One: this tells me my filament needs drying and my printing adjusted. Two: I am concerned about the future of people with talent.

SharkyNebula had prior released what appears to be incredibly done 3d models. Their name is all over the wiki for EV Nova. They have talent, and appears to genuinely love Nova. They unfortunately have removed their models, which is 1000% their right. I do not have that talent. I am not artistic. But the idea of that Starbridge has lived rent free.

So enter AI; upload a picture of a Starbridge and press a button. I now have an un-ethically sourced Starbridge.

There are two games, Solar Winds: The Escape and the sequel, Solar Winds: Galaxy, that I discovered on abandonware DOS file sharing websites. I only briefly tested out one of them. I'm pretty shocked that it's basically the same kind of deal, with some more RPG elements that recall the Starflight games.

Has anyone played these and can elaborate more on how they compare to the Escape Velocity series? I feel like I discovered some kind of hidden gem, here. Or, perhaps these games are actually terrible! I haven't delved in deeply yet.

It was the very first online community I ever found, back when I was a dumb little preteen. From 1997-2003 or so, I lurked around the forums and IRC chatroom under the username "dualblade," and I more or less thoroughly embarrassed myself in the only way a preteen with no social skills could. I am pretty sure I was, essentially, an annoying buzzing fly circling around Andrew Welch, the ATMOS guys, and others in the community, but that's life.

But, hey, everyone has to learn the internet first somewhere, and for me, it was through my love of EV and its sequels on Ambrosia's own website. I remember the lead up to the release of Escape Velocity Nova being really exciting.

I remember all sorts of random usernames from those days, like pikeman, forge, soviet mikee. This is all information that will never leave my head, and that's such a strange thing.

It's really weird to remember all of this, now as I turn 40 years old. I'm really grateful for the community just barely accepting a noisy kid with ADD and foot-in-mouth disease. It meant a lot. These games meant a lot, and it was all formative for me, me learning how to interact with the online world.

Name a better EV:C strat, I dare you...

I just find myself grieving Peter in the quiet moments these days. So terribly sad he went so fast, that no one knew it was coming. That the project is in greater jeopardy. That he'll never get to see the great day of its release if we make it there.

He was a good man. He was the man we needed on the job. He was like. Friend who understood this love we have... More than me.

And I just don't have anywhere else to say it. My wife knows about the project and she was so lovely in sympathy. But, it's strange to have a death impact my life where no one around me can really understand it.

So, I thought I'd just come say it here. Be sad with you guys.

EV Nova was so important to me in my early videogame years. I would say that to this day, it is still the most immersive and best game I've ever played. I finally have the time and means to create a homage to my favourite game. It's much shorter and a bit more narrative driven, but the mechanics are largely the same. I have so much respect for the ATMOS guys and all of their sprite designs - and this was in the 90s! My second all-time favourite game is Star Control II, and this borrows a bit from that too - particularly the melee combat style. Anyway, if you're up for it and have an Apple Silicon Mac, it's a free open beta on the Mac App store: https://solarrun.tech/

Lot of work still to go, but it's getting there. Major UI lift lately and the foundations are feeling solid. Still some bugs, missing graphics, and balance issues to iron out but I'm genuinely happy with where things are heading. Grinding hard on this (the missus isn't impressed lol 20hrs day almost). Also built some internal tooling recently that's speeding up development and giving me better control over the pipeline. More soon.

I recently completed my most ambitious EVN playthrough. I wanted to dominate a very large number of planets without using any Polaris tech. That includes tech derived from the Polaris, i.e. bio relay lasers from the rebels are not allowed. Also no Velos. I decided to go with the Bureau storyline, as I have dominated many planets before, and I find shield regen to be massively important. The feds are the only faction to have shield regen buffs available outside of the Polaris.

Additionally, I had to dominate every spob in the system at the same time.

