11 ms·
Naev – open-source game about space exploration, trade and combat
- dbingham 3y agoSounds very similar to Endless Sky[1] - another open source game drawing on the old Escape Velocity games. I really enjoyed both Endless Sky and the Escape Velocity games, so I'll have to check out Naev at some point! [1] https://endless-sky.github.io/ https://endless-sky.github.io/
- tsujamin 3y ago+1 for endless sky, has that “just 30 more minutes” hook
- ktbwrestler 3y agothis is awesome, do you know if it supports multiplayer? I might help out with Naev since that also apparently has a multiplayer plugin...
- kzrdude 3y agoEndless Sky doesn't support multiplayer. It sticks very close to the EV model, just modernized (higher definition graphics).
- whartung 3y agoI found Endless Sky to be ok, but it didn’t hold my interest in the end. The early part of exploring a new game was fun, just going through the mechanics of trade and navigation and such. My one combat was decidedly one sided and a disaster. I honestly don’t remember the game play of it much. Most of the navigation and movement is automated. By the time I got enough money for another ship, I had become disenchanted with the mechanics. Trying to min/max sales and trade and such. And was never strong enough to play Galactic Marshal or anything like that. That’s when I put it down. Just may be the game doesn’t suit me. Or I never got into some sweet spot of challenge to engage me. And since the galaxy is fixed (at least I think it’s fixed), I didn’t see much opportunity in replay of it.
- cwillu 3y agoThe actual storyline develops after a significant amount of in-game time, and is actually kinda easy to miss the initial two hooks if you click through things too quick. Basically, a planet gets nuked, and a while after _that_, somebody approaches you once you end up in a certain area of the map for a little while. (And that's before you discover [censored] and [censored] and the whole [censored] storyline that happens after the “main”/initial plot ends)
- Widdershin 3y agoProps to the writing in Endless Sky, probably has the most nuanced and interesting plot of any open source community built game I’ve played.
- cwillu 3y ago‹tries that karate move now, just for kicks›
- o11c 3y agoNote that trade missions generally give about 10x value compared to trading yourself. Going into dead-end system chains can help stack multiple missions with the same destination. Some brief notes about combat in Endless Sky (with some differences from EV:N): * The population of ships is much higher in ES; it's much easier to get overwhelmed. Note that when you initially enter a system it starts with 5 seconds (I think) worth of ships, and they keep randomly spawning at a continuous rate (in the game files, the numbers mean "expected delay between spawns in milliseconds" I think). If there is a hostile enemy ship, chances are its random delay was pretty short, so more will come. Instead you should try to arrange your fights to be in a system with low traffic. * The easiest way to get started with combat is to take escort missions, which spawn fixed enemies, and have allies that you can use as shields. They also persist if you disable them and land, so you can capture them easily (sell your fighter and buy a shuttle which can hire more crew). This is by far the fastest way to make money (as in, pay off your debt on day 3). * Ships do persist between systems, so if they jump out you can follow them * You absolutely can play the game without ever buying anything or doing missions, slowing capturing more powerful ships until you get a Bastion. This isn't a reasonable thing to do, but I did it anyway just to prove it can be done. * The Monty Python maneuver has been heavily nerfed, but still has an important place. * There are 4 different approaches for weapons on your ship/fleet; each ship should largely pick one and stick to it (and you should ground ships with the wrong loadout for your current task): 1. do as much damage as possible, 2. reliably stop shooting when target is disabled (that is, beam or weapons or at least high-velocity ones (though this is less important against slow and tanky enemies); it won't help if your allies see another target behind it), 3. overload enemy heatsinks (very useful against certain ships but useless against others), and 4. drain enemy energy (I've never found this useful, but have been affected by enemies using it on me). Also a couple special cases: 5. the player ship should be somewhat optimized for capturing, which may be at the cost of weapons, 6. your main ship might also want extra fuel, for exploring or just avoiding deadlines (escorts can land/takeoff to refuel without taking an extra day ... they can share with you, but they are dumb if multiple uninhabited systems exist on your path), 7. anti-missile also takes away from direct damage but is usually worth it (and without the tough energy/heat costs), 8. it does matter which gun slot you put your weapons in; use the I(nfo) window, 9. weapons that use ammo get expensive for the player's fleet, unlike enemy ships (and I guess mission-based escort ships, but those are rarely really combat-capable) which get everything for free; unlike EV:N your permanent escorts don't refill for free (but you do get to choose their loadout, so it's a net win I guess). * Regarding engines, steering is generally more important than thrust for both combat and escaping to another system, but thrust matters for escaping/dodging within a system. A full guide to optimizing your ship would not fit in this margin, but it is certainly possible to beat the default ships, especially by mixing outfits between factions. * Many factions will forgive you easily if you just attack pirates or something, but some factions will never forgive you. If you accidentally draw aggro merely jumping between systems should suffice. * There are some outfits that you can only get by boarding or capturing a ship, and some that you can only get by capturing the whole ship. This includes outfits never buyable, outfits only be unlocked later in the main plot, and (if you use 0.9.8 which is still widely deployed) outfits that were supposed to be removed for balance reasons.
