
T H E
 _   _   _____   _____   ____    _____   _  __  
| \ | | | ____| |_   _| |  _ \  | ____| | |/ /  N E W B I E
|  \| | |  _|     | |   | |_) | |  _|   | ' /   
| |\  | | |___    | |   |  _ <  | |___  | . \   M A N U A L
|_| \_| |_____|   |_|   |_| \_\ |_____| |_|\_\ 

Compiled by 
Jonathan Shekter aka KillThemAll! (jshekter@interlog.com), 

With material from
Jonathan Ellis   aka maniac       
Herbert Enderton aka Red Shirt    

...and many others. 

Revision 1.3, November 1995


Contents:

     1. Introduction  (Shekter)

     2. Basic Instructions
        2.1 Connecting To A Server (Ellis, Shekter)
        2.2 Logins (Shekter)
        2.3 The MOTD, Teams and Ships (Mehlaff, Ellis)
        2.4 The Game Screen (Shekter)
        2.5 Essential Commands (including messaging) (Shekter, Mehlaff) 
        2.6 How Not To Be Obviously A Twink (Shekter, Ellis)
        2.7 So What Do I Do Now? (Shekter)

     3. Finer Points And Strategy
        3.1 Dogfighting (Hammond, McCoy)
        3.2 Escorting (Shekter)
        3.3 Ogging (Ellis)
        3.4 Defending a planet (Shekter) 
        3.5 Start-of-game bombing (Shekter)
        3.6 Scout bombing (Yasuda)
        3.7 Taking Planets (Markiel)

     4. Miscellaneous Stuff (Shekter)
        4.1 UDP, Short  Packets, and SLIP
        4.2 Ghostbusts

     5. Resources 
        5.1 Where To Find More (Ellis)
        5.2 Netrek Glossary (A whole bunch of people)


1. Introduction

     According to the FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) list for the
newsgroup rec.games.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 opponents. If you 
do not have a  computer on the internet, or connected via SLIP or PPP, 
you will not be able to play.

     This game has a history and can actually be traced back through various 
     ancestors to 1972.  See the history compiled by Andy McFadden 
for more detailed information.

     Up to 16 players, often widely separated geographically, connect to 
a central "server" running at some site. There are about 30 public 
servers in the world and of these maybe 10 are well known and popular. 
The individual players uses a "client" program to connect to the server 
of their choice. Once in the game, the server receives commands from the 
client (and hence the 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 each other and interact, or to put it less academically, everyone
plays in the same galaxy to try to take it over.

        This manual is a guide for netrek beginners; it is independant of 
any particular client. Clients are highly configurable and vary from one
another in terms of features. Please consult your client manual for details.
There are a lot of very cool things that a client can be configured for,
including macros, RCD's, etc., so it's worth reading your client
documentation.

2. Basic Instructions

2.1 Connecting To A Server

     If you run netrek without any arguments it will just complain at 
you. It needs to know which server to connect to.  To tell it, 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.) 

     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 servers.  Type

     telnet metaserver.ecst.csuchico.edu 3523 

to get details about the different ports.  In addition, Most clients
can be run with the -m option, which will cause the client to connect 
to the metaserver and display a window with the names and status of 
servers with active games, and allow you to select which to join. If you 
are playing netrek for the first time, it is strongly recommended that 
you start the client with "netrek -m". 

     Netrek will then attempt to connect to the specified server. After
connection, there will be a pause, especially if running over the modem, 
as the MOTD ("message of the day")  is received from the server. This can 
take up to 30 seconds with a long MOTD over a modem, even longer if the 
MOTD contains bitmaps and you load them.  When the MOTD has finished
loading, the main Netrek window will be displayed.


2.2 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.  

     When you connect to a server, therefore, you must login. If you don't
wish to use a permanent handle, login as "guest".  It is a good idea to be
a guest during at least your first few hours playing.  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: put the mouse in the tactical (left) window as you type
your name and password or you won't be able to enter anything!


2.3 The MOTD, Teams, And Ships

     With the mouse in the MOTD window, press "f" and "b" to move forward
and backwards through it.  Whenever you are at the MOTD you can also 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 (more or less)
balanced in size.

     Click on the team with the next to largest number of players you will
be assigned a cruiser for that team.  (The numbers will fluctuate as ships
are killed and are resurrected.)  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, especially for the inexperienced.
     Cruising speed: 8 Combat speed: 6 Max. armies: 2

     D - Destroyers(DD):  These are similar to scouts but they are a little
more tough and they have slightly more powerful weapons.  The destroyer is
sometimes erroneously referred to as "halfway between the scout and the
cruiser."  If this were so, it would have more powerful phasers and be able
to go an extra half warp faster.  For the unskilled player, they live up to
their nickname of "Ship of Lose."  The destroyer is really a specialty 
ship, primarily used for taking planets by those who know what they're doing. 
     Cruising speed: 7 Combat speed: 5 Max. armies: 5

     C - Cruiser(CA):  An all-purpose ship, and the default if you don't
select another.  
     Cruising speed: 6 Combat Speed: 4 Max. armies: 10

     B - Battleship(BB):   This ship is slow to accelerate 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--but watch
your fuel, this ship uses a lot of it.  The BB or the CA is recommended for 
inexperienced players, since it's harder to die in them.  Since dodging
is tough for the BB, heavy use of tractoring, pressoring, and detting is
important.  See the dogfighting section.
     Cruising speed: 4 Combat speed: 3 Max. armies: 6

     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.  Another is that they are guaranteed to bomb at
least two armies at once.  Also, they are very tough to kill because they 
can take so much hull damage.  This is important when taking planets, 
because they can keep dropping while detting.  Other ships don't have the 
hull to det without putting up their shields (and you can't drop armies 
with shields up). They can also cloak cheaply to sneak in and attack 
planets.  
     Cruising speed: 8 Combat speed: 4 Max. armies: 20
   
          O (for "outpost") - Starbase(SB): These are very powerful and 
hard to destroy.  New players cannot play these (a rank of Commander is
required). 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 base, you're best off  running away 
from it.
     Cruising speed: 2 Combat speed: 2 Max. armies: 25


2.4. The Game Screen

     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  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 teammates.

     Below the map window are three scrolling lists. These are, by default,
the All window, the Team window, and the Individual 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.


2.5 Essential Commands

     With this in mind,  the following is a rip-off with minor changes of
the classic "opening screen" documentation, which is part of 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 (mehlhaff@ocf.Berkeley.EDU)
for writing it.  

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

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 

     Lots of commands, huh?  And those are just the more common ones! 
Notice how difficult it is to reach a lot of these keys, such as orbit, 
lock onto, tractor, pressor, etc.  Most people use a keymap to make it
easier to reach the important stuff; see the your client manual for details.


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 galactic 
or tactical window (depending on which client you are using). 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 (e.g. Fed vs. Kli is no good).  You can get DI (damage
inflicted) 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, i.e. 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 torpedoes, 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 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 netrek
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.  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.

     Each additional warp halves your turning speed.  Slow down to turn.

