2016 Battle of Space Games: No Man's Sky, Star Citizen, and Elite Dangerous

[Legend]

2016 is arguably the best year ever for space games. The genre is seeing a huge resurgence with tons of great titles but at the forefront are Star Citizen, Elite Dangerous, and No Man's Sky.

Personally I'm really interested in all three titles and the genre in general, so I thought it'd be fun to compare and contrast the games. Each one is going after a unique audience so this isn't about determining an overall winner. For starters, here's the latest trailer for each game.

No Man's Sky

Elite Dangerous

Star Citizen

Now how about some rankings:

Universe Size

• NMS is a procedural universe with essentially infinite planets.
• Elite Dangerous is a semi procedural galaxy with trillions of planets.
• Star Citizen is a handcrafted with hundreds of planets.

Multiplayer

• Star Citizen is essentially multiplayer only, and is online only. You will always be interacting with other humans. Can fly ships with friends.
• Elite Dangerous is online only, but can be played in a "solo" mode. Can fly ships with friends.
• NMS can be played offline. Apart from seeing things named by other players, it is a single player game.

Realism

• Elite Dangerous is as realistic as possible with its universe, while arcady with game mechanics and ship combat.
• Star Citizen uses the rule of cool for everything except ship combat. For flying, it simulates every ship thruster individually.
• NMS doesn't care about realism.

Planet Sizes

• Elite has 1 to 1 sized planets, with the largest landable ones being ~6 times the size of Earth.

Star Citizen and NMS have to tie for second since both are too close to call. Star Citizen showed off a 1,000 KM planet in this video:

which matches pretty close to what I calculated the size of NMS planets shown in trailers. These planets are still huge, but for reference they're less than half the size of Pluto or roughly the size of Ceres (the smallest dwarf planet).

How unique planets are

• No Man's Sky has planets actually worth checking out. Tons of unique flora and fauna.
• Star Citizen has hand made parts on each planet, but the surfaces themselves are pretty comparable.
• Elite Dangerous. See one planet, you've seen them all.

Things outside flying your ship

• Star Citizen is always you playing as you. When piloting a ship, your character is stuck inside that ship pressing buttons. You can stand up and walk around, jump out into space, shoot a hole in an enemy's cockpit with your pistol, float into that hole and finish the player off with hand to hand combat, fly their ship down to the planet, run to the nearest pub, and hand out with friends while telling them a story.
• In NMS once your ship has landed, you can get out and walk around exploring on foot. Shoot and collect stuff.
• Elite has no "space legs," but you can switch to a rover and drive around planets.

Game features/elements

• In Elite you can be a space pirate, a bounty hunter, a miner, a trader, a peace keeper, a spy, a gas truck, a racer, a hitman, a paper boy, an explorer, a crafter, etc. Tons of variety where you can role play however you want.
• NMS has combat, exploration, and trading.
• Star Citizen pretty much just has combat and trading.

"Personality"

• Star Citizen has tons of characters and story.
• NMS has no story, but everything feels alive.
• Elite Dangerous is essentially a text adventure game. They are working to change this, but right now it's pretty "spreadsheet" feeling.

Personalization

• Star Citizen has a full character creator as well as ship and outfit customization. You can have many ships and many characters at a time.
• Elite allows custom paint jobs to be bought, as well as hood ornaments like bobble heads. You can have many ships.
• NMS has zero Personalization, and only one ship at a time. If you find a ship you like, then you better keep it.

Future

• Elite has huge ambitions with $40 season passes each year. They plan to add space legs, FPS, big game alien hunting, etc. In 2015 they are adding crafting, NPCs, character creation, multiple people per ship, and passengers.
• Star Citizen is planned to release this year, but they will also be releasing a single player campaign.
• NMS will not change post launch.

So which game are you most interest in? What are your thoughts? Did I get any of my info wrong?

[BananaKing]

since it isnt officially delayed yet, Mass Effect might also release this year. so maybe it might be added to the list.

[Legend]

Since 2016 is almost over, I think it's time for an update!

2016 was a flop. All three of these games dissapointed in one way or another. Star Citizen's Squadron 42 was delayed out of 2016 and progress with the PU has been slow. Elite Dangerous has only had two expansions for the whole year and both have been underwhelming in one form or another. NMS ended up differently than marketed and failed to use procedural generation effectively. Here are some of the original sections from my post with updates.

Universe Size

• NMS has 256 galaxies with 2^48 planets each.

Realism

• NMS is even more unrealistic than expected. The planets are stationary and are only loosely inspired by how real star systems function.
• Elite Dangerous is doing a lot of hand waving with this year's two updates. Materials use a magic inventory system and ship launched fighters 3D print themselves even though this tech is used for nothing else. Ship launched fighters have cockpits even though they are controlled remotely. Hired pilots die when your ship explodes even though the 100s of other people on your ship can use escape pods. These inconsistencies go on and on and it's gotten very frustrating.

Planet Sizes

• Star Citizen showed off planetary gameplay. The example planet was about 2,000 Km in diameter.
• NMS planets are asteroid size at around 250 km diameter.

How Unique Planets Are

• Star Citizen takes the cake. Planets use procedural generation to assist artists but everything is human made. Every planet has a detailed backstory.
• Elite Dangerous has improved planet surfaces. They have also added lots more things on surfaces including alien life, ruins, and volcanic activity. Some planets are very unique and some are very average.
• NMS planets are less varied than expected. Planets are identical regardless of surface location and have only one biome. There is variation between the biomes but planets of the same biome are very similar. Flora and fauna are not unique: they are cookie cutter.

Game Features/Elements

• Elite Dangerous has added crafting/engineers, taxi and passenger missions, tourist locations, ship launched fighters, and co-pilots. Aliens are also an emerging element that seem to be incredibly detailed.
• Star Citizen has detailed their development plans and it reminds me a lot of Elite. Updates will bring mining, farming, and science.
• NMS trade is not really viable and isn't a good way to play.

"Personality"

• Elite has added faces to every person in the game. They have also added voices to stations that really make things feel more alive.
• NMS had kept its text adventure elements a surprise. The game often has text describing interesting events but these are not shown visually.

Future

• Elite has been incredibly slow updating. Only two of the 4 Horizons expansions have released and both have had issues. They keep doing awesome updates to fix and improve past content and just announced a big update focused solely on that. 2.3 with character creation and multi crew will be next year plus the 2.4 mystery update. 3.0 imo will be space legs.

2017 will be the true battle of the space games. Mass Effect, Star Citizen, and Elite season 3!

[Ludicrous Speed]

lol, NMS sounds worse than I thought. Can't believe i was hyped. Glad I didnt fall for it.

[Raven]

I really don't think Mass Effect can be put into the same category as the other three games. It's a very story-driven, single player experience with much more limited sandbox elements, if any. Unless I missed something and Bioware has created a massive online universe, it's going to be a very apples to oranges comparison.

[Legend]

I really don't think Mass Effect can be put into the same category as the other three games. It's a very story-driven, single player experience with much more limited sandbox elements, if any. Unless I missed something and Bioware has created a massive online universe, it's going to be a very apples to oranges comparison.

I'd put it up against Squadron 42 more than anything else, but imo it's still similar enough to the others too. Heck the first ME had procedural planets of its own.

[Raven]

I'd put it up against Squadron 42 more than anything else, but imo it's still similar enough to the others too. Heck the first ME had procedural planets of its own.