Sponsored by

The FSP and SIR have guides, and FORT have newbie hints from RUS Earless. Well, we decided here at the Smugglers Net to have our very own guide. This is almost a shameless copy of the FSP and the SIR one, and I am very grateful to FSP Stargazer and Maher Shalal Hash Baz for permission to use their respective guides as a basis for my own. Also, thanks to Eden who wrote the original FSP guide in the first place

The FSP's Rough Guide To The Galaxy

The following guide is designed to help new starships joining the play by e-mail game To Boldly Go. The advice presented to you below is based around the experiences of novice and veteran members of The Foundation For Spreading Peace and.....

Sorry, must have missed this bit when I was copying, pasting, and deleting.

This is what you do when you meet a ship that is bigger than you. There are two options. You can make like a tree and leave, that is run away, chicken out, flow like custard away from the scene of attack and use the hide in space/gas giant/coronosphere option. This is a good idea when the ship you meet is a hostile, chaotic, or enemy alien, and also when you meet BSL (or any other pirate who is bigger than you). This is a bad idea when you meet no-one, an alien who is pathetically weaker than you as it wastes officer turns. The second option is to try and talk to the person you meet. This is a good idea when the person you meet is a human as they will have an e-mail address you can use to e-mail them. This is a bad idea if you are facing an alien as they do not have an e-mail address and so can't be contacted via e-mail. This is also a bad idea when meeting pirates eg BSL coz they will just laugh maniacally and shoot you anyway.

This is a good way to get money. What you do is you go to somewhere where there is a factory selling something, then go somewhere else where they buy it. Here are a few trading tips. If you buy something worth $100 or over, don't scrap it as it only becomes worth $25 then. Don't lose your pod(s) and warp drive in a fight. You completely up a certain creek without a certain paddle then. Make sure you always sell for a profit. It's not really worth it otherwise. Don't sell in the same location that a ship bigger than you is selling in. There's no point as the price will plummet before you get to sell. I personally think that chocolate is rubbish. Ok, so it don't cost anything, but the profit you make on it is really crap and doesn't cover the cost of the jumps you made to get there. I recommend doing the contraband run. This also makes enemies of some aliens which gives you weaponry favour.

Weaponry officer, Fix this, maintain that. Engineering Officer, get those warp drives going, maintain them. Science officer, hack that starnet, scan the local area for popcorn. Medical officer, ermm.... Heal crew? Ok, get some crew then. These demand $1 pay per turn, and guess what, you don't get a choice about this. Mind you, once trained they increase the skill level of the officer they work for so that you are able to maintain better modules and go on better adventures!!! You can recruit crew from hiring halls, or from rogue bands. Don't spend all your cash on sending your officer to school as the early skill levels are obtained through maintenance and repairing modules. Adventures also give skill points. For mercenaries, you can bid for them and decide how much you want to pay for them. Then you put them in a pod and leave them there for a while. If you dispand them, you can then only bid for another one if you are very lucky (5% chance each turn of them forgiving you). Mercenaries are used for getting the mercenary contracts that are offered in the SST

These could also be included under the title "Free Modules" or "Whoops, let's run away". If they are smaller than you (or have less weaponary than you) I advise shooting them for all it's worth and getting a few free (if damaged) modules. If the ship is bigger than you (or it doesn't have impulse drive % greater than yours) see the defend option. If the impulse drive % is less than yours, the alien self destructs in a kamikaze attack doing plenty damage to your ship!!! For more on alien warfare, click here.

This bloke is one evil dude. He takes the form of Weasel 127, and he has an evil zapper. Never fear, I will get him with my lightsabre of Goodness. Oh, he snapped it in two. Ok, here comes my Sword of Omens. Oh, that's broken in two as well. Ermm... I'm running out of options? Ah, so that's what you use 100 favour for. Spell : Banish Evil. Ah. He's gone now. You can come out from behind the sofa. Right. Who released him? "me miss." Ah, it was you. What did he offer you? "popcorn miss". Oh. So you released evil for some popcorn. Right. Do you know what evil did to that really big ship over there? Well, that ship sure isn't happy about it and is going to track you down and destroy you. Was it really worth it for some popcorn?

NEVER RELEASE EVIL (unless you think that you can get away with it)

Hey, this stuffs good, and I didn't even need to pray to get it. Some wizened old bloke with a beard just gave me this stuff. Cool. What can I do with it? Well, with 100 favour of a particular type, you can achieve enlightenment, which means that you can then banish evil, predict evil's movements, and also protect yourself from evil's attacks. You can also improve you ship with favour. Once you get 15 favour, you can either praise a prophet, or denounce a prophet. Denouncing gets you more favour which is a good thing. However, when the prophet turns up next turn to demand why you took it from him without permission, things don't look to rosy. Have you seen how big the prophets are? Take a look at the rankings, and lets just say that the top ship has amass of around 300!!!!

The really big ships who give out favour and also gain favour from other players due to praising. They work for wizened old guys who have big white beards, and are known as the Great Old Ones. They apparently invented the universe, so I'm sure one of their names is Jeremy.

There are currently 3 main alliances. The FSP, SIR, and FORT. There are probably numerous other secret ones (the smugglers net being one of these!!) If you join an alliance, you do get a head start in your game, but the alliance rules also pin you down. It depends on whether you want to be a free spirit or be ruled by someone as to whether you join an alliance. I will not try to sway you either way, although if you would like to join the smugglers net, e-mail us at smugglers_net@hotmail.com and we will give you more details.

The Better Ship Lollipop (BSL as he is referred to) is the most famous pirate. However, there are others, and there are numerous lists and places of information where pirating can be reported. If you want to become a pirate, remember that there are ships bigger than you and they will come and find you if you bash up an ally of theirs. Fun isn't it when you meet a ship who is so much bigger than you that their rams and guns are bigger than the whole of your ship!! If you do want to report piracy, see the TBG Villians list on the homepage of Maher Shalal Hash Baz, or you could report it in the Sub Space Times.

Ok, that's all for now. Once again I would like to thank the FSP and SIR for letting me use their Guide format. Sorry it's not very original, but I'm not an original kind of guy.