Naev – open-source game about space exploration, trade and combat

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?).

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.

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...

I remembered that I had enjoyed its text based quest in prison (and maybe somewhere else as well, cannot recall that).

Endless Sky doesn't support multiplayer. It sticks very close to the EV model, just modernized (higher definition graphics).

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)

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.

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.

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.

I really really miss having games like Armada to couch-play.

Mods fix that issue, and the modding scene is active.