Endless Sky - 2D Space Game

[Norfleet]

I have neither the time nor the energy to address all of the conversational points here, but I will say this: The one storyline that ES currently has is much longer, better written, more cleanly edited, has more branches, and features more choice and consequence than any SINGLE Escape Velocity storyline.

ES actually has multiple storylines at the moment. There's the "main plot" Free Worlds storyline, the Remnant storyline, and the Wanderer storyline, off the top of my head. All are pretty railroaded, with the only real choice being a few cosmetic options and the option to derail the train, ending your participation in the storyline. All are pretty okay for what they are.

Mechanically, their interaction with the game is generally better: EV:N storylines have this tendency to hard-lock you into an endgame ship, that you can never change out (unless you wanna lose it forever), while ES storylines are less about locking you into a buildpath, mostly because ES handles multiple ship ownership better than EV:N (although not as well as SS).

Ultimately, its flaws can be overlooked on the grounds of it being open source and free, whereas SS and EVN are functionally dead ends, closed systems doomed to die from entropic decay.

 

[Blaine]

Unless something has changed since last I played, the Remnant and Wanderer storylines aren't "main" storylines—they're on the side. In fact, if you go into the game blind, they come out of nowhere from hidden corners of the galaxy, which is a nice surprise.

The Free Worlds storyline is a lot less railroaded than any single EV:N storyline, although it's been a while since I've played ES, so I can't cite specific examples. I'll get around to it at some point, though.

Most criticisms of ES that have been aired in this thread are basically legitimate—in the sense that I agree there are imperfections in those areas—but I tend to disagree with the degree of severity assigned to most of them. Some of the complaints verge on histrionic hyperbole.

One problem the game clearly suffers from is best-in-class ships. There are sheaves of human ships that you'll never actually want to use, and handfuls from other races; while the human Bactrian (the largest all-rounder) was so heavily used that it was first nerfed, then locked behind an arduous new mini-storyline as a reward. To be fair, though, the galaxy does require NPC ships to be out and about, so in that sense the rubbish ships don't entirely go to waste.

 

[Norfleet]

Unless something has changed since last I played, the Remnant and Wanderer storylines aren't "main" storylines—they're on the side. In fact, if you go into the game blind, they come out of nowhere from hidden corners of the galaxy, which is a nice surprise.

Given that they're at least as long as the "main" storyline, I'd consider them pretty prominent.

The Free Worlds storyline is a lot less railroaded than any single EV:N storyline, although it's been a while since I've played ES, so I can't cite specific examples. I'll get around to it at some point, though.

I dunno man, aside from like, one major branch and one fork that re-merges to the same place (which changes a bit of text and isn't one that involves any direct decision on your part), the campaign seemed pretty linear, not helped by the fact that there's a clear correct choice.

Most criticisms of ES that have been aired in this thread are basically legitimate—in the sense that I agree there are imperfections in those areas—but I tend to disagree with the degree of severity assigned to most of them. Some of the complaints verge on histrionic hyperbole.

Such as?

One problem the game clearly suffers from is best-in-class ships. There are sheaves of human ships that you'll never actually want to use, and handfuls from other races; while the human Bactrian (the largest all-rounder) was so heavily used that it was first nerfed, then locked behind an arduous new mini-storyline as a reward. To be fair, though, the galaxy does require NPC ships to be out and about, so in that sense the rubbish ships don't entirely go to waste.

It doesn't help that the player is pigeonholed into flying a single line of ships, namely, the assault transport, because YOU ARE THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN ACTUALLY DO THIS. This means all the cooler ships are only really useful as escort ships because you, and only you, can deliver the Spess Mehreens that make any of this worth doing. Also, many of the ship descriptions flat out admit those ships are explicitly obsolete and exist only to make the universe feel lived-in. The fact that you can acquire them as used ships for free rather than paying for new list-price makes them slightly more relevant than if you could only get them by paying their overly-high price.

 

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0.9.14 Polish release

This is a "stable" release, focusing on bug fixes and polishing the recent v0.9.13 release. New changes include the following

• Numerous typo fixes
• Fixes to how several missions are offered to the player
• Better suggestions of possibly incomplete conditions in some missions' "visit" dialogues
• Differentiation between two Remnant engines' reversing capabilities
• Certain Navy shipyards now stock the Dropship
• Ships that have no specified "drag" attribute default to 100, rather than causing crashes
• Weaponry that alters the ship's status conditions (e.g. ionization) now respects the required minimum value of 0
• The "interrupt fast-forward" preference defaults to off

Some minor improvements were added to help support plugin authors and content creators:

• Quarg planets now have regional attributes to enable better targeting via missions
• Missions that fail to be instantiated print more informative messages in the error file
• Large numbers of missing image frames no longer pollute the error file

 

[Endemic]

More frequent builds here, if you don't mind being a beta tester: https://github.com/endless-sky/endless-sky/actions/runs/2440855684

 

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[beta] Unstable release 0.9.15

This is an unstable release, containing big changes that may introduce new bugs. Major new changes include the following:

• 60+ new outfits
• 80+ new missions in human space and beyond
• 40 new stations and planets in existing systems
• Improvement of many graphics, including stars, ships, effects, and outfits
• The addition of parallax to background stars and haze
• Sweeping balance changes to various ships and outfits
• Overheating a ship only disables energy generation, letting the ship still use battery power to operate
• Changes to the UI, including the addition of new ship and outfit categories and an overhaul of the map screen
• Changes to existing missions, including an overhaul of the first third of the Free Worlds campaign.

