As far as I know there is no Gathering Storm demo - the only demo out currently is original relatively unpatched Starshatter.

Ahh there was a game, a very old game called Rules of Engagement 2, and it could be linked with another game called Breach 3.  You commanded a ship, and at times commaned a small fleet from your command ship, and you could board other ships and starbases and every now and then, Breach 3 would open up and you commanded the boarding party, setting their weapon loads etc.  I enjoyed it alot on the old Amiga 2500, could never quite get the PC version to work.

You could make a game like Rules of Engagement 2, then make another game like Breach 3, that could be linked to the first game.  You then could play either game seperatly or you could link them.  You controled everything from damage repair, to communication with other fleet commanders, who had charactoristics alot like D&D, they would even earn experience IIRC, they would follow you or they would be slow in their reaction.  You had a pool of other ship commanders to chose from for each mission, some commanders were really good and others not so.  You could hide in astroid felts and actually mine them for resources to repair you ship damage.  Even if a ship system was completely destroyed you could get it repaired at a starbase, if the starbase tech level was high enough that is (I remember often taking over neutral starbases just to fix ship systems, as they were not always very cooperatable).

I would like to see a game like that again.

Or even another old game called "Star Frontiers: Elite II"

Ahh the memories.  Horrible graphics by todays standards but man were they fun.

The best starship simulators I have ever played were also the best and first "true" open world games --- STARFLIGHT! and STARFLIGHT 2 Trade Routes of the Cloud Nebula!

Starflight Resource Page

Games like Grand Theft Auto and Saints Row or Eve, talk about being an open universe or game world but in reality they are extremely limited only to their specific actions. Starflight and Starflight 2 offer not only a Space Opera style story but a true open world in which you only need to ever use your weapons twice. You are allowed to create and customize your crew, your ship, and talk/kill/whatever your way to glory/fame/Credits/Ru's/power... And the games have a great sense of humor.

And here is the amazing thing, these games are roughly the size of a few MB's (They were made for the DOS). Though it is true you can find different versions of both the first and second game it is widely thought that the DOS versions are superior.

And if Starflight is too old school for you then I recomend The Urquan Masters.

x3 terran conflict, you can hire marines to do ship boarding.

or if you want something free and full version, but might not be good, but still decent, try universal combat, you can download the full version for free.  

Funny that I stumbled on this thread.  I've been thinking a lot lately of quitting my job (I'm currently a finance lawyer) and starting an independent game studio.  I wanted to do a hardcore starship simulator as our first title, ala Silent Hunter in space.  Obviously, less sneaking around than a sub simulator, of course.

It's an interesting proposition.  Right off the bat you're talking about cutting out 75% of the market (consoles) to make a PC-only game.  Not only that, a very niche PC-only game.  I would be quite wary of spending more than $600,000 to make such a game.  And that doesn't buy you much.  I understand Ironclad made Sins for under $1,000,000 which is impressive.  I wonder if that includes marketing.

I'm looking around at a few of these games, and X3TC looks interesting.  But is it out yet?  Gamestop says it doesn't come out till this April, and Gamespot says the same thing.  But it seems that a demo and patches are available on the X3 website.  Wikipedia says it came out last October or so.  Am I seriously missing something?   

Its been out for a while now. You should be able to buy it from a number of places.

The retail disk based version uses a DVD check for copy protection, you must play with the disk in the drive.

The digital download release on Steam uses a limited install system , but they are very loose in that regard because you get 5 installs and from what I hear customer support is friendly about activation issues.

I want an online EVE type game with multiple people able to be on the same ship.

No, I don't mean like having engineers (although maybe different classes could give your ship different bonuses such as speed, maneuverabilty, etc) but everyone being a gunner or some combat role (although I guess engineers could be like healers in fantasy MMO's?) I would really like to see a game like EVE where you could have 30 people all cooperating to run one huge ship. I guess internet latency might make this undoable currently.

Denryu, while not MMO, Angels Fall First Planetstorm (the UT3 game of the AFF universe) does have fleet battles with individual players crewing ships and manning turrets/helms/fighters.

No body mentioned Starfleet command

It the computer vrs of a pnp game called starfleet battles.

Playes resonable well if you dont crank up the speed to twitch levels.

The single player still works but the online world has long since disapeard.

The best & closest to the pnp game is version 2 or the orion wars.

The vers 3 is not very good x ships and next gen ships.

If you can find vers 1 or 2 or the orion wars xp you should have some fun with it

Independance War as there a long, long time before B5.  Good game to boot if you can track down a copy.

Moving on, one of the problems with being the captain of a virtual starship was demonstrated quite admirably by bridge commander.  fundementally it's quite boring.  I mean if it were real then it'd be the best job in the universe; shoving your starship in to every anomoly going and using the main gun(s) in a planetry version of ant vs magnifying glass.  But in bridge commander you ended up in the twisted position that the AI 'crew' were better at their jobs than you were, so you ended up taking a back seat whilst the game played itself (seriously, the AI could shoot and move the ship much better than your controls allowed and the same went for damage control).  I'll grant you it's realistic but boring for a player of games.

Submarines has worked well for decades though. 

I think if you're going to do space sim type thing then you need to move away from existing francises, there is just too much bagage attached to say Star Wars/Trek (or A. N. Other) to really pull it off without upsetting someone.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQO

The X series is kinda tedious for a single player. You spend hours doing stuff just to realize it doesn matter. Autopilot doesn't work, you ram into random asteroids and your ship costs more to repair than money you have.

If you want space, Eve is the best. Not really a sim, but iot is damn good.

http://www.freeallegiance.org/

Focused totally around multiplayer battles. Each team has a commander that gives orders and builds structures via a RTS-like interface.