ARPIA2
Download the ARPIA2 plug-in for Escape Velocity Nova, version 2.2.0
A walkthrough is available in RTF format here, and a guide to The Riddle can be found here.
Arpia was devised as a simple plug-in/add-on for a game called Escape Velocity: Nova (EVN or EV:Nova for short), the third game in the Escape Velocity series of Ambrosia Software.
The storylines the player can follow had really inspired me, and so it was that I started to create a little story of my own.
ARPIA2 is a game add-on of three large storylines woven in parallel among which the player must choose.
The player fights battles, frees slaves, explores the galaxy, discovers trade, protects the human race and is part of Arpia.
To view images from ARPIA2, you can visit the Arpia Gallery
In ARPIA2 you get to choose your path. But beware: one choice can change the future, and the future holds many surprises… Do you have what it takes?
It has always been everyone’s dream to fight off entire fleets by oneself, to become a big-time rich trader, to do covert ops and to know everyone, everywhere.
Well, here’s your chance.
Complete with stunning graphics made by incredibly talented designers (some of them actually created EVN years before, others have since then become game designers themselves or are hoping to do so), it is another way of being Arpia.
Enjoy the plug-in!
Shield add-ons for ARPIA2
ARPIA2 is compatible with ShieldBubbles and other such shield plug-ins. You may download an ARPIA2 ShieldBubbles add-on (requires 3D ShieldBubbles), or download Guy’s Shields plug-in, which includes a version for ARPIA2.
[pilotlog removed by admin]
Do you have any other plug-ins installed? Could you post the entire contents of the pilotlog?
somwwhat strange also.. was just messing around.. when i demand tribute from planets.. it doesnt do anything… im think reinstall maybe?
now i cant do pirate hunt 6, ive tried changing ships and everything….. here is my Pilot log,
[pilotlog removed by admin]
if you need more say so…
The 5 Civ ships that were all in pirate crafts kinda threw me off….. i have 2 pirate carriers, 2 class 5 valks, and im in a class 5 valk with 2 150mm railguns and 8 100mm rails and wraith cannon..(got 2 of the 100mm from a mission)…. i couldnt beleive it.
lol … cant beleive i didnt think of that… ty, find pirates around sirus.. hehe thought it meant in the system… ty alot
Bobby, could you post a pilot log? In any event, it’s in one of the systems adjacent to Sirius that you’re supposed to find the pirates.
Ok so ive looked around and no one seems to be having this problem. Im on pirate mission 5 in the begin of the new lines. right before i accepted this mission, i copied my pilot file a few times then went back into my reg pilot and accepted the mission. 5 ships flew in and hovered around one of the planets in pirate ships(one being amazingly strong and it also looked like my shots were not hitting). but were marked civ for faction which i thought was strange. They kicked the crap outta me and i reloaded, this time no one showed up.. i had the mission and no one flew in. loaded a fresh file that didnt have the mission yet and same thing,,,, i mean… was that not the pirates and their flying in the outter regions of sirus? or is it bugged… if so, any ideas?
@Eli: in the latest version, 2.1.8, I have attempted to take some of your comments into account (by reducing the chance of death in all cases and removing it altogether in one instance; by extending the time limits). I hope that you’ll play the other two storylines using this version and that it will be less frustrating.
This truly is an amazing game.
I understand what you were going for and obviously you can’t cater to everyone’s tastes – reading over my post I should have mentioned more that I did indeed enjoy the expansion and thought it was a great work. The time limits, etc. were generally okay, but the few times that weird problems resulted (like when I killed the mothership but it still managed to destroy Culuria because of EVN’s time limit… limitations) it really frustrated me to think all of those things should have been removed. I don’t think I will ever agree with the random planetside death, though, for two main reasons: 1 is that one of the main things that draws me into each and every EVN storyline (including yours) is the idea of becoming a supremely powerful guy who can overcome everything; feeling like an invincible super hero who was single-handedly saving the universe, etc. ARPIA2 gave me the same feeling, but then when I would randomly die planetside, I found myself baffled, frustrated, and most importantly unbelieving. My character was supposed to be a T3 with incredibly combat ability, and some random guy is able to turn around and stab him with a knife? That doesn’t make sense to me – a telepath would be able to read his intentions, and a warrior would be able to protect himself. Similarly, being able to explode hearts with my mind, best the most powerful being in the universe, etc., and then having the opportunity to watch a laser sight travel up my arm and then to my head before being shot (at the very height of the character’s power, no less), makes no sense either. Why not block the bullet, become one with the universe, explode the hear of the shooter, etc. ? Literally the entire game felt cheapened for me just because I now knew I had a character who WASN’T a supreme awesome, but was just a guy who was pretty good. The first time I died and then for the rest of the storyline I felt only half as cool as I had before, because I knew in the back of my mind that my character was a failure. Problem 2 is the introduction of a deity figure. It creates a deus ex machina feeling. in a way, and aside from coming back from death is never mentioned in any way whatsoever. Wouldn’t my character not get stabbed because he knew he had been before? Wouldn’t he have some higher level of enlightenment? It is not addressed in any way, except for the moment you’re dead, and so just feels like this completely weird out of place part of the story. And then obviously having to redo something is never particularly fun, but I’m okay with it if it’s my fault that I have to redo it. I had to do the last mission 4 times, which is literally just jumping 15 times and then landing. Fun? No. Anyway, I could rant forever about anything. Let me reiterate that I think you did a tremendous job here, I just like to pick at things. It might be cool, however, to see a “no random deaths / no time limits” release of this plugin to work for different play styles.
