The Commands

0-9

Set ship's speed. The numbers zero through nine set your ship's speed. It takes time for your ship to accelerate or decelerate to the desired speed. Damaged ships can't use higher speeds. When engines freeze, you can't set speed. Setting speed breaks you out of a planet's orbit.

.<digit>

Set fractional warp speed. This will set a fractional warp speed goal for your ship. For instance, if you are traveling warp 7.5, hitting .1 would deaccelerate you to warp 7.1.

k

Set course. The letter k or the right mouse button will set your course towards the current mouse position. Turning towards the desired course can take time, depending on your current speed and damage.

j

Teleport. This command will randomly teleport you to a position within about a range specified in the configuration file from your current position. This should eat heat and fuel like candy (set by config file). This option is only enabled if xtrekd has been compiled with -DTELEPORT_OPTION.

T

Turbo mode This will set your speed to a turbo speed for a given number of game ticks as defined by your configuration file. Heat and fuel gain/loss rates are based on this new speed. This option is only enabled if xtrekd has been compiled with -DTURBO_OPTION.

p

Fire phaser. The letter p or the middle mouse button will fire your phasers towards the current mouse position if you have enough fuel. You may only fire phasers once per second.

t

Launch torpedo. The letter t or the left mouse button will launch a torpedo towards the current mouse position if you have enough fuel and less than thirty torpedoes currently out. This max usually isn't significant since there is also a reload time built into the firing operation.

m

Drop Mine. This command will cause your ship to lay a mine at the current location. This mine will have a lifetime for between 8 and 10 minutes, and will only detonate when an enemy ship approaches, doing damage to any ship in range. If time runs out, the mine will simply explode.

d

Detonate other torpedoes. This command will detonate other enemy torpedoes near you, doing less than maximum damage to you. This costs fuel based on the power of the enemy torpedoes.

e

Detonate your own torpedoes. This will turn your own torpedoes off so that you can fire new ones.

D

Detonate your mines. This will explode all of your own mines; however, this capability can be turned off in the configuration file.

R

Repair damage. Hitting this key will decelerate your ship to a stop and will begin repairs when the ship is stopped. Your shields are down when you are repairing and you cannot fire weapons. In a nutshell, you are a sitting duck. Putting your shields up or moving is the best way to get out of repair mode. If your ship is orbiting a friendly repair planet, damage will repair at a faster rate.

c

Cloak your ship. This command toggles your cloaking device, and allows you to remain invisible on the windows of every player. This would be nice except that you cannot fire weapons while cloaked, or have shields up while the device is in operation. To enforce this, shields will automatically be dropped on entering cloak mode, and (since most times you uncloak you will be in battle) raised on exiting. In addition, there is a small chance (which is based on range), that an enemy ship may see you flicker as their sensors penetrate your device's field.

u

Toggle shields. This key will toggle your shields up and down.

+/-

Put shields up/down. This key will put your shields up or down.

l

Lock onto an object. This will lock your ship onto the object nearest the mouse cursor. If the object is a planet, your course will change and you will be placed into orbit around the planet when you arrive. If the object is a ship, you will start receiving the ships 'vital statistics' as detailed in the Screen Layout section. This lock will also roughly double you phase's hit angle, and again roughly double your chance of getting a sensor penetration of their cloaking device if they activate it while you have the lock.

To break the lock, just set course normally. You cannot lock onto cloaked ships.

f

Follow locked ship. If you are currently locked onto a ship via l, this command will set your ship's autopilot to follow that ship. Your course will automatically be updated. The follow may be broken at any time by simply specifying a new course.

b

Bomb a planet. If an enemy planet has more than ten armies, you can bomb them. With four or less armies, you must beam down armies to defeat them. Your shields will go down to bomb, and you will take damage from the planet. You get kills for the armies destroyed.

z

Beam up armies. If the planet you are orbiting is owned by your team and has more than four armies, you can beam them to your ship to carry to other planets. You must be orbiting to beam up armies. The number of armies you can carry is equal to your kills * 2. You can never carry more than ten armies.

x

Beam down armies. This command will beam the armies that are on your ship down to a planet you are orbiting. If it is an hostile planet, you will kill his armies. If all enemy armies are killed and you land an army, you take the planet for your team. If it is a planet you own, you will simply add to the armies already there. If it is a friendly planet, owned by other teams, you cannot beam armies down.

C

Throw a coup. Sometimes players will discover that all their planets have been taken, or have been left with no armies. In order to allow the team some form of return you can hold a coup on your home planet assuming that the following criterion are met:

• Your team must have armies on no planets.
• You must have more than one kill.
• There must be less than five enemy armies (or zero friendly, should you still own it) on your home planet.
• You must be orbiting your home planet.

After the coup, the planet will have four of your armies on it. As they come back you can take over more of your occupied worlds. When your last planet is taken, you will have to wait from thirty minutes to an hour before you can have a coup.

i

Info on object. This will pop up a window near the mouse cursor which contains information about the nearest object (planet or ship). To remove this window, just type 'i' again.

o

Orbit a planet. If you are near a planet and going warp two or less this will put in orbit around it. You must be in orbit around a planet to bomb it, beam armies up or down to it, repair at it, or get fuel from it. Enemy planets will damage you if you get near them. Setting a speed will break out of orbit.

Q

Quit xtrek. This command will start a self-destruct sequence, and return you to the entering screen, at which time you may click on the quit box to actually terminate the game for your display. The time it takes to self destruct may depend on the config file you are playing under (see Scenario Customization).

?

repeat all of the previous messages. Message sending is detailed below. This command allows you to review the current set of them.

@

Allow/disallow copilots. This toggles a feature allows more than one player to fly a ship (on separate displays).

L

Get player list. This gives you a quick list of other players in a subwindow on the short range screen. To remove this window, just type 'L' again.

P

Get planet list. This gives you a list of planets in a subwindow on the short range screen. You get information only on planets which your team owns or has previously orbited. To remove this window, just type 'P' again.

S

List score information. This gives you a list of interesting statistics on each player and team currently in the game in a subwindow on the galaxy display window. It may be removed by hitting 'S' again.

s

Toggle visual status window. This will turn a visually oriented status window on and off.

U

Toggle showing of shields. This will toggle whether or not shields are shown around ships in the short range view. By default, this is on.

M

Toggle galaxy map updating. This toggles whether or not xtrek is updating the galaxy map each tick.

h

Toggle the help window. Typing h will pop up a help window below the normal window. The help window lists commands you can type. Its useful for small problems like forgetting how to put your shields up, and for authors who forget what command does what. Typing 'h' again will get rid of it.

w

Set war status. This command will give you a window that you can use to declare war and peace with other teams. It will be fully detailed below. Hitting w again will remove it.

n

Toggle bell. This toggles whether or not xtrek will try annoy you with beeps when interesting things happen to your ship.

N

Toggle naming of planets. This toggles whether or not xtrek will put planet names under the circle on the short range view. Depending on whether or not you are running under X11R4, X11R3 with or without -DX11_R3_ENV, this could speed up updates considerably.

G

Turn on hostile mode. This will make you hostile to all ships in the game, and is separate from the war mode. It is primarily useful in target practice with robots.

g

Turn off hostile mode. This undoes the effects of G.

H

Hose mode. This will start a robot for each empire defined in the config file, and insure that at least one robot is always on the game for each. The robots will start up in patrol mode, going from planet to planet in their empire.