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Endless Sky - 2D Space Game

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a cut of domestic sheep prime

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Been playing a lot of Endless Sky lately (it's now on Steam for free btw, and it's the open source 2d space game I've been dreaming of for a long time now. It's a basically a clone of Escape Velocity Nova, which if you haven't played it, you need to.

ujnnrwg.jpg

uoQb2Fb.jpg



I've made it partway through two playthroughs. The first was as a space trader, which was fun, but I got a little bored of that and decided to spice things up with a combat only playthrough, which is harder at first, but also very fun.

Story wise, I haven't done anything to do with the main quest, but I've had a blast playing through, hunting pirates and upgrading my ship(s) anyway.

edit: saw Junmarko posted a link to an RPS article on it in the indie thread.
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/11/02/endless-sky-release-free/

edit: My current warship and its two escorts:
0TCQaot.jpg

edit: Posted this to the wrong forum. Mods, feel free to move it to the sim forum.
 
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i don't know how you endured it. i tried only some tutorial missions and it gave me seizures.
i took the interceptor and i couldn't fathom how the combat system could ever appeal to anybody.
 

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Well, to each his own, though the sparrow interceptor you start with is beyond weak and is really hard to start the game with as combat only pilot if you aren't at least a little bit familiar with the combat. It's actually easier to make money ferrying passengers and doing cargo runs first, and then upgrading to a berserker interceptor or light warship.

Still, if you don't mind the frustration of random npcs blowing up your prey challenge of doing combat from the start, you need to only go after a single pirate interceptor at a time and capture them. They are each worth about 400,000 credits when sold. Needless to say, you can pay off your loan and upgrade pretty quickly once you get the hang of it.
 

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Well, to each his own, though the sparrow interceptor you start with is beyond weak and is really hard to start the game with as combat only pilot if you aren't at least a little bit familiar with the combat. It's actually easier to make money ferrying passengers and doing cargo runs first, and then upgrading to a berserker interceptor or light warship.
Any game that makes the default keyboard configuration for shooting weapons TAB is immediately placed in my do not bother to continue to play pile.

Is there a simple way to rebind all the keys in a single go? I'm not interested enough to waste my time individually mapping each key to something sane. Even better - a game like this would probably play well with a game controller so is there support for one with logical bindings?
 

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That was my initial reaction too. Haven't seen such a nonsensical control configuration in years. It may have been EV: Nova's setup though, I don't remember. No way to remap all the keys simultaneously that I know of.

It's an open source indie game though, so maybe something will come out eventually. I doubt it though, since there are only 24 keys.

I don't use a controller so, I can't speak to your second question.
 
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Looks like it's still being updated:

Stable release 0.9.12
by Michael Zahniser

A new release is now available on GitHub, unstable version 0.9.12. This version contains a huge amount of new content and game engine updates. Downloads are available for Mac OS X, 64-bit Windows, and 32-bit Windows. Ubuntu Linux packages are available in a PPA. For more details, see the changelog.

This marks more than a year since @tehhowch, @Amazinite, and @Pointedstick took over the lead developer roles, and this is the fourth release since then. I’m very thankful for the work they’ve put in; I hope to come back to Endless Sky at some point (to wrap up the Wanderers story line and maybe add new stories as well), but I’m glad to be able to take a break, work on creative writing and other random projects, and not feel duty-bound to spend all my weekends keeping up with issues and PRs!

 

Mag Steelglass

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I love the idea of an open-source EV clone and am excited about the potential of Endless Sky.

I tried it out once and had a similar experience to MadMadHellfire - I picked the interceptor and was very disappointed in its speed/maneuverability and overall combat capability, as well as the overall pace & style of combat. And nothing else really caught my attention in an appealing way to make up for it.

But they are still updating it, so I’m going to keep checking back each once in a while and see if it’s gotten better.

The project I’m really excited about right now is the official remake/remaster of Escape Velocity Override for modern platforms. It’s on Kickstarter now: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cosmicfrontier/cosmic-frontier-override
 

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You can't even begin to understand what you're missing out on. With the sole exception of there being only one campaign storyline (a storyline, however, that is noticeably superior to any individual storyline in EV:N), Endless Sky is an improvement on the Escape Velocity formula in every conceivable way.