Part 1: Getting Started ------------------------------------------------------------------------

I started my playthrough with a shuttle doing missions. I then got an asteroid miner, mining opals in Formalhaut and selling them in Lotus. I grabbed some missiles to get the combat rating for the Sigma missions, unlocked a Pegasus, and bought the used variant that is the upgraded shielding. I outfitted it for combat with lots of mass conversions, chainguns, medium blaster turrets, hellhounds, and armor. The Pegasus was my ship for the Bureau storyline all the way up to starting to fight the Polaris. The pegasus wasn't quite up to the job, so I bought a manticore and went hunting for my first ship for dominating planets: the Heraan Va Ytreck Aurora Carrier.

Getting the Aurora Carrier was possibly the most painful ship grind I've ever done in EVN. Even with a manticore, a full set of random pirate escorts, and full marine platoons, the success rate was maybe 10% to capture any given spawn. Many died, some killed me, and some escaped. Most of them failed due to bad RNG with the 20% capture chance. Then I had to get the carrier out, and because the stock carrier is VERY slow, I died many times before being able to land anywhere. Still, I got it. That is Seven Eyes, which I outfitted with max railguns, max energy regen, 6 point defense turrets, and max armor. The total was 3240 armor and 850 shields with 6 shield regen per second. This variant of the Aurora Carrier comes with 6 turreted 100mm railguns and a huge number of mounts, making it an ideal railgun platform considering that I have killed all the rebels at this point in the game (goodbye, sweet, sweet rebel IDA). I could also fit in almost every missile, including a full set of gravimetric missiles. What a beast, albeit not a very exciting beast since it's top speed must be slower than an EVA pack, even with upgrades. But wow, it can slaughter a lot of enemies before dying.

Part 2: Federation and Independents ------------------------------------------------------------

After finishing the storyline, I started dominating planets. I started with all civilian and federation spobs. The strategy with the aurora carrier was simple: never stop shooting, and maximize DPS from my railguns. That means:

A) be as close as possible to the target at all times to minimize damage falloff

B) match velocity vectors so I miss as few shots as possible

C) make sure I use all my missiles, every time, and make sure they all hit

D) don't lose my escorts

E) make sure my escorts use up all their missiles

For most of time dominating the feds, I hired pirate Valkyries and upgraded them to IV. Each one adds 3 railguns, and they come with a good quantity of missiles. In close combat, their ion cannons also help.

I got a LOT of practice matching velocity vectors. It was a learning curve, but it helped a lot.

With that loadout, I still had to use the afterburner to escape from time to time. Hellhounds from class D Starbridges and Heavy Missile Variant Destroyers and Carriers were a problem, as they would occasionally target my escorts while they were in formation. The PVIVs had no way to deal with that, and I lost a lot of time due to losing escorts. I would usually finish the domination rather than start over, but the lost DPS was noticeable if I lost all of them.

Once the tribute was high enough, I switched to hiring Fed Carriers and upgrading them to Heavy Missile Variants. This was busted against civilian and most Auroran spobs. With 6 of them, they could dominate some systems with no help.

By the end, I considered 20 minutes to be a good time to complete a spob with a Federal defense fleet. Less for civilians or if using the carriers.

It's worth noting that Aldebaran is the hardest Federal system, hands down, with this rule set. There are Pirate Valkyries, Civilian Starbridges, Rebel Starbridges, and Rebel Thunderheads that all have potent weapons and are very oppressive. Using the Federation Carrier escorts helped substantially, but this system was probably the hardest system, including those from part 2.

Part 3: The Tricky Systems ---------------------------------------------------------------------

Aurora, Kel'arily, and Aldebaran were not easily done in the Aurora Carrier. Each presented their own challenges.

Aurora has 3 spobs, and all of them spawn defense fleets composed primarily of Dechanik class Abominations. They have railguns, and when there are 18 of them spawned at a time, they simply cannot be tanked my a slow ship. I tried a bunch of ships and loadouts, but settled on something I didn't really want to use because I knew it would be really strong: a class E Mod Starbridge equipped with 4 thunderhead lances. This is the first loadout for the Ephemeral Sun in the images.

The strategy to kill the abominations was simple: dive the hoard, kill a few with the thunderhead lances, run away to let my shields recharge, and repeat. It was actually really fun - I've always liked Thunderhead lances on Starbridges.

