SWINE/Win32 ** BETA RELEASE ** A port of the SWINE 1.30beta Netrek Client
to Microsoft Windows NT and Windows 3.1/Win32s by Jonathan Shekter
(shekter@hookup.net)
Contents:
0. For People Who Already Play Netrek
1. Introduction
2. System Requirements And Installation
3. Basic Instructions
3.1 Connecting To A Server
3.2 Logins
3.3 The MOTD, Teams, And Ships
3.4 Essential Commands
3.5 How Not To Be Obviously A Twink
4. Finer Points And Strategy
4.1 Dogfighting Strategy
4.2 Essential Operations
4.3 Taking Planets
4.4 Complete Command Reference
5. Configuration
5.1 Keymaps
5.2 Complete Xtrekrc Reference
5.2 Macros And RCD
5.3 Default Macros And Distresses
6. Technical Stuff
6.1 Where To Find More
6.2 Netrek Dictionary
7. Resources
7.1 UDP, Short Packets, and SLIP
7.2 Ghostbusts
8. Features Specific To This Client
9. Troubleshooting And Hints
0. For People Who Already Play Netrek
This document is a somewhat extensive player's manual. If you
already know netrek in general and SWINE (formerly COW-lite) in particular,
then all you really need to read is sections 2 and 7. This program is a
direct port of COW-lite v1.20, including all features (UDP, short packets,
RSA, metaserver ) and command line and xtrekrc options (except fonts and
color.) In other words, if you're clue, read sections 2 (installation) and
7 (Windows-specific features.)
If you're new to netrek, read on!
1. Introduction
Welcome! You are now the proud owner of the best (and only at the
moment) port of a netrek client to the Microsoft Windows
environment.client.
According to the FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) list for the
newsgroup Netrek,
"Netrek is a 16-player graphical real-time battle simulation with a
Star Trek theme. The game is divided into two teams of 8 (or less), who
dogfight each other and attempt to conquer each other's planets. There are
several different types of ships, from fast, fragile scouts up to big, slow
battleships; this allows a great deal of variance in play styles."
It is played over the Internet, against real human oppenonents. If
you do not have a Windows computer on the internet, or connected via SLIP
or PPP, you will not be able to play.
I did not invent Netrek, as anyone who plays will know. I did not
even (really) write this client. SWINE was written primarily by Steve
Sheldon at Iowa State University. Even he did not write SWINE in a sense as
it was based on the BRMH client, which itself was a modification of the BRM
client by Ted Hadley, which was worked on by a team of people (and has now
evolved into COW) and was originally derived from the Berkely and Rick's
Moo clients.
In other words, this game has a history and can actually be traced
back through various ancestors to 1972. Andy McFadden has written a
wonderful history of the game, see which for more.
Up to 16 players, often widely seperated geographically, connect to
a central "server" running at some site. There are maybe 100 public servers
in the world and of these maybe 20 are well known and popular. The
individual players use a "client" program to connect to the server of their
choice. Once in the game, the server recieves commands from the client (and
hence player) and sends the positions and status of the other ships,
planets, etc, to all players, several times per second. The net effect of
all this is to create a virtual galaxy where everyone can see eachother and
interact, or to put it less academically, everyone plays in the same galaxy
to try to take it over.
2. System Requirements And Installation
SWINE/Win32 is a full 32-bit binary, developed under Windows NT,
but will also run on Windows 3.1 with Win32s, minimally v1.15a, installed.
If you do not have Win32s it is available by ftp from ftp.microsoft.com as
/SoftLib/MSLFiles/PW1118.EXE. (I didn't invent the filename!) It is also
available on wuarchive.wustl.edu or ftp.cica.indiana.edu, in the windows
directories.
You will need a WinSock implementation for your machine. Any
flavour of WinSock should work, including Trumpet WinSock, although there
are better TCP/IP stacks (Trumpet is somewhat slow). If you are already
using other TCP/IP applications, such as Mosaic, Netscape, Eudora, WinVN,
you already have a winsock.dll installed.
SWINE/Win32 will run with a display driver of any number of colors,
from a monochrome (1-bit) to 24-bit displays, and everything in between .
But, you are STRONGLY advised to be running in 1024x768 resolution, as
otherwise you will have trouble fitting everything on the screen.
The follwing files are included in this release:
* netrek.exe - Netrek/Win32 executable
* netrekrc - sample configurartion file with nice
window placements * ntrk6x10.fon - 6 by 10 pixel fonts
file * ntrk6x10.alt - alternate font file, for large fonts
display drivers * netrek.wri - You're reading it!
Put these into the same directory (ntrk6x10.fon in particular must
be in the same directory as netrek.exe for proper operation), make sure
WinSock (and Win32s if needed) is installed and run the executable. That's
it!
3. Basic Instructions
3.1 Connecting To A Server
If you run netrekexe without any arguments it will just complain at
you. It needs to know which server to connect to. To do this, use the "-h"
command line option:
netrek -h thiserver.foobar.somewhere.edu
This tells netrek to join the game in progress on that server. (You
can specify the port number, if it's not the standard 2592, with the -p
option, should you need to.) For a list of servers, get online, see the
Resources section in this document.
The better way to go about this, however, is to use the metaserver.
The metaserver is a central computer, currently
metaserver.ecst.csuchico.edu, which keeps track of currently running games
on all server. If you start netrek with the -m option, it will first
connect to the metaserver to get a list of active games. It will then
display a menu of each server and how many people are playing, and allow
you to select a game to join. If you're running SWINE/Win32 for the first
time, starting the program as "netrek -m" is highly recommended.
When you start the program, it will load the defaults and then
pause briefly while initializing. If you have selected metaserver use (with
the -m option) there will also be a pause while the program telnets to the
metaserver.
Netrek willl then attempt to connect to the specified server. After
connection, there will be a pause, especially if running over the modem, as
the MOTD is recieved from the server. This can take up to 30 seconds with
a long MOTD over a modem. Then main Netrek window will then be displayed.
3.2 Logins
Everyone who plays netrek has one or more "characters." People play
under handles. The point of this -- besides fun -- is to allow to server to
track each person's statistics from game to game. Thus you can have
ratings, be promoted in rank, etc. A good name can also inspire fear in
your enemy (a bad one inspires laughter, or ogging!)
When you connect to a server, therefore, you must login. If you
don't expect to play on this server often or do not wish to create a
character or use a current one, login as "guest." Otherwise, think of a
name and type it in. You will then be asked for a password. This prevents
other people from logging in as you and messing up your stats. Think of one
and remember it! You will need it to log in later.
Important note: This program is a direct port from X-Windows. As
such, it uses X-style input focusing. This means that when you type, the
keystrokes go to whicever window the mouse is currently in. Conversely, you
must place the mouse in whichever window you wish to type in. This includes
the login window. So, put the mouse in the tactical window as you type your
name and password or you won't be able to enter anything!
Also, if you are using Windows 3.1, you need to set your real login
name (as opposed to a character name). By looking at the player list (you
may have to switch to alternate format by pressing '') you can see the
real, user, login name of each character. Also, when you connect, your
login name is displayed. This works correctly on Windows NT, but, the
problem is, on Windows 3.1, there is no function to get the user's login
name becuase there is no login name! The previous version of this client
replaced the login name with the much hated "bozo". You should use this
option to set the login name the client sends to the server. Most often,
you will want to set it to whatever the name portion of your e-mail address
is.
3.3 The MOTD, Teams, And Ships
"MOTD" stands for Message Of The Day and it's what you see after
you successfully log in. It will be displayed in the left window (called
the "local" or "tactical" window) along with the team selection windows.
With the mouse in this window, press "f" and "b" to move forward an
backwards through this message, and read it. Press Shift-R (capital R)
should you wish to reset your stats. Do read the MOTD: it will tell you
important server-specific information.
The other defining thing about this screen are the team selection
windows. The large numbers indicate how many people are playing on each
team. Often you will not be able to pick an arbitrary team but will be
restricted to some subset. This ensures that the teams are balanced in
size.
Click on the team of your choice and you will be assigned a cruiser
for that team. Or, with the mouse in the appropriate window, press a key to
select a ship type and start as that type. The keys you may press are:
S - Scouts(SC): These are fast fragile little things. Good if you
want to fly around the galaxy at high speed and get shot down by the first
big ship that gets near. They are very good for harassing, and bombing if
there are many undefended planets with very few armies on them. They are
difficult to use to fight anyone, especially if your machine is having
blink problems. Cruise: 8 Combat: 6
D - Destroyers(DD): These are similar to scouts but they are a
little more tough and they have slightly more powerful weapons. They are
good to fight in if you're good at dodging and keeping larger ships away.
Definitely the best ship for those fond of the 'Run-Away' tactic.Cruise: 7
Combat: 5
A - Assault Ships(AS): These ships are primarily useful in bombing
and capturing planets (something that beginners should do after mastering
the basics). One of their unique features is that they may carry 3 armies
per kill their captain has. Also, they are very tough to kill because they
can take so much hull damage. You have to plug extra torps into them 'just
to be sure'. They also can cloak fairly cheaply, to sneak in and attack
planets. Cruise: 8 Combat:4
C - Cruiser(CA): The standard ship. It combines a wide variety of
features, making it a good all-around ship. It is the default ship if you
don't select one. Cruise: 6 Combat: 4/5
B - Battleship(BB): This ship is slow and hard to maneuver.
However, it has the most firepower of any normal ship. It is also very
tough. Since it can take a fair amount of damage while still dishing out a
lot, it is very effective for offensive players. This ship or the Cruiser
is recommended for inexperienced players, since it need not worry so much
about evasive maneuvers when it is in combat. Also, it
lasts longer, both in damage and fuel. Cruise: 4 Combat: 3
O (for "outpost") - Starbase(SB): These are very powerful
and hard to destroy. New players cannot play these (rank of Commander
req'd). Because they are so powerful, new players should probably avoid
getting in fights with one. It takes several players working together to
destroy one! If you see a hostile SB, you're best off running away from
it.Cruise: 2 Combat: 2
3.4. Essential Commands
When you first enter the game, you will see two main windows and
several smaller ones. The large window on the left is the local or tactical
window, where you will do most of your playing. It shows your ship and the
immediate area around it. The window on the right is the map window, which
shows the entire galaxy.
Each planet has a long name which appears on the local window, and
a three letter abbreviation which appears on the map. The color of the
planet indicates its owner, which can be one of thr four team colors or
gray for neutral. Some of the planets will also have symbols on them. A
person symbol means there are more than 4 armies on that planet (and hence
it can be bombed if its an enemy planet or beamed up from if it's a
friendly planet). A wrench symbol means that the planet is a repair planet;
while in orbit around this planet you will repair damage much faster that
usual. A gas can (looks like a sort of little box) means that the planet in
question is a fuel planet, and you can refuel on that planet. This is
important, because although you regenerate fuel automatically if you are
not constantly using it, a fuel planet will fill you up much faster.
Below the tactical display are two little windows. The topmost of
these is the warning window. Important messages will appear here. Below
this is the message-send window where you can compose one-line messages to
send to your team-mates.
Below the map window are three scrolling lists. These are, by
default, the All window, the Team window, and the Inividual window (the
"your" window). These show, as you might have guessed, messages to
everybody, messages to just your team and messages to just you in them.
Read messages! This is important.
With this in mind, the following is a direct ripoff of the classic
"opening screen" documentation, which is partof the MOTD of many servers.
It will tell you the basic commands and should be enough to get you started
playing. Thanks to Eric Mehlhaff for writing it.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
OPENING SCREEN
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mouse Buttons:
Left - Fire Photon Torpedoes toward Mouse Cursor
Shift+Left or Middle - Fire Phaser toward Mouse Cursor
Right - Change course toward Mouse Cursor
Other Important Commands: 0-9 Set Warp Speed 0-9 ) Set speed to
warp 10 ! Set speed to warp 11 @ Set speed to warp 12 %
Set speed as fast as you can go! c Cloak/Uncloak Ship. While
cloaked your ship will not show up on other players'
tactical displays. It will show up as a ?? on the Galactic
display. l Lock onto object. Sets your course to that object. If
it's a planet or a Base, you automatically dock there once you
arrive. t Fire torpedo p Fire phasers T Tractor Beam.
Pulls target toward you but uses a lot of fuel. Useful to make sure ships
that run away get killed. y Pressor Beam. Just like Tractor,
but it pushes target away. Useful in keeping those over-
agressive warships away from you. s,u Raise/lower shields. Your
shields consume fuel. Also, your ship will only repair internal damage
while shields are down. But you are much more vulnerable when your shields
are down. L Bring up the Player List Window. So you can see the
names behind the player numbers, as well as their stats. i,I Get
information on the player or planet nearest your mouse cursor. Lower and
uppercase report different things, try both.
q Quit game quickly Q Quit game, but read the MOTD first
h Bring up help window
How to send Messages: Press 'm' or put your mouse cursor in the
outgoing message window. It is the lower of the two thin one-line windows
just below the tactical window. Type the letter for who you want to send
to: 0-9, a-j Message is sent to player of that number/letter
t Send to your own team
A Send to All (Everyone!)