Yes, it's true that fighters are cannon fodder, and you aren't going to be reenacting Top Gun or Wing Commander in this game. It's annoying, and there's no getting around that; although it's worth noting that the main reason you could pull that off in EV was by virtue of ridiculously overpowered gunboat-sized ships crammed full of ridiculously overpowered outfits, which isn't possible in ES. Well, not on a small scale, anyway. Remember how you could defeat an entire Federation carrier fleet while piloting a Pirate Valkyrie in EV:N? Fun, but absurd.

There's a ton of meat in every other area of the game and with ship/fleet doctrines beyond "lone space cowboy in an interceptor." The amount of shenanigans and exploitation you can get up to is ridiculous, and the ship customization and exploration aspects are beyond incredible.
 

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Just saw this in the changelog:

Pirate "raids" now depend on how well defended your fleet is, not how many freighters you have.

:lol:

Prior to this, pirate raids were seemingly based solely on the total number of cargo slots in your fleet. "Raids" = the pirates spawn and are waiting for you at points along your route, in much the same way wolves might spontaneously show up in great numbers to harry a giant migrating herd of bison. Fleets can be absolutely huge (many dozens of ships, certainly), so a few very strong warships could mow through this clown car of pirates like bricks through wet tissue paper, and even capture some very lucrative ones in so doing, handily increasing profit.

A very experienced player will know how to avoid being preyed upon by pirates no matter how many are spawned in and even if nearly defenseless, so basically, this is a nerf of sorts to prevent pirates from showing up en masse if they'll just end up being lambs to the slaughter. That's a sensible change (predators go after easy prey), so I'm fine with it.
 
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So I sunk 10ish hours into the game and the combat/capture mechanics are pretty terrible...

Fundamentally its because you have to fight (if you want to fight) with a sizeable fleet which is controlled by the AI at a neckbreaking speed.
So the AI focuses an enemy and flies straight at it, shooting. Turns around and repeats. If ships are slow, than they circle around just continuously shooting.
So neither engines nor the steering matter (movement irrelevant) since the AI who is controlling your fleet cannot use them to our advantage, invest into shields or firepower!
You are left with your flagship. But the enemies can spawn in unlimited quantities and will spawn forever in pirates sectors or near them. So you cant really duel based on movement either. You will just get out-spawned.
So combat consist of getting the beafy-est warship fleet and pressing 1 button.

There is also no costs to repair your ships, just land on a planet for a full heal. This also destroys the gamestate of the star system. All enemies, allies despawn... You can safely depart. And land again if enemies are spawned nearby...
When you jump, enemies dont attack ships that are left behind. Only the current starsystem is actively simulated/played. So you can get a quick jumping flagship to escape combat and this stops the enemies from destroying your fleet...

All economic missions pay less than capturing ships and take more real time/tedium.
Basically you warp into a system with 1. shipyard and 2. pirates nearby and just wait until the allies disable an enemy ship... or help a bit.
Pirates dont ever stop spawning. Allies too. They just slug it out indefinitely.
Enemies stop pursuing you if you fly away too far from the star in a system. They will literally turn around after some distance x.
So you get an Argosy+mod or Clipper and sell it for a cool mil... Easy.
Trading goods would require you to carry 10000 cargo to get ~1 mil. Thats ~50 to 100 ships...
Big haulers have 100+ cargo, at 100 profit, you need 10 big haulers just to get 100k profit.

The upgrade system is trash too. You can agonize about the space usage all you want, its completely irrelevant. The most important part is the count of ships you have...

It was mildly entertaining getting to Leviathan though. Even the farming. Collecting every type of ship I could find.
Clusterfuck, looks much wackier in realtime and motion:
PYJ8DUa.jpeg


This game with much better balanced economy, tightened mechanics and phase based combat would be pretty kewl though.
 

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You can't even begin to understand what you're missing out on. With the sole exception of there being only one campaign storyline (a storyline, however, that is noticeably superior to any individual storyline in EV:N), Endless Sky is an improvement on the Escape Velocity formula in every conceivable way.
I feel like you might be exaggerating a little. The storylines are not bad. But they're not THAT amazing.

