In Praise of EV-Nova

[Crossroads Inc.]

I would hope, that many here know of and have played the Ambrosia game "EV-Nova" An 'asteroids;' type sprite based game that is open ended, easily modded and quite entertaining. I recently Opened up the game after it being almost a year since I last played it and I've been sucked back in, playing almost nonstop for the last month. I had really missed just how fun the "simple" game is, as well as just how nice it is having an endless supply of interesting mods.

For those that know the game, the Mods I currently, and have used for AGES are the following.
"Shield Mod" adds bubble shields to all ships, and just makes them prettier.
"Ship Variant Mod" Adds 3 to 4 different types of every ship in the game, usually "militarized" versions with extra gun slots but smaller cargo, and then the same thing in reverse. It might not sound like much, but this is one of the best mods in the games.. It makes versions of ships that otherwise are quite unplayable in thier 'stock' forms Starliner anyone?
"Custom Title Mod" A fair simple mod that adds custom titles to a series of s,all mini missions that usually have no impact on the game what os ever. The titles are "Cunjo Hunter" (it makes it so you always get this, "Deep Space Explorer" (for completing the Kontek Probe Mission.) "Terraformer" (for finally finishing the terraforming missions. And "Roadie" (for the Rock Band Mission.

There are COUNTLESS other mods, but those are the ones i play with the most. Playing this again also reminds me of my Favorite ship of all time... The Manticore one of these ships, with the right upgrades WILL fuck you up. A stock ship comes with 8 turrets, and 8Gun ports. It also comes with SIX "Ion Beams" which chew through shields and can disable a battleship in seconds... With Upgrades you can have a total of TEN turets and TWELVE gun ports. Add to this the ship has a cool 500tons worth of cargo space, allowing you to do almost any cargo mission for quick cash, and you have a VERY Well rounded ship.

Usually when I play the game my progression is ->Shuttle->Heavy Shuttle->Thuderfury (which I use to stack up huge amounts of "Un Courier" missions for goody points, ->Mod Starbridge (which I use to up my fighting skill, since one of those kick ass, ->IDA Frigate-> for upping cargo runs, AND because it makes a good pocket Warshp for doing more and more difficult missions, and then as always a "Heavy Weapons Platform" Manticore.

And just for the records, my current Manticore has the following:
4-150 Railguns
6-100 Railguns

3-Ion Cannon turrets
2-Auraon Disabling Pulse Turrets
3-"Storm" anti missilie chain turrets

3-Radar Missilie Launchers

it will FUCK you up Mang

[Ryan Thunder]

Can't speak for EV Nova, but I used to play Escape Velocity and Escape Velocity: Override back in the day. Owned quite a few planets by the time I was done, too.

[Stark]

If only the game wasn't totally static and thus massively boring, and if only time actually passed on a planet. Whoops, you landed with a deathship directly above? Hope you've got another save, lol!

The mods that make up for the game's massive shortfalls are really funny. The game has a) Starcon combat and b) a really stupid story. The economy, communication, universe, everything else is shit boring.

[Serafina]

I love these games.
By the way, they are shareware, so you can give it a try for free - you only need to pay if you want to unlock the latter ~2/3 of the storyline and the more powerfull ships that come with it.

Oh, and railguns suck

[Losonti Tokash]

It's still 30 bucks for a 7 year old game.

[Serafina]

It's still 30 bucks for a 7 year old game.

It's not like the graphics are ageing or anything - they are deliberately in an old-fashioned style.
Granted, it is kinda expensive for a game that old - but then again, we are talking about a small business.
And i am paying for the fun, not because it is new and shiny.

[Stark]

Even the demo lets you find infinitely repeatable massively profitable trade routes, and in half an hour you can go from a terrapin to unlimited money. Every single time!

Fun. Oh no, boring. This is why space rangers is dynamic and random seeded.

[Serafina]

Meh - there may be hyper-efficient, game-breaking and easy ways to "beat" the game. Thats not what makes it fun - it's about experimenting, flying ships because they are cool, using custom content and so on.

If you do not like that - thats your problem.

[Stark]

You mean ignoring the massively static world to find sub-optimal solutions? Sounds like a personal problem. The issues were bad once, but once you've seen actual dynamic markets, actual npcs, actual factions, actual semi-emergent stuff the game is just massively boring and linear.

The ship fit thing is just hilarious - people obsess over their LEET FITS when there's no multi and really obvious 'best setups' money isn't even an issue because you can generate infinite money at will. People like this should just play EVE, lol.