F Send to Federation K Send to Klingons
R Send to Romulans O Send to Orions
Use the Esc key to cancel a message before sending it.
Tournament Mode: Tournament mode starts you when have 4 vs 4 and
the teams are not diagonally opposite (eg Fed vs Kli is no good). You can
get DI only during tournament mode, and more DI leads to promotions. DI is
a composite score based on total planets taken, armies bombed, and ships
killed. During Tournament mode ('Tmode' -- look for the little 't' among
the flags, which are on the upper-left of the "dashboard" directly below
the tactical window) you receive no DI for attacking non-warring races, ie
those races not represented by a team of 4 or more.
Ratings: Your rating will be updated only during Tmode. Ratings
are derived from your planet bombing, killing (offense) and getting killed
(defense) rates, normalized with respect to the average of all players.
That is, a rating of 1.00 means you have exactly the average of all the
current players.
Plasmas: To get plasma torpedos, get 2 kills, and refit to
[DD/CA/BB]. These home in on a target but can be shot down with phasers.
Getting Started:
When you start playing Xtrek, it's probably best if you use the
'guest' login handle. When you first enter the Game, you may need to press
hit the keys 'B' and 'V' twice each. This makes the planets resources show
up on the tactical and Galactic Maps. If you are experiencing a lot of
'blink' (uneven screen updates), try setting your updates/second to a lower
value. Do this in the options window ('O' - that's capital oh -- to bring
it up). Click the mouse button on the updates number until you get the
number you want. Lower updates tend to produce less blink, although they
make xtrek less playable when the network is working normally.
Declare peace with everyone (except perhaps the current enemy
race). This way you won't be attacked by neutral planets and robots!
Set stay peaceful when reborn (in the options window again). This way you
won't have to redo your war settings every time you get shot down.
Hints for Beginners:
Watch your fuel. When you run out, your weapons won't fire, you can't
go very fast to run away, and you'll be helpless. If you run out of fuel,
go orbit a friendly or neutral fuel planet. You can recognize these by the
little fuel can (looks kind of like a square) on the right side of the
planet, assuming your maps show resource icons on the planets (if not, see
Getting Started, above). Avoid chasing ships, unless you know they are
badly damaged or out of fuel. It's very hard for you to dodge their fire,
and very easy for them to dodge yours. On the other hand, if you can get
someone to chase you, waste them!
Learn who your enemies are. If you shoot at friendly ships, not only
do you waste fuel, but you show everyone that you are a beginner. And many
players will specifically go for beginners just for the easy kill. Change
speeds a lot. It is often useful to use high speed to get into the action
quickly. But at high speeds you will have a hard time dodging enemy
torpedoes.
If you're not in combat, fly around with your shields down. This
enables you to repair a little damage, and you use less fuel that way. But
beware, you are very vulnerable if you are surprised.
Strategy and the grand Scheme of things:
There's more to Netrek than just ships flying around and blowing
each other away. The actual goal of the game is to conquer the galaxy. As
a shorter term goal, a team must conquer the planets of the other team.
This genocides the team, and all its players are forced to quit or change
to a new team.
How to Conquer Planets:
You conquer planets by first bombing the armies on enemy planets
down to less than four. Then you need to get some kills -- you can only
carry armies if you have killed with your current ship -- and beam up some
armies from one of their own planets with the 'z' key (you can only beam up
armies if the planet has more than four armies, so you have to keep your
enemies from bombing your planets!). Once you have armies, orbit the
enemy's planet and beam them down with the 'x' key. Each of your armies
destroys one of the enemy's armies, so you will need more armies to capture
a planet than the planet currently has. Usually, as a rule of thumb, it
takes 5 armies to capture a planet, unless of course, it has fewer armies
than that on it.
Some planets are more important to capture, too. Fuel planets are
good planets to capture, because capturing them prevents the enemy from
refuelling on them. Similarily, repair planets (look for the little wrench
symbol on the planet) repair ships orbiting them much faster than normal.
Agricultural or "agri" planets -- press 'i' on the planet or bring up the
planet window with 'P' -- are valuable becuase they generate armies
quickly.
Standard Netrek games usually follow a pattern:
The game starts: The teams have all their planets and usually about
30 armies per planet. So, the object in this stage is to bomb out as many
of the enemies' armies as possible, while preventing them from bombing out
your own.
The planet capturing stage: Most of the armies are bombed away, so
the players concentrate on capturing the enemy planets. It's kind of
pointless to try to capture enemy planets while they still have a lot of
armies, so this is why players don't try to capture planets until this
stage. If the enemy has lots of armies, it is very easy for them to simply
recapture their planets.
The Desperate wait for armies: The players have used up most of
their armies trying to take planets, so they are waiting for more to grow
on their own planets so they can take the enemies'. What few they do get
often end up dying, as the ship that was carrying them is hunted down by
hordes of enemy ships.
The Last Planet Defense: One of the teams has lost several of its
planets. It only has a few of the ones near its homeworld. They don't
have many armies to recapture their worlds because they don't have many
worlds to grow them. But their worlds are well defended because they come
back real close to them when they die. This stage can last for hours if
the winning team isn't aggressive or well-enough organized to take those
last few worlds.
Genocide: One team loses its last planet, and the cycle starts
over, but with a few changes. The team that just won has twice as many
planets. But the new team has all its planets with a lot of armies on
them. The first few minutes are a struggle to see if the new team can
capture a lot of planets before all their armies are gone.
This help file courtesy of mehlhaff@ocf.Berkeley.EDU (Eric Mehlhaff)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
3.5 How Not To Be Obviously A Twink
A "twink" (see section 6.2) is someone who is a netrek loser.
Netrek, because it is a multi-player game, has an etiquette. Specifically,
stupidity and laziness are not tolerated. Below are some comments on how
not to get labled a as a twink, which is not only embarassing, but
dangerous as players may kill you whenever they need an easy kill (so that
they can carry armies and hence take planets.)
A twink:
- does not read messages. Netrek is a team game. Be part of the
team.
- shoots at his own team. Know what team you are on. You chose it,
after all. Know what color that team is. Do not fire upon ships of that
color. Simple.
- picks up armies, flies in without escort, and gets killed while
carrying. Don't die with armies on board if you can avoid it. Everyone gets
killed while carrying, but getting stupidly killed while carrying is
unforgivable, if your team is low on armies, which is often the case.
- does not listen to his teammates. Help your team! People more
experienced then you will try to direct actions and strategy. If you have a
better idea, say so, but don't just ignore the requests of your teammates.
- calls for help continuously, whenever there's someone chasing
him. Learn how to defend yourself. If you can't, don't, for example, fly
deep into enemy territory by yourself. Actually, this is fine, but don't
then expect your friends to come to the rescue as soon as someone starts
grinding you down. For one thing, ships do not move all that fast and so by
the time they arrive you will probably be dead. For another thing, there
are better things to do than waste time saving someone who will just get a
new ship a few seconds later anyway, unless you are of some special value
to the team, e.g. carrying armies, have many kills, etc. This does not
mean, don't call for help when defending a planet or taking, for example.
But if you are about to get killed and you're not doing anything special,
sorry.
- does things or takes resources better done or used by others.
Examples of this are bombing a planet when there is a friendly assault
ship right there that could do it, or taking armies before a more skilled
or better equipped (e.g. you're in a scout and he's not) player who wants
them can beam them up. (The first is becuase assault ships are more likely
to bomb planets to a lower value than any other ship type, making planets
easier to take.)
- explodes near his teammates and kills them. Explosions do
considerable damage. This fact can be used to your advantage, for example
when ogging (killing with a suicide attack) someone. But don't explode over
or near friendly ships. For example, if your are protecting someone, as in
escorting for planet takes, stay a little bit away from them so that
if/when you get toasted, you don't kill them too.
- pesters others for help instead of reading the manual or figuring
it out online. This last point is extremely important! Read this document
thouroughly, and investigate the FAQ, various Mosiac sites, and the Netrek
archives (see section 6.1) thouroughly before pestering other playes for
help with simple things. Note that this does not mean don't ask questions:
on the contrary, many players are more than happy to explain things to
beginners. But a) not in the middle of a battle, b) not always are an
unlimited amount and c) not things that are easily found out by reading the
help (press 'h') or the manual. In otherwords, people who are too lazy to
find out for themselves, if at all possible, will not be regarded highly.
Other players will offer suggestions and answer specific questions. Things
like "how do you play this game?" or asking "how do I raise my shields"
eight times in the middle of a game (when you can always press 'h' and find
out) are not appreciated by most players.
4. Finer Points And Strategy
4.1 Dogfighting
Dogfighting is not the point of the game or even a primary
objective.
It is a means to an end as is neccessary for two reasons: a) you
must have kills to carry armies and take planets, and b) you often need to
stop enemy ships from doing things, such as taking your planets or bombing
your space, or killing your team's carrier (or you!) when you are trying to
take a planet. Killing them is one good way, although there are others.
The following is from the Netrek archives. Due credit to those who
wrote it, please.
---------
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Here is the manual I mentioned. I posted it 'cause many people
said I should.
I only use a CA, so if you play another ship take any advice with a
grain of salt (actually, take it all with a grain of salt.).
There are, as I see it, 3 major things about successfully
dogfighting. The most important, by far, is intensive use of tractors. The
second is to change speed constantly. The third is to det incoming torps.
Remapping the keyboard in the .xtrekrc file is important. The y
key for pressor (?), etc. is impossible to properly utilize. For those
interested, here's mine: dTeyadllrrqe D I think some of that was redundant,
but it works, so I don't care! :)
I. Tractoring/pressoring II. Changing speeds III. Detting IV.
Shields V. Torps VI. Phasers VII. Cloaking VIII. Plasma IX.
Knowledge is half the battle :) X. Interesting Tidbits
I. Tractoring/pressoring
A. Tractors are most useful for holding an opponent in place so
that your torps can catch up to him. By tractoring an
opponent, one a) slows the opponent's turning speed down for a
short time and b) pulls him in the direction of your torps.
THIS IS MOST IMPORTANT. I can not tell you how many people
have come rushing onto the screen that I have tractored, using
their speed, and pulled them right onto a string of torps.
B. Tractors are also useful for pulling wounded enemies (and
full-strength scouts) into your phaser range so that you can
finish them off. However, see III. Detting for more on that.
C. My favorite method of killing any enemy is to pull up next to
him, speed up to warp 8 or 9, and on the pass launch a volley
of torps and at the same time tractor him. Fire the torps
almost perpindicular to your ship, because at warp 8, they will
move outward AND forward, hence slamming into the opponents
ship. I will also det his torps if they look like they might
hurt me. Sometimes, if the torps might not hit him, I pressor
him, and sometimes, just sometimes, his rapid turning pushes
him BACK into the string of torps.
D. In the opposing situation, if an enemy tries this on me, I turn
in his direction and pressor off of him at the same time, which
(most of the time) propels me out of his incoming swath of
torps. Pressors are most useful for maneuvering into and out
of positions for battle. I don't use them extensively in battle
but perhaps to keep a phaser-thirsty ship out of range so that
I can torp him, or, in cases where there is a good BB playing,
pressors are a key to survival.
II. Changing speeds
A. It is important to change speeds constantly. Many opponents
tend to dodge torps I send at them. However, when involved in
a dogfight, and torps are flying in a perfect line at your
ship, slam your hand down around the 7-8-9 area, and watch as
your CA accelerates past the torps (I dogfight at 4). A while
back, I fought with West 11 or 12 times on an abandoned server.
Against that kind of skill, I change speeds maybe, once very 3
or 4 seconds, just to throw him off as to where I am going.
That match ended in a tie or close to it. Those 'lil matches
took over a minute usually. Learn to be patient. The next
entry, B, illustrates that.
B. The other day, I angered an opposing BB so much that he roared
onto the screen firing a plasma and a blob of torps. I calmly
turned perpendicular to his plasma and accelerated. That got
me out of the torps' way and out of the possible turning radius
of the plasma. The BB then turned tail and slowly moved away
from me, firing torps all the way. By moving back and forth
and calmly accelerating out of his torps I followed him all the
way up to a fuel planet, never raising my shields or firing a
shot. He started orbiting the fuel planet, and I sped up to 8
or 9 and roared by him, firing a volley of torps, tractoring
him off the planet, detting, and phasering. Needless to say,
he died and I lost my shields. But I was patient.
C. Also, remember to pressor oggers that appear behind you, as this
will keep them from blowing up on you (I tend to tractor them,
fire torps at them, and then pressor them, thus ensuring their
death and preserving most of mine). However, you must be going
away from the ogger at at least warp 7 for this to work,
because pressors only really neutralize the ogger's tractor.