Yes, it's true that fighters are cannon fodder, and you aren't going to be reenacting Top Gun or Wing Commander in this game. It's annoying, and there's no getting around that; although it's worth noting that the main reason you could pull that off in EV was by virtue of ridiculously overpowered gunboat-sized ships crammed full of ridiculously overpowered outfits, which isn't possible in ES. Well, not on a small scale, anyway. Remember how you could defeat an entire Federation carrier fleet while piloting a Pirate Valkyrie in EV:N? Fun, but absurd.
I think the key difference between this game and EV:N is the relationship between weapon ranges and speeds, and the relative handlings of the ships. In EV:N, weapon range/speeds were such that you could outpilot attacks and still return fire. It took sufficient time for a weapon to go from muzzle to target such that the target could actually do something about it. In ES, weapons are either instantaneous hitscan beams, very fast projectiles, or undodgeable missiles, with the former two all having extremely short ranges, so you cannot even fire on an enemy until you're already at point-blank range. You will NOT miss or dodge at the only ranges you're allowed to fire with any effect at all.

Combat is also resolved VERY quickly. Your units, or theirs, will likely be destroyed instantaneously as the sheer volume of fire exchanged at point blank rapidly overwhelms the defenses of all but the toughest ships. And they WILL be exchanged at point-blank range because enemies spawn on top of you (or you on top of them).

The ability to defeat an entire fleet with piloting definitely doesn't exist at all here. Is the game therefore to be focused on fleet action? Well, the fleet action isn't great either, since it's just the aforementioned clusterfuck.

The amount of shenanigans and exploitation you can get up to is ridiculous, and the ship customization and exploration aspects are beyond incredible.
I honestly wouldn't say this is true either. Everything boils down to your fleet spamming flamethrowers, lazorbeams, or ion cannons at your opponents and hoping that you, or your counterproductive "allies", don't manage to ruin the only reason you're doing any of this to begin with: To take a shot at the roulette of trying to loot your opponent's ship, without which combat is basically entirely pointless. Also, the infinite enemies that spawn endlessly right on top of you, and trying to get your newly acquired ship to fuck off and stop trying to ram itself face-first into enemy fire.

Conclusions: The pacing is very, very bad. The combat balance is poor. The story is okay, but almost strictly on rails. Game has a lot of potential, but most of it is, at present, unrealized or squandered. It's a very interesting piece of code to study due to its open source nature, though.
 

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There is also no costs to repair your ships, just land on a planet for a full heal. This also destroys the gamestate of the star system. All enemies, allies despawn... You can safely depart. And land again if enemies are spawned nearby...
To be fair, an entire day elapses in-game while you're down on that planet, even if it is instantaneous from the player's perspective. Time is a bit wonky in general: It takes a day to jump from system to system, unless it's an escort ship you summoned, in which case it can cross the galaxy in real-time while no in-game time elapses.

This time-wonkiness is largely inherited from EVN, but ships can't become detached from the player there.
 

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There is also no costs to repair your ships, just land on a planet for a full heal. This also destroys the gamestate of the star system. All enemies, allies despawn... You can safely depart. And land again if enemies are spawned nearby...
To be fair, an entire day elapses in-game while you're down on that planet, even if it is instantaneous from the player's perspective. Time is a bit wonky in general: It takes a day to jump from system to system, unless it's an escort ship you summoned, in which case it can cross the galaxy in real-time while no in-game time elapses.

This time-wonkiness is largely inherited from EVN, but ships can't become detached from the player there.
How does this game compare to star sector?
 
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How does this game compare to star sector?
Technically..., everything in ES is worse.
But early game in ES is much comfier, and cute and does space-feel-discovery much better than SS. You do have to google "space music" and run it in the background. I ran the game in debug mode to get the x3 slowdown in combat.
 

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ES does "single ship" gameplay better than SS. Single ship gameplay in Starsector does not even survive the completion of the tutorial. In fact, it's dead even in chargen. Of course, single-ship gameplay in ES is still actually kinda shit in the end, as every action will quickly devolve into a massive clusterfuck of ships shooting each other, and SS makes this mode of play far more entertaining.

ES performs WAY better than SS, though. Even the largest clusterfucks have not the slightest impact on performance, whereas SS can definitely overload.

All in all, SS is the better game, and I'm mainly looking at ES mostly for development inspiration due to it being open source, so you can see what makes a space game tick. And what it's doing wrong. And can even fix those wrongs.
 