Indie deva overpricing their games is hilarious - you'd be hard pressed to find a real game that went for 30 four years later let alone seven. But hey, this is the Market where people are dumb enough to charge 60 for Dominions 3. If only they got more exposure and lowered their prices they might get more sales - hell EVN would work on an iPhone.

[The Kernel]

And just for the records, my current Manticore has the following:
4-150 Railguns
6-100 Railguns

3-Ion Cannon turrets
2-Auraon Disabling Pulse Turrets
3-"Storm" anti missilie chain turrets

3-Radar Missilie Launchers

it will FUCK you up Mang

Ditch the Radar Missiles and get Hellhounds instead which are much more powerful, tough for even Polaris to jam and have a great ionizing effect.

That being said, even the low end Polaris and Rebel ships will make mincemeat of your Manticore in the right hands. You would do much better with a Rebel Frigate (those omni lasers kick enormous amounts of ass) or of course a Polaris cap ship with CPLs, Multi-torps, etc.

That was always my biggest problem with EV: Nova...no matter what you did you couldn't get decent hardware (especially the godly multi-jump organ) unless you were in the Polaris storyline. That and there really isn't a decent way to create your own story by subjugating worlds and carving our your own empire, although perhaps I'm asking too much with that.

[Stark]

You can probably get a mod with such scripting in it; but the reliance on rigid scripts is why nothing interesting ever happens outside the combat.

Of course, other space games do dynamic stuff just fine. But then, they use digital distribution and reasonable pricing to reach markets.

[The Kernel]

You can probably get a mod with such scripting in it; but the reliance on rigid scripts is why nothing interesting ever happens outside the combat.

Of course, other space games do dynamic stuff just fine. But then, they use digital distribution and reasonable pricing to reach markets.

Yeah, I don't usually agree with you, but in this case you have a point. However, EV: Nova is also basically a graphical update to a 15 year old game developed by 2 guys during which time rigid scripting was pretty much the norm. So I'm willing to give it some slack.

Still even with slack, the game could be a LOT better if it had embraced some dynamic concepts.

[Stark]

I really enjoyed the earlier games until I worked out the economy didn't even have a small random component. Since there's rarely any time pressure, it means the whole 'rationing money' and 'best fit' stuff is irrelevant because you can go print more money (especially using the 'hire extra ships' thing), which kind of undermines the game (and the item balance is horrid anyway). It's even worse after playing an entirely dynamic game like Space Rangers (although that has bleh combat instead of Starcon combat).

[Straha]

I loved Escape Velocity because it was one of the first games I ever played.

I loved EV Nova until I bought it. Then I realized what utter shit it was. As everyone has pointed out there's no dynamism to the game or the economy, your escorts are either pointless or godly killers of doom, you can make oodles and oodles of money but after a while what's the point?, and the storyline(s) are complete predictable shit (surprise!) utterly denuding the game of the one thing that would make the lack of dynamism worth it. People told me I could use plug-ins, but 99% of plug-ins are crap and I'm not going to mine through crap mountain just to find the one plug-in that makes the game kind of better.

Every so often I get the urge to play it again, and download a copy but it goes away after a week or two. That said if anyone wants to borrow my license for a couple weeks to see just how crappy the game is even in full mode I'm more than willing to lend it out, assuming that wont get it revoked.

[Battlehymn Republic]

EV:N is inferior to its predecessors in that the story chains are retarded sometimes and force you to take certain tracks.

Just play Transcendence. It's free!

[Nephtys]

Trancendance is a far superior game with more dynamic combat, less obtuse 'buy this to level up!!!', and an option to NOT have to trade.

[Stark]

Is it wrong that when I went to the website and saw 'download Transcendance 99c' I thought 'I ain't paying 99c for your stupid game pal'?

[Ryan Thunder]

Trancendance is a far superior game with more dynamic combat, less obtuse 'buy this to level up!!!', and an option to NOT have to trade.

Yes, although I would have liked to get a new ship every now and then instead of just tacking ever more powerful systems on to the one I started with...

[Battlehymn Republic]

Is it wrong that when I went to the website and saw 'download Transcendance 99c' I thought 'I ain't paying 99c for your stupid game pal'?

It is 'cause I already said it was free.

[Stark]

a) you are not a reliable source
b) people put 'v' or 'version' infront of version numbers for a reason
c) version 0.99c is a stupid version that means the developers don't know how versioning works
d) it's clearly a download link

[Lord Relvenous]

EV:N is inferior to its predecessors in that the story chains are retarded sometimes and force you to take certain tracks.

Just play Transcendence. It's free!

Damn it, now I'm addicted to that game. Curse you!