D. When you are attempting to catch up to a target, and he is
fleeing at similar speed, you can do 2 things: 1) If there are
enemies in the area who could help him, you must get him
quickly, so det torps sent in your direction. 2) If you and he
are alone, if he fires a line at you, slam the 1-5 warp area
and turn a little to the side. This usually lets you dodge
most of them, but he gets those few extra seconds to flee a
little more. However, if he has no help in the area, you might
still have a chance of catching him.
III. Detting.
Here is the Netrek concept that will get me in trouble with other good
dogfighters. Most never det in battle. I, however, live on detting. I
will cover detting on the "accepted scale" from A to C.
A. Det when tractoring scouts in and phaser them to death. Scouts
fire dinky 25 pt torps that do 6 pts of damage when det them.
If you can tractor them and you are moving at sufficient speed,
you can crunch a scout in a CA. As long as you det. This goes
for any wounded ship, too. If a CA is wounded and is sitting
stopped, rush at an angle, fire torps and tractor him in.
However, you MUST remember to det torps. If you don't 10 to 1
you will mutual with him.
B. Det torps for wounded ships, planet takers, and SB's. If you
want to be a good escort, stay AHEAD of the planet taker and
det any torps headed for the planet. However, REMEMBER to fire
at incoming oggers, and if you must, mutual with any too close
to the planet.
C. Det enemy torps to wound other enemies. This I use only in
special situations. When a cloaker (planet taker) flies over
enemy torps, det them. You will take damage, but so will he.
Any planet taker that slows down 'cause of wounds is usually
dead in any clueful game. Planet taking counts on the taker to
make it to the planet as fast as possible before oggers
overwhelm the escorts.
D. OK, I also det a lot in combat. When I am dodging, I will
often det to open a "hole" in a stream of torps, or det the
first few torps in a string so that I can zoom by. Remember,
detting ideally only inflicts 25% of the damage on your ship,
so detting 4 or 5 torps really is nothing in a CA. I also tend
to det whenever I make a pass at an enemy. Granted, at one
inch away those torps might not hit me, but I don't take the
chance. 50-130 pts norm on a dogfight, I guess. At one inch,
one pass is usually enough :). Some good players can use my
detting against me, but not always.
E. You know those situations where you and an opponent suddenly
zoom on the screen at the same time and right at each other?
Usually, you will ram each other with a blob of torps.
However, the best way to survive is to slam your hand down on
the speed of 1-4, turn rapidly to one side, fire torps,
pressor, and DET constantly. About 50% of the time this will
allow me to destroy the incoming ship, but I in turn usually
take almost 80-90% damage. However, I survive.
F. If you are in a situation where both you and your opponent are
both wounded and he is taking pot shots at your ship, go into
repair mode. When he fires a torp, and you can't dodge it, det
it. Repair mode will usually repair enough shields for a 10 pt
det. This way you conserve your fuel. Once you get enough
fuel, start moving and unleash a full string of torps at the
enemy.
G. If you are in a situation when you have enough fuel to kill a
crippled ship but he is right on top of you and his explosion
will kill you, pressor him away before phasering him and
killing him (assuming he has no fuel).
IV. Shields
Never keep your shields up all the time. Your hull doesn't
repair and your fuel regenerates slower. Get in the habit of
putting shields up ONLY when you are doing the following:
1. Approaching an enemy planet for bombing or planet taking.
2. Within about 3/4 the phaser distance of a CA or -->BB
<--.
3. If torps are gonna hit ya.
4. If a cloaker is coming to ogg you and he is within phaser
distance on the galactic.
5. If friends fire a lot of torps over you and an enemy is in
the vicinity to det them on you.
6. It's fun to let a SC to get within phaser range: let him
lock you a few times and he (sometimes) get cocky. Once he
turns around to engage you, tractor him in and kill him.
V. Torps
A. Though I covered most of this in tractor, PRACTICE, PRACTICE,
PRACTICE. Some people here at Duke who program 'borgs say my
torps are almost vector anyway. I have been accused many times
of having a 'blessed borg.' It is because I practiced lots
last year (this year I don't play very much anymore). PRACTICE
AIMING THOSE TORPS. Learn to lead your opponent.
B. Don't det your own torps when you are first learning. This is
the lazy man's way of getting another shot. When you are first
learning, and you die cause your first shot missed, you will
soon learn to start aiming better. If, however, you keep
detting your torps, you will waste all your fuel in no time and
gain little experience from the situation.
VI. Phasers
A. I use phasers when I make a pass at an enemy. Usually it is
the difference that kills him. It is difficult to remember to
tractor, torp 8 times, shields up, det, phaser, and move...but
the extra 40 pt phaser sometimes is all you can get on the guy.
B. I don't suggest attempting to whittle down an enemy with
phasers. The only person I've ever known to do this
effectively against me was Val, and he's gone...
VII. Cloaking
A. Don't cloak (remember, this is a dogfighter's manual).
B. Cloaking is only for dodging 'outgoing oggers' (those coming to
ogg you before you reach your target) or to pass over some
interference dogfighters who are between you and your target.
C. Cloaking is for mainly planet takers and oggers. That is NOT
my forte.
VIII. Plasma
A. Never use plasma.
B. However, plasma is useful when there is a solitary planet taker
orbiting a planet and you are racing to it. A plasma and a
blob of 8 torps will usually do the trick.
C. SMACK!
IX. "Knowledge is half the battle." :)
A. KNOW YOUR ENEMY. Know what kinds of ships the bitmaps are.
Learn what kind of shields and hull and torps and phasers each
ship has. Learn to add up quickly in your head, "Well, 3 torps
and a decent phaser. 120 for the torps, 40 for the phaser.
That CA is hurtin' and won't be able to flee from me for a
bit..."
B. Keep track of your shields and your fuel. Make sure you have
enough fuel to get out of there, 'cause you might get 2 kills,
but an ogger will rip you to shreads when ya have an empty
tank.
C. Learn to cripple an enemy. When you are rushing to say ogg a
SB hanging around the enemy home planet or especially to take
the home planet, NEVER kill oggers coming to engage the blob of
escorts and planet takers you are moving with. If you do so,
you a) waste your own fuel and shields and momentum, and b)
enable the enemy to reappear right next to your target with
full everything. Bad move. Either cloak before you get to
outgoing oggers, or hit them with 4 torps to cripple them <--
This is possible. X. Interesting Tidbits
A. I don't really ogg...I usually uncloak about an inch from the
player and depend on my aim to kill the guy...ogging would
better be explained by MUCUS, _ensign, Val, and FreeKill.
B. Escorting
1. Fly in FRONT of the carrier.
2. Det torps that might hit him on the planet.
3. Oggers usually race onto the screen at full speed... Use
it to your advantage: tractor and jam 8 torps up his
nose... He can't dodge due to his high speed.
4. NEVER fire torps over your home planet when an enemy can
det them on your carrier.
C. Flying Interference
1. If you are staying at an important front line planet, and
you are flying "interference" in guarding it... keep your
eyes open for takers and their escorts massing below and
call for help.
2. If ya get caught defending a planet against a mass of
enemy ships, as I often do, good luck. The best thing to
do is 1) cloak and maneuver over the taker and det his
escorts torps. 2) Distress a lot and move back and forth
over the planet, firing a few torps to make enemy ships
turn from their course. In this case, you MUST survive
long enough for help to arrive. Most likely, on a clued
game, you would be ogged by the escorts, but sometimes
they hestitate too long and friendlies arrive.
That's it!
Insights, criticism, etc. please either post to r.g.n or mail
John Kirk Hammond jhammond@raphael.acpub.duke.edu
Thanks!
------------------------------
From: mccoy@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Jim McCoy) Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
Subject: Re: Favorite fighting tactics Date: 19 Jul 1993 15:53:01 -0500
A lot of the "dogfight" tactics depend a great deal on what ship
you are using, so it is harder to generalize in the same way you can with
higher level strategic discussions. Most of what I consider "dogfighting
tactics" are really only a list of general ideas and philosophies that
depends a great deal on who I am fighting and what is happening at the
time.
The biggest secret to dogfighting well is learning to use your
tractors and pressors. This is not really a secret, as everyone who is a
good dogfighter will tell you about it, but until it becomes so natural
that you don't think of T/P as any different from phasers and torps you
will not be able to fight with the best out there. Speed and fuel
management is second I think, and accuracy with phaser and torps runs
behind these, IMHO.
A couple of minor tactics that might be useful (these generally
assume a CA v. CA engagement):
-Tempt the enemy with down shields at the upper limit of their
phaser range and pressor them every now and then. When they take the bait
and hit you with phasers you turn into them, tractor and accelerate, raise
shields and follow up with a phaser of your own. With practice you should
be able to get all of these actions done within the span of the enemy's
initial phaser recycle; a pressor and a turn after you get your phaser lock
can then shear you away from them to limit damage from a folow-up phaser.
- Tractor charge: This tactic relys upon a constant tractor as a
hook, holding them enemy in place and allowing you to more easily hit them
with torps. This assumes your opponent does not know how to pressor. By
selectivly using a pressor the tractor'd enemy can gain maneuverability and
get around your torps. This gambles a lot of fuel on the question of
whether or not the person you are fighting with knows what pressors are.
For most pick-up games this should work well but it is a big risk to take
in a high clue game.
-Jab the enemy with your pressors to goad them into upping their
speed so that they can close the distance separating the two ships. When
they turn towards you switch to tractor and pull them in and unload a
stream of torps and a phaser. This is similar to a tractor charge except
you get to retain more control over the engagement due to your low speed
(and higher maneuverability) by using pressors prior to contact to get the
enemy to increase their speed.
-Use pressors to evade torp streams. This sounds simple, but it
seems few people do it. You just turn in a direction perpendicular to the
torp stream and pressor off the firer, you can usually get out of the
torp-wobble arc from the stream just using pressors and a little bit of
warp. This is particularly useful if you are damaged but the enemy is not
willing to close to knife-fighting range and risk a mutual; you can dance
around their torps even at low-warp.
-Torps do not have to hit the enemy to be effective. You can set
up a stream of torps to deny a direction of movement to the enemy and force
them in a particular direction. Most people will instinctively turn away
from the stream instead of detting through it to break off the engagement.
This is also a useful tactic if you are double-teaming someone (to direct
them towards your partner) or are being double-teamed (to split up the
enemy so that you can engage them one at a time.
-Get good positioning. Try to decide where to fight before you
start. Being able to fall back to a fuel or repair planet is an advantage
you should try to set up if you can. Be prepared to give ground, but
expect them to take damage and lose fuel for the ground they gain from you.
Make them need to get through you, this is not as easy as it may sound; if
they want to avoid you it is best to force them to take a wide turn. This
is particularly important in the "space-control" style of dogfighting that
is popular in recent INL play.
-Speed kills. This is simple enough, but it seems a lot of people
have this mistaken impression that they can maxwarp into a dogfight and
survive (or even maxwarp _through_ a dogfight...) If you are going at your
max speed by the time the enemy is on your tactical you will be at a
disadvantage because you _must_ slow down soon while the enemy can either
accellerate or decellerate and use their increased options to gain an
advantage over you.
raisin
4.2 Essential Operations
As I have noted before, netrek is a team game. There are some basic
team manuevres that you should know.
Taking a planet: a single carrier (of armies) can get killed quite
easily, especially if the opposing team considers that he must be killed at
all costs to save a planet. So unless the planet in question is totally
open, takers need escort to protect them from enemy ships while they beam
down armies, which is a slow process. You will therefore sometimes see
requests for escort (in the team message window.) If you are in the
vicinity and free, help that player make it to their chosen destination. To
do this, it is best to slightly arrive ahead of the carrier, and clear out
enemy ships. The idea is to protect the taker, hence if you kill and damage
the ships in the vicinity it makes it easier for the taker to take. Often,
however you will not be able to kill all the ships nearby. In this case,
when your carrier arrives, you must protect him from enemy fire. The taker
is very vulnerable while dropping armies as his shields will be down.
Position yourself between the taker and the enemy if at all possible, and
distract the enemy ships by engaging them. You can also detonate enemy
torps that would hit your carrier, by pressin the 'd' key (the torpedoes in
question must be quite close to your for this to work). The point of the
exercise: keep the carrier alive long enough to take the planet, at all
costs, including your ship! (Obviously don't escort if you are carrying
yourself, if you can help it. Beam down your armies to a safe location
first.)
Ogging: This is the art of killing a carrier, or potential carrier,
by suicide run. Ogging is a simple tactic and any dummy can do it. On the
other hand, ogging well is an art, involving exactly when to uncloak, how
fast to go, etc. A good ogger should be able to kill his target every time
(obviously this does not apply if the target is an SB), simply becuase he
has the advantage in that his explosion is a weapon.
Ogging a starbase: Enemy starbases can be very inconvenient.
