Naev

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Naev[1] (previously NAEV, or Not Another/Neutron Accelerated Escape Velocity, depending on who you ask) is an open source Escape Velocity clone, set in an After the End scenario in which the the sun has exploded in an event known as "The Incident" and created a vast, impenetrable nebula. With the loss of Earth, The Empire (founded out of The Federation) is shattered, unable to keep the Houses under control. Now it's every man for himself as Space Pirates run rampant despite everyone's best efforts.

Currently in development, as is this article. A version of the game was released on Steam in 2017 in an attempt to attract new contributors.

Links:

The website for the project is currently down as of 2019.[3] This has had no impact on development, however, and releases can still be found on the project's SourceForge page: https://sourceforge.net/projects/naev/files/

Tropes used in Naev include:
  • After the End: After a massive incident in Sol system.
  • All There in the Manual: Wiki and forum, mostly.
  • Apocalypse How/Class X-2: The Incident, which led to the solar system being completely obliterated. This also annihilated other nearby systems and caused planetary desolation even further out, creating a very unstable and dangerous nebula within the blast radius. Ouch. Plus the plagues on Sorom.
  • Arbitrary Maximum Range: Projectile/energy weapons fade out, missiles presumably run out of fuel... yep, limited ranges all around.
  • Attack Drone: House Za'lek doesn't have the manpower to waste on the classic Space Fighter, or otherwise find them wasteful. Or something. So instead, they use squads of small attack drones. Also, the Collective.
  • The Battlestar: Any sufficiently large vessel can in principle be this, although given the current state of escorts launching fighters doesn't really work as well as it should (and is very costly if one of them gets destroyed, which can happen very easily). Nonetheless, all you need to build your own battlestar is a large body and a fighter bay. Some ships are even specifically designated for this purpose (though again, you don't have to use them that way).
  • Big Bad: House Proteron. They haven't done anything yet and they're hidden on the other side of the nebula, so no one even knows that they're still around, but the plan is for them to rise up and Take Over the Galaxy, possibly with the player's help.
  • Bio Augmentation: Soromid's drastic answer to The Plague. Eight out of ten who underwent the augmentation died prior to the breakthrough
  • Black Market: You can buy quite a lot of stuff that you're not otherwise authorized to buy by visiting pirate strongholds. The FLF are a lesser example. None of these locations care what licenses you have, only whether or not you have enough money for them.
  • Boring but Practical:
    • The Quicksilver's speed makes it very useful for completing all sorts of missions.
    • Cargo missions themselves are this. It can be tempting to go for the much more rewarding bounty and mercenary missions, but just doing a bunch of cargo missions ad nauseam is very safe, easy, and gives you a chance to do something while you explore the map.
    • If you're using a small ship, the humble Ripper Cannon will do you wonders (with enough aiming skill, of course).
    • The Hyena ship is this in-universe, as stated by its description: "Not much of a fighter, nor does it pack too much of a punch, but in groups they can overcome nearly any vessel, and it's so simple to pilot that reaction time is vastly improved." In layman's terms: the thing is so stupidly simple that it bores you and slows time down ever so slightly, which is great for getting an edge over your slower opponents.
  • Brain Uploading: The Thurion, a civilization of people who upload themselves to a network later in life. They want to spread their way of life to the rest of the galaxy, not out of a desire for conquest, but because they believe themselves to be enlightened.
  • Church Militant: House Sirius. They're not zealous fanatics (and in fact have a fairly healthy cultural elite), but as the wiki puts it:

"To the Sirii, faith is what air is to other people. You don't see it, you don't pay attention to it, you often don't even think about it. But without it, you can not live."

"Sorom was caught in the blast and was rendered sterile. But elsewhere in the galaxy, the Soromid persisted. All Soromid knew the history of Sorom, and they would not suffer to be destroyed, no matter what the universe threw at them."

