Thrusters to full burn! Let's achieve Escape Velocity Nova!

The Escape Velocity series is well known among Macintosh users, who had an exclusive hold on it for many years - I learned about EV (all of Ambrosia's games, really) through a classroom Mac, and not having access to it has always been the one thing I regretted about having a PC. The games are adventure-RPGs set in space with Asteroids-esque mechanics – all action takes place in starships, and while things do happen on the ground, they are purely descriptive.

I have to warn you, this first post will be all background information on the displays and the history of the game (both in the game and in the real world). If that doesn’t interest you, skip down to the last section where I ask for some player input.

Escape Velocity finally came to Windows machines in July of 2003 with the release of a port of Escape Velocity Nova, the third game in the series. EVN’s life began, as I understand it, as a total conversion plug-in for EV: Override, the second game in the series. However, the people at Ambrosia Software noticed the project and decided to make it an official installment in the series. That may have been a bad idea.

Don’t get me wrong, EVN is a great game, and I’ve sunk more hours into it than into either of the other games. The fact remains that it isn’t exactly the shining light of the series; for example, the overall challenge and breadth of the game is lower than in the first two and the player will often feel railroaded by the game's descriptions of their actions (kind of like playing a tabletop RPG with a controlling, mediocre GM).

That said, one of the reasons I love the game (and that I’m doing this LP) is that the sparse and generally bad writing of the game gives my imagination a springboard and my games generally end up with me keeping a mental diary for my pilot. My plan for this Let’s Play is to have it be mainly narrative, told from the point of view of our pilot as a counterpoint to the second-person PoV of the game’s text.

And now, on with the game’s introduction!





The year is 1177NC (roughly 3940AD). Humanity has splintered into many groups, but the six most important (read: the six that have a main storyline) are the Federation, the Aurorans, the Rebels, the Polaris, the Vell-os, and the Pirates.

The Federation is pretty a bog-standard sci-fi (sorry, I meant “SyFy”) large space government centered on Earth. They're supposedly a democratic government, but the real decisions are made by its Bureau of Internal Investigation. If you guessed that the BII is essentially a secular space-Inquisition, give yourself a cookie. Fed ships are pretty balanced, and in major systems they’re almost always found in packs led by a carrier or destroyer. Single fighters and gunboats patrol less important systems.

The Auroran Empire is the largest government in the game, by both population and real estate. They are divided into five Houses, one of which is voted to rule the Empire at any one time, and give respect to their warriors above all else. Auroran ships are brutish, with heavy armor and relatively weak shields. Their weapons take up a lot of mass (upgrade space) and have trouble breaking down shields, but have some of the longest ranges in the game and can chew through armor quickly.

The Rebels control a couple of systems to the north of Federation space. They specifically oppose the BII, but are willing to fight the Fed navy to get to their masters. Rebel ships are generally civilian ships given some nice upgrades and a coat of green paint, but the Rebels have acquired designs for destroyer-class vessels from both the Feds and the Polarans and have done some very interesting things with those ships.

The Polaris are the utopian race. They live with a caste system, with each Polaran being placed in one of the six castes based on their SAT2 scores. Their ships are grown as much as built, and are generally the most powerful vessels in the game. This is in large part due to the fact that they use beam weapons, which are more accurate and deal more damage than the projectiles used by other groups. All their outfits are superior to other factions’ equivalent outfits.

The Vell-os are psychics descended from an ancient Indian prince. They are currently under the control of the Federation, but in the past they beat the Feds to a bloody pulp over the question of Polaran independence and sued for peace only to prevent more death. Their ships are basically one huge shield with only a tiny amount of armor beneath, but are fast with powerful beam weapons and a huge reserve of energy. While they have very little technology per se, Vell-os ships are arguably the most powerful in the game.

There are numerous pirate factions in the game, but the main one is the Association of Free Traders. These men and women are actually a combination of militia and mercantile guild, but are called pirates by the Federal government because, the Feds claim, their “free trade” is just a euphemism for smuggling. The Association are enemies of other pirate groups and will attack them on sight, especially the aggressive pirates and smugglers of the Associated Guild of Free Traders. Pirate ships are mostly more maneuverable and heavily armed versions of civilian ships, but high-level AFT members will have access to many unique upgrades and some rather powerful ships.

This is the main screen. The green arrow is pointing to our ship, a lowly shuttlecraft, which is just approaching a planet. (If you look closely, you’ll see that our running lights are blinking.) On the right side of the screen, from top to bottom we have:

1. The minimap. It doesn’t tell us much right now, but for most of the game we’ll have upgrades that will color-code ships and ports as friend or foe and show us whether other ships are large or small.

