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The Vague Guide To The TBG Universe

 

Well, the FSP and SIR have guides? Why can't we have one too? Here it is. Before anyone complains, I've had permission from FSP Stargazer (head of FSP) and Maher Shalal Hash Baz (he wrote the SIR one) to write this and use some of the material, formatting used in the other two guides. Thanks to them, and also, I believe, to Eden who I think wrote the FSP one. Right, on with the guide.

1) Yay, I passed the test and now have my very own starship!!!

What the hell do I do now? You have various choices.

  1. Abandon ship. If you are going to do this, at least have the decency to press the drop out button. Then someone else can have the chance to pass the test and then abandon ship also.
  2. Attack the first thing you meet with your primitive laser. If this happens to be an alien with all basic modules, you'll probably lose. For more information on attacking aliens, see further down in the section cunningly entitled Alien Warfare.
  3. Talk to ships that you meet to see if they can help you. If they are a pirate they will probably shoot at you, but don’t let that deter you. Most ships are not pirates, and there are some of us who like to talk.
  4. Start trading. See section on trading
  5. Join an alliance. You can if you want to, and for some people this helps.
  6. Read the SST. This is probably one of the best places for finding out information, and it also gives you a place to slag people off anonymously if you want to.
  7. Look at the playerpages. This is probably THE best place for help, as it gives you an idea about which ships are helpful and such. However, if you want some help or information, don’t forget to say please and thankyou. It does not cost anything, and it’s plain rude to do otherwise.

2) Trading

Ok, you’ve got your ship, you’ve got your $500 and you’ve decided to start trading. What’s your first plan of action? You could always harvest chocolate from a comet cloud. Indeed, some guides say that this is probably the best form of early trade. Personally, I say that’s utter rubbish. The whole point of trading is to make us much money as possible! "I WANNABE ROLLING IN IT" should be your attitude. Hence, something that sells for $25 - $75 is not very good especially when you have to spend about $30 - $40 actually getting somewhere to sell the damn stuff in the first place. Take my advice. E-mail Feline Grace and ask nicely (remembering those P’s and Q’s) and he might send you a help sheet. Alternatively, you could ask me and I’ll give you snippets of information on places to sell things. My advice is get selling contraband as soon as possible (mind you, if you’ve decided to join the FSP then this isn’t an option since it makes enemies of the race that you sold contraband to and the FSP don’t like you having enemies!). Before contraband, try selling something that will give you at least $125 profit. Something like Dilithium, or New tricks. These cost $250 dollars, and as long as you know where they sell at a reasonable price, you can start making a nice profit. What is the point of trading? Well, there are two reasons to trade. One is to be a money-grabbing bastard. The other is to make money to buy decent modules from the shops which leads me nicely onto my next section

3) Making Your Ship Bigger

Again, there are various ways of doing this.

  1. Become a pirate
  2. Buy modules
  3. Shoot modules of alien ships
  4. Shoot modules of human ships
  5. Swap modules with other players
  6. Adventures
  1. Probably one of the not so good options, and is closely linked to option d. If you want to become a pirate, make sure your ship is big enough to be able to lose a fight or two first. Also, be prepared for a few big ships to start chasing you. They can be pretty scary and I guarantee they can run faster than you.
  2. To do this costs money, and also, you need a shop at your location. If both happen to coincide, you can buy a module. However, there are lots of different tech levels. (well, 6 actually, but who’s counting?). For an easy and effective way of remembering the tech level of modules around, remember the following acronym. PBMAEM. It certainly helped me!!! Make sure that your officer is good enough to be able to cope with the demands of a particular module otherwise he’ll have a nervous breakdown, and might possibly top himself. This is not good. However, if you stick to the following simple guidelines , then your officer can relax and drink his herbal tea in peace.