Killing one requires a coordinated effort. Typically wave after wave of
ships gang up on the starbasse and do suicide runs into it, firing
everything they have and then hopefully exploding right over it. The trick
here is to cloak so the SB doesn't just phaser you before you get close
enough. (Cloak before the SB comes onto your tactical display, and hence
you onto his, otherwise he will know where you are anyway.) Then, flying at
maxwarp into the SB, uncloak just before you reach him and fire a full
stream of torps and your phasers into him. You will die very soon, but if
you sime it right the explosion will hurt him. Use a battleship or an
assault as these have strong hulls and so can get closer before dying.
Ogging an SB works best when several people do it at once. The SB can only
fire so fast and phaser in one direction, so when mutiple people attack
simultaneously, it is much easier to get a clean shot.
There are several variations on this. Sometimes it is helpful to
fly slower so that you can dodge the torps being fired at you to get close
enough. Also, it is sometimes useful to circle just out of phaser range and
send streams of carefully aimed torps at the SB. This only really works
well if there are not many enemy ships in the area, for two reasons: one,
they will kill you, and two, a starbase, while it cannot dodge very well as
its max speed it warp 2, can use its powerful tractor and pressor beams on
nearby friendly (or unfriendly!) ships to move itself out of the way of
torpedos. Speaking of which, if the SB tractors you -- you will know
becuase you will suddenly not be able to move or dodge very well -- just
fly right into him, tractoring him too! He is holding you still so he can
kill you, you're dead anyway. So fly right into him, closing the distance
as fast as possible so that when you explode you damage him. It is a bonus
if there are enemy ships docked on him. In this case, try specifically to
kill them. An explosing ship does much more damage than a few torps. If
there are several ships you may be able to set up a chain reaction where
one explodes and causes another to explode, etc. Major damage time! (Hint:
never dock on your team's SB in battle!)
Defending a planet: Sometimes you will notice several ships, some
of them cloaked, heading towards a planet of yours. If you have time, check
the player list. If players with kills are coming in, they can be carrying
armies and so may be trying to take a planet. Be especially wary of
cloakers, the classic planet taking tactic. At this point you need to
destroy the enemy ship(s) at all costs. Go especially for cloakers and
anyone trying to orbit the planet. Call for help! Kill the carrier!
Exlpoding on him works, but remember that a ship dropping armies is very
vulnerable. His shields are down and he is following a precise little
circle. A cloaked orbiting ship is easy to hit, so kill it! Also, if he is
foolish enough not to cloak -- or out of fuel! -- tractor him out of orbit
so he cannot drop.
Sometimes it is useful to just orbit a planet to protect it. This
not only acts as a deterrent, but while you are oribiting you will have so
little else to do that you can watch for incoming takers and warn your time
in time. When takers approach (watch the galactic!) stop orbiting the
planet, and start flying. You cannot dodge while orbiting and so you will
be easy to kill if you do not start moving. Plus you have some acceleration
time, and you need to be fully up to speed by the time you engage.
If you are the only one in the area in and you must defend a
planet, your job it to delay the enemy long enough until help arrives (you
did call for help when you saw that enemy formation approaching on the
galactic map, didn't you?) Failing this, you basically have to ogg the
carrier, if you can figure out which ship it is. It will obviously be
someone with kills. Also, some people will be known carriers. You can tell
when someone beams up armies, if the armies icon suddenly dissipears from
the planet they are orbiting (from one of their planets, obviously; if it
dissapears from one of your planets you just got bombed!) Often you will
see messages of the form "6++ @ CAP" or just "6++". This means that player
number six just picked up armies at Capella. If you see someone pickup,
don't hesitate to tell your team with a similar message. (Hint: use macros
for this! See section 5.2.) Lock onto the enemy carrier, maxwarp, cloak,
get inside the enemy formation, uncloak just before reaching him, tractor
him (this helps hold him and pull him into your torpedoes) and fire
everything you have, exploding in a burst of glory right over him, and
killing him. If there is just a single unescorted taker going for a planet
you can ogg him as described above, but you might try coming in uncloaked.
Sometimes this will scare him enough to make him turn around, as he doesn't
want to get killed while carrying. This doesn't work on anyone who can kill
you easily, obviously.
Startgame bombing: when you first enter T-mode (tournament mode)
there will be many armies on all planets. At this point you must bomb them
away. The best ship for this is an assault as it bombs the fastest. It can
also cloak cheaply and regenerates fuel quickly. Fly to an enemy planet,
putting up your shields just before arriving, cloak if there's anyone near,
and hit 'b' to start bombing. Watch you warning window. When it says
"bombing is innefective" and the armies symbol dissapears from the planet,
turn your shields on, lock onto the next planet with armies, and maxwarp to
it. You can stay cloaked almost indefinately doing this, especially if the
planets being bombed are fuel planets -- yes they belong to the enemy but
they still refuel you, even as they damage you. At the same time, when you
are in your home space, kill enemy bombers to protect your own armies.
4.3 Taking Planets
This is the next logical step after mastering the game controls and
learning to at least survive a dogfight. Below is a very brief introduction
to the actual mechanics of taking a planet, with most of the stratgey
ignored.
You must first have kills to take a planet. So kill a ship or two.
Look at the armies gauge on the dashboard. You will want enough kills so
that you can carry enough armies to take a planet. Then lock onto a
friendly planet with armies and head over there. When you arrive and go
into orbit, press 'z' to beam up armies. If there are not enough armies on
that planet to fill your ship to the number you need, keep stopping at
planets and beaming up until you are full. One useful tactic here is to
cloak just before you beam up, and for some time after. This way the enemy
cannot tell who is beaming up armies, and so you avoid getting ogged.
When taking yourself, always ask for escort unless the planet is
totally open. This can work too -- sometimes a single ship can take a
planet by itself. The trick is to not attract the enemy's attention. By the
time you start dropping, it will be too late for the enemy to arrive in
time to stop you. But usually you will want an escort. So ask for one (by
sending a message to your team, stating where you wish to go and how many
armies you are carrying). When it arrives, proceed towards to planet. Make
sure you have enough fuel -- stop at a fuel planet if you don't -- and are
not already damaged. When you get into enemy territory, cloak. Do not cloak
too soon or you will run out of fuel as your cloaking device uses a lot of
the stuff. Not only does this make you harder to hit, but if you are not
cloaked, any enemy ship can simply tractor you off the planet, which means
you will stop dropping. If masses of enemy ships start to converge around
your target as you approach, this may be a a good time to turn around and
try again later, or try somewhere else.
When you reach the enemy planet and start orbiting, hit 'x' to
start beaming down. At this point you have to wait and hope you don't get
killed before you are done. Detting enemy torps that are going to hit you
can be useful to reduce the damage they will do. You can also raise you
shields just before impact and resume dropping immediately after. If you
are successful the planet will first go neutral (gray) and then your team
color. If a planet is left neutral then it becomes a race to get an army on
it; the first team to do so will own the planet.
Planets "grow" armies. When a planet gets armies it is said to
"pop". Originally, there was a timer in the server that increased the army
count on all planets by one every 40 seconds. Not only did this create a
huge spike of net traffic every 40 seconds, but experienced players learned
to time this cycle and thus knew exactly when a planet would pop, which is
a great advantage in taking or bombing. The current version of the server
randomizes the order of the planets, updates one planet each second, then
repeats the cycle. Since there are 40 planets in standard Netrek, the net
growth rate is the same, but popping is now somewhat unpredicatble. You
should never have to wait more than 80 seconds (worse case), but a planet
can theoretically pop twice in a row (after which it would be at least 40
seconds before it popped again.)
Agricultural planets grow armies much faster. In particular, if an
Agri planet is below four arimes (or you bomb it to below four) it will
always go above four armies on the next update. For this reason, never bomb
or drop on an agri planet (after the initial startgame bombing) below four
armies unless it's about to be taken or you can stay in the area for quite
a while. Otherwise, you not only have given the enemy team new armies to
use within the next 40 seconds or so, but you have made the planet harder
to take. For example, if the planet had 4 armies, and you dropped two, it
now has two, but on the next pop it is guaranteed to have more than 4.
Why don't planets just get 100,000 armies as they sit idle between
games? There is a random "plague" in the server that kills armies. This is
rigged such that a planet with less than ten armies will almost never get
plauged, wheras as you go upwards of 20 or so it gets increasingly likely
very quickly. You will probably never see a planet with more than 40 armies
on a regular server.
4.4 Complete Command Reference
The following is the complete list of commands you can use while in
play.. Note that all commands are case sensitive, and a ^ denotes a control
key, e.g. ^a means control+a, which is different from ^A, which is
control+A (control+shift+a, in other words.)
Combat Functions:
c Toggle cloak. { Turn cloak on } Turn cloak off
d Detonate enemy torps. All enemy torps within a certain range will
explode. They do as little as a quarter of their normal damage at maximum
det range. Detting is useful for protecting another ship, causing damage to
other ships (if you can manage to det enemy torpedos fired by one enemy
over another) or preventing torps from hitting you. Use it carefully,
though: if there are many torps nearby and only one or two will actually
hit you, it is better to let them hit than det, as one direct hit will do
less damge than say, 5 detted torps, each at minimally 1/4 normal damage,
probably more.
D Detonate your torps. If you can do this near an enemy it will cause
damage. It will also enable you to fire again if you have 8 torps active
(the maximum.) This is not a very good idea however as you will be wasting
gobs of fuel firing and then detting useless torps.
f Fire plasma torpedo. You need at least 2 kills, and must be flying
a BB/DD/CA to do this. Plasma torpedos are tracking, but they can be shot
down fairly easily by phaser. They do a lot of damage but use a lot of
fuel. Note also that when they are shot down they explode and ships that
are too close can take damage.
p Fire phaser. The mouse cursor specifies direction.
s Toggle shields [ Shields down ] Shields up
t Fire photon torpedo. The mouse cursor specifies direction.
u Toggle shields
T Toggle tractor beam. The mouse indicates the target. This pulls the
target towards you but uses a lot of fuel and raises your engine temp.
Since tractors are very useful and hitting shift-T is inconvenient, many
players map lowercase t to this function (see the section on keymaps.)
_ (underscore) Turn tractor beam on. Mouse indicates target.
$ Turn tractor or pressor beam off.
y Toggle pressor beam. Same as tractor (see 'T') but pushes.
^ Turn pressor beam on. Mouse indicates target.
Movement And Navigation Functions:
0-9 Set speed to 0..9 ) Set speed to 10 ! Set speed to 11
@ Set speed to 12 # Set speed to half of your maxwarp
% Set speed to as fast as you can go! > Increase speed by one
< Decrease speed by one
k Set course. The mouse cursor specifies direction.
l Lock onto object. The mouse cursor specifies what; it can be either
a ship or a planet. A small triangle indicates the lock, and you will fly
towards that object. If it is a planet or SB you will orbit / dock when you
arrive. ; Like l but only locks onto planets and starbases (things
you can orbit or dock at)
* Send in practice robot, if there's no one else playing. On many
servers, this is also the key for starbase transwarp. This is Really Cool.
Lock onto your SB, go no faster than warp 2, hit transwarp, and you will go
warp 99 until you reach the SB (at which point you will dock), run out of
fuel, or die. This is handy for reaching the front lines fast.
Planet Functions:
b Bomb planet. You must be orbiting an enemy planet and in T-mode to
do this. You only need to press it once and you will continue bombing
untill the planet reaches 4 or less armies.
C Try to coup a planet. This is a way to (sometimes) get back your
home planet. You must have kills and be orbiting it.
o Enter orbit or dock. You must be going no faster than warp 2 and be
on top of a planet or starbase.
x Beam armies down to planet (yours or enemy) or a starbase. You must
be orbiting or docked to the planet or stabase in question.
z Beam armies up from friendly planet or starbase. Again, you must
orbit or dock.
Message Functions
E Send generic distress call.
F Send armies carried report
m Start sending message. After hitting this key type the destination
(0..9 and a..j = specific player, F/R/K/O = specific team, T = your team, A
= all) and then the body of the message. Hit enter to send or escape to
abort.
X: Enter macro mode. After pressing the macro key, you can send the
macros you have assigned to those keys. See the section on macros. You also
have available all the standard distress calls. Both the distress format
and key can be changed (see: RCD). See the sections on Macros and RCD for
specifics, including what the default macros are.
^0..^9 ^@ ^# etc... The distress calls are all mapped to similar
control keys. For example, instead of pressing <macro>0 to send an
armies carried report, you can use ^0. See the section on RCDs for
available distress calls / reports.
Misc. Functions
C Throw a coup. If your home planet is neutral, you can try to get it
back by orbiting it and throwing a coup. Not many servers seem to actually
support this anymore, but you can try it.
e Toggle docking permission (when playing a starbase). This allows or
disallows other players to dock on you and repair, refuel, beam up/down
armies, etc. If you turn off docking while players are docked, they will be
ejected, hence the assigned key.
i or I Get information on object near mouse. Uppercase shows different
info than lowercase.You can use this to, for example, find out how many
armies are on a planet, where a player is logged in from, how many kills
they have, or whether a planet is agricultural.
