What do I play while I wait? Good to scratch an itch and help me come up with ideas?

There are shockingly few games featuring space ships.  Good recent ones I know of are...

Faster Than Light (NetHack in space... just get this if you don't have it, it's a classic)

Galactic Civilizations 3 (the current reigning champion of Master of Orion clones)

Sword of the Stars (older Master of Orion clone, heavily based on the Star Fleet Universe)

Stardrive 2 (a minimalist Master of Orion clone that is pretty good)

You might also try the free game Continuum (AKA Subspace).  It's very old, not many people play it anymore, and the ones that do are very good at it so its hard for new players... but it is a top down space combat game like Star Control.

It does seem like 4X may be the most popular in the space genre. 

I did really enjoy FTL and played it a couple times through. I had GC2, but haven't been able to get GC3 yet (I know I should!). I'd love to play GC2 again but when I tried the UI felt too dated, hard for me to get into after all the leaps made in the past few years. I know, this makes me a terrible strategic gamer. 

The thing that I miss in 4x games is the story/characters being really unique and important feeling. I played Endless Space as well and while I liked a lot about the 'feel' it also felt kind of 'empty'. 

I haven't played GalCiv3 either but I did play GC2.  I don't really like Master of Orion clones much, it's a game I've played over and over for decades.  They are all pretty much the same, Civilization in space, and more about peacefully building than a galactic war.  I would be very interested in an actual "Grand Strategy Galactic Wargame" but how to make one of those is kind of lost knowledge at this point and I don't think anyone in a position to make such a game has any idea how to even begin doing it:-(

It's not really that 4x is the most popular genre when it comes to space ships, its more that 4x and flight sims are pretty much the only way the computer game industry knows of using space ships.

That's funny, I've actually felt that the GalCiv clones were more about war than peaceful building and exploration, but maybe those are our play styles! 

I'd love to have turn based games that were very exploration focused, but I'm not sure I've found one that really hit the spot.

Space Combat - Elite Dangerous.

Space Exploration - Out There Omega Edition.

Mass Effect?...

I'll play Fallout 4 when I'm on 11 days New Years vacation (just built a PC for it).

^ Hunam_, I built a brand new PC back in Nov just for Fallout 4 as well.  You're gonna have a blast (pun intended)!

Just upgraded my PC as well, but I'll probably wait until everything is released in a package for Fallout - I'm currently playing Dark Souls 2: Scholar of the First Sin edition for the most part (and a bit of Xenoblade Chronicles X). 

Mass Effect is pretty good actually, to scratch the "Talking to Aliens" bit, though I think we've mentioned in several threads that it's very Star Trekky with humanoids. Is it just me or is the plot ripped from Star Control 3? 

There is really not much strategy game there if you decide to conquer the galaxy.  You just make one big fleet and go around smashing everything in some form of uninteresting combat.  The focus is on building and advancing, because it is based on Civilization and that is what you do in those games.  I like 4x space games for what they are, I just don't like them as strategy wargames.

You could also try "Space Rangers" or "Star Wolves" for MMOs you can try "Star Sonata".

But I would recommend trying "Space Rangers" first. It has very fun and interesting minigames (can sometimes get repetitive). It would be nice if SCF had such minigames.... it makes for a good break from time to time.

I'm holding off on Xenoblade Chronicles X until someone hacks the Wii U and adds cheat codes (memory edits) in to boost movement speed. Xenoblade was fun, but it was even better with accelerated movement.

Oh, I did play Space Rangers. It was fun for a bit but kind of flat. Things were fun enough, combat wise, to get me through Space Pirates and Zombies. The writing in SPAZ wasn't great either, but it didn't feel as flat as Space Rangers. The visuals at least had more personality, I think. 

It's hard to imagine Xenoblade X with even faster movement - it's realllly fast, honestly. And I haven't even gotten the transports yet. My major issue is that it feels so much like an MMO (and has multiplayer features) but kind of like an oldschool one. The fetch/kill quests are just kind of boring. It probably gets better after the first 20 hours :-p 

I bought Space Rangers a few steam sales ago but returned it. It was heralded as a game similar to Star Control, but it was too bland.

Agreed on SPAZ. If you like timers, you'd love SPAZ and the soon-to-be-released SPAZ2.

The movement hack I had for Xenoblade let you run at 10x speed - comically fast. It was like hitting the FFWD button. It made the game more enjoyable because I spent less time moving between battles and more time questing.

As for XCX getting less fetchy? It won't. Xenoblade didn't. XCX is very similar to the previous game. Better graphics, not as good of a story, and same level of fetch quests.

One of the reasons I played Space Rangers was because it was said to be similar to Star Control.

It definitely is nothing like Star Control and storyline wise may be a bit flat. But the mechanics wasn't that bad.

The puzzle based and story based minigames was the most interesting part for me. Combat minigames become boring after a while.

Still it does have its good few points that remain endearing.

I just played SC 1 and 2 again. I have them on my phone, my Nvidia Shield and my PC. I do find myself replaying Starflight as well.

wait, how do you play it on your phone??

You can find it in Google play my friend!

Playing Genesis Starflight on my phone with bluetooth game controller.  Awesome!

I must say, Fallout 4 sucks you in just like Fallout 3. That radiation clouds weather effect is amazing. I miss long distances and open areas though. 

If you liked SPAZ you will probably like Rebel Galaxy more.

cool, I didn't really know that one, I'll check it out. I didn't initially snap it up because it didn't seem to be top down. 

I Finished the plotline in Rebel Galaxy and I'm not sure how I feel about it. The encounters random or not seemed over scripted. Don't get me wrong I did enjoy playing it but it seemed like waaaaay too much running back and forth between systems doing favors. I know SC series had a lot of that, but RG travel time between destinations was just a pain in the butt.

Ok, don't tell me too much cause I just got it and I'm looking forward to trying it out

I'm allergic to spoilers.  

Quoting sendingsignal, reply 22

Ok, don't tell me too much cause I just got it and I'm looking forward to trying it out

I'm allergic to spoilers.  

I won't. I will say it was still a fun game. I'm very critical of my Space Genre games. I will say that I LOVED Ring Runner: Flight of the Sages. There are two books that go with it that are superb!

I seem to already have that one! I don't even remember getting it. Must have been a bundle. 

First off, I want to make a post about Fallout IV and Rebel Galaxy. They had the same main, core problem for me. They both did away with ANY sort of interesting quests, and instead devolved into a shoot-fest for every single quest. And people won't understand if they never played the original Fallouts and maybe even New Vegas. But Fallout four didn't have one quest that involved for than "Go here and murder everything there" and that'd a goddamn shame. I played the he'll out of FOIV and beat it, but ya know how many hours I put into New Vegas? 270 hours. I stopped IV after 73. And the reason is - aside from killing everything in sight, there wasn't a single damn interesting thing to do in the entire wasteland. 

Rebel Galaxy was the same. Aside from a main quest that ended way too early, it was several steps backward missions wise and nothing we haven't seen before! Zero personality in any of the characters/aliens, a whole lot of shooting, and quests that include: drop off package/pick up package/protect a harmless ship/kill everyone I sight. It was soulless and boring. 

But the shooting I'm Fallout IV is awesome, and the ship combat in Rebel Galaxy was fun too! But that's all there was, in both games, and damn it I'm so incredibly sick of that sh*t. 

It was a betrayal to long time fans of Fallout. And I'm bitter about it.