I am bouncing around between a few of my favorite space sim games right now and there is something I noticed just now: While you can enter asteroid fields or planetary rings and fly around dodging giant space rocks, all those rocks just sit in place and maybe rotate around. None of them move.
You can’t affect their trajectory. They can’t collide with each other, and you will never have to adapt to an asteroid coming out of nowhere coming toward you.
In fact the only game I can remember having moving, dynamic asteroids is literally "Asteroids."
I would love to play a game where you can have a space battle that feels like the scene in Star Wars Episode 2 when Jango is trying to take out Obi Wan. Having to dodge weapons, asteroids, and account for the asteroids movement and changing trajectory based on collisions/exploding.
Shit would be badass.
This just got posted today Star Wars: X-Wing and MechWarrior veterans release In The Black, a “serious” space combat sim with Newtonian physics. Could be what you’re after.
I get what you’re after, but space sims in particular do get one thing right in that asteroid fields are made up of rocks in largely stable orbits, i.e. they’re not moving around relative to one another and crashing into each other and so on. Because if they were, they wouldn’t be asteroid fields for very long.
My vote is for Star Fox, anyway. Some of the astroids legitimately do have it out for you there and home in, and a couple of them also inexplicably have faces.
You are right. I guess what I really want is not a space sim but a space fantasy? Or at least give them actual physics so they can be pushed by external forces. 🤷♂️
Can’t say I know of any. I only play Elite time to time. I hate the asteroids these games currently have I don’t think I need them any more mobile
With the way a lot of the space games I’ve played work (usually some kind of open world crafting game like Space Engineers or Starbase) the asteroids are used to mine for resources and would be fairly intensive to have them be moving objects to avoid aside from just not paying attention.
I think there’s a mod for SE to make asteroids movable objects, so you could strap some engines to it and call it a day, but I don’t think it would make them an active danger to avoid.
I remember seeing people on Starbase building ships to grab and bring whole asteroids back to their station or whatever.
Also as an aside, I just wanted to say how bummed I am that Starbase died. It had/has the potential to be absolutely massive, with the huge shared open universe (the main planet the game orbits around has like 12 different moons, and some take IRL days to fly to because the game is just that big, tbh I kinda love it for that) and custom ship building. Last I knew they added space station and capital ship building as well, but I never got that far myself.
I suppose you could say KSP counts. You can grab asteroids in that one and move them around.
Another, more relevant one is Star Trek: Legacy. I believe this mission fits your requirements. The game is abandonware, however, so you’ll have to find some means to acquire the game.
Maybe Star Trek: Armada? I remember a few missions where you have to evade some space hazards like asteroids. You can pick it up on GOG.
Maybe Starcom: Nexus? It’s a 2D space game that incorporates drift when you fly around. I don’t remember if asteroids matter all that much, but you can ram other ships to break their components.