Eli, thanks for your feedback.
Re many of your comments, ARPIA2 attempts to make the whole thing more “realistic”: when you’re sent on a mission, you are meant to take the most direct route, not take a detour and do as you please; when you are fighting off a massive fleet, chances are that taking a break in combat is not an option (i.e. kill them or die); when doing anything as risky as you do in ARPIA2, there is a risk of death. Many have considered these aspects to detract from the experience of the storyline, but others consider that it makes it more down to earth.
I hope this clarifies some of the choices I made (though I’ll admit that I should have lowered the price tag for saving Culuria).
I just finished the public figure storyline. I thought the plugin was pretty good, but the storyline (at least this one) really seemed to randomly drag on into 3 or 4 smaller storylines, and the whole random chance of dying planetside, forcing me to redo a mission, was tremendously irritating. A lot of stuff was not at all obvious, especially a few lines of the riddle and occasionally trying to figure out what planet I was supposed to go to was really difficult. Having mission deadlines I also found to add no redeeming quality to the plugin at all, given that part of the fun of EV is exploring around, and I constantly felt rushed for what seemed like no reason. The worst was when the aliens were attacking the planet, I left, went and fought it, died, reloaded my save, decided I needed some escorts so landed again, left, killed it, jumped back and found the time limit exceeded so the planet was destroyed. Then I had to waste a couple hours saving up 10 million credits. Why? So many choices in this plugin don’t seem to have fun in mind, instead they seem to have been made for the sake of showing off cool new things you can do with EV plugins. But enough of my scrutiny – otherwise it was pretty fun. Better than some of ATMOS’s storylines, although not as good as a few of the best ones.
@homerjay: try visiting Rebel II, where you got the mission leading directly to the Traitor Hunt.
Somehow I failed the mission to retrieve/insert a spy on New England in the Wolf 359 system. Now i only get mundane mission bbs delivery missions – no public figure missions as I’d had. Do I need some amount of credits or something? I have 2M and a manticore.
Gah, I forgot that it was a 180° rotation, not a vertical flip.
In the southern hemisphere the pole compasses point to is the south pole. Maps down there (AFAIK) are upside down compared to Maps in north America or Europe. So for them east would be left on the map, not right
DGIE004, how so? East is always east, as far as I can tell…
Hi… slight problem with the riddle… “And by the rising sun shall you find what you seek.”… I live in the southern hemisphere, so it’s ‘reversed’. It works out eventually but I just thought it might be worth mentioning.
I just checked the walkthrough for the 10th time and for some reason I finally noticed I need a combat rating of average for the story to start up – maybe that’s it. Doh!
I’ve installed arpia2 on nova (pc). (I converted the plugins carefully, not discarding the resource fork.) The splash screen shows arpia, and I see a pilot contacting me in the game with the witticism “what has happened to my game? – everything’s changed.” So I think it is installed. But I can’t seem to start any of the missions, such as the pirate missions. I have upgraded to a Starbridge, explored a decent amount of the galaxy (Fed, Rebel, and Auroran space, (stopping at all the bars) plus a few uninhabited systems adjacent to Polaris or in Krypt space). I’ve read the docs. I don’t see what I’m supposed to be doing. The only missions I’ve been offered the whole time are the standard nova kontik sensor and united shipping missions. I don’t know if I’m supposed to be able to yet, but I also cannot navigate to the systems shown at http://www.arpia.be/images/wp/arpiasystems.jpg Can someone help me?
@ Peter: Hogun Flagship? I’m on the Carachnor. Also, I think the Hogun flagship is weaker than 5 Hogun Fighters(?). Also, the Zalien Access plugin works with Arpia2, just thought you might want to know. 😉
@ Pappa: MagNIE. 😉 *doesn’t really like it when people call him “Maggie”*
Yeah, cause there isn’t any interactions after you have beaten the Storyline. there should be legends of Al’Ario slipping around the Galaxy, either destroying… or helping others, and people becoming suspicious when they see you when you go around the Galaxy and a whole new story line comes up, it would be awesome!
Hello Petter!
I had a thought after reading what Maggie said. I always felt all the EV games fell back too heavily on taking over the universe for the end game. Is there a way to set a bounty on the player via the loosibg faction that exponetially increases bounty fleet size for a time until killing you? Basically post story line end game has always been too easy!
Regards,
Pappa Smirf
With your new Hogun flagship? Yes!
Okay. So now I just conquer the galaxy?
@ Magnie: there are little bonus things after the Regular and Shadow storylines. The Public Figure has less post-storyline mission bonuses.
Okay, I finished the story line, I’ve noticed a few spelling errors… I wish story lines go on longer, or at least have some interesting effect. o.O No one really talks to you… or anything, which goes for the other story lines too… *sighs* Loved the story line though! 😀
All except the Arpian Plugin’s, I got the full version now and it works amazingly. 😀
Which .rez files are in your plug-ins folder?
Okay, I’ve removed all the plugins except… for the “Arouran Cruiser Fix” which I have a feeling I should keep it there so EV Nova doesn’t crash. 😉 So I started it and the Splash Screen does not show up. :/ I don’t see anything related to Arpia. 🙁 I have cleared enough space on my computer so I can download Arpia 2 ( *cheers* ) I’ll go try that.