2. Our gauges. On top is our shields, which regenerate (but too slowly to be useful in pitched battles); in the middle is armor, which doesn’t regenerate. You can survive running out of shields, but if your armor hits zero you’re space dust. The bottom line is our energy. Energy is technically measured in energy units, but most people measure a ship’s max energy by how many hyperspace jumps the ship can make without refueling because every jump, no matter how large the ship or long the jump, takes 100 units of energy.

3. Our destination. The port or system we have selected is displayed here.

4. Our armed secondary weapon. Missiles, rockets, torpedoes, and the more powerful energy weapons must be selected here to be used. Fighter bays are also considered secondary weapons, so fighters have to be selected here to be launched.

5. Our current target. At the top is the ship type, below that is the ship variant. At the bottom right is the ship’s affiliation. At the bottom left is the state of its shields; on most ships this will change to its current armor value if its shields are destroyed, but this isn’t always the case! Our target is bracketed in the main screen as well; the brackets are yellow here (or are supposed to be, anyway) because the ship is neutral/friendly to us.

6. Last but not least, our money and freight. Since this pilot file is brand new, he hasn’t picked up any cargo yet and he still has his starting savings of 25,000 credits.

At last, time for some player input so I can start our game:





First, we need a pilot name, nickname, and gender, none of which really affect anything. Feel free to pick the “Strict Play” option, but be warned that this will probably be a very short LP if you do so; among all the other gruesome fates that might await us it’s very possible to leave a planet and end up in the middle of a heated battle. If that happens to us before we can afford to change ships at least a couple of times, we’ll be dust. And that’s just the earliest and most random death available to us. Other deaths are much more certain.

Next we need a name for our ship. We can name every ship we buy, so I think it’d be cool if you guys came up with a theme for ship names. However, I guess if everyone wants to just yell out random names I could just go through them in order of popularity.

Finally, I need to know which main storyline you guys want to see. If you’re wondering, there are sidequests with useful rewards or interesting bits of sidestory that don’t affect the main story; I’ll be doing as many of them as possible before starting the main mission string because they can be hard to move along once the main mission string has started.

I’m going to start playing Wednesday; the first gameplay update should be Thursday night and after that I hope I’ll be able to post on each Monday and Thursday.

Edit: Please add personality suggestions as well. I want this to be a Talking Time pilot, and there's several things I couldn't easily put up to votes (like when and how exactly to upgrade ships) that will be influenced by the personality of the pilot.

Captain Aloysius J. "Peg-Leg" Ahab of the Stupid Piece of Crap Shuttle.

Your ships should be named after consoles, starting in the primitive era and getting newer as you upgrade. I look forward to reading the adventures of the shuttlecraft Colecovision.

How many kinds of ships are you likely to have throughout the course of this game? I like the console idea, but I also like the idea of having a ship called the Difference Engine.

It really depends on which of the main storylines we take. Some of them make you change ships more often than others and/or give you a ship with a predetermined name (I think all of them except for the Polaris and maybe Rebel strings make you take a named ship at some point). I'll need names for probably six ships and maybe as many as eight.

If he goes down the Vell-os path, not many!

(But oh man will you slaughter everyone around you.)

The Vell-os Javelin is like unto a mighty blue whale, gliding merrily with its young through an ocean of exploding starships.

I love the Vell-os so very much.

I like the name Captain Aloysius J. "Peg-Leg" Ahab.

However, I think you should name all your vessels after Tom Waits songs (God's Business, The Drinking Piano, Creampuff Casper Milktoast).

The Vell-os story is frickin' awesome. EVN is pretty much the gate-way game to the rest of the series - it's prettier, easier/more forgiving, the stories are to varying degrees more on-rails than the previous games (the Vell-os story is as rigidly on-rails as can be), and it does a good job of selling the style of game.
The older games allow more freedom within storylines, but this comes at the price of a less pretty game, and a much harder one.

...And after all that, I don't have a name for your Shuttle. Though I'd third the console-naming idea.

I knew this would happen if I told you the LP was starting.

Name: Donovan Bailey
Ships: Consoles

Honestly Deadpool (and playing AS Deadpool) sounds like the most entertaining option possible.

The Escape Velocity series is one of the few times I ever wished I owned a Mac.

And EV: Nova is awesome.

No idea for a name though. Sorry.

Thumbs way up!

EV Nova is available for Windows. Ambrosia also released plug-ins that turn the game into the original and Override, as well.

You know, just a heads up in case you didn't know.

Two thumbs up. Although your end-game ship might be an Atari depending how many upgrades you go through :-/

No one has a an opinion on which story line to follow? If no one cares, I think I'll do Polaris for the mad creditz you can make in that territory.

