Here's the long and the short of it: You patrol an 8x8 sector grid of Federation space. There are X number of enemies invading. You have starbases to refuel at. The Long Range Sensor window tells you how many enemies, starbases, and stars there are in each sector. It is up to you to eliminate the enemies (no time for diplomacy) within a certain time frame, and without running out of dilithium energy. It's all about time and energy management.
Tips:
-Impulse takes less time than warp (warping to the next sector consumes a day of time). So if you're right next to an adjacent sector, just do an impulse hop to get there.
-Red stars sometimes allow you to slingshot around them with the "Richochet" command in the computer console. These slingshots will send you a random number of sectors away without consuming fuel or time. A good way to explore the map.
-The "scan" command in the computer will tell you how much energy the enemies have, so you don't waste excess power on phasering them. Use your torpedoes first, anyway, because they consume no power.
-Go into the options and uncheck "one control window." I don't know why this option even exists. But it will irritate you to no end until you uncheck it, as it will make all of your carefully arranged windows disappear each time you do something. Aargh!
I love this game back in the late 80's/ early 90's. For orginal window 3.1, the graphics are pretty cool. The issue, I had back then was figuring out the controls without documentation. Thanks for hte link.
ReplyDelete