     Watch your galactic map to get the "big picture."  Pay attention to
cloakers.  Enemy ships near you will cause you to go to yellow or red 
alert. This can be used to tell if the cloaker by you is an enemy or not.

     Torpedoes you det won't hurt your teammates.

     Bomb enemy planets with armies on them.


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.  (Note that most if not all current servers restart the galaxy
after one genocide.)

How to Conquer Planets:
     You conquer planets by first bombing the armies on enemy planets down
to less than four.  Below 4 you cannot bomb them.  (Neither can the other
team pick up from them, however.) Here is one time where the AS is useful:
the AS always bombs at least two, so if the planet is at 5 and you bomb it 
with an AS, it will always go to three or less!  If the planet is at 6, 
however, you should first bomb it down to 5 with a normal ship and then 
have the AS bomb.  
     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 
refueling on them. Similarly, 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 most valuable because 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.


-----------------------------------------------------------------------


2.6 How Not To Be Obviously A Twink

     A "twink" (see section 5.2) 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 labeled a as a twink, which is not only embarrassing, 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.

     - Dies with The Armies. Note that there is a difference between dying
with armies (which happens to everyone) and dying with The Armies. That is,
dying with armies when armies are scarce. Often in a game, armies are 
plentiful, or would just get bombed away if not picked up, and getting 
killed while carrying happens to everyone. But it's a real bummer when some 
twink picks up the last two armies which are vitally needed to take back 
that critical planet and goes and dies with them. Summary: don't.

     - 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. Unfortunately, many players are impatient with newbies (I'm 
one of them ;-), and will not do more than curse at you for your mistakes.
If you want to get more out of them than curses, don't argue with them.  
They will only get angrier because a "clueless newbie" presumes to correct
them!  Apologize, even if it wasn't your fault, and ask what you did wrong.  
This makes them feel stupid and then they will often become helpful.  
Complimenting them doesn't hurt either.  Of course, here I'm assuming that 
the arrogant player actually knows what he's doing and isn't just a jerk.
There are a few clueless jerks around, too.

     - 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 and 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, are the only player with 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. 

     - 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 the planet  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
thoroughly, and investigate the FAQ, various WWW sites, and the Netrek
archives (see section 6.1) thoroughly before pestering other players 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 don't ask without trying hard by yourself.  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.

     - plays for himself.  Play for your _team_.  There's a lot of 
otherwise good players who only want to increase their stats by planet 
scumming. Space control.  Escort.  Scout bomb.  I can't emphasise this last 
enough; there are few players that I am more happy to have on my team than 
one who will join the game, see that their team needs a bomber, and then 
goes bombing. 


2.7 So What Do I Do Now?

     Scout bomb. This is one of the best things a beginning player can
do. It requires little dogfighting ability, you don't die too often,
it gives you lots of practice maneuvering and dodging torps, and best of
all, it's very helpful to your team. I would suggest that anyone new to the
game of Netrek do some scout bombing at first. 

        Scout bombing is of course, done with a scout; select this ship 
from the opening screen. The basic technique is just to go from planet to
planet bombing, but there is some finesse involved. First of all, getting
deep behind enemy lines is omething of a trick; flying at maxwarp through
a dogfight in the hopes of getting past it is a good way to get killed, even
if you are cloaked; scouts are very fragile. You must usually fly far
around enemy ships, often way off into neutral space. At any rate, once
you approach a planet with armies to bomb, the procedure is basically the
same: lock on (press 'l'), shields up as you approach (press 's' or 'u'),
wait till you enter orbit, then bomb ('b'). After a while, enemy ships will
notice and start chasing you. This is good -- you are keeping them from 
helping their team. You are much more maneuverable than them (unless they
are also in an SC) and also much faster, BUT you are very fragile. The 
solution is to run and dodge. Buttorping is good here, though frowned
upon in other parts of the game. Learn to dodge. If you are really good,
you can even take out a ship by suddenly charging at them at high speed 
and firing everything you've got. This takes some skill, but I've 
defeated many a BB in a scout; the trick is to get them angry and 
make them waste fuel first.


        Besides bombing, the other duty of a scout bomber is to call
call pick ups as you see them. You are behind the lines and in some
sense have time on your hands, so a SC bomber is ideally placed for
reconnaisance of this type. You can tell when someone picks up by watching 
the number of armies on a planet being orbited by them. While the little 
army symbol(the little "man") on the planet will disappear if they remove 
all the armies, more often than not you have to watch the army count by 
pressing "i" over the planet repeatedly as they orbit it. If the armies 
are going down, they are picking up. Tell you teammates so they can watch 
out and or kill them. There is a handy macro for this in most clients: 
place the mouse over the enemy carrier and press Ctrl-9. This sends a 
message like "4++ @ Rom" to your team.

        Scout bombing is very helpful, and probably the easiest useful
thing for a beginner to do. It is excellent practice, and actually it
is also one of the most important jobs in a game. 


3. Finer Points And Strategy


3.1 Dogfighting 

     Dogfighting is not the point of the game or even a primary objective. 

     It is a means to an end 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 by John Kirk Hammond a.k.a.
Lance.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------


     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.  For those
interested, here's mine: keymap: 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 :)

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 perpendicular 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.

     [JE: T/P can also be very useful to help you dodge torps.  The
         most obvious way is to just turn away from your opponent
         and pressor off him to give you more room to dodge.  If you
         have a teammate or an enemy off to one side that you can t/p
         off of to move you sideways out of the torps, that is even 
         better.  If you're using a teammate as a t/p post, though, make
         sure you're not moving him into torps at the same time!]

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.
         [JE: a style enormously helpful to conserving fuel while 
         dogfighting is to fight at a base speed of warp 2, tractoring, 
         pressoring, and accelerating as needed when torps are fired.  
         This is most effective in a CA/BB/AS.
         Thanks to Erik Lauer for pointing this out.]

     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 you 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.
         [JE: maxwarping at an enemy is never a good idea, and if  you 
          do find yourself in that situation, keep in mind that it may be 
          better to mutual than to go to 90% damage and spend a lot of
         time repairing--if you mutual, you immediately get a new ship.]

     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 going to hit you.

         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 perfect 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...
         [JE: you'd be surprised how quickly a man who uses both
         phasers and torps well can take down someone who only
         torps.  Learn where your 20 point phaser range is, and 
         phaser any time he is within that range.  If you are doing
         less than 20 points you are probably wasting fuel.]

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.  S M A C K !

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 hurting 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 shreds when you 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.

      John Kirk Hammond 
     jhammond@raphael.acpub.duke.edu

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

3.2 Escorting:

     Escorting a planet taker: 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 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 pressing the 'd' key.  (The torpedoes 
in question must be quite close to your for this to work.  Experiment to 
get a feel for the maximum range--the farther away they are, the less damage 
they do.) The point of the exercise: keep the carrier alive long enough to 
take the planet, at all costs.  (Obviously don't escort if you are carrying 
yourself, if at all possible. Usually it isn't. Sometimes you may have 
time to beam down your armies to a safe location first.)  Do NOT fire 
torpedoes over the planet where enemies can det them -- your teammate 
will also take damage! 