  3. Type of Module

    Skill Level Officer Needs To Maintain It

    Primitive

    2

    Basic

    5

    Mediocre

    10

    Advanced

    17

    Exotic

    26

    Magic

    37
  4. Let’s go alien bashing. I would write it here, but there is a section on alien warfare further down so I don’t think I need to.
  5. This is closely linked to a). Players tend not to like pirates for some reason. Consider the following. You have recently gotten hold of a set of primitive weapons ie Primitive ram, disruptor, gun, laser, missile, and fighter. You arrive at a star where there is a smallish ship which only has a primitive laser. You, being greedy, want that nice basic warp drive he has there, so you attack him and utterly destroy his ship, gaining a broken warp drive along with a few other broken modules that will take a few turns to fix. Then you jump off somewhere for repairs. In a couple of turns time you come face to face with a rather large ship, and this ship sends you an anonymous mail saying "Bye Bye." What do you do? This ship has at least 1 of every kind of weapon at advanced level. Hmm… a few calculations, and your ship has just been destroyed. It turns out that the small ship was part of an alliance which you could quite easily have found out by talking to him. Instead, now you’ve got a reputation as a pirate, and you have to restart. Take my advice. Don’t do this.
  6. However, swapping modules with other players is part of the game, and can be done quickly and easily with a little communication (somewhere along the lines of "can I have one of your warp drives, I can trade you an adventure location / weapon / money"). You get the general idea. People like this option, and you get a good reputation.
  7. These are free and easy. They require skill levels, but also you gain a skill level by successfully completing them. However, the only drawback is that the modules have a low reliability. But hey, what’s wrong with maintaining for a few turns?

4) Alien Warfare

A more detailed section will appear here later. Basically the plan is this.

  1. Find an alien that you can beat up. If you can't beat it up, don't attack it. You will lose (Duh!!)
  2. Check that it has an impulse drive percentage greater than yours (this will become clear later)
  3. ATTACK ATTACK ATTACK ATTACK ATTACK ATTACK (Unless you are in the FSP, in which case, be a really nice ship, and do nothing to that poor defenceless ant.)
  4. Pick up the scraps once the alien has exploded / chickened out / run away / been destroyed / Become a lawyer etc.

A few words of warning. At alien homeworlds, if you meet up with an alien that happens to have it's home world at the place you are at, it will not run away. It will say something like "Rat 36 defending Homeworld Heroically". This can look really amusing when all Rat 36 consists of is an impulse drive and a life support! How the hell do you expect to defend a planet with an impulse drive and a lifesupport I ask? In the process of defending homeworld heroically, they will try to sneak up on you and then explode at you. This causes quite a bit of damage, and you don't get any modules that explode. Damn. They will explode under two circumstances. If the alien has less impulse drive than you, and they are doing less damage than you, they will explode immediately, wherever they are. (If they are doing more damage than you, they will continue to fight.) Secondly, if the alien reaches adjacent range, they will also explode at you. Exploding at you causes lots of damage!! There is an exact formula, but I can't be bothered to work it out, so there. You'll have to look in the rules won't you!!!

5) Human Fighting

There comes a point when you just have to slug it out with someone. Be you a pirate, or someone just out for a revenge attack. The same applies here as it does for fighting aliens, with the added bonus that the ship will not do a kamikaze attack on you and damage lots of your modules. If you are fighting a human ship, it might be wise to consider what tactics that person might be using, are they a complete and utter pillock ie they are attacking you with a primitive fighter when you have a mediocre ram at your disposal and they want adjacent range, and how much damage could they do in one turn. It might be worth considering all that is around you (eg terrain type!) as this does have a bearing on what happens. For a more detailed idea on how to fight people, e-mail us at smugglers_net@hotmail.com and we will try to give you some tips.

6) Player v Player Etiquette

Ok. If you are just going to attack a player, it might not be wise to say "Hello, I am going to attack you" since this then gives the player a chance to run away / hide / gibber in the corner / formulate battle plans with which to annihalate you. Right. Having covered that section of etiquette, this brings us on to the topic of player v player etiquette where the ships don't want to kill each other. Generally, these fall into three categories.

