[HN Gopher] Naev - open-source game about space exploration, tra...
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Naev - open-source game about space exploration, trade and combat
Author : pabs3
Score : 433 points
Date : 2023-11-26 00:53 UTC (22 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (naev.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (naev.org)
| dbingham wrote:
| Sounds 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/
| tsujamin wrote:
| +1 for endless sky, has that "just 30 more minutes" hook
| ktbwrestler wrote:
| this is awesome, do you know if it supports multiplayer? I
| might help out with Naev since that also apparently has a
| multiplayer plugin...
| kzrdude wrote:
| Endless Sky doesn't support multiplayer. It sticks very close
| to the EV model, just modernized (higher definition
| graphics).
| whartung wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| The 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 wrote:
| Props 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 wrote:
| <tries that karate move now, just for kicks>
| o11c wrote:
| Note 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.
| DylanSp wrote:
| I've played Endless Sky a decent bit but always struggled
| with combat; thanks for this guide. What's the Monty Python
| maneuver you mentioned? (EDIT: Never mind, found an
| explanation at
| https://evn.fandom.com/wiki/Monty_Python_Maneuver)
| alisonatwork wrote:
| I had the same experience.
|
| I was having a blast being an explorer in a scout ship,
| shuttling interesting characters around, never getting into
| any battles because my ship was fast enough to outrun any
| pirates and I never pissed anyone off.
|
| Unfortunately at a certain point the game the railroads you
| into a storyline where you are forced to pick a side in some
| galactic war and entire sections of the map become unpassable
| because everyone attacks you, even if you are pootling along
| in a civilian ship with no weapons. I think you're supposed
| to build up a fleet and kill everybody, but it's such a big
| change in both tone and gameplay that it really bummed me
| out. Oh well.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Yeah there's no real way to finish the game as a plain old
| simple trader iirc, that's just the first of I think three
| or four major wars you get involved in during the entire
| game?
| atrettel wrote:
| I played an earlier version of Endless Sky but haven't kept
| up with the recent developments. I agree that combat in
| Endless Sky is a lot harder than in EV and really is not
| worth it until you can get a quite decent ship and get good
| at the game mechanics for combat. The key for me was to start
| by doing standard missions until you get enough money for
| trading commodities. Then you start developing trade routes
| and shipping commodities yourself. You build up a
| convoy/fleet, monitor prices in different systems, and make
| real money by buying low and selling high. That's more fun
| than it sounds, but it is a bit of a grind admittedly. Once
| you get going you can really make tons of money. This is the
| easiest way to afford a decent ship (in my opinion). And to
| me that's when the fun came in. Endless Sky also allows you
| to own multiple ships (unlike EV), so you can design
| different ships or even fleets for different purposes (one
| fleet for combat, one fleet for exploration, one fleet for
| trade, etc.). But there is unfortunately a bit of grinding
| you have to do before you can get to that point.
|
| Note that none of this involves the storyline, so you can do
| this for as long as you'd like regardless of how much of the
| story you have completed.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Someone 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
|
| I wonder if the Coalition campaign is done yet...
| maxbond wrote:
| A 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 wrote:
| How does the stealth mechanic work?
| maxbond wrote:
| It'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?).
| EdwardDiego wrote:
| So does stealth involve shutting down systems / power
| output etc.?
|
| I always like a stealth system in space that involved not
| radiating, as well as avoiding active radar, too many sub
| sims in my youth :D
|
| My favourite thing about The Expanse was when incoming
| radar stealth ships were finally identified by their bright
| drive plumes as they slowed for an attack.
| maxbond wrote:
| No unfortunately (or not that I've noticed), though you
| drop out of stealth if you open fire or use your
| afterburners. It would be cool if you came out of stealth
| at half power; that would make it pretty costly, since
| power and power regen are the stats that dictate how long
| you can sustain your weapons in a firefight (missiles not
| withstanding).
|
| That's very cool re: The Expanse. Alastair Reynolds, an
| astronomer turned sci-fi author, explores "weaponized
| astronomy" a lot in his books, especially the opening
| chapters of "Inhibitor Phase". Without too many spoilers,
| there's a ship that cools it's hull close to absolute
| zero and uses cryogenic gasses for thrust in order to
| maneuver, so that it isn't radiating IR. And they have to
| time their operations so that they aren't seen occluding
| the sun.
| EdwardDiego wrote:
| Oh, I definitely need to read those books, cheers!