M Toggle message logging. Saves all messages to a file so you can
laugh at them later.
N Toggle short/long planet names display on tactical window.
r Refiit. Use this to change your ship type. You must be orbiting
your home planet (Earth for Fed, Romulus for Rom, Klingus for Kli, Orion
for Ori) or your team's SB. After pressing r, press the key corresponding
to the ship type you want (s=scout, d=destroyer, c=cruiser, b=battleship,
a=assault, o=starbase/outpost)
R Enter repair mode. This sets you at warp 0, and turns off shields
and cloaking. Damage is repaired faster than normal in this state, but you
cannot fire. To exit repair mode, hit R again or raise shields. The
absolute fastest way to repair yourself is to do this while orbiting a
repair planet. When you are in repair mode a little R will appear in your
flags and you will not be able to fire or cloak.
w Change war declarations. This is important. Your weapons will not
lock or explode on ships belonging to races which you are not at war with,
and you will take damage if you orbit planets of hostile races. So, declare
war with your enemy and peace with everyone else (so you can use their fuel
and repair planets.) Note that if you change your war settings while an
enemy is on the screen you will be unable to do anything for about ten
seconds while "the computers get reprogrammed." The moral of this is:
declare war before you go into battle. Note that you start out hostile to
everyone, so if you forget before your first engagement it's not too
critical.
q Quit, don't re-read MOTD. Q Quit, exiting to MOTD screen. If
you hit either of these in red alert, a self destruct timer will start.
This is so you can blow up over your enemy. While the countdown is in
progress, any input cancels it.
= Request full update (see the section on UDP and Short Packets)
- Request partial update (see the section on UDP and Short Packets)
~ Write out current settings to an xtrekrc file
& or : Re-read "nifty" settings from xtrekrc file
Window And Display Functions:
B Cycle through galactic map planet display options. Possible options
are show nothing, show owner, or show resources (the most useful, as on a
color display you can tell owner by color.)
h Toggle help window. Display a brief summary of these commands, as
well as what key each command is currenly assigned to.
^k:
Toggles the keymap window. Shows your xtrekrc-specified keymap,
ckeymap, and buttonmap.
L Toggle player window. This lets you see the names of the players,
their stats, and, most importantly for defending planets, their kills.
| Toggle between sort by number / sort by name Toggle netween new and
old playerlist format
O Toggle options window. There are many neat things here, most of
which are configurable via the xtrekrc file. Experiment! This is a really
useful command.
P Bring up the Planet window. Lists all planets, owner, who has info
on them, number of armies, and facilities at each.
S Toggle stats window. This is a larger version of your dashboard,
sort of. Kind of big and annoying and I don't like it but you might.
^s: Toggle macro window. Indicates which macroing packages (NBT,
NEWMACRO, SMARTMACRO, RCD) are active.
U Toggle rank window. Shows you what ratings you need for promotion.
V Cycle through tactical planet display options. Possible options are
show nothing, show owner, or show resources (the most useful, as on a color
display you can tell owner by color.)
^x: Toggle xtrekrc window. Displays a woefully incomplete listing
of xtrekrc options and their current settings.
, Toggle ping stats (network statistics) window
+ Toggle UDP control window.
? Cycle through show nothing / show one big message window / show
three message windows.
<space> Turn off all special windows (planet, rank, help, udp, etc.)
5. Configuration
Upon startup, Netrek looks for a configuration file called
"xtrekrc" (or, equivalently, "netrekrc", in first the current directory,
then the user's home directory (under Windows NT, or as set by the
HOMEDRIVE and HOMEPATH environment variables), and then in the same
directory as netrek.exe. You can also set the filename with the XTREKRC
envirinment variable. Many, many things can be set in the xtrekrc file, and
its proper use is essential to good Netrek play.
5.1 Keymaps
The default key assignments were created more out of ease of
memorization than speed of access in combat. For example, enabling the
tractor beam is awkward, requiring the use of the shift key. Also, people
will always have their particular preferences. For this reason, almost all
netrek players use a keymap to change the key assignments. Its use it quite
simple. Simply add a line of the form "keymap:
<key><function><key><function><key><function>...."
to your xtrekrc file. Each pair of characters assigns the key specified by
<key> to peerform the function originally assigned to the key
specified by <function>. For example, to map toggle tractor (T) to
't', and set max warp (%) to 's', you would use
keymap: tTs%
The space bar can be remapped, but it cannot be the first key to be
remapped in a sequence (obviously). I often map it to det:
keymap: tTs% d
The following is a list of all (I hope) options that can be set in
the xtrekrc file. The values immediately following the option names are the
default value of the option if not set.
Features: These are options the you will most likely play with a
lot, most of them settable in the options window, which you will want to
set to suit your tastes.
askForUpdate: off Get full update from server when you enter the
game. This is a good idea when using short packets and UDP.
buttonmap: 1t2p3k Maps mouse buttons to key functions. Format:
<button><key>... like keymap. Available buttons:
1 = left 2 = middle 3 = right
4 = Shift+Left 5 = Shift+Middle 6 = Shift+Right
7 = Control+Left 8 = Control+Middle 9 = Control+Right
a = Shft+Ctrl+Left b = Shft+Ctrl+Middle c = Shft+Ctrl+Right
[ Windows client included netrekrc adds 4p = shift+Left for phaser.
]
cloakChars: ?? The characters to use to show cloaked ships on the
galactic map. Another popular choice is "()".
clock: 2 Stat clock: 0 -- no clock, 1 -- h:m, 2 -- h:m:s.
color.name: New! You can now set colors in SWINE/Win32 as in the X
Windows version. Replace "name" by the color you wish to set, one of:
"white", "black", "red", "green", "yellow", "cyan", "light grey". To
specify the color to remap to, either use the syntax "#RRGGBB", where RR,
GG, and BB are two digit hexadecimal numbers specifyin the red, green, and
blue components of the new color, or use a symbolic name, from this
somewhat excessive list, which is actually the X-Windows rgb.txt file:
"snow", "GhostWhite", "WhiteSmoke", "gainsboro", "FloralWhite", "OldLace",
"linen", "AntiqueWhite", "PapayaWhip", "BlanchedAlmond", "bisque",
"PeachPuff", "NavajoWhite", "moccasin", "cornsilk", "ivory",
"LemonChiffon", "seashell", "honeydew", "MintCream", "azure", "AliceBlue",
"lavender", "LavenderBlush", "MistyRose", "white", "black",
"DarkSlateGray", "DarkSlateGrey", "DimGray", "DimGrey", "SlateGray",
"SlateGrey", "LightSlateGray", "LightSlateGrey", "gray", "grey",
"LightGrey", "LightGray", "MidnightBlue", "navy", "NavyBlue",
"CornflowerBlue", "DarkSlateBlue", "SlateBlue", "MediumSlateBlue",
"LightSlateBlue", "MediumBlue", "RoyalBlue", "blue", "DodgerBlue",
"DeepSkyBlue", "SkyBlue", "LightSkyBlue", "SteelBlue", "LightSteelBlue",
"LightBlue", "PowderBlue", "PaleTurquoise", "DarkTurquoise",
"MediumTurquoise", "turquoise", "cyan", "LightCyan", "CadetBlue",
"MediumAquamarine", "aquamarine", "DarkGreen", "DarkOliveGreen",
"DarkSeaGreen", "SeaGreen", "MediumSeaGreen", "LightSeaGreen", "PaleGreen",
"SpringGreen", "LawnGreen", "green", "chartreuse", "MediumSpringGreen",
"GreenYellow", "LimeGreen", "YellowGreen", "ForestGreen", "OliveDrab",
"DarkKhaki", "khaki", "PaleGoldenrod", "LightGoldenrodYellow",
"LightYellow", "yellow", "gold", "LightGoldenrod", "goldenrod",
"DarkGoldenrod", "RosyBrown", "IndianRed", "SaddleBrown", "sienna", "peru",
"burlywood", "beige", "wheat", "SandyBrown", "tan", "chocolate",
"firebrick", "brown", "DarkSalmon", "salmon", "LightSalmon", "orange",
"DarkOrange", "coral", "LightCoral", "tomato", "OrangeRed", "red",
"HotPink", "DeepPink", "pink", "LightPink", "PaleVioletRed", "maroon",
"MediumVioletRed", "VioletRed", "magenta", "violet", "plum", "orchid",
"MediumOrchid", "DarkOrchid", "DarkViolet", "BlueViolet", "purple",
"MediumPurple", "thistle", "snow1", "snow2", "snow3", "snow4", "seashell1",
"seashell2", "seashell3", "seashell4", "AntiqueWhite1", "AntiqueWhite2",
"AntiqueWhite3", "AntiqueWhite4", "bisque1", "bisque2", "bisque3",
"bisque4", "PeachPuff1", "PeachPuff2", "PeachPuff3", "PeachPuff4",
"NavajoWhite1", "NavajoWhite2", "NavajoWhite3", "NavajoWhite4",
"LemonChiffon1", "LemonChiffon2", "LemonChiffon3", "LemonChiffon4",
"cornsilk1", "cornsilk2", "cornsilk3", "cornsilk4", "ivory1", "ivory2",
"ivory3", "ivory4", "honeydew1", "honeydew2", "honeydew3", "honeydew4",
"LavenderBlush1", "LavenderBlush2", "LavenderBlush3", "LavenderBlush4",
"MistyRose1", "MistyRose2", "MistyRose3", "MistyRose4", "azure1", "azure2",
"azure3", "azure4", "SlateBlue1", "SlateBlue2", "SlateBlue3", "SlateBlue4",
"RoyalBlue1", "RoyalBlue2", "RoyalBlue3", "RoyalBlue4", "blue1", "blue2",
"blue3", "blue4", "DodgerBlue1", "DodgerBlue2", "DodgerBlue3",
"DodgerBlue4", "SteelBlue1", "SteelBlue2", "SteelBlue3", "SteelBlue4",
"DeepSkyBlue1", "DeepSkyBlue2", "DeepSkyBlue3", "DeepSkyBlue4", "SkyBlue1",
"SkyBlue2", "SkyBlue3", "SkyBlue4", "LightSkyBlue1", "LightSkyBlue2",
"LightSkyBlue3", "LightSkyBlue4", "SlateGray1", "SlateGray2", "SlateGray3",
"SlateGray4", "LightSteelBlue1", "LightSteelBlue2", "LightSteelBlue3",
"LightSteelBlue4", "LightBlue1", "LightBlue2", "LightBlue3", "LightBlue4",
"LightCyan1", "LightCyan2", "LightCyan3", "LightCyan4", "PaleTurquoise2",
"PaleTurquoise3", "PaleTurquoise4", "CadetBlue1", "CadetBlue2",
"CadetBlue3", "CadetBlue4", "turquoise1", "turquoise2", "turquoise3",
"turquoise4", "cyan1", "cyan2", "cyan3", "cyan4", "DarkSlateGray1",
"DarkSlateGray2", "DarkSlateGray3", "DarkSlateGray4", "aquamarine1",
"aquamarine2", "aquamarine3", "aquamarine4", "DarkSeaGreen1",
"DarkSeaGreen2", "DarkSeaGreen3", "DarkSeaGreen4", "SeaGreen1",
"SeaGreen2", "SeaGreen3", "SeaGreen4", "PaleGreen1", "PaleGreen2",
"PaleGreen3", "PaleGreen4", "SpringGreen1", "SpringGreen2", "SpringGreen3",
"SpringGreen4", "green1", "green2", "green3", "green4", "chartreuse1",
"chartreuse2", "chartreuse3", "chartreuse4", "OliveDrab1", "OliveDrab2",
"OliveDrab3", "OliveDrab4", "DarkOliveGreen1", "DarkOliveGreen2",
"DarkOliveGreen3", "DarkOliveGreen4", "khaki1", "khaki2", "khaki3",
"khaki4", "LightGoldenrod1", "LightGoldenrod2", "LightGoldenrod3",
"LightGoldenrod4", "LightYellow1", "LightYellow2", "LightYellow3",
"LightYellow4", "yellow1", "yellow2", "yellow3", "yellow4", "gold1",
"gold2", "gold3", "gold4", "goldenrod1", "goldenrod2", "goldenrod3",
"goldenrod4", "DarkGoldenrod1", "DarkGoldenrod2", "DarkGoldenrod3",
"DarkGoldenrod4", "RosyBrown1", "RosyBrown2", "RosyBrown3", "RosyBrown4",
"IndianRed1", "IndianRed2", "IndianRed3", "IndianRed4", "sienna1",
"sienna2", "sienna3", "sienna4", "burlywood1", "burlywood2", "burlywood3",
"burlywood4", "wheat1", "wheat2", "wheat3", "wheat4", "tan1", "tan2",
"tan3", "tan4", "chocolate1", "chocolate2", "chocolate3", "chocolate4",
"firebrick1", "firebrick2", "firebrick3", "firebrick4", "brown1", "brown2",
"brown3", "brown4", "salmon1", "salmon2", "salmon3", "salmon4",
"LightSalmon1", "LightSalmon2", "LightSalmon3", "LightSalmon4", "orange1",
"orange2", "orange3", "orange4", "DarkOrange1", "DarkOrange2",
"DarkOrange3", "DarkOrange4", "coral1", "coral2", "coral3", "coral4",
"tomato1", "tomato2", "tomato3", "tomato4", "OrangeRed1", "OrangeRed2",
"OrangeRed3", "OrangeRed4", "red1", "red2", "red3", "red4", "DeepPink1",
"DeepPink2", "DeepPink3", "DeepPink4", "HotPink1", "HotPink2", "HotPink3",
"HotPink4", "pink1", "pink2", "pink3", "pink4", "LightPink1", "LightPink2",
"LightPink3", "LightPink4", "PaleVioletRed1", "PaleVioletRed2",
"PaleVioletRed3", "PaleVioletRed4", "maroon1", "maroon2", "maroon3",
"maroon4", "VioletRed1", "VioletRed2", "VioletRed3", "VioletRed4",
"magenta1", "magenta2", "magenta3", "magenta4", "orchid1", "orchid2",
"orchid3", "orchid4", "plum1", "plum2", "plum3", "plum4", "MediumOrchid1",
"MediumOrchid2", "MediumOrchid3", "MediumOrchid4", "DarkOrchid1",
"DarkOrchid2", "DarkOrchid3", "DarkOrchid4", "purple1", "purple2",
"purple3", "purple4", "MediumPurple1", "MediumPurple2", "MediumPurple3",
"MediumPurple4", "thistle1", "thistle2", "thistle3", "thistle4"
You can also use "grey0" to "grey100", not to mention "gray0" to
"gray100". All names are case insensitive.
