Escape Velocity Nova

[The Dude]

It's a very nice little game. Though the storylines aren't very deep or long, they are good for what they are. Definetely get EV Nova. I know for a fact that there's a mod that let's you play Override in Nova for free(I think the devs themselves made it), I also vaguely recall there being a mod that lets you play the original Escape Velocity.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

EVN's kind of nice but railed as hell stories which I thought mostly sucked. Story-wise, the writing tries to be too epic (depending on your story line) and if you don't buy it, it starts to get annoying. The Polaris(?) story line has you being like some kind of God, which doesn't really work.

Blowing shit up is kind of nice. Didn't think much of the whole ship upgrade system and there's no trading or anything like that, other than point A -> B missions. I'd say it's worth getting for the most part though.

 

[Binary]

If you enjoy the arcade-ish space combat, EV Nova is definitely a nice game to have.

I wouldn't however call it a RPG, so this thread might be in the wrong place

 

[DangerousDan]

EV Nova is okay. I'd consider buying it purely for the plugin which allows you to play Override, which is clearly superior, gameplay wise. Nova suffers from having a storyline which equates to take [Item/Person] to [Planet/back again] , followed by a long, dramatic dialogue about how powerful a person you are. Override has awesome space battles, and space opera plotlines. Very cool, and fun. If you've a Mac, I'd reccomend downloading Override and a bunch of the old plugins. (The Frozen Heart, Babylon 5, Femme Fatale and Star Wars Override to name a few.) They offer hours and hours of more gameplay.

Anyway, to get back on topic- buy Nova, get the Override plugin.

Cheers.

 

[Jaime Lannister]

I remember having both Escape Velocity (not nova) and Realmz on my old Mac and Realmz was much, much better, despite being a Gold Box ripoff, because it was a fun Gold Box ripoff.

Maybe Nova made improvements, I dunno.

 

[Norfleet]

Blowing shit up is kind of nice. Didn't think much of the whole ship upgrade system and there's no trading or anything like that

Uh, what? No trading? We talking about the same EVN here?

 

[DarkUnderlord]

Whoops. Totally forgot. There is a trading system but trade prices don't change and the system isn't even moderately interesting. There's no real dynamic supply and demand element. You find one route moving shit from A -> B and run it until you've got a few hundred million (prices and quantities for sale never change). EG: The Polaris capital has a planet in the system on the left of it selling shit that the planet in the system on the right of the capital wants. Head to the capital, rent 9 of the big Polaris freighters right at the start of the game and run it until apathy sets in.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

I'm not really sure I care much for dynamic trade routes in most games. Hardwar is about the only one where I really liked it but that was because of the interface. It also made more sense in Hardwar because it took place in a small colony. In a large system, like a galaxy, it doesn't make a lot of sense. One little ship typically isn't going to impact the markets of an entire planet.

I really hated the dynamic economy in Space Rangers. Ugh.

 

[Norfleet]

Well, they each have their plusses and minuses. Static economies lend themselves to a "find the most exploitative trade route", dynamic economies tend to end up as an nigh-unmanageable mess because of insufficient information and an absolutely lousy interface for managing it, as in practically all such games, the trading aspect is always an afterthought, and thus you simply don't *GET* the kind of tools needed to trade such an economy. Trading a dynamic economy tends to be an exercise that involves a lot of charts and spreadsheets. It tends to start sounding a lot like work and not all that much like fun. I mean, if you're going to operate something so complex, you could just be doing this in *REAL* life and making *REAL* money out of it, eh?

 

[almondblight]

Realmz was pretty cool. To bad no one has made a rip off, it'd be awesome.

 

[Vault Dweller]

So, anyone else tried these games? Are they worth getting? If so, which one should I get?

I liked it. Here is a good review:
http://www.rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=69

 

[Absalom]

So I played through EVN for the first time a couple days ago and got stuck on the "Set a trap" mission on the pirate branch.

For those of you not in the know, the mission asks you to disable and board a certain ship among a fleet of 10+. The tricky part is that you have a fleet too, and as the game is 2d, more likely than not the ship will be destroyed instead of disabled.So the hard part isn't based on your ship and how well you customized or pilot skill, its based on this other fleet destroying fucking EVERYTHING and you having only basic commands to order them about. So you have to retry over and over again hoping both fleets spawn in a good spot and try to order them to shoot firing when the objective ship. This is incredibly fucking annoying.

So, does any BRO have any tips for this mission? I tried google-fu, but could only find a guide that says "Complete the mission! and then go to Rebel II" like I didn't already fucking know that. I even failed the mission hoping to restart it since my save wasn't in an optimal state and I broke the mission chain. This would have prompted a whole game restart (it only allows you one save) if I didn't keep sensible backups.

 

[circ]

It's been ages since I played it. Uhm. I really can't remember much of anything except maybe some mission for the Vas'O? And Antarians? Something.

Anyway, you could try hijacking one of those big black pirate ships I forget the name, but they hold massive amounts of guns. Stick ions on it, I think that was an option - and ion everything and then board.

 

[Absalom]

I have a big clunky ship with plenty of guns. The problem is that the enemy fleet is 12 Manticores with the gay ass EMP missiles that disable ME as soon as I do anything. But I have a fleet (that is forced upon me for the mission)that insta kills everything. The problem is that the ship I need to capture is usually in the middle of all the Manticores and gets destroyed in the crossfire.

I can do it, it just requires 30+ reloads until everything is lined up correctly, the stars are aligned, and my allies aren't retarded.

