HARMLESS

Your First Flight

You have a Cobra Mk III, one hundred credits, a pulse laser and no reputation whatsoever. Nobody is going to tell you what to do next, which is rather the point. But here is a first hour that works.

1. Buy cargo. Press M at the station for the market. Lave is a rich agricultural world, so its food, textiles, liquor and furs are cheap. Buy something and fill the hold.
2. Pick somewhere to sell it. N opens the short range chart. Anything inside the dashed circle is within your fuel. Industrial worlds pay well for what agricultural worlds grow.
3. Target it and jump. Move the cursor with the arrow keys, press ENTER to target, then L to launch and H to make the jump.
4. Fly to the station. You arrive a long way out. Point at the planet and press J for the torus drive; it cuts out near anything solid, including pirates.
5. Dock. Line up with the rotating port and go in slowly. See Docking. It is the hardest thing you will do today.
6. Sell, refuel, repeat. And this time buy a little more.

You will also see fat margins on Narcotics and Slaves. Those are illegal. Carrying them makes you a target for the police, and getting caught costs more than the run is worth. Until you know what you are doing, anyway, and then it is your business.

Your Ship

A Cobra Mk III. Fast, tough enough, and with a hold big enough to make a living. Everything on the console tells you something that will eventually keep you alive.

Fore / Aft shields

Take damage before your hull does, and recharge on their own. They are directional: a ship behind you drains the aft bar. Turning to face an attacker puts a fresh shield between you and it.

Energy

Four banks. What is left after your shields fail. When it reaches zero you are dead. Also fuels the ECM and the energy bomb, so burning it defensively is a real trade.

Fuel

Seven light years, in tenths. Only hyperspace consumes it; flying about a system is free. Refuel at any station, or skim a sun if you have fuel scoops and steady nerves.

Cabin temperature

Rises near a sun. Ignore it and you cook.

Laser temperature

Rises as you fire. Let it max out and the laser cuts out exactly when you need it, so fire in bursts.

Scanner

The ellipse at the centre of the console. You are the middle; the stalks show whether a contact is above or below you. Red is hostile, green is not, yellow is the station.

Controls

Two layouts. Classic is the 1984 BBC Micro scheme and the default; Modern is WASD. Toggle with B when docked. Arrow keys fly in both, flight-style, so pull back to climb.

These tables are generated from the game's own keymap, so they cannot fall out of step with what your keyboard actually does.

Trading

The whole economy turns on one idea: worlds are short of what they do not make. Every commodity has a price that slides with the local economy, and the two ends of that slide are where your money is.

So the classic run is a short hop between neighbours at opposite ends of that scale, carrying one thing out and a different thing back. Poor worlds have the sharpest prices and the worst company.

Contracts (C when docked) pay better than cargo for the same journey: deliveries, courier work, and bounties on pirates. They have deadlines. Missing one costs you the fee and some standing.

Hyperspace & the Charts

N gives the short range chart, your neighbourhood, with a dashed circle showing exactly how far your remaining fuel will take you. G gives the whole galaxy: 256 worlds, all of them real, all of them generated the same way they were in 1984.

Move the cursor with the arrows, ENTER to set your target, D for a full report on the world under the cursor, and F to search by name. Then H in flight to jump.

You arrive at the witch-point, a long way out from the planet, and the journey in is part of the game. That is what the torus drive (J) is for. It disengages near anything with mass: a planet, a station, or somebody who wants your cargo.

Docking

The single most feared manoeuvre in space, and rightly. The station rotates. The docking port rotates with it. You have to arrive lined up with a slot that will not hold still.

1. Approach the face with the port on it. An amber marker shows where the port is, with an arrow at the screen edge when it is behind you.
2. Get on the axis, straight out from the port, not off to one side.
3. Roll to match the port's rotation. This is the part people miss. The opening is a letterbox, and your ship has to be the same way up as it is.
4. Slow down. Then go in. The marker turns green and reads DOCKING PORT — LINED UP when you have it.

Get it wrong and you bounce off the hull with a bang and a dent in your shields. Get it wrong at speed and you die.

When you have the money, buy a docking computer. It is the least glamorous purchase in the catalogue and the one that will do most for your quality of life.

Trouble

Pirates

They want your cargo, and they size you up before committing. A fat hold on a soft ship draws a crowd. Anarchies are worst.

Jettison (Y)

Throwing cargo out genuinely works. A pirate who gets paid loses interest; this is an escape, not a donation.

ECM (E)

Destroys incoming missiles. Costs energy. A missile you do not answer will take most of your shields with it.

Police

Vipers, and they are good. They care about contraband and about who shot first. Shoot a clean ship near a station and you will find out how good.

The law

Your legal status follows you across the galaxy. Offender is inconvenient; fugitive means every Viper in the system.

Gangs

Organised, well equipped and coordinated. They fly as a unit rather than a mob. You will not meet one until you are worth the trouble. Consider that a compliment and then consider leaving.

Equipment, roughly in the order worth buying it

1. A large cargo bay, because every run then earns more.
2. Fuel scoops. Free fuel from suns, and they let you collect cargo canisters from things you have shot.
3. The beam laser is the first upgrade that changes a fight.
4. An E.C.M. system answers missiles.
5. A docking computer. See above. Buy it.
6. Escape pod. Cheap insurance. You lose the cargo and the ship, but you keep being alive.
7. An extra energy unit recharges you faster, which in a long fight is worth more than it sounds.
8. Military laser, galactic hyperdrive, energy bomb. For when money is no longer the problem.

Stations only sell what their tech level supports. The good things are on the high-tech worlds, which are usually the safe ones.

Ratings

Your combat rating is the only score that matters, and it moves slowly. It starts at Harmless and ends, for almost nobody, at E L I T E.

Harmless · Mostly Harmless · Poor · Average · Above Average · Competent · Dangerous · Deadly · E L I T E

Tougher opponents count for more, so the ladder is climbed by picking harder fights, not more of them. Reaching the top is the whole game. Most commanders die Competent.

The Long Way Out

The original shipped with a novella in the box. So does this one: an original story in five chapters, together with papers from the eight galaxies: a GalCop advisory on how pirates size you up, obituaries from the Tionisla Chronicle, a dead pilot's log, and the bar-talk about the Dark Wheel.

Read The Long Way Out →