Space combat
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for real-world military activity in space, see Space warfare
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Space combat is a game type that involves playing in a space environment. This environment can include an action based game such as any of the Rogue Squadron games, or a strategy games such as Microsoft's Abandonware Allegiance. Typically these games include a type of ship, mounted with guns and/or missiles and other accessories.
Action based games of this type will usually be based on the players' ability to "blow things up" with or without a reason. Many older arcade games such as Galaga and Space Invaders pioneered space-games.
As the 3D-era started to unfold, space-games slowly started to evolve into space-combat games. One of the popular space-combat games was Elite. Wing Commander was one of the most popular computer game franchises of the 1990s. Although most space-sims focussed on mere combat, interest slowly started to shift towards mercenary-style gameplay. Elite was an example of this shift of interest. Recent examples are Freelancer and the Arvoch Conflict
Strategy based games of this type will usually depend on the player's ability to reason and make judgements with foresight. A well known example of this is Blizzard Entertainment's StarCraft series.
A division of strategy based games is single player and multiplayer versions, Allegiance is a multiplayer game that requires teamwork above everything else, while games like StarCraft are played relatively the same in both single player and multiplayer.
Most developers seem to stay away from this shrinking genre of space sims, and gamers that prefer that genre tend to stick with one game. A few AA-space sims have been released since, however, most space-combat games are indie-titles (independent developers), made by people who love the genre. Since these indie's have limited budgets, with no publishers backing them up, quality varies. However, many interested in space or space combat find it a noble cause to support.
Since 2003 EvE-online a major MMO factor has by many's opinion lifted the legacy from Elite being a massive single world online game where 25-30k players battle, trade, mine, build and so much more all at a level of complexness most games can only dream of. This is large due to the indy developers CCP which base large portions of its game development on the players opinions, suggestions and to some extend support.
