: Very Positive $28.95 AU https://store.steampowered.com/app/383840/Nimbatus__The_Space_Drone_Constructor/ EVE Online - Fully Released EVE Online is a community-driven spaceship MMO where players can play free, choosing their own path from countless options. Experience space exploration, immense PvP and PvE battles, mining, industry and a thriving player economy in an ever-expanding sandbox. EVE truly is a virtual world, one that houses so many people and factions and wars it’s almost impossible to keep track of. If you're looking for a game with history and lore, legends and tales of war, and distances almost unimaginable to the human mind, then EVE is for you. Although you should note that it is extremely hard to get into and to fully immerse yourself in the culture and history, will take a lot of dedication. All Reviews: Mostly Positive Recent Reviews: Very Positive. $Free (With packs) https://store.steampowered.com/app/8500/EVE_Online/ Bonus I know we already have enough on our plate with DU, but these two are game projects that are definitely worth following in the future. I highly suggest you look into them. Starbase - https://store.steampowered.com/app/454120/Starbase/ Skywanderes - https://skywanderersgame.com/ If you have anymore good games that i missed or noticed any mistakes I've made, please notify me with a comment! ☺️

EDIT: To preface this, I'm aware that currently the plan for protecting constructs is with some kind of "bubble". For the purposes of this discussion I referred to a potential function of a TU to be protecting constructs in the space from damage. I consider these to be interchangeable, since we've got no idea what the "bubble" is or how it works, needless to say this suggestion revolves around a method to nullify those defenses that takes hours and notifies the defending player of when they will be vulnerable. The other backbone suggestion here is that both tiles become vulnerable not just the defender, but they become vulnerable only to each-other. This turns the "cyber-warfare module" into a raiding or conquest tool instead of a griefing tool. It has already been hinted by NQ that in order to attack and claim a tile controlled by a TU, that the attacker might need to own an adjacent tile with a TU as well. Since this is a function meant to make taking territories more like a war and less like a raid or grieving run, lets keep that ball rolling. How about also requiring a declaration of war? This would serve as both a warning and a raid timer for the defending player, setting it so that a player must declare their intentions to attack the adjacent tile basically 24 hours in advance, opening a fixed window of time to actually raid and attempt to secure the adjacent tile. That the defender has time to gather a militia or hire mercenaries (since otherwise the attacker could mass a group and attack the defender while they are afk, like rust, which is not really what DU is striving to be). Some factors Each group of controlled adjacent territories would contribute to an overall score that would be a factor in the amount of notice and length of window permitted to attack. If the attacking side is attacking from a single hex, and the defending side is 5 or 6 hexes that are continuously adjacent, then the attacker would have to provide a lot of notice, and would be granted a narrow window to secure their first hex (narrow being a couple of hours or something), and if the attacker is able to successfully secure the hex, their window would be extended for attacking other adjacent hexes until they capture another hex (extending the window further) or the window expires. If the attacker and defender each had roughly the same number of hexes, it could be around 24 hours of notice for something like a 4 hour window. Once you reach a point where the attacker's tiles outnumber the defender's tiles by a wide margin, you might get 12 hours notice for a 6 hour window or something. What would this look like implemented? When a rival org might try to invade a planet, they would be forced to start by claiming an unclaimed hex to use as a "staging area" effectively. Even if for some reason a planet ends up 100% claimed, then the attacker could claim a space-hex (if that end up getting implemented) and launch their attack from orbit. If the attacker starts by claiming a tile that's adjacent to the enemy right away, they risk getting preemptively attacked is high because of the short window for being badly outnumbered. The attacker might instead claim a hex that is 1 or 2 spaces away to construct a base of operations, claim tiles leading to the territory they wish to conquer and go from there. Battles for large territories could take weeks (if the attacker declares war, waits the wait period, then claims only 1 or 2 hexes and repeats), or it could be done in a weekend (if the attacker declares war, waits the wait period, and systematically and successfully claims all of the interconnected hexes 1 by 1 extending their raid window enough to continue, but this would require overwhelming force, organization, and supplies in the part of the attacker. To take hexes from other players in this proposal, you'd have to be really committed to making it happen since it is unlikely that you'd be able to place your TU and also attack all in one play session (due to the wait period). The TU's would then serve their purpose very effectively in protecting structures and ships from random acts of looting. Some of the nitty gritty here, to ensure that you'll actually be online during the attack window as the attacker, when you declare war, you basically schedule a time for that attack window to start and the system would send the warning to the defending player 24 hours in-advance of the window set by the attacker (and of course, it wouldn't let you set a window for sooner than you'd have to wait based on the number of hexes). Some variations to consider -After the declaration of war timer is over and the window starts, it could mean that both the attacking and defending hexes are up for grabs, meaning that if someone attempts to steal a tile from you and you defeat them, you could use the time remaining in the window to launch an attack on their hex, preventing continued harassment and attacks. This is probably the best way to go. -This system could use different timer lengths for TU's owned by individual players vs TU's owned by organizations. Organizations might benefit from shorter or longer attack windows, or it might be that Orgs with at least 10 players get a slight boost (but not beyond 10 to limit dead alts, and not counting trial characters for the same reason). -Players might be able to raise temporary shields to affect the length of that attack window, or prevent the attack from spilling over into more adjacent hexes. That or it would come down to how they physically built the structures on those hexes, its possible for a player to make it very difficult to take more than one hex at a time. -Player count in those hexes might affect the length of the window as well, it would check to see how many players are present on the "smallest" of the two teams and scale the length of the window accordingly, more players means more time. -Raid windows could instead be determined solely by actual static-core elements (such as temporary shields or siege weapons).