Several features have been added to the game engine, for use by plugins and other content creators.
These include:

• 20 new swizzle options
• The ability to customize ship and outfit categories in the data files
• Four new damage-over-time types
• Conversations can trigger mission actions depending on the player's choices, including payment, gifting items, and triggering events
• Missions can trigger actions every time the date increments
• Plugins can selectively disable vanilla content
• Events can remove objects from a system without needing to redefine the entire system
• Removal of the 32 hardpoint limit

This summary only scratches the surface of what was added during 0.9.15's year-and-a-third-long development cycle. For a complete list of changes, as well as further detail about what was summarised, see the changelog. This release also marks the highest number of contributors to a single release, bypassing 0.9.9's record of 69.

 

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v0.9.16: Stable release​

This is a stable release, focusing on bug fixes and polishing the recent v0.9.15 release. New changes include the following:
Breaking changes:

• The accompany objective on mission npcs no longer implicitly sets the save objective. Plugin missions that had "accompany" but not "save" should be changed to include "save" if the intention of the mission is that the npcs live.

Bug fixes:

• Added a firing sound to the Ka'het Annihilator Turret, as it was missing one.
• The jump range of systems affected by the Ssil Vida activation are now reset when Ssil Vida is deactivated in order to avoid a bug in pathfinding. This change will be reverted in the future once the pathfinding is improved.
• Fixed an error where attempting to launch with a fighter as your flagship under certain circumstances could cause you to launch with no ship at all.
• Fixed a longstanding bug where npcs could get stuck thinking they need fuel after traveling through a wormhole.
• Fixed a bug where fighters would sometimes fail to reparent to a carrier that had space for them when recalled.

Other changes:

• Clicking on a planet card on the left side of the map now selects that planet as a destination on your travel plan.

A complete list of changes can be found in the changelog. Special thanks to those who contributed changes to this release: @1010todd, @a-random-lemurian, @Amazinite, @Anarchist2, @Arachi-Lover, @GefullteTaubenbrust2, @Hecter94, @Hurleveur, @LepRyot, @McloughlinGuy, @mOctave, @petervdmeer, @quyykk, @RisingLeaf, @roadrunner56, @samrocketman, @Saugia, @thomasballinger, @tibetiroka, @warp-core, @williaji, and @yjhn.
If you are using the high-dpi plugin, you should download and install the updated version that goes with this release.
Mac OS X and Windows binaries can be downloaded here. (For Windows, please choose 32 or 64 bit.)

 

[Blaine]

I'd like to point out also (years after the fact) that the Escape Velocity series had an opposite, yet very similar, problem: You could obtain powerful hull variants, supe them up with rare outfits, then solo kill almost everything in the game; what you couldn't solo most likely couldn't catch you, anyway, because you dictated the distance and parameters of the engagement.

Indeed, I fondly remember soloing Federation Carriers with a Starbridge variant equipped with tricked-out rail cannon(s) and some fancy subsystems. I no longer remember all the details.

Then near the end, when you'd obtained large quantities of currency from doing static repetitive tasks, you'd be able to field a fleet of straightforwardly powerful big hulls and dominate that way (or just one super-powerful hull, like the Kestrel or the Polaris Raven).

Endless Sky pretty much lacks the "obliterate everything solo with rare outfits" factor of Escape Velocity, and it also pretty much lacks the "eliminate everything solo with one super-powerful ship" factor as well. I would say that there are a few possibilities to kinda-sorta solo under certain circumstances, and Endless Sky also allows you to eventually have a virtually unbeatable fleet.

These games are primarily about faction storylines and exploration. Beating enemies in any EV title or Endless Sky is all about learning the game mechanics enough (via storylines and exploration) to figure out how to have a big leg up on your opponents, then struggling to gain access to, capture, steal, buy, or otherwise obtain the right ships and outfits to make that happen. Once you do, neither EV nor ES demand amazing fleet doctrine design or twitch game skill.

 

[blessed king of longing]

looks like EV with AIDS and none of the soul. i'll still give it a try, but there's no way it'll hit the story highs and the aesthetics are worse despite being much newer

...played it for a little, it has some clear QoL improvements over EV, but almost everything looks and feels worse despite coming out over a decade later than Nova. Probably not enough to make me stick with it. Really a shame that Matt Burch gave up on making games, man...