I have an idea. Earlier you said some of the Polaris ships would have become alien-like sentient beings with no captains. What if the ships (and technically the weapons) instead got mutated by the ubër-virus and became xenophobic alien warships of doom? It'd add another factor to the difficulty. You finally make your way to Polaris space, and suddenly a mutant raven and it's mutant scarab and manta escorts are on your tail!

Stop reading my mind! That's an idea I've been toying with. Though I'm not sure if I want Polaris space to be the "end game" zone or Wraith space beyond it, since with how things currently are, you have to go through every House's former territory before you can reach Polaris space, since the jump lanes you'd need are missing.

This is genius.

I was reading the description with 'Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-Flat major, Op. 73' playing in the background. Bloody creepy.

If you want, I could do some title page and interface graphics. (I have photoshop!)

@joshtigerheart, on Feb 6 2008, 06:43 PM, said in After Nova:

You're pretty much right on my ball there, except when you salvage an outfit, you have to take it somewhere to be repaired so its usable. And then the engineers abuse their monopoly and charge you to install it onto your ship, though mostly to prevent the player from getting overstuffed with outfits, like a Shuttle who got REALLY lucky and salvaged seven HBTs (good luck on doing that).

Shuttles can't hold that. If they could, goodbye Pirate Valkyrie II, III, or IV.

@joshtigerheart, on Feb 6 2008, 06:43 PM, said in After Nova:

Too early to say what it'd have, if said Manticore even appears. Though being forced to fight one with a full Crown of Thorns would be seriously difficult.

Yep. Plus, most ships might have a very low deionization rate.

@joshtigerheart, on Feb 6 2008, 06:43 PM, said in After Nova:

I recently envisioned some places spending years and years reconstructing a single capital ship for offensive or defensive purposes, with them armed with whatever they could find. Like a Fed Carrier with Medium Blaster Turrets, Storm Chainguns, IR Missiles, a Rebel Viper Bay, and a Civvie Lightning Bay (I made up that selection of weapons as I went).

That would be a good idea. However, if it would be for sale, it would have to be super expensive. Let's not forget the people who need food and shelter and the like.

@s-s--valor, on Feb 6 2008, 07:34 PM, said in After Nova:

I have an idea. Earlier you said some of the Polaris ships would have become alien-like sentient beings with no captains. What if the ships (and technically the weapons) instead got mutated by the ubër-virus and became xenophobic alien warships of doom? It'd add another factor to the difficulty. You finally make your way to Polaris space, and suddenly a mutant raven and it's mutant scarab and manta escorts are on your tail!

Mutant Raven, eh? Near unbeatable if said thing happens. Get rid of the Scarab and Manta escorts and you might just live. MIGHT.

Speaking of ships, what DO you have in mind, JTH? A combination between a Starbridge and Valkyrie or something like that?

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If you want, I could do some title page and interface graphics. (I have photoshop!)

I'll keep your offer in mind Templar when I start later. For now I'm just going to sit back and figure out what direction I want to take this in, among other things, and then make an official announcement once I have enough worked out. And I'm jealous of your Photoshop.

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Shuttles can't hold that. If they could, goodbye Pirate Valkyrie II, III, or IV.

When a mission grants an outfit, it doesn't care if you can hold it, you get it anyways.

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Speaking of ships, what DO you have in mind, JTH? A combination between a Starbridge and Valkyrie or something like that?

Most ships would be somewhat run-down versions of Nova ships, albeit armed entirely differently, since they would have just been hauled in and repaired. However, the biggest ships that'll be available to the player will be the IDA Frigate, Enterprise, Starliner, and Pegasus, like with the IDA being the toughest ship available. Nobody is going to want to give up those "super powerful" ships they spent years rebuilding. And to make sure the player can't get them, they'll all have a crew of zero!

So the above mentioned Fed Carrier you would never have access to.

@joshtigerheart, on Feb 8 2008, 12:43 AM, said in After Nova:

And to make sure the player can't get them, they'll all have a crew of zero!

