Starlancer was a little gem all too often forgotten, indeed. Very, very fun dogfights with that.
Freelancer was also very good until the plot lasted. The "sandbox" part of it, meh....
Perhaps Wing Commnder & Freelancer are decenance of Elite .... anyone have a cronilogical break down of the space sims?
Chief
Almost any game is a descendant of Elite, at least chronologically speaking, there wasn't much choice back in 1984. [big grin]
Wing Commander came around 1990-91 I think, but that was the forefather of combat space games with a campaign that was later aced by its own sequels, and then by X-Wing/Tie Figther and the Freespace series....as for the sandbox games, the only notable mention for me remains that of the X series...heavily inspired by the first Elite as Egosoft itself admitted back in the days (1999), but still some of the best sandbox space games to be found.