  1. Established player v Established player. In this case, I would reccomend the smaller of the two hailing the larger of the two using the anonymous mail option. Remember to put your name on it otherwise the larger ship won't know who the hell it is from. These meetings generally take place when two ships happen to meet whilst going about their normal business.
  2. Established player v Newbie. Here, it is definitely up to the Newbie to hail the big ship. It is entirely possible that by doing this, the Newbie will get a new mod out of this. These situations crop up mainly at the less popular stars or planets that are not homeworlds. Usually, these are arranged meetings in order to swap modules. I would offer this word of warning though. While it is ok to ask for help occasionally, many people like people to earn things for themselves, so constant please of "can I have xx mod and xx amount of money" might just go unheeded. Also, only demand what the more established player has said you can have. When a ship is a Newbie, there isn't much for it to do, apart from exchange demo mods for primitive mods, and start the long road of trading and attacking small aliens. Big ships however have the means and the skill do be doing lots of adventures, and shooting up the rankings. Whilst most big ships are more inlcined to help newbies, they don't like being taken for granted with their help so try your best to be gracious, and thankful, and above all, it is up to you to keep communicating with the larger ship to keep things going smoothly.
  3. Newbie v Newbie. Well, absolutely anything could happen here as at least 50 percent of the Newbies that join do not have a clue what is going on at the beginning, and both could end up hiding in space from each other, or something equally amusing! I think this section is best left to chance, as that what is usually is in the game itself!