The one time I did do it a federation ship happily destroyed the disabled vessel while I was trying to maneuver my clunker into boarding it.

 

[L'ennui]

Pray to the RNG and soldier on. It's a good game, no? Have you encountered the Vell-os (don't remember the right spelling, meh) yet?

EDIT : Also fuck this subforum. *throws Molotov cocktail at thread

 

[TripJack]

play a real faction like polaris and you will never need to mess with a fleet of your own

 

[Absalom]

Pray to the RNG and soldier on. It's a good game, no? Have you encountered the Vell-os (don't remember the right spelling, meh) yet?

EDIT : Also fuck this subforum. *throws Molotov cocktail at thread

FUCK the Vell-os path as well. Finally got a really nice ship and I go to the next plot mission and... I'm stuck with a new shit ship that handles COMPLETELY differently from all other ships. Beautiful. And that was a big fuck-off fleet battle as well! Not to mention you're straight up a fucking mind slave so yeah. That path also sucks.

play a real faction like polaris and you will never need to mess with a fleet of your own

Eh if/when I get back to this game I'll prolly try that. Couldn't find any obvious leads to their story line tho.

 

[L'ennui]

Does not suck. YOU BECOME DAVID BOWMAN FROM THE END OF 2001 A SPACE ODYSSEY HOW COULD THAT POSSIBLY SUCK

Never tried Polaris.

Did end up with a huge pirate fleet, conquering worlds and plundering booty. Hmm booty. Hopefully Ambrosia will make another sequel to this series, it's been one of my favorites ever seen I played the original game to death on my mother's Macintosh when I was a kid.

 

[almondblight]

I liked EV and EVO a lot better.

 

[L'ennui]

Confederate scum.

 

[Blaine]

I'm reviving this ancient thread because it has come to my attention that Escape Velocity: Nova (and indeed, the entire Escape Velocity series) is in real danger of being "lost."

EVN's place in the pantheon of incline is obscure, but secure. It's an amazing game combining space exploration and combat with enormous doses of CYOA, choice and consequence, and adventure game elements.

Ambrosia Software's website really isn't working very well. It hasn't been updated in ages and seems to essentially be crumbling like an abandoned building. There's still activity on their (ancient) forums, but cursory checks with a search engine reveal that people are having difficulty registering, logging in, purchasing the game, receiving activation codes, and so on. I've experienced this bugginess myself. Apparently, there's just one person anyone has managed to contact via email with mixed success lately, a guy named Bernard. Given Ambrosia's software catalog, I get the impression that they haven't sold much of anything in years and that pretty much the entire team has disbanded.

For example: https://www.reddit.com/r/evnova/comments/70uho9/is_the_ambrosia_website_safe/

At the moment, Ambrosia's website is the only clean source for downloading EVN. Even if one were to get one's hands dirty, there's little more than a puff of vapor to be found on torrent sites and so on, which isn't surprising since EVN is very old and not particularly well known.

Something really ought to be done about this. Any ideas?

 

[Infinitron]

Something really ought to be done about this. Any ideas?

Since they're probably too out-of-touch to be proactive about it, you could try to get somebody from GOG or Nightdive Studios to contact them and offer to distribute the game.

Wishlist items:
https://af.gog.com/wishlist/games/escape_velocity?as=1649904300
https://af.gog.com/wishlist/games/escape_velocity_nova?as=1649904300

 

[udm]

I emailed them years ago but they never got back to me. I'll never understand these types that just go radio silent and refuse to sell their games to a wider audience. Fuck, you don't even need to market shit if you're so disinclined to get your hands dirty, but the jewgold at least will continue to roll in. It's like they hate money.

 

[Blaine]

Something really ought to be done about this. Any ideas?

Since they're probably too out-of-touch to be proactive about it, you could try to get somebody from GOG or Night Dive Studios to contact them and offer to distribute the game.

Wishlist items:
https://af.gog.com/wishlist/games/escape_velocity?as=1649904300
https://af.gog.com/wishlist/games/escape_velocity_nova?as=1649904300

I've already seen those very same wishlist links and attached comments. They're five years old, and EVN isn't getting any younger. I have a feeling that wishlisting something on GOG tends to be about as effective as slacktivists updating their Facebook statuses, especially these days. At this point, "wishes" are more likely to be fulfilled through sheer coincidence, if at all.

I'm sure the people running GOG receive heartfelt emails vouching for this or that old game on a regular basis. The signal-to-noise ratio isn't going to be very promising.

Yeah, I know that I COULD personally send unsolicited emails as a concerned private citizen... and if that's all anyone's going to do, I guess I'll try it. The best chance of success would probably involve an Ambrosia representative contacting GOG or whomever. Even then, this one Bernard guy may not have the technical know-how (access to the game's source code, ability to remove built-in registration system, etc.) or legal authority to actually do or authorize anything.

People have figured out how to soft-crack the game's registration code using the clean game files, but that does nothing to properly conserve the game and is a piss-poor state of affairs anyway.

 

[Blaine]

It's been almost a year since I last posted. No one's been able to contact anyone at Ambrosia in years, as a cursory scan of this subreddit will show:

https://www.reddit.com/r/evnova/

However, I managed to log in to the Ambrosia website (though their software is very broken), I've got the software installers downloaded, I actually found my old license codes in an alternate email of mine (pictured below), and I've reached out to that EV Nova fan who mentioned in the subreddit that he has a crack for the game.

I realize no one else cares about EV Nova anymore, but it's fucking incredible and I'd hate to see it be lost.