1 NQUAD This parameter defines the galactic size. You can play in a 2x2 galaxy of quadrants up to a 10x10 galaxy. The size of the galaxy will probably have some effect on the game length. 1 PASSWORD Enter the password associated with your name. Case is irrelevant. If you have never played the game before, the program will create a new game record for you in the ratings file and ask you to verify your password. Your password can be up to 16 characters long. This is to prevent another person from playing under your name and possibly getting you demoted. This should NOT be the same as your login password (for obvious reasons). If you forget your password, you will have to start over using a new name. 1 PHASOR Phasors are energy beam weapons that fire either forward or rear along the axis (present bearing) of the Enterprise. Their strength attenuates with distance from target and bearing of target relative to bearing fired (inverse square relationship). A 100 unit bolt will produce a 100 unit hit at a distance of 2.24 (SQRT(5)) a.u.s if the target is directly in line with the Enterprise. Phasors act immediately upon all targets in their path, but may be masked by intervening objects (planets, starbases, other targets, etc). Starbases and planets are unaffected, as well as ships you have captured. 2 ENERGY Enter the amount of energy to allocate to the phasor bolt. Be careful not to use up all your energy this way. It takes a 300 unit hit to destroy a Klingon, and a 400 unit hit to destroy a Romulan. If you don't get them the first time, though, they will be repairing the damage in the interim. Your phasors will also be killing some of his crew (and your troops, if you have transported a boarding party) which may slow down his rate and strength of fire somewhat. 2 DIR Type "F" for Forward or "R" for rear phasors. Forward means in the direction the Enterprise is currently headed, and rear means 180 degrees opposite. The target should be approximately in line with the way you are headed for maximum effect. 1 PLANET Planets can be explored by the shuttlecraft and useful (or sometimes harmful) things found. Otherwise, they are mainly objects to avoid, as collision with one will result in your destruction. Each planet has a radius (use the PLOT command) within which a collision will occur. Photon torpedos will destroy them, as well as collisions with enemy vessels. 1 PLOT This command gives the bearing to each planet (useful if you want to destroy them with your torpedos) and to the starbase, if one is present. Will not work if short range sensors are damaged. 1 PROCEED Makes time pass. One turn (1 starminute) passes each time this command is entered. See TRAVEL command to move faster through time. You can just press instead of typing "0". 1 RATED The program maintains a record for each player, reflecting his past victories and defeats. Each game you play is assigned a difficulty factor (ranging from 0 to about 116). The difficulty factor is based on the game level selected, the number of enemy, and the size of the galaxy, according to an arcane formula derived by the bureaucrats in Starfleet command. Each player starts with a rating of 0 and gains or loses points depending on what score he attains in a game and the difficulty factor of the game in relation to his own personal rating. The net change in your rating for the game complexity you have chosen is displayed and you can, at this point, reconsider and try new game parameters. As you gain points, you will have to play increasingly more difficult games to continue to gain points. 2 RANK With your personal rating is associated a rank, as follows: RANK MINIMUM RATING NEEDED =========================================== Recruit 0. Cadet 5. Midshipman 10. Ensign 20. Lieutenant JG 25. Lieutenant 30. Lieutenant Commander 37. Commander 45. Captain 55. Commodore 67. Rear Admiral 80. Vice Admiral 90. Admiral 100. Fleet Admiral 120. Your rating can never go negative. Anyone who makes it to Fleet Admiral deserves a 21 gun salute! 1 RECONSIDER If you don't like the possible rating changes associated with this game situation, you may elect to reenter the game parameters. Do this as often as you want, to see how the game parameters affect the difficulty factor, or to get the exact difficulty factor desired. It is recommended that you play games of a difficulty approximately equal to your current rating, in order to progress smoothly through the ranks. To protect against Control-C'ing out of difficult situations, whenever you start a game, the points you would have lost given your current score are immediately deducted from your rating. As the game progresses and you start killing some of the enemy, these points are added back in to the rating file. In the event of a system crash during a game, you are just out of luck. 1 REPULSE Repulsor beams are used to push away nasty Klingons who are approaching too close. Or you can try to push them out of the quadrant (or galaxy) or into stars, Romulans, or each other. 150 units of energy at a distance of 2 a.u.s will move a Klingon 1 a.u. further away (movement is on a direct line away from the Enterprise). Energy required increases with the square of the distance to the Klingon. 2 ENERGY Enter the amount of energy to expend on the repulsor beam. The effect on the Klingon will be dependent on the distance squared from the Enterprise. 2 KLING You must select which Klingon in the quadrant is to be pushed away (even if there is only 1). Enter the number as shown on the Short Range Scan. 1 ROMULAN Romulans, on the other hand, are much more difficult to live with. In addition to taking more energy to destroy, they have a higher crew strength and are much more difficult to capture. Although they always stay on integral coor- dinates, the fact that they "hop" from one spot to another makes them diff- icult to pin down. They have very clever computers on board that allow them to launch torpedos that will intercept you if you don't change your course regularly. 