You could also consider using a "fail mission x on capture" string causing the player's ship to explode. You know, you get on the ship, try to power it back up, and it goes critical on you, taking out both ships.

If I wanted to do that, it'd be easier just to create an outfit that removes more armor than the ship has. Most of these unboardable ships will be mission ships, if not all, hence giving them zero crew is more to prevent the player from abusing the abort mission function to capture them. Just as Qaanol how he obtain some ships in EVO.

Perhaps I spoke too soon when I said I was certain I was doing it. This topic was propagating hype within me for the project. Of course, I'm still interested, but a few days later, I'm sitting here reminding myself I have other projects that need to be completed. Most of them are small and not very significant, but one will have very high priority once Colosseum is in the Nova Files folders. You've probably noticed at the bottom of my signature a link to a novel marked as WIP. Yes, that would be the project I'm speaking of. Due to conflicts of time, I put it on the back burner until Colosseum was finished because, at the time, I was expecting to have the TC completed and released within a month or two, so it would take far less time to finish.

And that was at this time last year, if not earlier. I don't recall the exact date, but its been at least a year since my novel was thrusted to the waiting room. Hence, I'm finding myself not so eager to undertake a new plug-in project and delay my work of literature for another two or so years. I feel like I'd be doing it and the few that's read and commented on what I have so far a disservice.

So, once again, I'm going to ponder on this issue. If I do decide to actually start on After Nova, well, I'm not sure yet. I haven't thought it through that much, though I'm probably going to want to break down my work load so I can write this book. Otherwise, I'm going to have to add this to the comparatively short list of abandoned concepts. It never got officially started as a project, so there's no ware to call vapor. Plus if I do abandon it, I'll throw the few resources I edited experimenting with the concept to see if it was possible together and release it for others to use if they choose.

Again, I'm going to think on this. I'll let you guys know what I've decided when I decided it.

Sounds like a sweet idea. I'd be happy to play it if you get it done. Man, I need to come around this board more. I miss so much interesting stuff.

There's a lot of SF out there which builds on this basic premise — in fact, its one of the classic seven premises of SF).

I drafted out a story on these lines a few years ago, but never got round to implementing it as a plugin.

Something which I've always wanted to do, which this story would lend itself to very easily would be an EVx time-travel scenario.
Part I: you troll round the new universe, trying to keep life and soul together as you vainly pedal ineffective plague remedies on Planet W, deliver unappetising Kale from Planet W to Planet X, and avoid the pirates as you take Planet X's minerals to Planet Y, where they manufacture ineffective plague remedies, until you bump into Dr Omega, who tells you about the Tryphomorphicchronomat experiments which were rumoured to have been carried out on Planet Z. With Dr Omega, you travel to Planet Z, pursued by pirates who believe that you are trying to locate a weapon against them. From Planet Z, Dr Omega triggers the Tryphomorphicchronomat, and you blast through it in your wreck of a ship, with the intention of returning to the Nova universe (or any other earlier universe) to prevent the plague from happening. Unfortunately, three pirate vessels burst through at the same time.

Part II: you struggle in the highly organised and structured earlier universe, as you have no papers, and your ship doesn't meet the minimum safety requirements. After agonising months of trolling round that universe, you acquire enough Creditos to get yourself something legal. You then set off in to try to locate the secret lab where it was rumoured they manufactured the virus. Eventually — after more fights with pirates, who have now signed up one of the secret agencies of the current world, convincing them that you are in fact trying to release a virus — you find the lab, which is in the same system as the Tryphomorphicchronomat. In a pitched battle with pirates, your ship is badly damaged, and you board and take over one of the pirate ships. You blast the lab to smithereens, and then use the Tryphomorphicchronomat to return to your own time.