3.3 Ogging:

     This is the art of killing a carrier, or potential carrier, by
a suicide run. The basic idea is to cloak before you get on his tactical,
run up to him until you're about half an inch away, then tractor-phaser-
torp-torp-torp until he dies.  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.  Two good oggers working together should be
able to kill the target every time. (Obviously this does not apply if the
target is an SB.)  When ogging with someone else, it is important that you
do not both come from the same direction.  If you do, your target can turn
and shoot at both of you at once.  When I do it, I watch what direction my
teammate is coming in and decide which direction the target must run in to
reach his teammates, and attack him from that direction. 

     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 starbase and do suicide runs into it, firing everything they have
and then hopefully exploding right over it.  However, it's harder than it
sounds.  Keys to a good ogg are:

     - all oggers uncloak at once.  If you do not, the base can pick you 
off easily one at a time.  Thus, if you know you're going to have a head 
start on the other oggers using a heavy ship (BB/AS) is a good idea. 
Conversely, don't take one if it will make your team wait for you.

     - oggers come from different directions, for much the same reason that
ogging a normal ship from the same direction is inefficient.

     - the ogg does not take place with a lot of the base's teammates
defending.  One defender ~ two oggers, so minimize the defenders.  It's not
enough to call an ogg when the base is alone, you also have to watch the
galactic to make sure that the enemy is not heading towards the base,
otherwise by the time your ogg gets there he could have several defenders.

     - don't maxwarp directly at the base once you are on his tactical!  It
is trivial for a good base to tell you are heading in a straight line and
pick you off with torps or phasers!  If you head in at about warp 7 (in a 
CA)  you will be able to dodge torps much more easily.  It can also be a 
good idea to fly at a point an inch or so to the side of the base until you 
get close to him, to throw him off more.

     - having an uncloaked CA/BB/AS lobbing torps (plinking) at the base
while the others are ogging can help a lot against a relatively undefended
base.  With more defenders, it becomes much less effective.  CRITICAL to
this is that you should NOT plink from the side of the base that the oggers
are coming in from.  If you do, he can pressor off you to move away from 
the oggers (and towards his team) much faster!  Get behind the base, and
force him into your oggers!  If, when you do this, the base tractors you,
you have two options.  You can reverse direction, tractor him, fire, and
 try to do as much damage as you can, finishing by exploding on him.  Or, 
you can slam on the maxwarp while firing torps at him.  The latter is more
 effective before an ogg, because the base will be forced to use more wtemp 
phasering you and likely wtemp completely during the ogg.  The former 
option is only recommended if you are low on fuel or if you're you're 
really close to the base when he starts firing.

     - if the base has ships docked on it and does not pressor them off,
fire at them.  Each docked ship that you blow up does an additional 100 
points of damage to the base as well as preventing them from firing at the 
other oggers.


3.4 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! Exploding 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 orbiting 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?)  Critical to this is GETTING BETWEEN THE ENEMY 
AND THE PLANET. Then they have to go through you, not you through them, 
and you have room to retreat/buttorp.  If you can do this, you have a 
very good chance of at least delaying the take until help arrives.  
Failing that, 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 disappears from the planet they are 
orbiting (from one of their planets, obviously; if it disappears 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 Cappella. 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.


3.5 Start-of-game 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 your warning window. When it says "bombing 
is ineffective" and the armies symbol disappears  from the planet, turn 
your shields on, lock onto the next planet with armies, and maxwarp to it. 
You can stay cloaked almost indefinitely while bombing; ASs even 
regenerate fuel at warp 0.  However, detting incoming torps uses 100 
fuel per det, so watch that or you will uncloak from detting.  At the 
same time, when you are in your home space, kill enemy bombers to protect 
your own armies.


3.6 Scout bombing

        This is part of a guide for scout bombers written by Dean Yasuda.  

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

(We are ROM, they are FED).

Q1:  What is passive bombing?

A1: Passive bombing (also called positional-bombing) is a bombing
strategy in which the bomber focuses on being in a position to bomb
enemy armies that will pop in the future.  The bomber dynamically
maintains a position deep in enemy territory that gives him bombing
ownership of as many planets as possible.

Q2:  When should I p-bomb?

A2:  Whenever the enemy has more than five planets if nobody else is
bombing.  In general, one bomber is all you want in a pickup game
because there are so few "clues" on the team that the others really
need to be escorting, taking, ogging, etc.

Q3:  Where is the best spot for a p-bomber?

A3: A lone p-bomber should try to live just below and right of ALP
(center) in order to control the six right and central planets.  A
secondary bomber should lurk below and right of (VEG), pressuring the
core while keeping an escape route into third space.

When the bomber has at least 3/4 fuel, he should lurk at a minimum of
warp 5, in order to win races to planets.

Q4:  What is the best path to enemy territory?

A4: Arcing through shallow third and fourth space is the best path to
Fed space.  A bomber should avoid the front line if the enemy presence
there is strong.  The wall-route is sometimes safe, but an attentive
enemy CA can sometimes expel or kill the scout.

Maxwarp out of your core, slow to warp 9 while passing the front, and
arc narrowly around the enemy position.  It is reasonable to let an
enemy CA chase you into toward third space; he is losing his position
faster than you are losing yours.

Once you enter enemy territory, find a safe, effective place to
regenerate E-temp and fuel, and then optimize your position.  If
another bomber is in the primary position, he will either shift to the
secondary position or play an aggressive or ogging role.

Q5:  What if they chase me?

A5:  Run towards third space.  Remember, as long as they're chasing you
they can't do anything else for their team.  If they're really inept (say
they chase you mindlessly in a CA) you can still get some bombing done
while avoiding him.  Don't let him kill you unless in dying you bomb his
last armies.  The main reason he is chasing is probably that he wants
a kill.

Q6: When and how should a scout ogg?

A6: Ogg when bombing duties are covered and it is apparent that your
ogging help is needed.  Never assume you can kill a good carrier;
assume that you can help a cruiser finish the job.  Prep an oggee by
light pelting, follow just out of range until help arrives, or fake a
bomb.  A scout can aid cruiser oggs by synchronization, following-up,
netting, pre-pelting, or tailing the enemy to prevent him from reaching
safety in time.

Q7:  Tandem scout oggs are fun.  Are there drawbacks to this?