1 SAVE You can save the game at any point. When you log back in, the program will remember that you had a saved game and start you up immediately. You cannot have more than one saved game at a time, but you can save a single game any number of times. The file name used is created from the first 9 letters of you last name + the extension ".S8V" and is deleted upon successful resto- ration of the game (thus, saving frequently does not protect you from system crashes). 1 SELF_DESTRUCT If there is no hope left, you can order the Enterprise to self-destruct. This has the advantage of taking any enemy that were in the same quadrant along with you, so try to do it in a full quadrant. 1 SHIELDS Your shields are there to protect your ship and crew from enemy phasor and torpedo hits. If you are hit with your shields down, some part of the ship will be damaged and personnel will be killed. Energy may be drawn from the shields automatically to complete some maneuver if you main energy banks run low. A collision will result in destruction of your shields and heavy damage. Your shields must be down before attempting to pull in a ghostship with your tractor beams. Shields are automatically dropped when you dock at a starbase. 2 ENERGY Enter a positive number to add energy to your shields, and a negative number to remove it from the shields to the main energy banks. Enter zero (or just press ) to reset the shields to zero and put all the energy in the main banks. If you find you don't want to change the shield energy at this point, then you must type '#' to cancel the command. 1 SHUTTLE Your shuttlecraft is used to explore the different planets in the quadrant. We will not spoil your enjoyment by telling you all the things you might find. You only have 1 shuttlecraft on board the Enterprise, but if it is destroyed, a starbase might be able to replace it (rarely). 2 COMMAND Possible shuttlecraft commands are: E - Explore R - Return to Enterprise D - Self destruct 2 EXPLORE Enter the planet number to explore. You can explore them in any order, but obviously some orderings are less time-consuming than others. The shuttle travels at a speed of 0.25 and will spend a variable and random amount of time exploring each planet ordered (you can tell it to break off and return at any time). After it has explored all the planets you have listed, it will automatically return to the Enterprise. Be careful not to leave the quadrant until it has returned. You can explore planets while you are docked at a starbase. 1 SR_SCAN The short range scan tells you about the quadrant you are currently occupying. Each point on the scan is represented by a pair of coordinates (x and y), with x coordinates increasing to the right, and y coordinates increasing upwards. The limits on the quadrant are from 0.5 to 10.49999, with objects displayed on the nearest integral coordinate. Each object is abbreviated to a single letter as follows: E - Enterprise, K - Klingon, R - Romulan, P - Planet, B - Starbase, G - Ghostship, S - Nucleonic storm, T - Romulan torpedo, U - Enterprise torpedo, . - empty space, and blank for a black hole. When two or more objects occupy proximate positions, only one is displayed. Some types of object are followed by numbers (1-9) to distinguish one from the other for certain commands and for informational purposes. Watch out for the black holes and especially for the cloaked Romulans! 2 OTHER_INFO The information to the right of you scan is very important. The time left indicates how many stardates are remaining to play (each game "turn" is one starminute, or 1/100 of a stardate). The condition indicates the general status of your ship in this quadrant, and can be one of the following values: GREEN - all clear, ORANGE - one or more enemy in the quadrant, YELLOW - same as green, but your energy reserves are very low, RED - same as orange, but some facility has been damaged, DOCKED - you are protected by the starbase, CLOAKED - you are invisible to the enemy! The position is your exact position in the quadrant. Energy is the amount remaining in your main energy banks. Torpedos is the number left on board plus the number that are queued to be fired yet. Enemy left is the number of Klingons and Romulans remaining. The number of cloaked Romulans remaining is shown in parentheses.Your crew and troops are the count of the people aboard the Enterprise (crew being used to run the ship and troops to fight aboard and capture enemy vessels). Shields shows how much energy remains in your shields. Speed and bearing show your present course. Speed may be followed by a + sign, indicating acceleration is in progress, or a - sign, indicating deceleration. Similarly, bearing, if followed by a + sign, indicates a turn in progress in a clockwise direction, while a - sign would indicate a turn in a counterclockwise direction. Score is a number from 0-1000 indicating what proportion of the enemy you have slain. Time ratio is the ratio of the number of enemy left to the time remaining and is either plus or minus a certain percentage from the starting ratio (so you can judge how well you are allocating your time). 1 STARBASE A starbase is a safe haven for the Enterprise. Be very careful how you treat them. They can be destroyed by a collision with another vessel. You should approach a starbase at a speed of not more than 0.25; being very careful that nearby black holes do not cause you to be accelerated into them. A starbase will fully resupply you with energy and torpedos. It will have additional troops and may have replacement crew and even a spare shuttlecraft for you. Also, they will repair your damage approximately 3 times faster than you could do it yourself. When you are not in the quadrant, any enemy there will be attacking the base which may be destroyed as a result (at level 4 only), but you will receive a message if they are in trouble (unless your communications are damaged). 