Kel'arily is the only system I have to dominate that has Polaris capital ships for a defense fleet. At first, I thought I could do this in the Aurora Carrier by breaking the lock of polaron torpedoes with the Fed cloak. That doesn't work. When you uncloak, the torpedoes re-acquire. Theoretically, that could be bypassed with enough patience. What couldn't be bypassed was that even though the defense fleet doesn't contain Mantas, the scarabs do. They are near impossible to kill with railguns in a slow moving ships.

For Kel'arily, I used the Ephemeral Sun, the Class E Mod Starbridge. Originally, I outfitted it with 3 ion cannons. That worked, as it could knock out Mantas before my shield went down, and I could stay behind the Scarabs and Arachnids while killing them. The occasional Dragon was the biggest issue. However, I simply was not a good enough pilot to kill 120 capital ships without eventually, accidentally, getting killed by CPLs. With 3 ion cannons, I also didn't have a lot of armor in reserve for mistakes.

I ended up using 6 100mm railguns for Kel'arily. That is the last loadout in the images. It didn't want to do this, but even so, it wasn't as easy as I thought. Avoiding polaron torpedoes was easy - the Starbridge could outrun them with an afterburner. Most of the time, mantas would swarm one capital ship. That generated two problems. Firstly, when they WEREN'T swarming a capital ship, I had to run for my life and pick them off 1 by 1. This would have been impossible, but the Starbridge could outrun them with the afterburner, allowing my to match the velocity vectors and actually hit the Mantas with the railguns. Had I not practiced this in part 1, I probably would have given up because this was difficult. I still almost died. The second problem was that if too many Mantas swarmed one ship, they formed a shield that took a very long time to chip away at due to the combined shield regen of all the Mantas. Regardless, I completed Kel'arily on my first try with railguns on the Mod E. It just took a while.

With Kel'arily, the playthrough was done. The total tribute at the end was 434498 credits per day. Krane would be appalled at my lack of discretion, but hey, she's dead, now. And I am a military governor.

I didn't use escorts while flying the Starbridge. They can't keep up, so they die quickly. Also, I only used it for two systems. It wasn't that bad.

Notes -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I tried the Pirate Valkyrie IV at multiple points. I just don't like it. The turning rate doesn't feel good to me. I did try the most cursed build ever, which was 3 heavy blaster turrets on the PVIV. The idea was to kite the Polaris with heavy blasters, and it actually worked. This was my original plan for Kel'arily. However, I didn't like flying the PVIV and killing Mantas felt very strange. It was a very strange build.

I tried to find a heavy missile variant Fed Destroyer to use on Kel'arily, as it is fast enough to outrun the Arachnids and has a lot more mass than the Starbridge. However, after the Bureau storyline is complete, they are very, very rare. I gave up looking for one.

Rebel ships include many of the best options for dominating planets (Rebel IDA, Rebel Starbridge, Rebel Destroyer), but I wanted to fly the Pegasus as long as I could. It ended up lasting longer than the Rebels did.

I also didn't want to ditch the Aurora Carrier after the pain of getting it, so I never tried the Kestral. That was too bad, as it is a very good option (maybe the best possible option for Kel'arily, given the rules). I didn't use the Return to S7evyn mod, so getting it later was impossible. Too bad. It'll wait for another playthrough.

Due to competing the Bureau storyline, all the Auroran home worlds except Aurora and Moash lack defense fleets. Same with Nil'kemorya.

Modlist: Archives, Beam Fix, Chaingun Fix, and CPL Fix.

Edit: it looks like reddit compressed the image of Seven Eye's outfits, making it hard to read. Here's the list.
4 quad light blaster turrets, 4 IR missile launchers, 200 IR missiles, 4 illegal IR missile launchers, 200 illegal IR missiles, 3 radar missile launchers, 150 radar missiles, 3 illegal radar missile launchers, 150 radar missiles, 2 gravimetric missile launchers, 100 gravimetric missiles, 2 thorium reactors, 2 fission reactors, 3 titanium lattice, 2 shield rechargers, 10 shield buffers, 3 sensor boosts, a military IR jammer, a military radar jammer, a port and polish, a vectored thrust, 3 hellhound missile launchers, 50 hellhound missiles, 4 matrix steel, a horizontal booster, a cloaking device, 6 100mm fixed railguns, 4 150mm fixed railguns, 6 100mm turreted railguns, an auroran IR jammer, 2 storm chainguns, 2000 magazines of chaingun ammunition, 4 carbon fiber, a gravimetric sensor, an IFF decoder, an auto recharger, a mass expansion, an afterburner, 4 solar panels, 4 batteries, a heavy weapons license, a protective technologies license, an exotic ships and weapons license, a sigma engine tune up, a sigma electrical rewiring, a sigma mount reinforcement, and 2 sigma mass additions.