I like this idea. As for storyline, I vote non-Polaris since that's the one storyline I completed (I might have done Rebels to, so not that one either).

Dude, the Vell-os story is totally the one you're meant to do to introduce you to the game, since it gives a nice run-through of most of the major factions and their place in the grander scheme of things.
But personally? I'd say each time one of the missions comes up that you can accept or turn down, you should put it to Talking Time whether or not to accept it, and see which mission string we end up on. Some of them are hard to see in their initial stages (Vell-os for example) and go unexpected places.

I wanted to do that originally, but I don't see an easy or simple way to pull it off. Every decision you have to make is made on a planet, there's no way to delay making a decision, and your game is auto-saved whenever you leave a planet.

I am considering LPing a Vell-os game (they're my favorite anyway, and I can run through the storyline in only one or two afternoons) so everyone can get a taste of the gameworld and the different factions, then - if there's interest - throwing open the voting again so one of the other story lines can be picked.

(I'd save a copy of the pilot file before the Vell-os trigger so the LP could just be rewound instead of starting over completely. I guess I could conceivably use copied pilot files to try and put every decision to a vote, but that would be a lot of copies to keep straight and the randomness of the game could still easily throw a monkey wrench into the whole idea.)

Ah, good point. Yeah, the Vell-os is a short (and easy!) enough campaign to be a general intro (and a good enough one to give us momentary glimpses at all the other factions) before letting us make the big campaign decision, so I'd say if you're up for that, it'd be a good way to go - and also give us two campaigns for the price of one!

...But this is me loving EV Nova enough to read through more than one campaign. If you think you can keep it interesting beyond the Vell-os campaign, and would like to put that much time in, I say you should go for it, but it's totally your (or the rest of TT's) call.

And by "some of the longest ranges in the game", you mean "across an entire fucking planetary system and through my ship while I'm just trying to fly around getting some trading done you bastards."

Beam weapons are also, if memory serves, absurdly short-ranged. So while they can massacre huge, slow ships, something like a Starbridge or various other light, fast ships are capable of avoiding them practically forever. (IME) And there's a couple of models of light, fast ship that are just big enough to mount some really nasty guns, so a beam weapon on a big ship - like the Polaris CPU likes to use - isn't really very good. Projectile weapons are much harder to dodge, thanks to their longer range and the fact that an enemy can throw out waves of projectiles.

Beam weapons on fighters, however, are a thing of beauty. Mmm... Polaris fighter bays...

IME, the hardest enemies in the game are the Aurorans - because of their sheer range - followed by a Polaris fighter swarm.

I'd be inclined to say do the Vell-Os as an introduction to the gameplay and setting, then do whatever major plot lets you get as many subplots as possible. One thing Lucas didn't mention about this game (I don't think) is that while there's six main plot threads in this game, there's many more subplots. These tend to be triggered randomly, by visiting various out-of-the-way worlds, or by completing certain seemingly-random missions. Some of them are fairly cool. I think I've played through most of them, but I can't remember if I got them all.

Another thing I really like about EV: the sheer number of weird crap that's out there in its galaxy map. A grand tour of the anomalies and just plain unusual planets could be a lot of fun.

Oh man why can't I have a computer that runs this right now.

I think the only stories I've done to completion are the Rebel and Vell-os. I might have done the Auroran as well.

If you're willing to do a second faction afterwards, go Vell-o since you say you can do that in just a couple afternoons.

Better yet: try to ask some questions for feedback for the next round during this first playthrough, so you can make those decisions when the time comes.

Alright guys, soon as I've finished watching Meet the Robinsons with my niece I'll start up a Vell-os playthrough. The first update will hopefullycover the tutorial missions, the first few side missions, and end before our second ship upgrade.

Right now Aloysius J. "Peg-Leg" Ahab is the winning pilot name, and the ship names will have a video game console theme. I'll check one last time before starting the game proper though, just in case.

Edit: Alrighty, it's playtime. First update should be tonight.

I'm doing a lot more explaining of things than I expected, and even without pictures my first update is already about four and a half pages in Word. I'm only about half as far as I planned to get in my first update, but it's so many words that I think I'll post what I've got so far and see how long it is on the screen before deciding whether I want to write any more for one update.

Well, I can play it in only a day or two, but playing it and writing about it will take quite a bit longer...

I guess I meant that more as "If you won't let this LP die like the last 30+ mostly have" sort of commitment to the game.

Cause it really sucks when they die and you were just getting into the LP.

By picking the vell-o first, one that sounds easy and you know well, you can call it quits if it was too much work before starting the second one.