1 STATUS The status report tells you most of the vital information about the your ship and also details any planetary findings you have discovered so far. 1 STORMS Nucleonic storms are magnetic disturbances in certain areas of the quadrant. If an object enters one, it is hurled to some random part of the quadrant and given a random speed and bearing. In the expert game, nucleonic storms will have a speed and bearing of their own and move about the quadrant. Strange things have been rumored to happen to photon torpedos that are caught in storms. 1 TIME The basic unit of time in this simulation is the starminute. There are 100 starminutes in one starday (or stardate). 1 TORP Your photon torpedos will destroy whatever they hit except starbases, black holes, shuttlecraft (too small), ghostships, nucleonic storms, and yourself. Torpedos are fired with a launch velocity of 0.4 a.u./stm in the direction you give, but this is added to any ship's velocity at the time of launch. Torpedos leaving the quadrant cease to exist, as do those striking black holes and starbases, but they pass right through the shuttlecraft. The enemy (Romulan) torpedos will hit you with a strength between 75 and 175, depending on the proximity of the hit. You cannot be harmed by your own torpedos (nor the Romulans by theirs). 2 NTOFIRE Enter the number of torpedos to launch. You are told how many remain in the torpedo bays and how many are already queued to launch. If you merely want to cancel a previously scheduled firing, then enter the negative of the number of torpedo firings to cancel. You can fire up to nine with one command, but they are launched at the rate of 1 per starminute. 2 BRNG Enter the bearing (0-360) with which to launch the torpedo. Note that the actual bearing and speed of the torpedo will be the vector sum of the Enterprise's velocity and the torpedo launch velocity at the time of launch. 1 TRACKING This report displays the location of moving objects in the quadrant. You will be given the speed, position, bearing and status of Klingons, torpedos, nucleonic storms, etc. 2 REPORT Possible reports to request are: V - vessels (Klingons, Ghostship, shuttle) S - nucleonic storms T - torpedos 1 TRACTOR Tractor beams are used to pull in and dock with Ghostships (which are derelict ships floating around space - probably in the aftermath of the enemy invasion). Ghostships contain random amounts of energy and torpedos. Docking with a Ghostship destroys it and transfers its energy and torpedos to you. For alternative uses of Ghostships, see help on transporters and communications. The amount of energy required can be displayed by using the computer command. If you attempt to pull in a Ghostship and don't have the energy for it, the command will be cancelled. You can't pull in a Ghostship if your shields are up. 1 TRANSPORT Transporters are used to beam troops (never crew) from one place to another in the quadrant. You can beam them aboard enemy vessels in an attempt to capture them, or aboard a ghostship to attempt to activate its weapons, or from a starbase if it has troops available, as well as other possibilities. If you leave the quadrant (or any vessel carrying your troops does) then all those troops not on the Enterprise are lost forever. 2 CANCEL Transporters are already in use. If you want to cancel the previous transport order and replace it with a new one, type Y, else type N. 2 FROM Valid "from" designations are E,K,R,B,G. In the case of G,K or R, you must follow the letter with the number of the ship as shown on your short range scan. 2 TO Valid "to" destinations are E,K,R,B,G. In the case of G,K or R, you must follow the letter with the number of the ship as shown on your short range scan. 3 GUESS For a cloaked Romulan, you must guess the coordinates he occupies (Romulans always occupy integral coordinates). If you guess correctly, the transport is completed. If you guess incorrectly, a small number of troops will die a horrible death in the vacuum of space. 2 TROOPS Transport rate is normally 40 troops per starminute (turn). It costs energy to transport them (0.5 units of energy per person times the square root of the distance to the target). The more men you send over to an enemy vessel, the better chance you will have of capturing it, and with fewer casualties. Size of defending crews on enemy vessels ranges from 75 to 200 (cloaked Romulans may have more). Your troops fight against Klingons better than against Romulans (who are also better defended). Once you capture a ship, it will respond to your commands (use the communications command), but the speed of response will be slowed if you only have a few troops on board. 1 TRAVEL This command is used to pass time. The game will cycle through its loops the number of times indicated, executing any activities previously ordered. Be careful of entering large values when moving or when there are enemy in the quadrant - you won't get to enter any commands while time is passing! 2 TIME Enter the number of starminutes to advance. To afford some protection, it won't accept a value greater than 99. 1 TRUCE You can propose a truce at any time. Of course, the enemy will only accept if they are heavily damaged and want some time to do repairs also. If a truce is in effect, it remains so until you do one of the following: o issue any change course or speed command o issue any fire or attack command o leave the quadrant The enemy will never agree to a truce if you have troops fighting aboard their ships. 1 ZORPHWAR ZORPHWAR is a fast-paced tactical, multi-player, computer moderated play-by-mail space wargame (whew). Rules cost $1.00 and are available from Zorph Enterprises, 3646 Gibsonia Rd. Gibsonia, PA 15044. 1 QUEST Quest of the Great Jewels (tm) is a computer moderated fantasy play-by-mail multi-player wargame. Twelve players compete for control of the land of Zorplia and the treasures hidden therein. Rules cost $2.50 and are available from Zorph Enterprises, 3646 Gibsonia Rd, Gibsonia, PA 15044.