A7: Yes, if it leaves the team without a bomber.  It takes almost a
minute for a scout to establish bombing position.  During this time,
about three armies will pop, and an enemy take can occur.  If bombers
ogg foolishly, they may wind up playing catchup (ogging or arriving
too late to bomb safely) rather than destroying armies as they appear.
Poor scout discipline is almost a given in any game, and the results
can be disastrous.  Cruiser-scout oggs drive the taker away from the
front, even if they fail.  The price for a failed, double-scout ogg is
often greater, and even a successful ogg may be a losing proposition.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------


3.7 Taking Planets

                   GREY ELF'S GUIDE TO PLANET TAKING
----------------------------------------------------------------------
     First of all, before anything, know what's going on. How you're going
to take planets depends on which planets you're trying to take. Are you
taking back your own space? You'll have to be careful with your armies as
you don't have many. Are you taking planets in the third space? You probably
need a fast ship. Taking core planets? You either need something 
really heavy, (an AS), or something really fast. Know how many kills you 
need, there might be a planet with only 1 army on it, that you can pick off 
with a 1 kill ship. If you're trying to take an agri, you're going to need 
two kills and at least 4 armies, and your effort will be wasted if you 
don't get them all down.

     Next, the key to winning the game is to take planets faster than the
enemy is taking them back. There are a lot of skills to help you do this,
but if you're serious about taking planets you don't have time to wander
around trying to get your second kill. The key is speed...you have no  time
to waste. 

     To take planets, first you need kills. Getting kills falls under
another chapter (Grey Elf's Guide to Making Yourself Useful) but I'll
mention a few ways of getting quick kills. The classic method is twink
bashing. It's cold, it's cheap, it works. You find someone with the nice 
0.3 kill ratio and get him to come after you. My favorite method is to let 
the guy get a decent phaser on me. Then I start to run and he says "I've
got him now!" and charges forward right into my beautiful line of torps. 
It's scary how quick you can rack up kills if the enemies line up right.  

     Another method is to get in front of your Starbase. If he's anywhere
near the enemy he is probably attracting oggers...try to pick them off
before your starbase gets at them. If he blows up someone you've just
crippled, call him a kill thief and tell him you'd like some reward for
destroying oggers for him.  He'll probably understand that you really want
some kills to take planet. Note that I'm NOT advising you to sit behind 
your SB and scum a kill after he damages it...first of all it usually takes 
too long, and makes enemies to boot. You certainly don't want your team 
against you when you really need some help.

     A third way is to try to force enemies into an outnumbered situation. 
This requires some skill in not getting killed, and is difficult if there
are several people ogging indiscriminately, or ogging you in particular.
Basically you try to get behind a person so he can't get away. Then you
sandwich him between your torps/phasers and those of your teammates, and
out of the random spread you have an even chance of getting a kill, better 
if your teammates aren't as good.

     Once you have kills, be careful. Good oggers will pinpoint anyone with
more than 1 kill, and especially focus on known planet takers. Always watch
the long range scanner for cloakers, and know if good players are headed in
your direction. If you spend 5 minutes getting 2 kills, you certainly don't
want a battleship running you over when you least expect it. This holds 
true everywhere, at all times. Little sucks more than getting blown up at 
your home planet as you refit to an assault ship...especially if the guy 
them bombs the armies you were planning to pick up. (A little secret: when 
I head back to my home planet to refit to an assault ship, I pick up some 
armies from the front line and carrying them back with me...because there's 
no guarantee they will still be there when I get back).

     There are a couple of ways to deal with oggers. First, you have to 
know they are there. Watch the long range scanner at all times, even when
dogfighting. Remember that your ship still has weapons, and use them. If 
you are planning to take planets, don't get in close with enemies...they 
may just be trying to suicide into you. I'm not encouraging people to 
runner-scum, but don't close with the enemy either. If an enemy is coming 
in cloaked, there are two things to do. If he's coming in very fast, 
either blast some torps into his path, since he can't dodge, or cloak 
just before he gets within phaser range. Slow, spin to the side, and 
speed up again...he will uncloak, go flying past you, miss with his 
torp spread (which you just dodged), and try to come back after you, now 
rather low on fuel. If he's coming in slow, fly away around warp 6, 
burning no fuel, and wait for the ogger to run out of fuel.  Then go do 
what you were before he got there. Remember that most oggs are ineffective 
unless you don't see it coming, are already hurt, or the ogger is really 
good. Also, let your teammates help you, but don't hide behind their 
coattails: if you're going to be effective you have to take some risks, 
and sometimes you get burned. Take your loss and come back fighting.

     What ship you choose to take planets in is a difficult choice. 
Everyone has their favorite fighting ship: I prefer cruisers. In some 
cases another ship might be more effective: you lose time in changing 
ships (less if your starbase is nearby), but a different ship might be 
able to do more. Each ship has a different style to it. Scouts are useful 
for taking planets that are left undefended and weak. You can slip in 
very quickly and beam down two armies, which can either take a planet or 
weaken it for the next person to show up. (This tactic can be very useful 
when the enemy is low on planets...letting other people take the planet 
with one kill ships). Destroyers are exceptionally good for taking lightly 
defended planets since they can carry 5 armies and are both fast and 
maneuverable. Heavier ships are more useful for taking well defended 
planets, since they can take the punishment of random torps. Remember 
that Assault ships can carry an army for every 0.33 kills...so an assault 
ship is much better for taking planets. However, enemies know what assault 
ships can do, and will often ogg one without even checking how many kills 
it has. 

     Another choice is how many armies to carry. This depends on what you
are trying to do, and how many armies your team has to use or lose. If you
expect that your team can defend the planet you're taking, only carry 
enough armies to leave one of yours on the planet, and let it grow. 
Carrying more is an invitation to be ogged, and is probably a waste unless 
you're sure that you can grab more than one planet in a single run. If you 
think your team can't defend the planet, and you're just taking it to deny 
it's growth to the enemy, try to carry enough to bring it to 3 or 4, so that
the enemy will have to waste many armies to get it back. Again, 
carrying more is just an invitation to be ogged, and it actually reduces 
your effectiveness, because you'll be so timid defending your piles of 
armies that you won't be able to get anything done. Sometimes you gotta 
die to take a planet...If you are taking a planet that is heavily defended 
(like a last planet stand) then carrying more than 4 is probably useless, 
because you'll probably just die with them all, and there's no point in 
losing lots of armies at a time. Of course, it all depends on how many 
armies you have: if you have 15 planets with 20 armies each, it doesn't 
really matter how many you die with, while if you have few armies you have 
to conserve every one you can get.  

     There are several different situations in which one takes planets.
These are: your team is down, it's an even battle, you're driving the 
enemy back, you're trying to break core planets, or a last planet stand.

     If you are short on planets, you are probably also short on armies, so
defending them is a must. Hordes of oggers will come for you as soon as you
pick armies up, if not sooner, so be ready. Don't just take a planet and fly 
away, because a planet with 1 army is easy pickings for anyone with a 
kill. Stay and defend it, or make sure someone else is. Otherwise, you 
might as well have died with the armies for all the good they did your 
team. If you have lots of armies (sometimes all your planets grow at once) 
it can be useful to save some on your starbase, rather than taking lots of 
planets that are easily taken back. Planets with 4 armies can't be taken by 
a 1 kill ship, while a planet with 1 army can. Always take an agri first if 
your team has the ability to defend it, because it will grow armies much 
faster than a regular planet.  Who needs a home planet when you have an 
agri...  