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ES does "single ship" gameplay better than SS. Single ship gameplay in Starsector does not even survive the completion of the tutorial.
Gee, I dunno breh. I disagree.
Actually smuggling drugs in the core worlds is very much possible all alone and is more profitable and more entertaining than ES.
The problem is that most enemy fleets are so huge. But not all! You have to pick fights carefully. But you can pull pirate patrols eez, they dont spawn out of ass everywhere for all eternity. There are even mechanics for it... you know, sensors, burn levels, hyperspace storms, maps have features! ES has nothing like it.
If you want to be a pirate, than it becomes harder because even small faction patrols are tough.
You also have to ask yourself, why do you actually want to fight? Fighting is not profitable... :lol:
Bounties, the easy type ones, are profitable and can certainly be done in 1 ship. A mule freighter can take 3 pirate frigs.
My gut feeling is also that SS bounties are level-scaled (i have not tested it yet) to your current fleet size.
Ie the prize for a "challenging" bounty is 120k and stays the same no matter your fleet size, but the enemy fleet gets scaled down if you take the bounty in 1seat shuttle...

Even a tiny Hound frigate has 75 cargo space. 5 for supplies and 70 for drugs, when drugs sell for 600 (you buy for 200) when in shortage, gives us 70*400=28k profit. Not bad for a 5 ly jump.
 

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Actually smuggling drugs in the core worlds is very much possible all alone and is more profitable and more entertaining than ES.
You'd have to go out of your way to do this, though, since a single-ship scenario doesn't even persist past the tutorial. All in all, this mode of gameplay is very much an edge case, and not really one that the game has recommended, given the rather strict divide between cargo and fighting ships, and the fact that your opponents will always be large fleets..

The problem is that most enemy fleets are so huge. But not all! You have to pick fights carefully. But you can pull pirate patrols eez, they dont spawn out of ass everywhere for all eternity. There are even mechanics for it... you know, sensors, burn levels, hyperspace storms, maps have features! ES has nothing like it.
You could, but why?


You also have to ask yourself, why do you actually want to fight? Fighting is not profitable... :lol:
Herein lies the interesting dichotomy between the two games: In ES, getting into fights, or at least around them, is the singular most profitable activity you can engage in. In SS, fighting is largely unprofitable and an impediment to getting anything done. But SS is pretty much a combat game, as in its core design: Everything is, in the dev's own words, aimed at getting ships to shoot each other. ES is not, and you can progress through the game barely shooting at anything at all.

And yet, in ES, combat is ludicrously profitable, in SS, it's mostly a waste of time and money. But in SS, the combat is great, in ES, the combat is pretty shite. Noteworthy, though: Avoiding or engaging in combat in ES doesn't break gameflow (unless you warp in and instantly die before you gain control of your own ship, a somewhat rare event that only really happens early), whereas in SS, any combat drags you out of what you were doing and locks you into a combat subgame (I'd call it a minigame, but honestly, the combat engine in SS *IS* the game and the rest is just a wrapper around it to get you there).

Ultimately, though, the single-ship experience is better-catered-to in ES than SS. In SS, single-shipping is a corner-case behavior that you're probably imposing on yourself, since the game doesn't normally put you in such a state. It's difficult to leave chargen this way and even the tutorial will break you out of this state. In ES, cruising the galaxy in a single ship is treated as the expected norm and the storyline sort of speaks to you as if you are in a single ship.
 
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You could, but why?
I mean, ultimately for fun "I am the captain of my ship" gameplay... why else.
For playable and mildly (sometimes) entertaining ship vs fleet duels.
Its a single-ship gameplay that actually exists.
You have to bend the game start and game settings but its there. And it works and its mildly challenging and it doesnt break suspension of disbelief even though you dont fight on the same map where you fly because the rules are sane and there arent unlimited squirrel pirate fleets just warping in and warping in and warping in wtf.
There is nothing like it in ES.

