A List of Nova Engine Eccentricities

When creating my plug-in I found these compellations of information about how the nova engine functions particularly interesting.

As I finish the very last stages of work on my plug-in I have decided to compile my own list of discoveries about the nova engine and its many eccentricities. All of these are things I have found working with WinNova 1.0.A (1.0.10), and may not be applicable to other versions. Some of these may have been documented elsewhere but I think I’m putting a number of these down for the first time; in any case I had to spend time researching all of them at one point or another so they are going on my list. I don’t know how much use any of these will be to anybody at this point but I seemed to enjoy putting this together.

Time:
Time advances after landing as follows:
1 day to land and take off (no matter your ship type)
+1 day to make purchases/sales at the outfitters (no matter how many or few)
+4 days to buy a new ship
+1 day to upgrade/sell 2-3 escorts
+2 days to upgrade/sell 4-5 escorts ---Note: it does not take time to hire escorts.---
+3 days to upgrade/sell 6 escorts

All time advances are applied on takeoff.

Thus if your mission has a deadline of 1 day and is given on a spöb it will always fail on takeoff. To be at least somewhat fair to how most people play any timed mission should probably give 3 days to a mission meant to be completed immediately on takeoff.

The Jünk Resource:
The Trade Center has space for one bought at (High) and one sold at (Low) jünk. If more than one jünk can be bought or sold only the one with the highest resource number will be listed.

The Öops Resource:
The öops resource always adjusts up or down from a given commodities medium price not the normal price at a given spöb. This price is not effected by your legal status either positively or negatively.

The Ränk Resource:
Ränk's must have ID# between 128 and 256

As near as I can tell a rank’s flags effect both the relevant government and all of its allies. Thus if you have Knight of the Red Branch which has the “can always land” flag checked you can not only always land on Wild Geese planets but also on any Federation or Heraan planet as they are both allies of the Wild Geese.

If you want a rank’s flags to only affect only a single government you must create an intermediary government who is allied with only the government in question and assign the rank to them. This is done in the main scenario in the case of the United Shipping Courier rank(145) its associated government is 190(United Shipping refuelling for free) who is allied to class 55 the only other member (at least that you are likely to encounter) of which is United Shipping(gövt 166). This makes it so you can get refueled for free and get battle assistance from United Shipping(gövt 166) but not their allies in classes 1 (Federation 128), 2 (Auroran Empire129), 10 (Rebellion 141) or 16 (Polaris 130).

The Mïsn Resource:
It is not possible to make mission associated ships enter a system through a hypergate unless they are following you, either as an escort or in pursuit.

While you can call a new fleet from hyperspace by starting a new mïsn using the appropriate parameters you cannot have them appear in a system on one of the nav defaults (as though leaving a planet or station) or decloak (as though waiting in ambush)

If the Special Ship’s Behavior is set to “Protect player” it will always appear to fallow the player through the hypergate into the system if that is how the player arrives. Thus you cannot arrive to a group of allies awaiting your orders through a hypergate.

The special ships for a mission cannot use ShipSyst settings:
30000-30255 System of a specific govt or any of its class mates
or
9999-10255 Specific govt's system
Although the AuxShip can use AuxShipSyst:
30000-30255 System of a specific govt or any of its class mates
9999-10255 Any system belonging to this govt

Note: these two AuxShip settings are some of the few that refer to the gövt of uninhabited systems.

The “appear randomly cloaked” ship start will have the ships hyper into the system you the first time you enter the system via hyperspace or if you take off from a planet in the system. If you reenter the system after leaving then they will appear at a random location in the system cloaked.

If you abort a mïsn in its on ship done field you cannot also have an on ship done disc shown.

TravelStel 30000-30255 Random stellar of specific govt or any of its class mates; does not function. The debuglog summarizes to: failed to find a valid nontransient random stellar of govt or a govt of same class, using initial stellar instead; even though the government is found using 10000-10255.

If you specify a cargo amount that is never picked up, you can have a mission test if there is a given amount of cargo space available for a later mission. If you do not have space the first mission can’t be accepted.

The Flët Resource:
The ships called using the flët resource do not use the hail quotes corresponding to their assigned government and as there is no other way to assign them a specific hail quote in the resource they respond with a simple “Greetings”

The Flag “Freighters (InherentAI <= 2) in this fleet will have random cargo when boarded” does not function. Ships in fleets never have cargo when boarded.

The Përs Resource:
Ships created via the përs resource do not use the generic government hails of their assigned government so if no specific hail quote is assigned to them and the “Show disaster info when hailing” flag is not set they respond with “Greetings”

The Sÿst Resource:
Persons summoned via the sÿst resource appear upon your entry to the system (already present not arriving via hyperspace or hypergate), and will not be called up again until you enter the system again.

Although two përs with the same name are treated as one person and thus only appear in a system once adding a space at the end of a name counts as a different person so if you have përs resources with generic names this could be used to have more than one in a system at a time.

Fleets summoned via the sÿst resource always enter the system after you arrive either via hyperspace or a hypergate and are never already present.

The Gövt resource as applied via missions and escorts generally:
If a gövt is set to not attack the player and/or be immune to player weapons, and ships of that gövt are assigned to the player as escorts (either via missions or hiring them at a bar) they will not be able to shoot anything. Their weapons will simply pass through everything.
(Found and described by my beta tester DarthKev)

In order to cause a mission to fail due to being scanned the gövt of a given ship must have a smuggling penalty of at least 1 as well as a matching scan mask. Thus ships from a gövt such as the Vell-os can’t cause a mission to fail because although they have a scan mask their smuggling penalty is 0.
(Resolved by my beta tester DarthKev)

Thanks for this. Some of these (like time advancing when you make purchases) were completely new to me.

Hmm... This may have taken longer to respond to then I would have preferred...

In any case you’re welcome.

In truth, time ended up being such an important part of my plug-in (which really is almost finished) that I just had to know exactly what was going on. My experiments corrected some of my misconceptions as well, at one point I was sure hiring escorts took time but it actually doesn’t. Another odd point is that the outfitters and the shipyards time advances aren’t specifically noted in the debug log but the time advances for upgrading/selling escorts are.