I want a persistent 2D space game. It has two modes of play.
Mode 1: You create an account and are given a small ship. You and your dinky ship fly around the universe making trades and doing missions. There are pirates and you tend to get exploded a lot and flying around is tricky because the planets have gravity. You trade and get rich and buy bigger ships. Then you become even more rich and start buying automated ships that will make trades and go on trade runs 24/7 while you're not playing. Pirates blow up those ships and steal the loot, so you buy bigger routes with guard ships. You start posting missions for new players to guard your fleets. You become very very rich and start buying on-planet real estate or maybe whole planets and customizing them. You're managing your fleets and missions and contracts and stuff mostly from your mobile phone at this point without actually logging in and flying around.
Mode 2: you don't create an account. You're just a pirate. Nearly the whole world is hostile to you. It will only take a couple of hours of play to grow from a tiny pirate to a universe-threatening dreadnought the likes of which the average account-holding players couldn't afford, but as soon as you stop playing, your pirate ship is lost and you must start again.
> Endless Sky is a 2D space trading and combat game similar to the classic Escape Velocity series. Explore other star systems. Earn money by trading, carrying passengers, or completing missions. Use your earnings to buy a better ship or to upgrade the weapons and engines on your current one. Blow up pirates. Take sides in a civil war. Or leave human space behind and hope to find friendly aliens whose culture is more civilized than your own.
I quite liked Endless Sky (which is no surprise because I quite liked Escape Velocity). Last time I tried it, the storylines were far from finished, but it was a good time.
It's got that... "in progress" feel -- and probably always will.
I love how many people it has fiddling with the code and storyline.
I know it's not something that can realistically happen, but I'd love for all games to switch to open-source after a few years of being available commercially.
It's cool to see continuous development on Endless Sky. At times... wish some features and improvements would go faster, but hey... that's part of playing with a non-commercial product. It's just a casual train-set in my basement... tinker a bit, play a bit, it's just sort of fun to see both sides.
Starsector might be worth trying out, depending on your choices you can land on either side of the hegemony's good graces and get mode 2 or 1. Check it out.
I feel like you might've heard of ‘Space Rangers’ (just ‘2d space trading with pirates’ does rather hint at it), but if not—it's about a third to a half of what you described, plus some other stuff on top. IDK if they ever made it multiplayer, though—maybe in the Steam release.
Mode 1: You create an account and are given a small ship. You and your dinky ship fly around the universe making trades and doing missions. There are pirates and you tend to get exploded a lot and flying around is tricky because the planets have gravity. You trade and get rich and buy bigger ships. Then you become even more rich and start buying automated ships that will make trades and go on trade runs 24/7 while you're not playing. Pirates blow up those ships and steal the loot, so you buy bigger routes with guard ships. You start posting missions for new players to guard your fleets. You become very very rich and start buying on-planet real estate or maybe whole planets and customizing them. You're managing your fleets and missions and contracts and stuff mostly from your mobile phone at this point without actually logging in and flying around.
Mode 2: you don't create an account. You're just a pirate. Nearly the whole world is hostile to you. It will only take a couple of hours of play to grow from a tiny pirate to a universe-threatening dreadnought the likes of which the average account-holding players couldn't afford, but as soon as you stop playing, your pirate ship is lost and you must start again.