- moffkalast 3y agoSomeone even got it running on WASM back in the day, though I'm not sure how up to date it is: https://play-endless-web.com https://play-endless-web.com I wonder if the Coalition campaign is done yet...
- maxbond 3y agoA few years ago I played Naev for a few days. It was a lovely nostalgia trip, and I recommended it to friends who had also played Escape Velocity, but there wasn't much game there and it was a bit clunky. A few weeks ago I got the itch again, so I downloaded Naev. To my pleasant surprise, development had not only continued but it has - dare I say it - surpassed Escape Velocity. There's a very cool stealth mechanic, the campaigns have been fleshed out, the AIs are more sophisticated than I remember in EV; it stands on it's own as a fantastic entry in the "Elite like" genre. ETA: Some advice for new players, do the Empire Shipping missions (by talking to an Empire official in the spaceport bar in Empire worlds). It's sort of the second tutorial, they'll have you go to meet all the different factions, and you'll get your Heavy Weapons and Heavy Combat Ship licenses.
- EdwardDiego 3y agoHow does the stealth mechanic work?
- maxbond 3y agoIt's not dissimilar from mechanics in other games, implicit in my comment is that none of the 3 EV games had any sort of stealth mechanic. (ETA: Actually, they had cloaking devices, but they were special unique items that you couldn't transfer if you upgraded your ship. Not sure if that exists in Naev, I haven't gotten very far into the main story.) You can go into stealth, and other ships have a bubble around you can see on your radar (the radar is also much better than in EV). If you get inside that bubble you'll fall out of stealth. The size of the bubbles scales with the mass of your ship, so a shuttle or an interceptor can hide very effectively, but massive cargo ships simply cannot. This makes being a criminal or smuggler much more interesting. In EV there was nothing more to it than being super fast and staying ahead of the patrols trying to scan you. In Naev it's the similar, but stealth gives you more options. It feels very cool to be drifting silently in space, waiting for patrols to move away so you can reach the jump point undetected. Feels more deliberate and clever. Another cool thing is that the AIs use it too. So it feels much more like you've been accosted by a highwayman when you're a little Terrapin trying to finish a mission, and suddenly pirates appear out of the blue (black?).
- rauljara 3y agoSeems like HN broke the trailer on their site. Fortunately, it also lives on YouTube: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CNBk1DK046k&pp=ygUMTmFldiB0cmFpbGVy https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CNBk1DK046k&pp=ygUMTmFldiB0cmF... Glad they aren’t shy about their escape velocity roots. I swear, the ship in their logo looks just like a kestrel.
- maxbond 3y agoIt's the Kestrel from EV: Nova (which as we all know is the ship that singlehandedly put Krain Industries on the map), with a little bit of red added. They're pretty shameless! Lots of the ships are pulled from EV: Nova with cosmetic changes (no idea about the legality, I suspect they got permission but I haven't looked into it), and there's a setting that skins the UI to look like EV classic.
- EamonnMR 3y agoThe Kestrel in Nova is a copy of the Kestrel from the original EV, which itself was a copy of the Estes 'Corsair' model rocket kit, see: https://blog.eamonnmr.com/2018/02/estes-rockets-and-escape-velocitys-rocket-design/ https://blog.eamonnmr.com/2018/02/estes-rockets-and-escape-v...