Part III: in your own time, you discover that it was your destruction of the lab which actually released the plague. With hardly any energy left in the Tryphomorphicthingummyjig, you blast back into the past. This time you have to destroy one of the three pirate vessels and take their place, enlisting the help of the secret government agency which you convince has to stop your earlier self from releasing the plague. You go through various adventures, finally arriving at the lab, disabling your own (earlier) self but also destroying both of the other pirate ships, to prevent your earlier self from boarding them and destroying the lab anyway. Realising that if you die earlier, you will not be around to save the day now, you scoop up your earlier self in your lifeboat, and shoot both of yourselves through the Tryphopieceofjunk. Realising you cannot co-exist with yourself for long, you eject yourself outside the Tryandgetabetteronenexttime, where the universe seems to be in much better order. Pausing only to see that you are, in fact rescued, you blast back through the Tryandstopmethistime into an uncertain future the end.

As far as I know, no-one has ever yet successfully done a proper time travel scenario, but it shouldn't be too hard with visbits and a bit of mucking around with the year (ps, you can do the year in Wetware, by changing the prefix, so that the numbers go up, even though you've travelled back in time).

(PS, the full list of classic premises is:

1. Good old set in a technological future, where virtually anything can happen (Lensman, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century)
2. Change one thing about the past or present, and exploit it consistently (Fatherland, Man in the High Castle)
3. 'Hard core' application of real scientific discovery(s) to a story (Neuromancer)
4. Evolutionary present or future (eg, introducing psionics, Babylon 5, or William Golding's 'the Inheritors', or evolution of robots in I Robot series)
5. Post armageddon/decline/collapse (Twelve Monkeys, Planet of the Apes, Foundation trilogy - often based on Europe's experience of the Dark Ages)
6. New species, same old problems (War of the Worlds, Babylon 5, Independence Day - often based on European colonisations 1600-1900)
7. Cosmic/religious (2001, Babylon 5, Dune, later Foundation books, Star Wars)

Brilliant. Maybe we (the EVDC community at large) could set that scenario up as a Tea Cup TC plug-in just to prove that it can be done? Shouldn't be too hard considering how low the bar has been set in TCTC.

I'm disappointed I didn't find this thread earlier, although when I first saw it I thought it would be about what all of us would do if EVN vanished from our hard drives. It's a great idea for a plug.

I wonder if maybe the player could try to unite humanity against the Polaris threat, which is formidable even with the Raven's exit points in such an evolutionarily ridiculous place. Naturally people would be suspicious of off-worlders given how the disease would have spread, so things would be awfully difficult from a political perspective. Maybe pirates could try to unite the galaxy -- more trade would give them more business, and they'd certainly benefit from not getting wiped out by Polaris vessels.

After some thought, I decided I'd be interested in doing this still if I was able to shift some of the work load to others (especially some of the drudge work of altering every single system in Nova). Aka had a small team. Because with just myself doing the bulk of the work, one of my major projects will get seriously neglected: this or my novel. And I've neglected the latter enough for working on Colosseum. So, if I were able to get some people to help, I'd be able to go through with this.

If you're interested, just say so. I'd prefer people who are capable of working with most, if not all, of the resources in Nova and able to commit a bit of time to doing a fair share of work, which might be difficult if you're already busy with a major project of your own, depending on how much time you devote to that in exclusion of other things.

I'm going to take a programming hiatus after Acheron, personally. I, too, have other things to work on. But if this does come to be I would be very interested in playing.

I'd help, but it might conflict with time that I could have spent on CTCM.

I can lend a hand here and there most weekends. I know my way around the resources. I'm only limited by the filesizes I can upload. Also, if you guys are interested I can make a discussion/development area on my forum EVHalo devoted to the project.

I would be very interested to see what you can come up with if this goes through to completion . Check this site out for some inspirado on what the world would be like without humans.

Sorry Josh. I'd love to help out, but I promised to beta test Ashen Galaxy for GSN after I was finished beta testing CTC.

I'd try... as I am slowly making progress on EV: Scarred. I can only do ships and copy shans, along with making planets and systems. Descriptions, I'd do as well, but JTH already stated he would do descriptions. So the above four I can only do.

I'm not surprised forty people aren't jumping on the opportunity to work on this. Though I don't mean that in some mean negative sense, don't get me wrong. Everyone is busy with their own projects.

I'll give this some more days. I'm sure everyone who might be interested in helping hasn't seen this.