colorfulPhasers: off Cycle through the different colors when you
get a phaser lock on someone. Looks cool, try turning it on.
continueTractor: on If off, only shows tractors for a short time.
continuousMouse: off If on, if you drag the mouse while holding a
button down, it will have the same effect as clicking rapidly while you
move the mouse.
dashboard: off Use a dashboard (LAB) style for the stats line. Try
this.
defLite: Use default BeepLite RCD highlighting (?)
enemyPhaser: 1 Width of enemy phaser lines. Mostly useful on mono
displays so you can distinguish your phasers from enemey phasers.
newdashboard: off Use alternate (Cup half full vs. Cup half
empty) dashboard. Needs dashboard on.
newnewdashboard: off Use new new dashboard.
extraAlertBorder: on Also uses inside border to show alert status.
fillTriangle: off If locks are shown, whether or not to fill the
triangle.
galacticFrequent: on Update galactic map frequently. This is good
for plocking cloakers.
keymap: aabbcc Maps new keys to old keys.
Format: <new key><old key><new key><old key>...
keepInfo: 15 How many updates (frames) to keep the info windows
(activated by i and I ) on the screen.
keepPeace: on Keep peace with races after death. Useful so you
don't have to reset your war declarations window every time you start a new
ship.
logMessage: off Log messages to a file.
macroKey: X Name of key to use for macro escape (TAB,ESC, or
<key>). I like using TAB becuase it's easy to hit, better than the
default 'X' which requires two keystrokes.
motionThresh: 16 How many pixels to move (x+y) before each
simulated button-press when using continuousMouse mode.
newPlanetBitmaps: off Use MOO style planet bitmaps.
newPlayerList: off Reduced stats format for the player list. Can
also be toggled with the '' key.
phaserMsgI: off Display phaser-hit points in the individual window.
(See also phaserWindow.)
phaserWindow: off Show phaser-hit messages in seperate window.
See also review_phaser for default mapping and geometry (message widths 13,
32, 80 supported).
planetCycleTime: ?? Number of updates to flash a planet when
BeepLite is on, I presume
refreshInterval: ?? ??
reportKills: on Show kill messages.
ROMVLVS: off Use "ROMVLVS" bitmaps for Rom team. Kinda cool.
singleMacro: FE List of macros that can be invoked with a single
keypress (i.e. don't have to press the macro key first to enter macro
mode.)
shiftedMouse: on Use shift and control for extra mouse buttons
(e.g. buttons 4-c)
shortKillMesg: off Shrink and line up all kill messages.
showFuelOnLocal: Make border color indicate fuel status.
showGalactic: 1 Map window planet bitmaps
display: 0 -- show owner, 1 -- show resoures, 2 -- show nothing.
showLocal: 1 Local window planet bitmaps display: 0 -- show owner,
1 -- show resoures, 2 -- show nothing.
showLock: 3 Options for lock triangle display. 0 -- dont show lock,
1 -- show on galactic, 2 -- show on local, 3 -- show on both.
showMapPlanetNames: on Show planet names on map (galactic) window
showMySpeed: off Display your current speed next to player number
on tactical display.
showPlanetNames: on Show planet names on local (tactical) window
showPlayerStatus: off Player list: also show players who are not
alive.
showShields: on Show ship shields. Why would anyone want to turn
this off?
showStats: on Show stats window . You can accomplish the same
thing with "stats.mapped: <on/off>" but it's here anyway.
showTractorPressor: on Show your own tractor/pressor on the screen.
sortPlayers: off Use sorted player list.
useMsgw: off Display the last message in the warning message
window.
useTNGBitmaps: Use The Next Generation bitmaps for the Federation
ships.
updatesPerSecond: 5 How many frames/sec the server should send. Max
is 10.
varyShields: off Change shields bitmap to reflect your damage
level.
warnHull: Warn hull state based on damage .
warp: off Warp the mouse to the message window during message send.
Once upon a time this was useful as you had to move the mouse to the
message window to send messages.
waitMotd: on Show the motd while on the wait queue.
whichNewPlanetBitmaps: 0 The actually sets the same option
internally as newPlanetBitmaps. 1 and 2 are, presumably, the Rabbit Ear
bitmaps and the ZZ Minimal bitmaps.
zeroArgUsage: on If no arguments, print usage instead of connecting
to default server.
Login Options:
defaultShip: CA Default ship to use on button-click entry
(SC,DD,CA,BB,AS,SB).
name: <your_name_here> Your default character name.
login: <your login name> Sets the login name, i.e. *real*
login name, the client will send to the server. This is valid only on
Windows 3.1. On Windows NT we just ask the OS for the login.
password: <whatever> Your default password. If both name and
password are supplied, COW-lite will attempt to log you in automatically.
Server Options: These can be used to set up server aliases and
server-specific options
port: 2592 Default port to use.
port.<x.y.z>: 2592 Default port to use with server x.y.z.
NOTE: if x.y.z is aliased (server.alias: x.y.z), use the alias instead.
newMesgFlags: on Server-dependent. Should be on for all new
servers.
server: calvin.usc.edu Name of the default server to use if the -h
flag isn't given.
server.alias: < x.y.z> Aliases. Replace x.y.z with full
server name, and specify <alias>. From then on you can specify that
server by doing 'netrek -h <alias>' instead of the full name
useRSA.x.y.z: on Use RSA on server x.y.z? NOTE: if x.y.z is aliased
(server.alias: x.y.z), use the alias instead.
Window placments: These are of the form
<window>.geometry: <width>x<height>+<xpos+<ypos>
Or you can specifiy just the position:
<window>.geometrey: +<xpos>+<ypos>
or just the size:
<window>.geometry: <width>x<height>
Possible windows are:
netrek - main window local - Main
fighting window map - Galactic map
warn - warning window message - message window
review - all messages window review_all -
messages to all window review_team - messages to team window
review_your - messages to individual window
review_kill - kills messages window review_phaser -
phaser hits window planet - planet list window
player - playerlist window war - war
declarations window fed - Fed selection window
ori - Orion selection window rom -
Romulan selection window kli - Klingon selection window
quit - The quit countdown clock
option - options menu window rank -
rank window stats - statistics window
tstat - dasboard window help - help
window UDP - UDP options window
lagMeter - lag meter window pingStats - ping
statistics window buttonkeymap - the key map window
xtrekrc_help - the xtrekrc help window (duh)
macro - active macros window
You can specify whether windows are initially mapped (displayed),
like this:
<window>.mapped: <on/off>.
You can also specify parenting of windows. If one window is a child
of another, when that window's parent is hidden or displayed, the child
window will also be hidden or displayed. Also, a window that is not
parented will have a caption on it.
For examples of all of these, see the default netrekrc.
Technical Options:
dontPing: off Don't attempt to start ping packets from the server.
forceDisplay: [ Windows client only. ] Force display type. 0 =
monochrome or 16 color, 1 = 256 color, 2 = 16/24 bit color.
forceMono: Force monochrome display. (Actually, color is still used
internally, but the colors are chosen so that they map correctly to
black/white.)
netStatFreq: 5 Lag stats update: 1 -- least often, 10 -- most
often.
netstats: off Keep lag statistics. Bringing up the lagmeter ('l')
will toggle this anyway, but it's there.
tryUdp: on Try to use UDP upon entering the game.
tryShort: off Try using short packets upon entering the game.
[Windows client: the default netrekrc file included turns this on as it
really helps over SLIP. ]
udpClientRecv: 1 How UDP packets should be received. Possibilites
are: 0 -- use TCP (no UDP), 1 -- use simple UDP, 2 -- use fat UDP. Try
setting this to 2 if you are getting a lot of server to client packet loss.
udpClientSend: 1 How UDP packets should be sent. Possibilites are:
0 -- use TCP (no UDP), 1 -- use simple UDP, 2 -- use enforced UDP (state
only), 3 -- use enforced UDP (state & weapon). The "enforced" modes
will repeat the UDP packets if the client doesn't get a response from the
server, on the assumption that the packet got lost. Try using 2 or 3 if you
are getting a lot of client to server packet loss.
udpDebug: 0 Level of UDP code debugging. You may enjoy seeing debug
trace messages.
udpSequenceChk: on Throw out udp packets that arrive out of order.
This is a good idea.
updatesPerSecond: 5 Number of updates (frames) per second (most
servers limit to 5).
useRSA: on Use RSA binary verification. If you turn this off you
will not be able yo play on many servers.
useTRports: ?? ??
5.2 Macros And RCD
Typing takes time. Time is critical in dogfighting or teamwork.
Most of the messages sent in Netrek are standard warnings, distress calls,
requests, notifications, etc. Also retyping that insulting message
everytime you doosh someone is a drag. Hence, you can put macros in your
xtrekrc, and allow a single keystroke to send a message. The format is:
mac.<key>.<dest>: <text>
<key> is the character you wish to assign to that macro,
<dest> is a standard message destination (0-9a-j for player, F/R/K/O
for teams, T for your team, A for all), and <text> is what you want
to send. So, for example, if you put:
mac.b.T: Bomb enemy core, please!
in your xtrekrc file, you could then press X (or whatever key you
assigned to macro mode with the macroKey option -- I like TAB) and then b,
and the above message would be sent to your team.
You can also send multiline macros, for example:
mac.i.A: \\ You have just been DOOSHED! mac.i.A: (o o)
Didn't that feel good? mac.i.A: ( . ) mac.i.A: V/
In this case the macro invoked by X,i will send the above to all.
WARNING: multiline macros can be a waste of bandwidth and very annoying!
Use them rarely, if at all. Some servers do not support them at all, e.g.
you can send them but the server will not repeat it to the players.
If there is some macro you want to activate without hitting the
macro mode key first, you can add it to the singleMacro option. For
example, to make the above two macros single key macros (which might be a
bad idea as you would then have now way to use the info window normally
activated by 'i'):
singleMacro: bi
But, there's more!
----------
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NEWMACRO documentation - Jeff Nelson 6/4/1993
Here is the idea: A player should be able to include in his/her
macros whatever reasonable information is available. And configuring its
display in whatever way is desired. In order to do this, the following
syntax is used (while remaining completely compatible with old NBT macros).
A key is assigned in the defaults file (ie .xtrekrc, etc) by a line
like:
mac.F.T Help! Carrying %a!!
This defines a macro which will send a distress containing the
number of armies a player is carrying to his team.
Note, this is NOT printf syntax! Any attempt to use formatting
will fail miserably. Maybe in the future someone will want to develop a
means of formatting the variables used in macros, but the only means I can
think of are both bulky and ugly.
Here is another example:
mac.f Help! Carrying %a!!
Unlike the first, this macro will not send directly to the team,
instead it requires that you give a third keystroke specifying the
recipient. For example, it could be invoked by:
XfT <- to your team Xf1 <- to
player 1 XfG <- if you are desperate, send to God
XfA <- if you are stupid, send to ALL
Old macros will still work in addition to these, thus be sure there
are no conflicts. These generally cause suprising results. For example,
if this is in your macro file:
mac.E.T Help! I'm carrying!! macro.E.A You
all suck! mac.E Help! I'm a twink!! mac.E.T
Help! I'm carrying again!! macro.E.A You all suck even
worse NOW!