     If the game is fairly even, then you want to take planets fast and 
stop the enemy from retaking them. Again, you are probably low on armies, 
and should be making sure the enemy is too. Only carry 5 at a time...go 
back for more after you take a planet. Carrying more is just too risky at 
this point in the game. Take agris first, then fuel, then repair. Your team 
will love you for it :-)

     Try to con your team into clearing the planet so you can take it. If
they aren't, you can try to clear it yourself, depending on how good you 
and the target are. If you think you need help, but aren't getting it, try 
this trick: wait for a teammate to get near, then fire some torps and try 
to get the enemy to shoot back. Toggle your shields a couple of times too. 
Look like your having a really tough battle. Hopefully your teammate will 
get the idea and come chase the enemy off. There's a lesson here that I'll 
mention again and again: people notice what happens on their short range 
scanner more than they notice the long range scanner. This is more true  
with less skilled players. If you want someone to notice you, do something 
on their short range view: if you don't want people to notice you, stay off 
their short range view. We all have tunnel vision, and often see only what 
we want to see. Use this to your advantage.

     As you advance into the enemy space, the game changes a bit. You start
to have more armies than the enemy...you can afford to be more aggressive
in taking planets. Every army you kill is another blow, every planet is
production lost by the enemy. A really strong push at this point can force
the enemy into a last planet stand. The enemy will be fighting back hard,
but they don't have enough people to defend all of their planets heavily.
Use this to your advantage.

     Oggers have an easy time at you when you are in their space, so watch
for them all of the time. Don't be conspicuous; just kind of fly around
until you see an opening. The key is that, as time goes on, different enemy
planets will become weakly defended. People fly around, and others get
killed. What you have to do is be ready for an opening to occur, and JUMP
on it before the opportunity closes again. What I like to do is pick a
promising side of the enemy space and float...careful not to get on the
short range scanner of any enemies. A lot of times, someone might be
floating perfectly aimlessly, headed somewhere else, but will zero in on 
you if they see you at short range. Even if you kill them, you've lost 
valuable time and opportunity, plus the person might very well look at the 
kill list and send out an ogg call on you. I wait for something: sometimes 
a planet just gets left open. Other times a teammate causes a distraction 
which keeps the enemy from looking at the long range scanner. (Remember, 
it's hard to look for cloakers when someone is shooting at you). Sometimes 
my team just blasts the enemy off. When a chance occurs, you have to MOVE, 
and fast. You may only have seconds to get the planet and get out before 
you are noticed. Cloak, and scream in at max warp. As you get close, slow 
down so you can dodge a bit. Slow down more as you get close to the planet, 
because you have to be going slow to orbit the planet. Keep your shields 
down as you go in (to conserve fuel), but keep your finger on the shields 
key so you can toggle them instantly. I usually raise them once I'm close 
enough to take damage from the planet. At this point there are four keys 
you need: bomb, beam down, det others torps, and shields (these are by 
default "b", "x", "d", and "u" or "s"). I find it useful to remap the bomb 
key to something near "x" and "d"; I use s. This way you can hit all three 
keys without looking down. It's also useful to have the resource display on 
the short range view: this way you can see if you should bomb before 
beaming down armies. As soon as you start orbiting the planet, start 
bombing or beaming down. Be prepared to det incoming torps, and to raise 
shields if it seems necessary. If someone fires a plasma at you, it's 
almost always better to raise the shields to take the plasma, then  
continue. Remember that raising shields stops you from attacking the 
planet, so you have to hit the bomb key again. Look for the army picture to 
disappear, then start beaming down. As you beam down, look back and forth 
between incoming torps and the little window above the message window which 
counts down the armies: 4..3..2..1..0..1..  As soon as you've beamed down 
all your armies, raise your shields and hit warp 6. Try to dodge torps on 
your way out, and punch it as soon as you are in the clear. Spin parry 
dodge. Lower your shields if no torps are hitting you, to save your fuel. 
Also, uncloak as soon as is feasible to avoid getting caught without any 
fuel. Head for the nearest friend and have him get in the way of the 
oncoming enemy hordes.      

     For a beginner, it can be a real problem to remember which keys to 
hit, and to hit them in the right order. Practice on planets that aren't 
so defended: pretend there are enemies about, cloak, and take the planet 
as if someone were about to kill you. You never know, someone might 
be.....At all times, don't panic, and never give up: that battleship 
MIGHT just miss :-) 

     Taking last planets is even tougher, because there are less openings. 
Usually you'll have to beat one, two, or even more enemies to take the
planet.  An assault ship is usually necessary for this, unless the 
defenders are really clueless. You have to pick your attack carefully; you 
can't just charge in and take the planet. Wait for things to look good. 
Bide your time: if the enemy only has one planet, they probably aren't 
coming back anytime soon. Wait for their admiral to fly away, THEN crash 
the planet. Always be ready; sometimes the enemy home planet will be 
totally undefended for just long enough to get in and take it. One of the 
best times to take a last planet is when the enemy has burned most of their 
fuel dealing with others: they might not have enough fuel to finish you 
off, especially if you det their torps for less damage.  Sometimes you'll 
wait for 15 minutes for those 3 seconds that the starbase drifts away from 
the planet. Only three seconds, but you're in and beaming down before he 
can find his plasma. Try to get the enemy to forget about you; let them 
deal with other people, and then suddenly pop out of nowhere to take the 
planet.

     As you fly in, you're expecting to get fired upon, so be ready for it. 
Have one finger on the shields, and use your other fingers to change 
speeds. I usually try to slide in at about warp 5, dodging the enemy torps 
as I go in. I accelerate as I see a clear path to the planet, and hope I 
can orbit quickly.  Always remember that you'll probably have to lock on 
the planet again, as you've been spinning around in circles all this time. 
Once you lock on, keep the shields up and move your hand over the beam down 
key. As soon as you orbit, start beaming down, and have another finger 
ready to det the incoming torps. This is probably a suicide mission, so 
don't worry about what to do after you take the planet. Only stop beaming 
down if a plasma is incoming: then it might be worthwhile to take the 
plasma to the shields, then continue beaming down. Usually it's all over 
before you can think about making it out alive. If you somehow manage to 
get all your armies down, try to fly away and get to your friends...but 
even if you die, you've really done a lot for your team.

     If there's more than one defender, or the one is fairly good, you'll
probably need help to take it. What you want is to have your enemies too
busy to look at the long range scanner to see if cloakers are incoming. 
This usually means you want the distraction uncloaked, so that the enemies 
will focus on the distraction. Try to come in from a different angle; few 
people expect a planet taker to come from behind them. Make sure the good 
defenders are occupied, or have your teammates assigned to take them out. 
There are two plans: either have your teammates kill most of the defenders, 
or just keep them so busy that they won't see you. Killing works better at 
planets farther from the home planet, since the returning ships can't get 
back in time.  Killing also is needed against good players, because they 
are probably going to see the cloaker anyway.