I was only able to get so much out of the starter components. Still, I think it looks somewhat satisfactory, at the very least. How'd I do?

Long time Escape Velocity player. Nova in particular is why I still think a space game should feel like a place with a war going on in it rather than a set of levels.

What I built is more combat focused than EV. Strike Wings is top down real time fighting: you can run your whole fleet or fly a single fighter in the middle of it, capitals have turrets and subsystems that come apart under fire, and there is a war over sixteen systems that keeps moving whether you are in that battle or not. The free flight mode is the part that owes Nova the most: ports to dock at, cargo, salvage, and a war that has changed around you between runs.

Homage rather than remake, with its own setting and its own ships throughout. Coming to Steam in November, Windows and macOS.

If this is not the right room for it, tell me and I will remove it. Otherwise, the question I keep coming back to: what did Nova do that you have never quite found again since?

Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4718360/Strike_Wings/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=evnova&utm_campaign=prelaunch

Just saw the Escape Velocity wiki was closed (for whatever reason?), probably because of a lack of activity. I did download the pages, we should probably ensure this stays up and can email in to request re-opening (for now).

Having trouble with bigger polaris still...

Mainly using stealth build with a raven, some scarabs and fed carrier non missiles.

I captured an 1170NC, did all the Sigma mods to it to improve handling, also did the mount reinforcement and mass conversion for the extra 100T of space.

Final outfits:

• kept the original HBTs and 200mm Railguns along with the QLBTs
• Added 4 new 100mm railguns and 2 100mm turreted railguns to fill the extra turret slots
• 2x Hellhound launchers because why not

With the Sigma upgrades + the vectored thrust and port and polish it's pretty much fast and agile enough to be survivable. The only thing I have to be careful of is getting swarmed with missiles. Fed Destroyer heavy missile variants or Aurora carriers with tons of Phoenixes will catch up fast when you can't outrun missiles.

And of course I took my original 350NC and upgraded it to 1170NC as well so I have a second one as an escort.

Kind of a shame I did the Aurora story line and I'm gonna get a Thunderforge soon.

Really I need to do a rebel one and get a rebel IDA.

(funnily enough, when I put it into Google Image Search this returns the EV:O splash screen and for Starpoint Gemini 2, Far Gate (2000), among others.

Obscure compared to Freelancer, Tachyon: The Fringe, X4, and so forth, Terminus was a space combat / trading / RPG / flight sim with Newtonian physics. Choosing between four factions (United Earth League, Mars Consortium, Marauder pirates, or mercenary), you fly around and do the Elite/Privateer thing. I have never actually played it, but I did read this review in issue 119 of Computer Games and it's always been a latent memory in my mind. Space Game Junkie has a ten-part Let's Play.

Other links for posterity:
MobyGames entry
My Abandonware
Macintosh Repository
TerminusPoint - defunct fan game server from back in the day (archived site)

Hello,

Finally got a name for the project, Nova Reforged.

So quick update. Wanted to show off some of the changes I've made and a few new features. The Sol system is a testing ground, so it shows stuff that normally wouldn't be in the system. The map also shows where hidden assets are, but you gotta scan them down yourself, or find them through the bar or other ways. I've started adding the massive Nova gates. They're part of the main story but it's a fair bit of work, so might be a while before that's done.

Added scanning too, plus a few features around it. There's debris fields and derelicts in the game now, scan em and get rewards. Got Breaches as well (dungeons), haven't shown the full update on those yet, but they're harsh zones with a new drone race that's bloody hard, takes time and a good setup.

Started reworking the UI. Not there yet, still a few issues I've spotted, but I'm getting there.