  • Disc One Nuke: Pirate strongholds, if you can find them, sell a lot of very powerful ships and weapons, and since they're pirates, you don't need licenses to buy the big stuff from them. A Pirate Kestrel equipped with Turbolasers and Twin Vulcan Turrets is not exactly unstoppable, but a major force to be reckoned with for sure. They also sell maps showing you the locations of hidden jump points used by pirates. The only downside is that you have to get through some pirate-infested territory alive and bribe the planet you want to land on – and have enough money to buy their stuff.
  • The Empire: Subverted. The Empire broadcasts messages into space saying "The Empire is watching you", but generally functions as a stable and safe society with no complaints from the residents and no mention of government oppression. In fact it could be said that thei're one of the nicest factions in the game. House Proteron is a straight example, however.
  • Failure Is the Only Option: If you join the FLF, you cannot save their base, Sindbad, from destruction or even defeat the Dvaereds. You destroy a couple bases, but no matter what you do, the Empire will discover Sindbad, you will be sent out to defend it, and no matter how many Empire ships you destroy, they will spawn more and more until they succeed. You become a legend to the FLF, but it becomes a shadow of its former self, contained within the Frontier systems, and you are exiled into the unknown reaches of the nebula (or you can become a pirate). On the plus side, access to the nebula also grants you access to the previously inaccessible Thurion and Proteron factions.
  • For Science!: House Za'lek and the Soromid. House Za'lek are just nerds scientists who spend all day arguing about what to do next. Soromid had a choice: For Science!, or The Plague would wipe them all out; it was a slow, certain death, or a Million-to-One Chance.
  • Frickin' Laser Beams: Beam weapons are especially prominent in the Za'lek fleet and quite powerful, though they're very short-range and not as easy to use as projectile weapons.
  • Future Imperfect: An archaeologist mentions that a certain artifact may have been used in "tribal initiations or even mating rituals". That artifact? A skateboard – or "skate-board", as he calls it. He even mentions that historians "believe that the feet were once central to human psychology".
  • Game Mod: While most people who modify the game usually just end up officially a part of Naev, Nox Impereii stands out as an independent mod.
  • Gatling Good: Many kinetic weapons look very similar to Gatling guns, and they are quite powerful. Used especially liberally by House Dvaered.
  • He Knows About Timed Hits: NPCs readily reference keys on your keyboard when explaining things to you about how to pilot your ship.
  • Hyperspace Arsenal: It used to be that only your equipment traveled with you and you needed to pay to transport your extra ships. Now the extra ships travel around with you, too. This is because forcing you to pay money to transport your other ships didn't add anything meaningful to the game.
  • Hyperspace Lanes: You need to discover and use designated jump gates to travel between systems.
  • Hyperspeed Ambush: Can happen with pirates especially as you're trying to warp out. You also do this to pirates you're hunting down for a bounty.
  • Hyperspeed Escape: You can do this any time you're in mortal danger, though it's tricky to do with most ships given the time it takes to warp. You have to pull one of these off after stealing a holopainting for the Baron.
  • Infinity-1 Sword: Given the variety of ships and weapons in the game there are technically a lot of these, but a few particular ones stand out:
    • The Pirate Kestrel, if you can obtain it, is not anywhere near as powerful as superheavy ships like the Peacemaker and Goddard, but deadly against lighter ships when properly equipped.
    • The Heavy Laser is much weaker than its stronger cousin the Turbolaser, but frees up a lot of CPU capacity for other things.
  • Jack-of-All-Stats:
    • Unicorp outfits, which are essentially just standard average outfits. Not amazing, just average. They find their use-case mainly as a cheaper alternative to the more expensive S&K, Tricon, and Milspec equipment.
    • Within the higher-end Milspec core systems, the Orion class is this. Orion core systems are very good, but outperformed in one area by each of the other classes (while the Orion class outperforms each of them in two areas).
  • Klingon Promotion: Combined with retirement. Dvaered Generals take a small contingent with them when they retire and become a Warlord governing one or more planets that they 'acquire' themselves, usually by knocking off an existing Warlord.
  • La Résistance: The Frontier Liberation Front (FLF), a terrorist group with a goal of driving House Dvaered out of Frontier space. The player can join this group, but it gets destroyed anyway no matter what you do.
  • More Dakka: The easiest way to fight is simply to attach a bunch of turrets to your ship with a high firing rate. It's less effective with forward-mounted weapons.
  • Multiple Endings: There isn't much of this yet, but the plan is to allow the player to take various paths to alter the galaxy.
  • Proud Warrior Race Guy: House Dvaered. They were originally workers, miners, outcasts and low-ranking soldiers fed up with how things were being run, so they rebelled until they were acknowledged and given what they wanted. Now they fly around in bright red ships and start fights. Usually when it's least convenient for you.
  • Sealed Evil in a Can: House Proteron were planning on galactic conquest, but The Incident created a vast nebula separating them from the rest of civilization (for now).
  • Space Is Cold: Averted. Management of weapons heat is part of combat.
  • Space Is Noisy: Very noisy. If you can't hear gunfire at any given moment, then you're either in the starting systems or the Nebula.
  • Space Friction: As with Escape Velocity we'll have none of that Space Is an Ocean nonsense, thank you.
    • Played with. You can drift in one direction with thrusters off, but to maintain full speed you need to maintain thrust. (Let go of the accelerate button, and you'll slow down a little and then stay at that speed.)
  • Space Pirates: They're all over the place, a constant threat, and in past versions of the game they even tended to Talk Like a Pirate. You can choose to join the pirates yourself if you want.
  • Suicidal Overconfidence:
    • Pirates often warp into systems that actually are rather dangerous for them because they're patrolled by much more powerful, better-organized, and better-equipped main factions (especially the Empire, but also the Dvaereds and the Soromid). In some systems pirates are more or less constantly being killed by police.
    • Subverted in general with the way the AI works. AI pilots are incapable of telling whether or not they have a good chance to beat a ship, but they do run away when they take enough hull damage. How well this works depends in part on what kind of ship they attacked and in part on how many police are around.
  • Super Soldier / Ubermensch: Soromid don't exactly get along too well with the rest of humanity due to their enhanced capabilities and appearance. Or more accurately, the rest of the galaxy doesn't get on too well with the Soromid. The Soromid could care less.
  • Unfortunate Implications: One mission has you rescuing children who were kidnapped by pirates and sold to human traffickers. You find out that this is a common occurrence.
  • Video Game Cruelty Potential: There are multiple missions where you can do some cruel things to people.
    • In one early mission, an old, frail man who isn't allowed to go into space at all because of a medical condition asks for a gentle ride in the local system. You can however choose to warp out of the system, causing him to bleed out of his ears and lose his hearing. He's not happy about it.
    • There are a couple of missions where you need to capture space craft containing innocent people. NPCs are understandably upset when you do this.
  • Villain Protagonist: You can choose to be a space pirate or a terrorist, and one of the plans for the future of the game is to allow you to join House Proteron in their attempt at galactic conquest.
  • Wide Open Sandbox: Continuing the tradition from the series that inspired it.
  1. ↑ pronounced somewhat like 'knife' or 'naive', not 'knave'
  2. ↑ Currently down; an Archive.org snapshot can be found here: https://web.archive.org/web/20131026070648/http://blog.naev.org/
  3. ↑ See issue #825 on GitHub: https://github.com/naev/naev/issues/825
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