In SS, single-shipping is a corner-case behavior that you're probably imposing on yourself, since the game doesn't normally put you in such a state.
But ES wants you to fly a huge fleet too... You have to larp single-shipping too. Its only the start that is different.
The moment you find a disabled Fury floating through space after one of the pointless and unending battles, you pick it up and it provides cargo for trade at the cost of the single guy who flies it - its nothing in upkeep and it makes no sense to sell it or your old ship.
All the quests are tied to cargospace/crew/combatscore. The bigger, the better. Especially cargo...
The main quest does have 2? combat gates that you'd be hard pressed to pass alone too...
Its just a comfy illusion because the story presents you as a guy buying a single seater and going 500k into debt while SS says "here are 3 frigates, 20 weapon hardpoints and 150 people crew, dont drown" - but if you do a spacer start, its very different - you start in a single seater without weapons... Its just hidden in the settings.
 

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But ES wants you to fly a huge fleet too... You have to larp single-shipping too. Its only the start that is different.
The moment you find a disabled Fury floating through space after one of the pointless and unending battles, you pick it up and it provides cargo for trade at the cost of the single guy who flies it - its nothing in upkeep and it makes no sense to sell it or your old ship.
Nah, the moment you find a disabled Fury floating in space after said pointless and unending battle, you dock and sell it and pocket the money. Then you go look for another one. Sure, you COULD drive it around for its cargo space, but the inept AI is just going to crash it. No, you sell that fucker. You totally sell that fucker. Then you take off, and wait around in the unending battle in your shittle until you find ANOTHER one. And you jack and it sell it. You don't have to LARP selling it because you want to remain a single ship. You do it because this is a sensible path to gameplay. The early ES game isn't about accumulating a fleet of random Furies and whatnot. It's about jacking ships so you can sell them at Ye Olde Choppe Shoppe for money to buy a bigger ship so you can jack even bigger ships. You don't keep those other ships around at this point in the game, not because of concerns of upkeep, but because they don't help you do the thing that is paying the bills: Jacking other ships. In fact, they'll likely blow up the thing you're trying to jack, or get blown up themselves.

All the quests are tied to cargospace/crew/combatscore. The bigger, the better. Especially cargo...

The main quest does have 2? combat gates that you'd be hard pressed to pass alone too...
ES's mass combat is so entirely bad that anytime you find yourself in such a combat gate, you're usually better off just keeping your head down and waiting for the NPCs to win it for you. Because introducing your own fleet to this situation will most likely just make this situation worse, as now you have even MORE people shooting your loot. Only on rare occasions do you, personally, actually need to engage in any combat, usually a duel against an enemy ship or two. Most other story combats are giant horrible furballs you don't want to be anywhere near.

Its just a comfy illusion because the story presents you as a guy buying a single seater and going 500k into debt
Yes, and the entire story basically persists in this illusion, probably to the detriment of the writing, since you're asked to do things like "let's totally keep these aliens a secret from the rest of the universe, nevermind that you have an entire crew of 400+ people on your one ship alone that has now seen all this shit and if ANY OF THEM talks, the secret is out". Yeah, the game really does kinda pretend that it's a single-seat ship game a bit longer than it really should. But the point is, this phase of the game lasts for a fair amount of time. You're probably getting an a hour or few's gameplay out of being a single ship before you truly hit the wall of what a single ship can be doing and start deathballing (at which point the combat system reveals itself to be even more shit at this...at least it performs well, though).

but if you do a spacer start, its very different - you start in a single seater without weapons... Its just hidden in the settings.
A situation that will persist until about a few minutes into the intro/tutorial, yes. Plus, you really aren't accomplishing anything like that: You're going to rapidly upgrade to the usual "Cargo Hauler + Fighting Ship" pair and escalate rapidly from there, as ships are really cheap in SS. Even the most expensive ship is only in the 500K-ish range.

But don't get me wrong, I'm not disagreeing that SS is clearly the better-packaged game at this point. ES has...a lot of flaws. But on the other hand, it's open source, so has a lot of potential, whereas SS is closed and thus a dead end that will eventually wither and die in the entropic spiral of existence, unable to intake anything new.
 

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I have neither the time nor the energy to address all of the conversational points here, but I will say this: The one storyline that ES currently has is much longer, better written, more cleanly edited, has more branches, and features more choice and consequence than any SINGLE Escape Velocity storyline.

Whether or not you like ES's one storyline on its own merits is a separate matter entirely, mind you. For example, some may have have enjoyed the Vell-Os storyline from EV:N more because of its themes and characterizations.
 

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