| maxbond wrote:
| The _Revelation Space_ series does start slow, he was a
| junior writer for the first part and he 's, but I enjoy
| it a lot.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| Another author who explores stealth in space combat is
| Greg Bear in 'Anvil of Stars' (the successor to 'Forge of
| God'). This is nothing like The Expanse, instead the
| galaxy is a hostile jungle full of predators just waiting
| for a young techno civilisation (like humanity) to
| naively broadcast its presence.
| bbarnett wrote:
| Jack Campbell's "The Lost Fleet" starts with Dauntless,
| and is reasonably good at considering light speed issues
| in combat, tactics, and moving fleets of ships at low
| fractions of the speed of light, eg .1c
|
| Also a good space opera, as well.
| vulcan01 wrote:
| However, if I remember correctly, stealth in particular
| is not really considered and is dismissed as impossible.
| Campbell does a good job of demonstrating tactics to hide
| ships, though.
| bbarnett wrote:
| Yes, the only stealth isn't really that. I won't say more
| re: spoiler.
| maxbond wrote:
| In space, no one can hear you scream, but everyone can
| see your heat.
| calf wrote:
| I absolutely LOVED playing Escape Velocity in high school!
| AmbrosiaSW made such great shareware games, with appealing
| graphic design and replayability--the modular system. I think
| all 3 EV games are good examples of the concept of "aesthetic
| unity" in game design.
| dguest wrote:
| Speaking of shareware: was I the only person who modded
| Captain Hector to take away his more powerful weapons?
|
| I feel bad now for not scraping together the 10 bucks or
| whatever they were asking for, but mom would have just told
| me to go play outside if I'd asked.
| gdhkgdhkvff wrote:
| Captain Hector. That's a name(and bane of my existence)
| that I haven't thought of in decades.
|
| I, too, was too cheap as a kid to buy it and spent many
| hours trying to figure out how to outrun him. Such an
| interesting/infuriating mechanic to enforce trial periods.
| jwithington wrote:
| Better than Escape Velocity?? Gotta try it then.
| rauljara wrote:
| Seems like HN broke the trailer on their site. Fortunately, it
| also lives on YouTube:
| 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 wrote:
| It'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 wrote:
| The 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-v...
| bbarnett wrote:
| Isn't it all just based upon Wing Commander?
|
| (Without this bracketed addendum, this would be a troll
| comment rank 16 mega-trolls)
| EamonnMR wrote:
| Actually, he based the gameplay on reading the Elite
| manual but never actually having played Elite.
| exo-pla-net wrote:
| For 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/
| 83457 wrote:
| Reminds me of Armada
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| I really really miss having games like Armada to couch-play.
| Loughla wrote:
| Wow. That hits on exactly what I'm looking for.
| Aeolun wrote:
| I'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 wrote:
| Mods fix that issue, and the modding scene is active.
| ajvs wrote:
| Yeah I have to say Starsector way of less arcadey combat works
| really really good, wish more of these space sims would copy
| it.
| hschne wrote:
| I don't play much anymore, but there's basically two games I
| keep coming back to. Starsector and Stellaris.
|
| Both Games get updates every couple of months. Which is
| perfect, because you get something new every time you pick one
| of them up again.
| EamonnMR wrote:
| Always love a good EV clone. I loved this one back when it was
| much more Nova-like.
| prawn wrote:
| Reminds me a bit of Star Control II and its Melee combat mode.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| This 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 wrote:
| This reminds me of Spore a lot
| lenerdenator wrote:
| Never 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 wrote:
| EV is still playable on the macOS classic emulators. I suggest
| giving it a shot too.
| thot_experiment wrote:
| Is the logo the Kestrel? Love it. Played the shit out of EV:N on
| the computer lab computers.
| walteweiss wrote:
| There 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)
| rkagerer wrote:
| Despite its bugs Space Rangers was incredible. The diversity of
| gameplay was great. Fly around space, fight people, solve
| puzzles and manage ski resorts.
| walteweiss wrote:
| I remembered that I had enjoyed its text based quest in
| prison (and maybe somewhere else as well, cannot recall
| that).
| yread wrote:
| Yeah the puzzles were awesome
| foota wrote:
| Did anyone else play the flash game, Flash Trek: Broken Mirror 2
| in the mid 2000s? The game was great fun for its time.
| EamonnMR wrote:
| Wow, 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 wrote:
| I was confusing the talk of Escape Velocity with Terminal
| Velocity and getting quite confused
| Jude_Lapoire wrote:
| I 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-f...
|
| EDIT : spelling
| EamonnMR wrote:
| I'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 wrote:
| When 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 wrote:
| Sounds like Eve Online
| moffkalast wrote:
| EVE Offline
| pyinstallwoes wrote:
| I miss that space game that was on Verant : Sony online
| entertainment. There was also a space marine game. Isomorphic.
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