Space Tyrant for Dummies

With Space Tyrant now online, I hope that more people will try it out. But before people get into it, there are a few hints that can help you. First off, there is one thing you need to know over all others. Upgrades / Ship Customization are PERMANENT. When you launch your ship, you may find yourself in an unfamiliar type of galaxy. The main galaxy is an Elliptical galaxy. I can best describe it as a 1-way with direction. If this were a physical object, it would resemble a young child’s attempt to cut a strip of paper. The exit numbers are random in legnth, but always go up or down. With the only way to play in telnet, Ray decided to make it even simpler than the other telnet interfaces. Each exit has a corresponding number, and by typing in that number, you can travel to that sector. Becuase S.T. is in real-time, the autopilot had to be reconfigured. To use the auto-pilot, type 0, then enter your destination. The next thing you need to do is upgrade your ship. Trading posts are located at sector 1, then 2001, 4001 etc.. The trading posts have a large neutral fig cover, so they are great early on for hiding. Uprading is one of the most important parts of the game, as this action is irreversable, and will decide how you play the game. Buy you holds last, for if you have empty spaces that could be filled by devices, they will instead be filled with holds if you are not careful. There are 5 spaces for devices and 95 spaces for holds, if you have more than 135 holds, then the extra holds will be taken from you device space. Hard-core traders will want to buy 5 Tractor Devices. With one and two tractor devices, you can nudge only ports. When you get 3, you can warp planets. With 4 tractor devices, you can nudge ports and planets into nebulas, and with 5 you nudge ports and planets out of nebulas. Combat computers give you a .1 and .2 defensive bonus with 1 and 2 of the uprades respectively. When you hit 3, you get a .3 defensive AND offensive bonus. With 4 and 5 Combat Computers, you get a .4 and a .5 bonus in offensive and defensive. The next feature is truly original. Ship scanners are just what they sound like: they automatically scan for nearby ships. Unfair? Well, they made the decision to get them and you didnt 😛 With only 1 or 2 of these devices, they are useless. If you get 3 of them, they can search the nearest 600 sectors, 300 in each direction for nearby ships. With 4, that number jumps to 1200 sectors, or 600 in each way. The ultimate scout has 5 of these devices, which allows that person to search 1800 sectors for ships, 900 in each direction. Doing this action takes up about 2.5 kg of fuel. To make it fair, Ray made it not fully efficient, so it is MUCH more difficult to find someone with scanners under neutral fig cover or a starbase. Which brings me to hiding. Starbase prices are always changed to confuse us, but this time, they also decided to make a #1 starbase have a defensive power of 25. The starting price for a #1 sb is 9375. (See the starbase chart at the end of this post) To get starbases and fighters, you can’t “make” them, you buy them, which takes away the need for hardware and iron. Grafitti beacons have been eliminated as well. On to making money. Sure the main galaxy is good, but there’s much more to be done than the elliptical. If you explore enough, you find out that there are other galaxies. You can find out what sectors have galaxies in them because they have a ‘~’ next to the sector #. To travel to that galaxy, type the button ‘t’. There is one seperate galaxy every 2000 sectors, with a size of 8000 sectors! The galaxy types are not always corresponding to the ones in TLF. A bar galaxy is the same as a bar in TLF (that appears to be the most common type.) Giant Globular is like a giant cube galaxy. The cubes are 100 sectors. The Dense Clusters are the same as back in TLF, but not as dense. The biggest change is the Open Clusters. These galaxies are the same as 6-ways in the main game. This is by far the best type of galaxy. The reason is the simplicity. Just type in ‘x’ to find the nearest planet, then ‘/’ to travel there, then ‘x’ to scoop the planet, then ‘/’ to go to a random neighboring sector. The last thing is productivity. Always, when in a seperate galaxy than the main one, check the productivity of the galaxy. It ranges from 700%-1000%, compared to the 500% of the elliptical. I was lucky enough to find a 959% Open Cluster. Watch your productivity per kg of fuel, a good amount would be 2000 and a great amount will be around 2400. Fuel is abundant, with 1kg being issued every minute! Other hints: Access the player statistics by pressing ‘p’ you don’t need a stastics module. Locate a planet with ‘l’ or ‘x’ Type in ‘?’ to view the other commands. So take a look around…What’s to loose?

Starbase Costs
(These costs are from scratch, to find the upgrade cost, just use the previous cost)
#1 – 9375
#2 – 18750
#3 – 37500
#4 – 75000
#5 – 150000
#6 – 300000
#7 – 600000
#8 – 1200000
#9 – 2400000
#10 – 4800000
#11 – 9600000
#12 – 19200000
#13 – 38400000
#14 – 76800000
#15 – 153600000
#16 – 307200000
#17 – 614400000 (Ray told me it’s been done before)

I hope to see you playing. My ship’s name is Conquest and has the top spot 😉
~Mirari~