     If you are helping someone take a last planet, your job is to keep 
the enemy busy...too busy. If there are only a few (3 or less), and no SB, 
then pick out the best of the defenders and suicide into him. They will 
all burn fuel shooting at you, and you'll take out the person most likely 
to kill your planet taker. The planet taker can then come in and take the 
planet in those few seconds before the enemy looks back at their long 
range scanner. If there are too many defenders for this to work, you have 
to be more sneaky. You somehow have to get the defenders to focus on you 
instead of the planet taker coming in from a different angle. One of my 
favorite tricks is to fly in cloaked, and then fly cloaked or uncloaked in 
the opposite direction from the real planet taker. If all goes well, the 
enemy will come chasing off after me while the real planet taker slips in 
behind before the defenders notice the deception. A lot depends on how good 
the defenders are: a few really clueful battleships can defend a planet 
against all comers. 

     This is all well and good, but usually you just get blown to bits
without getting a single army down. If this happens, hurry back out and get
some more kills. Pick up more armies, and start floating around again. You
know you're doing well if the enemy says "You have kills AGAIN???" Hang
around, look, wait, and then sneak in from behind, and get blown to
smithereens. Come back again...and often that third time, they'll have just
a little too fuel, and be a little too far away...and it's all over.

     So that's the advice I have to give on planet taking. I'll just
summarize:

     1) move: don't waste time
     2) get kills quickly
     3) watch for oggers always
     4) know what planets need to be taken, and who the defenders are
     5) choose the right ship and the right number of armies
     6) try not to attract attention
     7) try to get undefended planets
     8) wait for an opening, then jump on it
     9) attack when the enemy is too busy too deal with you
     10) come back again...and again...and again...eventually the enemy          
will collapse

     And remember, there's little more satisfying than breaking a long last
planet stand, or knowing that every player gets to see your name in the
final message: : "Galaxy has been conquered by Ff (Grey Elf) and the
Federation".  But the best compliment I ever got was when I took Romulus as
a Fed three times in a row, and one of the Romulans sent to the all board:
"damn elf".  Makes my day everytime I see that line.

Good luck, and good netrekking!

Andrew Markiel                          Rear Adm. Grey Elf (ex-
jm79@andrew.cmu.edu                     Admiral Neutrino)


----------------------------------------------------------------------

4.  Miscellaneous Stuff


4.1 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 unmoving 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 successfully played over the
modem via SLIP. This was made possible via yet another modification to
Netrek, Short Packets. This was an internal rewrite 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 torpedoes 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 
very update. This has results similar to lost UDP packets.

     However, all is not lost. If you find that your ship doesn'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 labeled "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 screen 
or you seem to be firing 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 noticeably
over a modem as the server sends more than 2000 bytes of data, including 
all ship positions and status, planet positions, 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 doesn'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 acknowledgments. 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.

     I personally often play over SLIP and a 14.4kbps modem gets you a 
reasonable lag and update rate. Playable, if you've never experience a 
direct connection. 

     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 260 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 system or 
computer, which  means that the network is fast enough but the computer 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.

   Something that is also very useful when playing over SLIP is to reduce 
the MTU (maximum transmission unit) setting of your SLIP software. The 
default is usually 1500. Reducing this to 1000 or even 500 will hurt 
throughput (so it's bad for those 4 meg ftp transfers) but give you better 
lag. I have found that changing the MTU from 1500 to 1006 gives me 40ms 
better lag, on average.

   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  to 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.


4.2 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. 



5.0 Resources


5.1 Where To Find More

     Netrek is a very large and evolving game. There is much more to it 
than We could possibly put all in one document. We 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 and FOCS (frequently offered clever suggestions) for this 
group is a good idea.

     The Netrek Home Page on the Web is http://www.cycor.ca/TCave/netrek.html. 
It has links to just about everything that exists in netrek. Highly recommended.

     A very good page is the JCH information archive (also accessable from
the Netrek Home Page),  
http://www.cs.cmu.edu:8001/afs/cs/user/jch/netrek/README.html

     Those without www access can get the JCH archive by anon. ftp at 
cs.cmu.edu /afs/cs.cmu.edu/user/jch/netrek or at 
esoteric.agron.iastate.edu /pub/netrek/INFO
     
        Have fun!


5.2 Netrek Glossary

     Compiled from posts by past players of the game, including:

          Kevin Bernatz (Sun Tzu)
          Terrence Chang (Exxon Valdez, retired)
          Hunter Chen
          Andrew Markiel  (Grey Elf)
          Hugh More (ZZnew guy, retired) 
          Walter Pullen
          Thomas Smith 
          Timothy Worsley 


Shekter: 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.) 
Ellis:   Removed a lot of those really old ones because this manual is too
long already.  ;-)

ASW:
     Anti-Scout Warfare. 

Barren:
     No armies  (duh, ;)) [ Hunter Chen ]

[ro]Bot:
     Practice robot, or third space robot, or terminator

[cy]Borg:
     A netrek client that has some sort of  automatic "cheat" feature, e.g.
auto-dodge or phaser, cloaker display, etc. This is cheating except on
designated borg servers such as mean.mu.caltech.edu.

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  ] 

     [Shekter: this is now very uncommon due to the RSA verification 
scheme, which was designed specifically to prevent this.] 

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 ]  [Shekter: this is what is now the standard Netrek server, so named
becuase it first appeared on a machine called bronco.] 

Buttorp:
     To fire torpedoes behind you while running. While this is a fun and
easy way to waste someone who insists on chasing you, doing this habitually
makes you a Runner Scum (see which). [ Shekter ]

Clue:
     Netrek playing ability, experience, etc. Also someone who has these,
e.g. "Tywong is clue". [ Shekter ]
     
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 ]

Chaos server:
     Utexas or KSU server with high refuel rates, free plasmas,  and Galaxy
classes. Also known as Galaxy server. [ Hunter Chen ] [Shekter: these are 
pretty rare these days. ]

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 hours and
still get the promotion. E.g., Admiral Flatliner has only 27.19 hours while
40 hours and a ratings total of 8 are required for the rank.  8 x 40 = 320
DI.  Flatliner's ratings add up to 11.69, so 27.19 x 11.69 ~= 320.

