Screen Layout

When you start the game, you are given a window with five subwindows. The big left window is the local view from your ship updated in real time, and your ship will always appear the center of it. Other ships will be displayed with their set ship bitmap, and will additionally ,on color workstations, also have a different color. The small hex (0-f) character to the right of the ship represents the player number. Round objects with names (which can be turned off) on them are the planets, and they also are the color of the owning team. Small dots on the screen are torpedoes or mines (torpedoes are in straight line motion). Enemy torpedoes and mines are a small cross while friendly torpedoes and mines are a small dot. Exploding devices are represented by increasingly large explosion bitmaps proportional to the kick behind it. Phaser shots appear as lines emminating from the firing ship.

The large window on the right is a map of the whole galaxy. Only ships and planets appear on it, and it is updated in real time. Ships are just a player number (in hex) and team letter; however, cloaked ships will not appear.

Directly below the galaxy window is a small status message window which will occasionally contain warning messages like "Not enough fuel to fire torp."

Directly Below the warning window is the message window. This window will be described later.

The small window on the left side (bottom) is your status window. The status area contains your vessel's 'vital signs.' If you are locked onto another ship, in addition to your own you will get the status of the other vessel on the second line, minus the Flags field. There are eleven separate sections to the full status line :

Flags

This field contains information about ship activities. There are twelve status characters that can be activated in this section (in order, left to right):

  S		 ship has shields up 

GYR 		 green, yellow, or red alert 

L		 ship has sensor or planet lock activated 

R		 ship is under repair 

B		 ship is bombing a planet 

O		 ship is orbiting a planet 

C		 ship is cloaked 

W		 ship weapons are over operating temperature 

E		 ship engines are over operating temperature 

u		 ship is beaming armies up from planet surface 

d		 ship is beaming armies down to planet surface 

P		 ship is allowing co-pilots 

Warp

Shows the ship's current warp speed in x.x format Ships move between warps 0 and 9.9.

Damage

Shows the ship's current hull damage. Damage repairs slowly if shields are down, faster if ship is in repair mode.

Shield

Shows the number of damage points your shield generators can absorb.They repair faster than hull damage.

Torpedoes

Shows the number of torpedoes the ship has flying

Kills

Shows the number of kills the ship has prosecuted in x.xx format

Armies

Shows the number of armies currently onboard Your ship can carry two times your current number of kills. The maximum number of armies it can carry is ten.

Fuel

Shows the current amount of fuel onboard

Weapon Temp

Weapon temperature as a percentage of maximum

Engine Temp

Engine temperature as a percentage of maximum

Failed Systems

This field contains info about which of the ship's systems are currently non-operational due to excessive damage. If a letter is shown, the system is down.

  C		 cloaking device 

L		 long range sensors 

P		 phaser banks 

S		 short range sensors  

T		 torpedoes 

c		 cooling system 

l		 sensors (locking ability) 

s		 shields 

t		 transporters