Terra-Firma Ver 8.40 Hints It is VERY easy to get wasted in the Terra-Firma Universe! This file will make it a bit easier to cope. This small file is in two parts. Part 1 being how to stay alive! Part 2, How to best put some of the more obscure features to good use. Section One: How to stay alive....... ** IMPORTANT ** Always check ahead to the next sector you are planning to visit! There are four very good reasons for this. One is that the sector may contain a Black Hole, Nova or Neutron Star. Your Colony ship is not designed to be any where near these type of stars. Because of this Bounders were developed. Bounders are designed to jump ahead into the next sector and check for these types of conditions before your onboard ship computer lets your ship enter. Bounders are great but limited! They will not help you with Space Pirate attacks or Satellite attacks. The second reason is Space Pirates! Most of the time they travel in small groups of under one hundred ships. Which your Colony fighter ships can easily handle. However there are Space Pirate War Lords cruising through the Universe and they can be very tricky! They may let it look like there are just a few Pirates in the sector, but hidden behind Planets and Moons could be a rather large fleet! Be careful! These fleets have been known to be over 60,000 Space Pirate fighter ships! Thirdly, be on the alert for other players Satellites. Once a Satellite has more than 100,000 fighterships on it. The Satellite will scan for two sectors around it and attack anything that enters those sectors! Once your Colony Ship has reached a level where you can carry 50,000 or more fighter ships. You are fairly safe from being destroyed by Space Pirates or Satellites. However, you must be on a constant guard for the three star type sectors mentioned above. Fourth, if you are out Colonizing or just planning to orbit a planet for supplies you MUST know if you are in Hostile Sector or not! The various scanners will report on whether or not you have entered a hostile sector. Most Hostile sectors will let you pass through unharmed but if a sector is considered hostile, it is because the planets have banned together in an effort to stay safe. Some planets will of course be more able to defend themselves and will be able to launch more Fighterships in defense. In the Terra-Firma Universe it is very unlikely for a planet to launch more than 30,000 fighterships. Never orbit a planet without first sending a scout out to survey the planets. If it is hostile, leave or make a trading pact with them. (from the main menu) Remember to leave your ship in the vicinity of one of your Satellites as other players must get through it's defense force before they can get to your ship. A protective grid is the best as only a tactical nuke can destroy it. If you have satellites surrounding your grid then the other player is going to have a hard time getting close enough to you to launch the nuke! Section Two: Obscure and strange things I have found about the game........ To win Terra-Firma or just to become the most powerful player, you need supplies from one of three space stations in the Universe. The location of only one of these Space stations is known. So if one were to block off the access to these Space Stations by orbiting powerful Satellites in the near by sectors, one could control access to these Space Stations! The above could still work but I have increased the number of satellites found in the universe and randomly placed them about. You will need to find them. The map 2 option is great for finding space stations. Co-Pilots have some undocumented (except here) features. Whether this is due to planning or some strange programming quirk will never fully be understood or known? Colonizing hostile sectors can be expensive in fighter ships. Not to mention dangerous! Co-Pilots can colonize these sectors for you while you are off line. For some strange reason they can get in and out of these sectors without a problem......Also, the planet defenses don't seem to affect things either! Copilots can also sneak around Space Pirates without a problem. Obviously, the builders and programmers at the Space Stations know something we don't. That however doesn't matter. What does matter for us is that it works! Not only does it work for the above but seems to be true of sneaking around Satellites loaded with fighter Ships! A few things to have in mind before you move, Make sure you have some bounders on board as they are destroyed when they hit a bad sector! Make sure you have scanned ahead. I always scan ahead to check for Space Pirates. If I fly into a new sector, the first thing I do is launch a scout ship to check the planets out. This scout ship will report back anything it finds including whether or not you are in a Hostile sector! In the normal scanner report you will see a heading untitled ships. If there is a (00) double zero the sector is safe from pirates. If you see a (01) it may be one Space Pirate or another player. Anything over (01) will be a fleet of Space Pirates. Remember that this may be a ruse, as there could be other unscanned Pirates hiding. Another undocumented feature is that when you bribe pirate fighter ships to join your fleet they are not considered part of your compliment of fighters. Their number will be added to the number of fighters you have on board during an inventory check but they are actually outside the ship and travel with you using fuel from your ships stores. The limit of fighters on board a level 99 ship is 99000 but you can efectively add to this number by bribing pirates to join your fleet. This is a great way to protect your ship from two fully loaded satellites that may be protecting the same sector and simultaneously launch 50,000 fighter ships at you. This feature may come in real handy if you need to get within 1 sector of a players defensive frid to launch a tactical nuke. The player may have protected his grid sector with multiple satellites just waiting to strike out at some unsuspecting colony ship that comes within their protective sphere. It will aloso be a great surprise to use on another player who never reads doc files! Also rememer that in version 8.35 with tactical nukes the defensive grid is no longer invincible. One of the best strategies I can think of would be to place a fully loaded satellite within the defensive grid sector. Also place some around the defensive grid sector. This way a player who wants to destroy your defensive grid has to deal with simultaneous multiple attacks from your satellites before he can launch a tactical nuke at you. He would then have to destroy the all the surounding satellites before he could get to your ship. Ending thoughts: Terra-Firma is a dangerous place. As is real life. I and many others who have gotten into the game believe it is more realistic this way. It lends an element of danger to the game, that other Space games may not have. I love player suggestions and incorporate many of them into the game. Please let me know if you have a great original idea. I do not except suggestions that are anything like other Space games. Dave Wendling FiDoNet 1:332/107 BBS 413-684-0145 I also monitor DOORGAMES and the DOORWARE FiDoNet Echos. Internet "nugicon@delphi.com" þ