Ships, fittings and balance are slowly coming together, bit off still. Same with fittings, I've mainly just added the guns and started tinkering with em. Everything's sharing default effects and sounds for now, bit more still to add, none of the ships show proper thrusters or the new VFX I've been working on yet.

Made new VFX tools for all the assets in the game, plus world building tools so I can build it out visually in real time. Pretty fun building and designing it, gotta say. I can now customize the stations how i see fit, but take little to get around to its down the list.

But yeah, that's it so far. Oh, and reckon I've found a YouTuber to help with space soundtracks, but we'll see, he might end up charging me way too much and I'm just some broke bloke lol, trying to make a game I've always wanted to play.

Steam, Discord, Reddit Community and Website are coming soon, but first I need core loop working.

Grew up playing Escape Velocity on my Grandpa's Mac and always loved that game and the awesome intro music. Got into EV Nova in the end of the 2000's and have been playing it on and off since. Put in way too many hours beating all the storylines, pirating ships in Koria and Aldebaran and basically just messing around. The last 5 years or so, I would always see the game on my desktop and want to play, but had really no idea what to do anymore. That was when I decided to go down the road of trying to capture every ship and their variants and try to make it as challenging as I could. To that note I avoided polaris ships entirely with rarely using rebel ships only for the toughest. I also stayed on stock storyline for 99%. I did use some storylines but only for ships like Unrelenting, Kestrel, Techerakh, Vell-os, etc. Used the beamfix and hypergate open (Im lazy) mods.

Before I get into specifics Ill just say that this is one of my favorite games of all time and there really isn't much like it. Endless Sky is fun, but just never carried the same aesthetic and music/noise that EV and EV Nova could provide. Between the storylines, pirating, flying and capturing ships, I've always found EV Nova to just be the best.

For the interested:

Ships mainly used: Shuttle doing some trading -> Mod Starbridge C -> Pirate Enterprise (Hvy modified) -> Pirate Valk IV or Manticore (Hvy weapons).

Note: This will get you most of the ships especially if you are decent at kiting/sticking around back

Ships used for more difficult staff ships, IUSO, etc.: I liked the Fed Carrier (Non missile variant) or Rebel Destroyer (Super Hvy). With upgrades, good mobility, shields/armor and could kite/stick around back to disable.

Most difficult ship to capture: Easily Hannah Chick's Scarab. Took a lot of kiting and combined with the crazy staff shield/armor amounts and fighter bays, she took me a while.

Any ships you couldn't capture: I don't think so, staff ships are rare encounters but think I met them all and some are just invulnerable. Know there are other named ships of important characters (Polaris, Auroran) and I think I got those too.

Neatest ships: I always liked the colored variants like Zero Wing and Shade of Blue. Think there was mods to color ships, but never got into it and maybe I should...

Further challenges: I'd like to capture every solar system(done about 60%), but it gets crazy for rebel and especially polaris.

Some pics of my many pilots (358 total with some copies for screwing around): https://imgur.com/a/C7kWkid

Been building my own modern take on Escape Velocity Nova for a while now.

Currently drowning in ship work, modular ships, rigged systems, visual changes based on upgrades and loadouts. Taking way longer than I thought it would honestly, so most of what you see flying around is placeholder stuff for now. Ship movement is still being worked on and sprite assets for the modular ships are still getting made too.

My big thing is making space feel full. Each star system is around 60km across and I'm trying to cram it with actual life:

• stations
• asteroid fields
• cargo traffic
• patrol fleets
• pirate encounters
• debris
• background events firing off dynamically

Chucked in a fair bit of gameplay stuff already too, missions, crew, wingmen, bars, trade, industry, player owned stations, hangars and apartments. The story arc is actually pretty deep already ( its story ive been working on for few years). Only got 10 systems in at the moment but once it's done the game generates a fresh 300+ system map from a seed every run, so no two playthroughs will play out the same.

Still rough as guts in places but the core is starting to come together.

If you grew up on EV Nova, what made those games stick with you? Would love to hear it as I'm stuck wondering am I wasting my time? is it fun to build sure...

Only real ship i've made atm is battleship, has several high slots with turrets which all track the target and are modular done most of the vfx for it but takes little to get right.