The suprising results would be that pressing XE would broadcast the
first two messages, and then wait for the destination of the third. It
would be impossible to ever use the last two. Unfortunately, multiline
macros also do not work if they require a destination. There is no good
reason for this, but since multiline macros annoy the hell out of me, I
ain't fixing it. You can still do something like:
mac.D.A: D mac.D.A: O mac.D.A:
O mac.D.A: S mac.D.A: H
This would properly broadcase 5 messages containing 1 character to
all. If you tried to specify the destination for these by using "mac.D:",
only 'D' would be sent.
Also '?' can still not be used as a macro key. The following
definitions will work in a macro (where 'target x' = whatever x the mouse
cursor is closest to when the macro is sent):
Standard:
%a armies carried by sender %d sender damage
percentage %s sender shield percentage %f sender
fuel percentage %w sender wtemp percentage
%e sender etemp percentage %t team id character
of target planet %T team id character of sender team
%c sender id character %n armies on target planet
%E 1 if etemped, 0 if not %W 1 if wtemped, 0 if
not %S sender two character ship type %p id
character of target player %g id char of target friendly
player %h id char of target enemy player %P id
character of player nearest sender %G id char of friendly
player nearest sender %H id char of enemy player nearest
sender %l three character name of target planet
%i sender full player name (16 character max)
%u full name of target player (16 character max)
%z 3 letter team id of target planet %b planet
nearest sender %o three letter team name of sender
%k number of kills sender has %K number of kills
target player has %* if this is encountered, the macro IS NOT
PRINTED %(SPACE) this is replaced by a space, mainly useful
for starting a message
FULLY CAPITALIZED:
%L three character name of target planet
%I sender full player name (16 character max)
%U full name of target player (16 character max)
%Z 3 letter team id of target planet %B sender
nearest planet %O three letter team name of sender
Ping stats: (may differ slightly from server '!' ping stats)
%v average ping stat round trip time %V ping stat
round trip standard deviation %y percent total packet loss as
calculated by server formula
Miscellanous:
%m the last message you sent %M the last message
you sent in all caps
As a further extension to NEWMACRO, a macro may now be sent to any
of the following destinations:
%i %I %c send message to self %u %U %p send
message to player nearest mouse %t %z %Z send message to
team of player nearest mouse %g send message to
nearest friendly player to my ship %h send message to
nearest enemy player to my ship
with a syntax like
#useful for INL... mac.C.%i: CAPTAIN
mac.N.%i: NEWGALAXY mac.S.%i: START
mac.T.%i: %Z
mac.W.%t: SHUT UP, TWINKS!! mac.I.%u: %u: det
when you escort! mac.O.%u: (%i) ogging
What this does is allows you to send a macro to a player or team
specified by your mouse location instead of requiring a 3rd character to be
input. Also, it allows you to send message to yourself without having to
actual sit there and figure out who you are (they tried and failed back in
the '60s).
Further, tests may be done within the macro system, the syntax for
these test is as follows.
%? introduces a test = equivalence
> greater < less
Expressions are evaluated on a character by character basis until
the test is resolved. The text of the test is then replaced in the macro
by 1 or 0.
Test are then fed to a syntax I call conditional text. The best
way to demonstrate how this works is example.
"1%{included if true%!included if false%}"
This would print:
"included if true"
whereas
"0%{included if true%!included if false%}"
would print:
"included if false"
Combining the whole package, a very robust macroing system is
quickly generated. One can easily design or mimic Distress calls,
including the variable NBT distress of the BRM client and all the hardcoded
message macroing built into my own client but never released.
Here are a few more samples to work from:
mac.F.T: Help! Carrying %a!! mac.f: Help!
Carrying %a!! mac.c.T: %p++ near %l
mac.b.T: %?%n>4%{bomb %l at %n%!bomb%} mac.d.T:
%E%{%!%W%{%!I'm fine. How are you? %}%}%E%{ETEMPED!!!
%}%W%{WTEMPED!!! %}Carrying %?%a>0%{%a armies!%!NO armies.%}
mac.a.T: %E%{ETEMPED!!! %}%W%{WTEMPED!!! %}Carrying
%?%a>0%{%a armies!%!NO armies.%} mac.R.A: I'm a
%?%S=SB%{star base!%!twink!%} mac.K.A: KissMy%S
mac.t: thanks mac.y: yes
mac.n: no mac.B: bye, getting
hungry/sleep/horny mac.e.T: need escort going to
%l%?%a>0%{, carrying %a armies!%} mac.v.%t %T%c PING
stats: Average: %v ms, Stdv: %V ms, Loss: %y%%
My Favorite:
mac.m: %m
----------
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
There is an even more interesting thing that you can do with
macros. It's called Receiver Configurable Distress (RCD). The basic idea is
that everyone likes certain standard types of messages, such as ditress,
pickup, carrying, etc, to appear in a certain way. Unfortunately this is
usually not the way everyone else sends them. To make matters worse,
everyone sends their messages in a different way and this hopelessly
clutters the message window. Fortunately, there is help! You can configure
the way certain standard messages and distress calls appear to you. This is
an important point: you do not configure the way the messages are sent with
RCD. Instead, you are configuring how they appear to you
----------
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: How RCD works (myths disspelled) Date: 6 Oct 1993 01:47:56 GMT
Hello all,
Since there seems to be some confusion on RCD and what it is for
then here is some info on it that may help..
About a month ago Grey Elf and some others suggested that the
distress calls should be able to be configured according to each player's
preference. The reason behind the request is that with the popularity of
macros it was becoming increasingly hard to parse throught the endless
types of distresses/messages out there.
Basically, a player (a) would send a distress out and player (b)
would get it. Player (b) would be able to put it into any format they
wanted according to what he/she had in their .xtrekrc. RCD is for this
purpose.
How it works:
Right now there are 25 distresses out there in the new BRM2.99pl3.
I've included the list at the bottom. RCDs use the same exact format as the
MACROS do. In fact, they use the same code.
There are three basic senarios depending on the clients and server
setups.
1) Player (a) has RCD but the server doesn't support it. In this
case the client will format the distress according to what the client has
depending on either internal defaults or or .xtrekrc distress call
setttings if any. It will then send out the distress in plain text for the
other players.
2) Player (a) has RCD, server has RCD, but player (b) doesn't. In
this case player (a) sends out the the distress type and info to the
server. The server realizes it's a RCD message and checks the clients
playing on it. If the client has RCD it passes the type and info along. If
the player (b)'s client doesn't support RCD, then the server formats the
distress according to what the server has internally.
3) Everyone has RCD (player (a), server, player (b). In this case
the player (a)'s client send the type and info to the server. The server
realizes it's a RCD. The server relays the message to player (b)'s client.
The RCD is formatted according to what player (b)'s client's representation
or .xtrekrc settings.
In cases 2 & 3 the info being sent is always the same from RCD
distress type to RCD distress type. The info can't be used by any other
players besides the ones on the same team. Therefore, you can format the
string anyway you want. If you don't like how the information was sent
then you can simply change it to what you're used to.
Hope this helps....
Nick -- J. Mark Noworolski jmn@eecs.berkeley.edu
*************************************************************** Receiver
Configurable Distress Calls:
***************************************************************
Receiver configurable distress calls have been added to the client
and use a MACRO-like syntax.
In order to change which key you would like a message to map to,
all you have to do is use either keymap like you have always done, or
ckeymap, a new feature introduced to accomodate the massive number of new
functions (ie message sending) that were included in this client. Please
see the ckeymap section of this document for more information on that.
In order to change *how a message appears to you* a line such as
the following should be in your defaults file:
dist.taking: (%i) Carrying %a to %l%?%n>-1%{ @ %n%}
dist.help: Help! I've fallen! I can't get up! %a
This has the format
dist.[name of distress]: [macro]
Arguments for the macro and SMARTMACRO syntax are exactly the same
as before. Any argument can be used, but usually only those in the groups
"Standard" and "FULLY CAPITALIZED" apply.
You MAY NOT affect how a message appears to anyone else, this is
against the basic concepts of RCD.
5.3 Default Macros And Distresses
Below is a table giving the name of each distress, the key it is
assigned to, and the default macro (at the time of this writing). In the
table below, the first character indicates which control character each of
these messages is assigned to. There are two exceptions, the generic
distress call and army report are still mapped to E and F; they do not use
control keys. You can also of course always hit the macro key and then the
non-control version of the key indicated.
All these examples assume: you are player F0 (%T%c), alias "Twinky"
(%i), flying a CA (%S), carrying 3 (%a) armies, with the mouse closest to
Cassiopia (%l or %L), which has 5 (%n) armies. The nearest friendly player
to the mouse is player Fc (%T%g) and the nearest player of any team to the
mouse cursor is player 06 (%p). You yourself are near Beta Crucis.
Key Distress Name
t taking %T%c->%O (%S) Carrying %a to
%l%?%n>-1%{ @ %n%} Taking a planet. Example:
"F0->FED (CA) Carrying 3 to Cas @ 5"
o ogg %T%c->%O Help Ogg %p at %l
Tell your team to ogg a carrier. Example:
"FO->FED Help Ogg 6 at Cas"
b bomb %T%c->%O %?%n>4%{bomb %l @
%n%!bomb%} Tell your team to bomb a planet. Example:
"F0->FED bomb Cas @ 5"
c space_control %T%c->%O Help Control at %L
Request space control at specified location. Example:
"F0->FED Help Control at CAS"
1 save_planet %T%c->%O Help at %l! %?%a>0%{
(have %a arm%?%a=1 %{y%!ies%}) %} %s%%
shld, %d%% dam, %f%% fuel Need help NOW to take or protect
a planet. Example: "F0->FED Help at Cas! have 3
armies 60% shld, 13% dam, 63% fuel"
2 base_ogg, %T%c->%O Sync with --]> %g
<[-- OGG ogg OGG base!! That greatest of manuevres, the
Ogg, as applied to an enemy SB. Example: "F0-
>FED Sync with --] c [--- OGG ogg OGG base!!"
3 help1 %T%c->%O Help me! %d%% dam, %s%% shd,
%f%% fuel %a armies. General distress. Same for help2.
Example: "F0->FED Help me! 13% dam, 60%shd, 63%
fuel 3 armies"
4 help2 %T%c->%O Help me! %d%% dam, %s%% shd, %f%%
fuel %a armies. Defaults to same as above.
e escorting %T%c->%O ESCORTING %g (%d%%D %s%%S
%f%%F) Tells your team who you are escorting. Example:
"F0->FED ESCORTING c (13%D 60%S 62%F)"
p ogging %T%c->%O Ogging %h
Tells your team who you are ogging. Example:
"F0->FED Ogging 6"
m bombing %T%c->%O Bombing %l @ %n
Tells your team that you are bombing. Many players turn
this message off (by inserting a %* anywhere in the
message string) as they can figure out for themselves where someone is
going to bomb by their course. Example: "F0->FED
Bombing Cas @ 5"
l controlling %T%c->%O Controlling at %l
Tells your team that you are space controlling somewhere.
This is the art of dominating a region of space.
Example: "F0->FED Controlling at Cas"
5 asw %T%c->%O Anti-bombing %p near %b.
Tells your team that you are doing Anti Scout (bomber)
Warfare. Example: "F0->FED Anti-bombing 6 near
Bet"
6 asbomb %T%c->%O DON'T BOMB %l. Let me bomb it
(%S) Respectfully requests that you be allowed to bomb
something. This is typically i used if you are flying an AS
as they have a much better chance of bombing a planet to a lower number,
makingit easier to take. Example: "F0->FED DON'T
BOMB Cas. Let me bomb it (CA)"
7 doing1 %T%c->%O (%i)%?%a>0%{ has %a
arm%?%a=1%{y%!ies%}%} at lal. %d%% dam, %s%% shd, %f%% fuel
General information message. Example:
"F0->FED (Twinky) has 3 armies at lal. 13% dam,
60% shd, 62% fuel"
8 doing2 %T%c->%O (%i)%?%a>0%{ has %a
arm%?%a=1%{y%!ies%}%} at lal. %d%% dam, %s%% shd, %f%% fuel
Same as doing1, by default
f free_beer %T%c->%O %p is free beer
Tells your team about a clueless player who is an easy
kill. Example: "F0->FED 6 is free beer"
n no_gas %T%c->%O %p @ %l has no gas
Tells your team about someone who is out of fuel, good or
bad. Example: "F0->FED 6 @ Cas has no gas"
h crippled %T%c->%O %p @ %l crippled
Tells your team that someone is crippled, i.e. badly
damaged. Example: "F0->FED 6 @ Cas crippled"
9 pickup %T%c->%O %p++ @ %l Use
this if you see an enemy pick up armies . Example:
"F0->FED 6++ @ Cas"0
0 pop %T%c->%O %l%?%n>-1%{ @ %n%}!