     Note that it is possible to lose DI because your ratings are always
relative to the global average  The double DI and quad DI promotions are
fairly meaningless -- basically you can get a promotion with insufficient
ratings but lots of hours.  [ Terence Chang ]


DI scum: 
     Similar to ratings scum, these people either only play during the
initial bombing runs, or else quit out near the end of the game when there
are no more chances for lots of bombing and planet taking. 
[ Walter Pullen ]

DL: 
     Draft League. A semi-professional Netrek league with regular games.
This requires less clue to play in than the INL (which see). [ Shekter ]
     
Doosh:
     To kill an important carrier who is carrying a reasonable number of
armies.  Any kill of a base that has been effective in gameplay is a doosh,
whether the base was carrying armies or not.  There are some other odd 
spots where "doosh" applies.  Any particularly large display of carnage 
(such as two fleets meeting at a planet and going up in an 8-ship chain 
explosion) certainly qualify.  Also, even if a starbase were very weak and 
innefective, any base ogg where 6-7 ships uncloaked simultaneously from 
well-spread angles such that it is very clear that the base hasn't got a 
snowball's chance in hell, is quite clearly a "Doosh!" [ Jon Blow ]

Ensign Clueless:
     A special term to denote those players who don't really know how to
play very well, but help their teams greatly by being at the right place at
the right time.  These guys can really help Oggers and planet taker by
distracting opponents and often serve to scare off runner scum who would 
be taking planets. [ Hugh More (ZZnew guy) ]

Ensign scum: 
     Good players who log in as guest or a new Ensign character so people
will think they are clueless, until they promptly get wasted. Especially 
fun to do against the Newbie scum, below. [ Walter Pullen ]

Faker scum:
     People who do things like fly their SB at warp 1 when it's not 
damaged, or pretend to be damaged so you'll chase them and they can waste 
you. [ Walter Pullen ]

Grey Elf effect:
     To suddenly dodge into a stream of torps.  He named it himself. 
[ Timothy Worsley ]  Also called the Pac Man Effect or Wocka Wocka Wocka
Effect.

Hitler:
     Scum who log in specifically to hurt a team, and so help the opposing
side. This can involve giving away kills, going in as their SB and letting
the enemy kill it (along with 25 armies), telling the other side who's
carrying, along with other nasty things. [ Walter D. Pullen ]
     A player who comes in on the other side in order to hurt them and then
quits out again and rejoins his old team. [ Hugh More (ZZnew guy) ]  

Hoser:
     Practice bot.  Also a derogatory term. [ Hunter Chen ] 

Human Target:
     A battleship Ogg done without cloaking at warp 8 in order to clear
space.  Named after Hugh Moore's ship of the same name. [ Timothy Worsley ]
 

Iggy:
     Practice robot. So named because it is often the player designated by
Ig (Player in slot 'g', on the Independent team.) 

INL: 
     International Netrek League. A professional Netrek league. INL players 
and INL games are generally considered to be the ultimate in Netrek clue.
[ Shekter ]
     
Kids:  
     Armies.  (I know there's an origin, but I'm not sure what it is.) 
[ Timothy Worsley ] 

Kill scum:
     People who only play to rack up kills and don't do anything with them
to help their team. They are often found hanging around the SB or around a
last planet where they can easily rack up kills. [ Walter D. Pullen ]

LPS [Last Planet Stand]:  
     If the enemy is down to a few planets, it's useful to try to get the
hardest ones first (like the home planet) while they are still uncertain
which planet you're planning to take: i.e. you can fake an attack on a 
different planet in hopes of drawing away some defenders. If it gets down 
to an LPS on the hardest planet, it's much harder to take since the enemy 
knows exactly where you're going. [ Andrew Markiel ]

Lawyers:
     Armies. 

Message scum: 
     People who send nasty or insulting messages to individuals or teams 
to intimidate or scroll their screen so they can't read useful stuff.
Especially applies to those robots. [ Walter Pullen ]

Name scum: 
     Similar to Ensign scum, people who play under a different name then
they are accustomed to. Often involves switching terminals with a teammate
to confuse the enemy or give an advantage. E.g. a good dogfighter gets a
kill and switches terminals with the team planet
taker. [ Walter Pullen ]

Newbie:
     One who has just started playing netrek. [ Hunter Chen ]

Newbie scum:
     Merciless players who target Ensigns and other newbies and waste them
several times to rack up kills so they can do whatever. [ Walter Pullen ]

Offensive Tackle:  
     See Human Target.  Named for Jon Kim's ship of the same name. 
[ Timothy Worsley ] 

Ogg:      
     Og....The act of Ogging.  The process of cloaking and appearing
adjacent to enemy while firing torps and tractoring on to him. Purpose:  To
kill.  Without caring about dying in the process, also called suiciding. 
Ogging is an art, it consists of knowing when to cloak and when to uncloak. 
Planets are not subject to Ogging, since no one can here their screams.
     Back in, I believe, November/December of 1990 I use to play netrek 
much more than now.  At the time, I was probably only Flt Captain Sun Tzu, 
maybe even just a Captain.  A group of us, which included Jay Hui 
(TheSlug), Byron Sinor (Krang), and Steve Russel (Khelik) were playing 
netrek with Terence. The three of us were Feds, Terence was Orion.  It was 
a full game, and Terence had come in as Og <== (beginning to get how it 
happened :> ).  At this time, suiciding people with kills *NEVER* happened.  
Dogfighting rained supreme, and cloaking was used only for planet taking, 
that is until Terence decided to teach us CMU boys a'lesson.  Steve had 
accumulated a 3, 4 kill ship and had taken Spica (or El Nath, I don't 
remember) and Terence chased him  and tried to mutual with him. Steve 
killed him, but was left at ~90% internal. As he wiggled towards Fed. 
space he watched the galactic map as Og reappeared and began to move 
rapidly in his direction.  I will never forget how his voice shattered 
the calm of the cluster with yells of "It's OGGGGGGGG. HELP! HELP!!!!!!!!!
It's OOOOOOGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG!!!".  His final words were something to the 
effect of "AAAAAAAAAArrrrrrrgggggghhhhhh, I've been Ogged!!".  Jay and 
I immediately picked up on the effectiveness of suiciding people, and had 
Terence show us how to do it better.   That is how Ogging started getting 
popular, and how the name spread through Netrek History.  [ Kevin Bernatz ] 


Ogger Scum:    
     Those who Ogg for no understandable reason.  This does not include
those who occationally Ogg planet takers with kills, bombers, and star
bases.  However, there are people who Ogg people with no kills, and people
who never take planets simply because it's the only way they can see anyone
blow up other than themselves.  [ Hugh More (ZZnew guy) ]

Pac Man Fever:
     The Grey Elf effect:  To suddenly dodge into a stream of torps. This 
is much better known as "Pac Man Fever!"  You know, eating the dots. 
[ Scott Drellishak ]

Peace scum:
     Players who declare peace against the opposing team so they can get
confuse some of the enemy to waste fuel, and can fuel off of the enemy
planets as well. Generally not applied to scouts mapping the galaxy at the
beginning of a game if they declare peace. [ Walter Pullen ]

Phaser Scum:
      people who, at every opportunity, will try to prove that Phasers are
superior to torps and plasma, and who will was an entire ships worth of 
fuel chasing a phasering a scout . [ Thomas Smith ] 

Pig:
     A 'Borg client written my Tod Mummert.  Also, any player who uses this
client.  Named after MUCUS PIG. [ Timothy Worsley ] 

Pizza scum:
     A player who takes up a slot, normally cloaked, while eating, going to
the bathroom etc. [ Timothy Worsley ] 

Pop:
     When a planet grows armies. [ Timothy Worsley ] 

Plasma Scum:
     Some one who devotes their game play to getting plasma and keeping it 
(i.e. never dying). They stay near a fuel planet and just plasma anyone who 
comes near.  Really obnoxious dorks to have on your team. [ Ellis ? ]