7) Advanced Options

  1. Dybuk of Evil
  2. Favour
  3. Subspace Times
  4. Alioth Orbiting Oasis - Now the TBG newsgroup
  5. Anonymous Mail
  6. Trilobyte Player Pages
  7. The Rules
  8. Alliances
  9. Alliances
  10. Popcorn
  11. Criminals
  12. Officer levels up
  1. Under no circumstances should you release this guy. Despite what some people say (like RUS Earless, and they are perfectly entitled to their opinions, I just think that they are wrong, but that’s my opinion!) Evil is a bad thing. Like it’s name says, Dybuk of Evil is not good. Ok, so Dybuk won’t attack a small ship like you, but it pisses off quite a few of the bigger ships whom Dybuk will attack by forcing them to waste a few turns trying to kill him. And, when they’ve finished with Dybuk, they’ll come after you. Some people like this sort of thing. Count me among their number!! Anyway, it isn’t really worth it. For releasing Dybuk, you get Popcorn. See popcorn for why this isn't such a great thing.
  2. You may have noticed on your screen the Engineering, Science, Medical, and Weaponary favour lists. These are a good thing. However, once you get 15 favour in one of those areas, you can start denouncing and geting even more favour!! Yay!!! I can denounce. Must Denounce!! However, if you do denounce, it’s quite possible that you’ll run into the prophet you denounced pretty soon, and things start to get pretty much like the pirate scenario! Whoops. Ok, maybe not denounce denounce. Ok, so how do I get the favour then? Well, if you read the rules, like a good boy/girl then you will find out. Basically, you get engineering favour for the size of your ship and energy gained each turn, Science favour for hacking starnet terminals, Medical favour for reducing plagues, and weaponary favour for having lots of enemies and scoring hits on other ships. There are 4 prophets. If you get chosen by a prophet (I’m not sure what you are chosen to do, but you can get chosen!!) then you can commune with the appropriate Great Old One for free favour. No-one gets annoyed if you do this! However, if you start denouncing a prophet without permission, then you can be classed as a heretic. Wahey, it's time to burn people at the stake! Well, not quite, but it does mean that you can no longer praise/denounce and your modules suffer from a 1% reduction in reliability. Not Good. Take my advice. Don't get into this situation!
  3. Ah, the good old SST. This is the place to publish reports of pirates, to generally leave short messages, to ask for assisstance (ie to ask for a module if you desperately need one. Someone might give you one!) and to generally leave little snippets of information about how annoying that last alien encounter was, or how good that last trade was. Also on this topic is
  4. The Alioth Orbiting Oasis. This is the local pub in TBG and is a place for Bar Talk. You can find it by e-mailing smugglers_net@hotmail.com, or it is linked to on some playerpages. There is only one rule for the Alioth Orbiting Oasis, and that is no anonymous posting. If you have something to say, don’t hide behind a blocked up door. No-one will take you seriously. However, I don't think this place exists anymore, so the next best thing resides at the TBG Newsgroup. Just follow the link on your secret URL turn page.
  5. The best way to talk to people is via the anonymous mail. At least, it is for first contacting them anyway. It’s also quite amusing for posting anonymous messages to people, but don’t do that. It’s not very nice, and nice Mr Jeremy might take the option away. Make sure you sign your ship name to all messages, and if possible, put an e-mail address that you can be contacted at there. When you meet a new ship, it might be nice to send an anonymous mail to them if only to say hi and to state your intentions (which are peaceful aren’t they. If they are not, well, you can tell them if you want to, but they might run away!) Anonymous mail is found via the utilities page.
  6. A place to put any information about you and your starship that you want. You can even put a link to another site if you want more than one page (greedy so and so. You never catch me doing that!!) This is also a place to let people know what sort of ship you are, and whether you want to be friends or whether you want to be the school bully.
  7. Three words on this matter. READ THE RULES
  8. If there are other human ships at your location, you have the option of allying with them. If you do, you can then give them money. Isn’t that nice. However, if you ally with each other, then the stronger ship will guard the weaker ship if they encounter an enemy. Ah, isn’t that nice. There’s not much else to say about this sort of alliance, except that you can only ally with one ship, whereas unlimited ships can name you as their ally. If you try and ally with another ship, your first ally will no longer be your ally and you can’t give them money!!! You can only give money to your ally if you happen to be in the same place during the turn.
  9. The other sort of alliance is something like FORT, The FSP, SIR, and the Smugglers Net. You can join anyone of these (except FORT, which has a member limit so that other players form their own alliances) as long as you agree to their constitutions. The smugglers net doesn’t have a constitution, except to say that You must be sociable.
  10. As I mentioned before, Popcorn has it’s advantages and disadvantages. You can get popcorn one of two ways. By collecting it after detecting it in a long range scan, or by releasing Dybuk of Evil (NOT GOOD!!!) You can then sell it, and the exact price is determined by differentiating, raising to the power of 5/6, integrating, interpolating it, taking the laplace transform of it, and finally by adding 1 to your answer, ie there is a lot of maths involved. Alternatively, you could look in the rules to find out exactly how it is worked out. However, here is the down side. Your crew health goes down 1% for every popcorn you are holding PER TURN, so if you are holding 21 popcorn, your crew health goes down by 21% each turn. Soon you’ll have a ship full of dead people. Isn’t that a bit smelly?!
  11. These guys are detected at various places. Once you have detected them, send in the LAPD (your weaponary officer!!) to get him. If he resists arrest, get him with the stun gun. If that misses, drop the cage from above on him. If that misses, roll out the tanks and blast his backside to kingdom come. Alternatively, just get a big stick and hit him with it. This tactic has never failed for me. Once you have him under arrest, interogate him to find the next one. If he doesn’t talk, increase the power of the solar generators, so feeding even more electricity through his body. Frazzle him, fry him, if all else fails, hit him. Just make sure you extract information out of him. Then take him to a prison, or accept a bribe.
  12. To get your officers skill up, you can send him to school, you can send him to an academy, you can get him to repair and maintain weapons, you can get him to go on adventures, you could get him to hack starnet terminals, or you could get an evil ring (see rules) and steal them off people, so making them your enemy!! Not good. Also, recruiting crew helps bolster the skill level so you can maintain your modules better!!

Well, that’s the end of this guide. I did this after reading the Rough and Rougher guides (FSP and SIR respectively) and if there is anything here that is there, thanks for letting me use it. Since I did this without reference to the other ones, I can’t tell if any part of this is the same or not. Anyway, if it is, that bit is courtesy of whichever guide it came from.