I have been playing Starfield exclusively for a week now, and part of that time has been spent in a spaceship fighting other spaceships. Whenever I am performing this task in any space game though, I ask myself: has this ever been fun? And I mean literally fun, not “it’s fun to be in an X-Wing because I like Star Wars.” Because I don’t think I have ever enjoyed space combat in any game.

Here is every space combat: You see one or more red triangles 2 km away. The triangles approach and lasers/plasma/whatever starts coming your way. Once a circle appears, you left-click the circle and keep it pressed down. Then you look at their shields and your shields to determine which will run out first. If it’s them, don’t move – just be a space turret. If it’s you, fly towards them and get a few seconds reprieve while both of you pivot to try and get “behind” the other. Repeat or die.

The funny thing is that I feel space combat sucks… for all the right reasons. Space is empty. There are usually no ship-sized pillars to hide behind, and many space games do not feature bullet-time, VATS, or other special powers that would make you be any different than simply a turret. And it’s easy to imagine “real” space combat maneuvering being made pointless by AI-driven targeting systems, lasers that literally deal damage at light speed, and limitations based on the physiology of the human crew. For example, we can imagine a pilotless drone ship being able to wildly spin around shooting in every direction, but not with a person at the helm.

Incidentally, I consider games not providing a lore-based excuse as for why every space battle isn’t just millions of tiny drones blasting each other out of the sky as extremely lazy. We have faster-than-light travel, we usually have AI companions, but apparently fixed-wing aircraft piloted by meatbags is the best we can do for taking down capital ships? Give me a break.

I do feel like Everspace 2 was the closest space combat has been fun for me, although they do “cheat” at bit. Specifically, there are a ton of special powers, including the ability to warp forward X amount of distance, and every combat features copious amounts of ship-sized pillars in the form of asteroids or derelict ships. Plus there were different “classes” of ships, one of which was essentially a carrier from StarCraft in that you spawned drones and let them do most of the fighting while you hid behind cover. Another ship class was basically an sniper assassin, wherein you used cloaking fields to escape and get into a position to fire a long-ranged weapon at your foes. So, yeah, actually Everspace 2 had fun space combat… but at a certain point, is that not basically a cover-based shooter with extra steps?

I will give a special shout-out to No Man’s Sky though. It is very much in the “space turret” combat category, but it does feel better flying around in space than most other games. Plus, unlike nearly every other game, you can seamlessly go from space into a planet’s atmosphere – with bogies still on your tail! – and vice versa.

If there are other actually good space combat games out there, let me know what they are.