Planet Scum:
     A sub-group of Ratings Scum.  Those who waste armies by dumping them 
on planets that can't be defended in order to improve their planet ratings. 
This can acutally help the team if they have a lot of armies or are against
a clueless opponent.  Often, however, it hurts the team because the 
planets are quickly recaptured and the armies are lost for good. 
[ Hugh More ]

++:
     Carrying.  More or less plusses represent an exact knowledge of number
of armies. [ Timothy Worsley ] 

Pregnant:
     Carrying armies. [ Timothy Worsley ] 

Ratings scum:
     General scummy players who only play to make the next rank and don't
bother helping their team any.  [ Walter Pullen ]

Ratio Scum:
     Another sub-group of Ratings Scum.  Those who are so cautious about
dogfighting that they rarely get a chance to do it, but prefer to pick up
injured ships.  These hurt a team by  stealing kills from those who would
use them (to take planets) and by filling up a team slot with a 
more-or-less useless player.  Frequenly, star bases are Ratio Scum. 
[ Hugh More ]

RCD:
     Receiver Configurable Distress. There is a whole section on these in
your client manual.

Res[urrection] scum:
     People who kill you right when you enter the game. The worst scum of
this type can kill you in this manner several times (especially in a borg
on needmore) each time you get pissed off and come in to kill the person
only to be smashed by a plasma and 8 torps before you can move or fire
anywhere. [ Walter Pullen ]

Type II Res scum: 
     Basically the opposite of the above. These people use a shiny new ship
or two to take out most anyone near their home planet, i.e. you are
beautifully dogfighting, and manage to take out that BB in your DD.
Unfortunately you are now going warp 2 and he comes right back in and 
flies at you in a new CA at warp 9 and your kill quickly becomes his kill. 
[ Walter Pullen ]

Redlining:
     Flying for a long period of time with an e-temp above 95.  
[ Timothy Worsley ] 

The ROBO effect:
     Shooting a plasma as soon as it is fired.  Some only count this as the
ROBO effect if the phasorer is then accused of playing a 'borg client. 
[ Timothy Worsley ] 

Robot scum:
     Players who bring in a 3rd space robot to give them an initial
advantage if they get genocided, or else attract the Terminators or
Hunterkillers over into enemy space to wreak havoc. [ Walter Pullen ]
     [Ellis: since most servers no longer allow bombing out of T, and
terminators' weapons will only hurt the team who fired out of T, and not
many servers even have iggy, you won't see this one a lot either.]

Runner Scum:
     Berkley term.  1) This refers to those who run from and even fight in
hopes of gaining the advantage of shooting backwards.  It is important that
this does not include running when outnumbered, injured, or out of fuel. 
It also does not include merely attemping to stay at range--where a smaller
ship is more effective.  Runner scum are looked down upon because this
tactic can't be used by everyone.  If it were, there would be no kills.  So
those who try to make the game more interesting get reamed. 2) also often
used to descibe those who hide in the backfield and only fight the
occational straggler. [ Hugh More (ZZnew guy) ]

RSA:
     The encryption alogrithm used in Netrek to prevent people from using
borgs. It works like this: each client has its own key, which is in two
parts, a public and a private key. The public key is given to all the
servers. The private key is hidden in the client binary -- this is why
clients are distributed only in binary form. When the client connects to 
the server, the server generates a packet of random data and sends it to 
the client. The client encrypts this with its private key and sends it back 
to the server. The server decrypts this with the public key for that 
client. If the client is what it claims to be, i.e. it has the correct 
private key, the public key will decrypt the packet back to the original 
sequence. It's actually somehwat more complex than this, but the net result 
is that it's very difficult to use a borg when you are not supposed to. 
Even if you do manage to create a "blessed borg", the server gods can 
simply disable the particular key you are using, without causing too much 
disruption.  [ Shekter ]

Scum:
     Of course I like that one definition I read on this group a while 
back, that a ___ scum is someone who does ___ more than I do. [ Walter 
Pullen ] 
     I should point out that at times, calling someone a <whatever> scum 
is a compliment.  Particularly, Planet Scum and Ogger Scum can often help 
their teams, and are cheered by thier fellows. [ Hugh More ]

Shark Ogg:
     To Ogg, without cloaking, by following a player just outside of
effective weapon range, until s/he reaches an obstacle, and then attacking.
[ Timothy Worsley ] 

SMACK!:
     A hit with a plasma torpedo, especially if the ship dies, when it is 
also a FATALITY, and especially when the ship in question was carrying, in 
which case it is also a DOOSH! [ Ellis ]

Surface Bombing:
     Bombing outside planets, genocided race planets, and other undefended
planets. [ Hugh More ]

Starbase scum:
     People who play a SB and try to individually waste anyone that comes
near. This involves cloaking and when an enemy comes within range, quickly
uncloaking and tractoring it in to its death.  Common tactic found most
anywhere. I do it all the time. :) [ Walter Pullen ]
[Ellis: of course, the base isn't helping its team at all.  Don't do it.]

Stealer scum:
     Very annoying teammates who steal your kills or planets, e.g. you
skillfully wound Flt. Capt. Dodgeswell after a hard dogfight and are about
to take him out when some Lieutenant flies in and takes the kill with one
phaser, or you use 4 of your armies to neutralize a planet, only to have
someone else take it when you are away getting more armies. Generally
doesn't apply if they take kills from the SB or take heavily contested
planets. [ Walter D. Pullen ]

Switcher scum:
     People who switch sides in the middle of a game, often to the more
clueful team so they can benefit by a quick genocide. Especially scummy is
to log in on one side, and bomb the enemy flat, then quickly switch and 
bomb the first team flat, to rack up DI. [ Walter Pullen ]

T:
     See T-mode.

Terminal scum: 
     People who kick you off that nice color xterm because you're playing
games and they want to use it to get some work done. [ Walter Pullen ]

Third Space:
     The section of the galaxy owned by teams with no players on them, e.g.
Orion and Klingon space in a Fed vs. Rom game.

Third space scum:
     Someone who takes over neutral space rather than working for a
genocide. [ Timothy Worsley ]

T-Mode:
     Stands for Tournament Mode. Stats are only recorded on the server when
there is a minmum number of players, usually 4 per team, to have a
reasonable game, and the opposing teams are not diagonally across from each
other, i.e. Rom Vs. Ori.. T-mode shows up as a little T in the flags
display. You can only bomb and take planets in T-Mode, so basically if you
don't have T-mode you don't have a game (which means you will have a minimum
of eight players for a Netrek game.)

T-Mode Scum:
     The worst slime in the galaxy. These are the people who at 3am log in
4 times on each side as guest, and then come in as their main character and
bomb everything and take over the galaxy a few times while they are the 
only one playing = lots of DI. [ Walter Pullen ] [Shekter: this is not 
possible on many servers now, as they check the actual login and IP 
address of the player to prevent this sort of thing ]

Wocka Wocka Wocka:
     Pac Man effect of eating enemy's torps without detting.   Also 
labelled as the Grey Elf Effect. [ Hunter Chen ]





