The Game
Here's the introduction to the game:

After this, it asks you to identify yourself and set the nationalities of the enemy ships.  You type in your name, then tell it which race you are and that of your enemy.  You will then be given the following fleet selection screen.

I have selected a Destroyer for my ship and a Dreadnought as my enemy.

Once you have configured the fleets, you can begin the game two ways.  The main way is, of course, to type 'Begin'.  This will place both fleets at the edge of sensor range (anywhere from 25,000 to 50,000 units away) and ready for instant fight.

The other method is to use the command 'Random' which appears to be designed for larger scale engagements with spread out battles and time to use resources like Tugs and Tankers strategically.  Unfortunately, the implementation isn't quite there yet.  Enemy ships are placed in clumps of similar ship types all over the map.  For example, if you have 5 Starbases, 5 Dreadnoughts, and 5 Escorts, all the Starbases will be positioned right next to each other, all Dreadnoughts will be placed in a cluster somewhere else, and same with the Escorts.  A better result would probably have been to have the enemy fleet spread out evenly, but since the code has presumably been closed for coming up on 15 years, that's probably not going to happen.

As you can see, my ship is at zero speed and all weapons are unloaded and discharged.

When you start, your vessel is at rest and all weapons are inactive.

"Ahead best speed, Mr. Sulu!"

In the screenshot above, I've set a course in the general direction of the Phantom, my Klingon Dreadnought foe.  As you can see, my ship is accelerating past warp factor 4.5 towards its cruising speed of warp 6.4.  My shields are already up from the beginning, but my weapons are offline.  Time to rectify that.

I've loaded my torpedoes with the default Mk 7 Federation torpedo.  It will take 3 cycles to load, but when they finish loading, they will be set to detonate when they come within 220 units of an enemy ship.  All torpedoes in the game have proximity fuses.  The Mk7 torpedo is well suited for engaging targets at distances of up to 20,000 units, but you can also manually load the Mk8.  The Mark 8 torpedo is slower then the Mk7, but it has a larger yield warhead.  It's good for fighting in the 1,500->5,000 range, further if you're lucky, closer if you're chasing them at high warp.

Next, "Almost Ready"

Page 1 of 6

Go up one level
ben@vipmail.com : hallert.net