- exo-pla-net 3y agoFor anyone into this sort of game, I always recommend Starsector [1]. It's a beautifully made game that is in active development and already very fun to play. [1] https://fractalsoftworks.com/ https://fractalsoftworks.com/
- Arrath 3y agoPossibly one of the best games out there, imo. I love Starsector to bits.
- 83457 3y agoReminds me of Armada
- jauntywundrkind 3y agoI really really miss having games like Armada to couch-play.
- Loughla 3y agoWow. That hits on exactly what I'm looking for.
- Aeolun 3y agoI’m not sure if I’d call one update every half year/year ‘active’ development, but it has certainly been consistently developed for 10 years or more at this point.
- Der_Einzige 3y agoMods fix that issue, and the modding scene is active.
- ajvs 3y agoYeah I have to say Starsector way of less arcadey combat works really really good, wish more of these space sims would copy it.
- hschne 3y ago
- EamonnMR 3y agoAlways love a good EV clone. I loved this one back when it was much more Nova-like.
- prawn 3y agoReminds me a bit of Star Control II and its Melee combat mode.
- Waterluvian 3y agoThis game looks pretty exciting to follow. Escape Velocity was a huge part of my childhood. My brother and I completely scraped that game clean of secrets. I learned how to use ResEdit because of it. We would daisy chain ADB keyboards and he’d fly while I controlled weapon selection and escorts.
- stevefan1999 3y agoThis reminds me of Spore a lot
- Avelina10 3y ago[flagged]
- lenerdenator 3y agoNever did play Escape Velocity but I like this one so far. It's a charming little game with some decent story development. And it even runs natively on Mac.
- adastra22 3y agoEV is still playable on the macOS classic emulators. I suggest giving it a shot too.
- thot_experiment 3y agoIs the logo the Kestrel? Love it. Played the shit out of EV:N on the computer lab computers.
- walteweiss 3y agoThere is a Russian game Space Rangers ¹ I played in the early ’00s, and I quite enjoyed it, was one of my favourite game. It’s a 2D game with quests and space exploration, battles and some arcade mode in hyper-space. I remember it very well, as it worked very snappy on my poor computer (even by that time standards). Now as I remembered that game, I wonder if Naev is something similar. I would rather not promote a Russian game these days, and I would rather play open source game. But from user interface perspective Naev looks quite bad when compared to that Rangers game made two decades ago. I judge Naev by its screenshots, so maybe the game looks better. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Rangers_(video_game) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Rangers_(video_game)
- rkagerer 3y agoDespite its bugs Space Rangers was incredible. The diversity of gameplay was great. Fly around space, fight people, solve puzzles and manage ski resorts.
- walteweiss 3y agoI remembered that I had enjoyed its text based quest in prison (and maybe somewhere else as well, cannot recall that).
- yread 3y agoYeah the puzzles were awesome
- aunglin 3y ago[flagged]
- foota 3y agoDid anyone else play the flash game, Flash Trek: Broken Mirror 2 in the mid 2000s? The game was great fun for its time.
- EamonnMR 3y agoWow, another Broken Mirror fan in the wild! Yes, that was the best Trek game there eas until Infinite came out this year. The author really got what made Trek tick and the gameplay was a perfectly serviceable EV like. One of the most technically ambitious flash games I ever played.
- a1o 3y agoI was confusing the talk of Escape Velocity with Terminal Velocity and getting quite confused
- Jude_Lapoire 3y agoI see a lot of Escape Velocity fans in the comments. Recently, one of the developers of the original series started building a remake [1] of EV:Override featuring compatibility with the old plug-in format, which, despite its crowdfunded nature, seems to progress well. [1] : https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cosmicfrontier/cosmic-frontier-override https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cosmicfrontier/cosmic-f... EDIT : spelling
- EamonnMR 3y agoI'm still a bit salty that they didn't leverage any of the perfectly good EV clones or general purpose game engines out there and have spent the time since the Kickstarter building an engine from scratch.
- taf2 3y agoWhen I retire I want to start a foundation to create free to play open source video games. Initially I was thinking we’d focus it on mobile games for little ones since so many of those games are designed to extract as much money for parents suffering through dinner etc… but this game looks like a cool target also
- hammock 3y agoSounds like Eve Online
- moffkalast 3y agoEVE Offline
- pyinstallwoes 3y agoI miss that space game that was on Verant : Sony online entertainment. There was also a space marine game. Isomorphic.