Tells your team the number of armies on a planet or that it
has popped.Example: "FO->FED Cas @ 5!" F
carrying %T%c->%O %?%S=SB%{Your Starbase is
c%!C%}arrying %? %a>0%{%a%!NO%} arm%?%a=1%{y%!ies%}.
Tells your team the number of armies you are carrying.
Example: "F0->FED Carrying 3 armies."
@ other1 %T%c->%O (%i)%?%a>0%{ has %a
arm%?%a=1%{y%!ies%}%} at lal. (%d%%D, %s%%S, %f%%F)
Another general call.
# other2 %T%c->%O (%i)%?%a>0%{ has %a
arm%?%a=1%{y%!ies%}%} at lal. (%d%%D, %s%%S, %f%%F) Same
as above
E help %T%c->%O Help(%S)! %s%% shd, %d%% dmg, %f%%
fuel,%?%S=S B%{ %w%% wtmp,%!%}%E%{ ETEMP!%}%W%{ WTEMP!%} %a armies!
Let's walk through two simple examples.
1. Map generic distress call (help) to 'h', make it appear as: "I'm
about to die with %a of your team's armies!"
2. Map AS bombing (asbomb) to '^A', don't change the message.
First try to seperate in your mind the two types of configurability
that are going on here.
1) you are changing the key that sends the message 2) you
are changing how the message appears to you
In order to do (1), just use a keymap. Nearly everyone who has
tried to configure their netrek client has generated some form of keymap.
keymap: hE
This performs the key configuration we wanted for the first
example.
In order to change the message,
dist.help: %T%c->%O I'm about to die with %a of your team's armies!
If you configure an RCD, you also must configure the header of that
message. This isn't is difficult as it sounds, just add the header to the
beginning of the RCD. For example, instead of
dist.T.taking: Carrying %a to %l%?%n>-1%{ @ %n%}
use
dist.T.taking: % %T%c@%b Carrying %a to %l%?%n>-1%{ @ %n%}
Two headers that I recommend (the last is the default):
% %T%c@%b % %T%c->%O
If you want to map the asbomb distress onto control-shift-a that is
slightly more difficult. The asbomb distress normally is associated with
control-6. Since control keys are involved, we MUST use the control key
map feature called ckeymap. The following line would perform the operation
we would like.
ckeymap: ^A^6
If you *also* want control-a to be asbomb, then use
ckeymap: ^A^6^a^6
If you have read all the documentation, are sure you are using the
right syntax, and RCD (or MACRO) still is not working, then check out the
following.
1. Did you receive RC_DISTRESS when you logged in?
The server must send this to the client to tell the client that it
understands RCD messages. Otherwise the client will just send the standard
formatted RCDs.
Some clients have a mod which shows you whether RC_DISTRESS is on
by looking at the first line of the macro window. If it says, "Packages
active: NBT, NEWMACRO, SMARTMACRO", you have no guarantee that RCD was
turned on by the server. If it says, "Packages active: NBT, NEWMACRO,
SMARTMACRO, RC_DISTRESS" then RCD is definitely on. Don't worry about #1,
go to #2.
2. Are any MACROs assigned to the same key as the RCD you are
configuring?
If this occurs, you will see the macro and NOT the RCD.
3. Are any other RCDs assigned to the same key as the RCD you are
configuring (this includes the DEFAULT RCDS!!) ?
If this occurs, you will see whichever RCD happens to be listed
first when the client examines the RCD list.
6. Technical Things
6.1 UDP, Short Packets, And SLIP
Netrek is played over the Internet (or other TCP/IP network), which
was never really designed for this kind of highly interactive, widespread
gaming. Originally all Netrek games were local (on the same piece of
ethernet), or at worst on the same campus (The game originated at
Berkeley.) When Netrek games started being played over wider geographic
regions, the lag became unbearable for players far from the server. The
packets simply could not be routed fast enough for smooth play.
At that time, Netrek was updated to support UDP (Universal Datagram
Protocol) instead of TCP. This is a network protocol that runs much faster
than TCP and greatly improved playability. The world was a happy place once
again. The only catch is, unlike TCP, UDP packets are not guaranteed to
arrive at their destination uncorrupted, or even at all! This is what makes
UDP fast, but it is also a problem. In practice, it means that packets will
occasionally get "lost" during play. If a server packet is lost you will
have a jerky update, or a ship will appear to be in the wrong position, or
a random umoving torpedo may float on your screen, seemingly ownerless. If
a client packet is lost, your phasers may not fire when you press your
middle mouse button, or your shields may stay down when you order them
raised.
In 1991, the first game of Netrek was sucessfully played over the
modem via SLIP. This was made possible via yet another modification to
Netrek, Short Packets. This was an internal re-write of the communications
protocol in Netrek to use much less bandwidth. In particular, rather than
sending the full positions and status of all ships and torpedos on every
update, the server sends only those things that have changed and only for
those objects which are in range (i.e. on your tactical map.) It also
employs clever packing of information in bit fields and variable length
packets to squeeze the maximum information out of every bit. This reduced
the bandwidth for Netrek to modem usable levels. However, this too had its
problems: with short packets it is possible for the client and server to
get out of sync with each other, as the full game status is not resent
every update. This has results similar to lost UDP packets.
However, all is not lost. If you find that your ship doens't always
respond to your commands, bring up the ping stats with the ',' (comma) key.
(Incidentally, this is also where your lag is displayed: look at the "avg.
rt [round trip] time" line.) Read the line labled "tot out pkt loss". If
this is greater than a few percent, UDP is losing a significant number of
packets.To fix this, bring up the UDP options window with '+' (plus). Click
on the line which says "sending with simple UDP" and cycle through the
various options. Try each one (enforced state, enforced weapons &
state, and the last resort, TCP only) until your packet loss drops to a
satisfactory level. What is actually happening here is that the client is
manually tracking what you ordered, and if the server doesn't do it,
resending the request.
If you have strange garbage (random torps or phasers) on your scren
or you seem to be fring at phantom ships, or your damage won't repair, or
any of many strange effects, try requesting an update manually. Try the '-'
(dash) key first, this requests a "small update." If this doesn't fix the
problem, try the '=' key. This will cause the client to pause noticably
over a modem as the server sends more than 2000 bytes of data, including
all ship positions and status, planet postions, and each player's stats,
but it should completely resync the client and server. One option that I
find useful in the options menu (press uppercase O) is the "request update
on enter" option. When this is on, every time you enter the galaxy in a new
ship, everything is updated. This causes a short pause, but it gets rid of
phantom data from your previous life which sometimes happens. If you find
this useful, put the line "askforUpdate: on" in your netrekrc file.
Incidentally, sometimes the client will fail to connect to the
server with UDP and/or short packets. If this happens, to turn on UDP,
press '+' and click on 'UDP channel is closed" (it takes a few seconds,
watch your warning window, try again if it doens't work.) How do you know
if UDP is off? You will be responding much slower than usual, and if you
have a modem, you will see the client sending data even when you're flying
straight and not firing, etc. These are TCP packet acknowledgements. To
turn on short packets, press ',' to bring up the short packet window, and
click on "Don't receive variable and short packets". Give it few seconds,
watch your warning window, and try again if it fails.
Note: the current version of the very popular Trumpet Winsock says
it supports UDP, but many people have reported problems with this.
I have tested this thing over SLIP and a 14.4kbps modem gets you a
reasonable lag and update rate.Playable, if you've never experience a
direct connection. This is under NT 3.5 Beta 2 (Daytona) SLIP -- 16 bit
SLIP's such as Trumpet are slower, very slow in some cases. Note that you
only need 9600bps of bandwidth to play, but the slower the modem, the
greater the lag. A 14.4kbps modem has a minimum propagation time of about
105 ms each way, so this means a minimum of 210 ms lag will be added to
whatever the lag is over the internet from your local SLIP server. Good lag
times over a 14.4kps modem are in the 300 ms range, which is awkward but
playable (hint: dodge before you're fired upon, and lead with your phasers,
not just torpedos.) On a direct ethernet conneciton, good lag is around 70
ms, but on a good day it is possible to get 40 or even 20ms lag across a
continent. If you have a direct connection and you're consistently seeing
high lag, you may have a slow video driver or computer, which means that
the network is fast enough but the compuer is not. Try reducing the number
of updates per second (again, in the options window.) If this works you can
add "updatesPerSecond: <n>" to your xtrekrc, where <n> is
whatever number worked for you. The default is 5; with a fast computer and
net connection you can get up to 10 or so before it chokes or reaches a
point of diminishing return.
A very common question is whether to have compression turned on or
off for SLIP play. At first I thought that compression should always be off
to reduce lag, as when the modem compresses it tends to wait for a good
chunk of data to arrive before transmitting so it can get a better
compression ratio, and this increases lag. However, during testing I found
that compression can sometimes get you an extra 20-30 ms off of your lag.
Actually, lag seems fluctuate randomly depending on the compressibility of
the packets being transmitted/recieved. The moral of the story: experiment!
On nice thing about compression on, though, it that your MOTD and
Metaserver listings arrive much faster.
6.2 Ghostbusts
Ahh, the infallible Internet -- not! You will at some point lose
your connection to the server while playing. This is called a "ghostbust".
However, the designers of Netrek (those clever people!) designed a
mechanism whereby the server will try to call you client back and reconnect
should this happen. And it even works sometimes!
If, while you are playing, you suddenly get a freeze, try switching
to the netrek console window. If you see a ghostbust message there, just
wait, and hopefully the server will call you back, and you will re-enter
the game. This can take several minutes, but it's better than sitting in a
wait-queue. If you were very lucky, it's possible that no one will have
killed you while you were disconnected.
7.0 Resources
7.1 Where To Find More
Netrek is a very large and evolving game. There is much more to it
than I could possibly put all in one document. I got most of the material
in this document from the netrek archives.
For more, the best place to go is the newsgroup rec.games.netrek.
Reading the FAQ for this group is a good idea.
Also, try the Web page at
http://obsidian.math.arizona.edu:8080/netrek.html. It has links to just
about everything that exists in neterk, including the jch information
archive.
7.2 Netrek Dictionary
Compiled from posts by past players of the game, including:
Kevin Bernatz (Sun Tzu) Terrence Chang
Hunter Chen Andrew Markiel (Grey Elf)
Hugh More (ZZnew guy) Walter Pullen
Thomas Smith Timothy Worsley
Credit is given for each entry. Those with no credit, I wrote. I
have included many terms which are old or almost never heard anymore, for
interest and amusement. There are, for example, about 10 different types of
scum that I had never heard of before (pizza scum and terminal scum are my
favorite.)
ASW: Anti-Scout Warfare.
Barren: No armies (duh, ;)) [ Hunter Chen ]
Bot: Practice robot.
Borg: A netrek client that has some sort of automatic "cheat"
feature, e.g. auto-dodge or phaser, cloaker display, etc. This is cheating.
Borg scum / Client Scum:
People who play borgs during non-borg hours or on non-borg servers.
[ Walter D. Pullen ]
Someone who uses borg clients on non-client nights. At least most
of these are from Berkley. Most popular are plasma clients and phaser
clients. I think it's pretty clear that these people are cheating. [ Hugh
More ]
[Ed: this is now very uncommon due to the RSA verification scheme,
which was designed specifically to prevent this.]
Bowling balls: Plasma torpedos. Named by Ben Peal. [ Timothy
Worsley ]
Bronco server: Bronco-type servers, such as CMU, Berekeley, USC,
and UofW. Differs from Chaos servers in refuel and plasmas. No Galaxiy
class ships. [ Hunter Chen ] [Ed: this is what is now the standard Netrek
server, so named becuase it first appeared on a machine called bronco.]
Clueless: A generally derogatory term referring to a player's
inability to match to expected levels of play either due to lack of
experience or poor ability. [ Hunter Chen ]
Clueless scum: People on your own team who do stupid things that
don't help it any, including but not limited to: giving the enemy kills,
picking up your only armies and then promptly dying, not listening to
messages, etc. [ Walter Pullen ]
Chaos server: Utexas or KSU server with high refuel rates, free
plasmas, and Galaxy classes. Also known as Galaxy server. [ Hunter Chen ]
[Ed: these are pretty rare these days. ]
Cookie: Plasma Torpedo [ Hunter Chen ]
Crack him open: Ogg a ship on the off-chance that it may be
carrying. [ Timothy Worsley ]
Deep Bombing: Bombing deep in enemy teritory. This often involves
cloaking, and is very important at the begining of the game. [ Hugh More ]
Det: to detonate torpedos. [ Timothy Worsley ]
DI: According to the authors, DI is "Destruction Inflicted." It is
simply your (planets+bombing+offense) ratings x (Tmode hours).
When you a receive a promotion "on DI", it means that you could sit
around and do nothing while waiting for the required number of ho