I am having a hard time grasping the way this game works. I read thru just about ALL of the help/rules but I am still troubled.

Lets start with the galactic view I can tell what ships are mine in GV. I am unsure of why certain systems become highlighted all of a suddon.
and I have not been able to figure out where/which systems my ships are in unless I click there name on my ship list on the right. and just playing around last night I launched random type drones in a system just to see what would happen. Today those drones move on there own and take no orders from me shrug. and I am not understanding what I need to do in a system? am i there to control the planet/suck it dry of resources? I also dont know what combat mass looks like and DL or gravity wells??? Are some planets better then others?

When I first started playing Tartarus I read thru the help pages and there were very nice pictures that spelled things out for me pretty good.

Im just a simple Oilfield worker i need big pictures

Thanks

Hi,

Tartarus help has been refined over many years. RipSpace rules/help are the bare minimum for me to get a beta started.

It's good you have posted the confusion though, as it lets me get a record, and start to make the rules/guides better.

Some some answers:
Drones are like fire and forget missiles. You cannot order them at all.

Galactic map exists purely to move ships into systems. There is no 'action' on the galactic map.

The highlighted systems are 'open' which means if you move your ships onto them they will enter the system. Systems only remain open for a time period. When they close, no more ships can enter the system.

When in a system, your fight. The only objective is to kill all the enemy ships, or drive them away - damaging them so heavily that the ships must jump away. If you succeed and become the last ship in the system you win - which means more funds to buy more ships.

However, winning a system is not the only reward. Whenever a ship jumps out of a system it gives up 1 pt of DL. And the nearest enemy gains 1Pt. So if your ship is closest to 3 others that jump out, then it will gain 3 pts. If it then has to jump out itself to avoid death then it loses 1 pt. Net gain for that combat was 2 DL.

DL makes ships better. DL is a max size, and you fill it by moving your ships onto a gravity well. You can spend DL on making your drones better. For example, your ship sits in a grav well gaining 1 DL per turn for 5 turns. It then fires off an attack drone of power 5, but adds 5DL to make it effective power 10. That means when it hits the target it will destroy 10 units, 1 per turn.

DL has doubled the effectiveness of the drone.

Has any of that helped?

Jonathan

The planets are only good for 1 thing in combat: the gravity wells they generate. However, there cannot be more ships than there are planets. (I don't know if asteroid belts count or not.)

Asteroid belts, they do a few things. They produce a gravity well on the hex that an asteroid belt is on, ...

and they also act as natural scrambler zones, so that if a ship is in them then no ship can see it and vice-versa.
.God here - Note this is no longer true, during play test it proved far too powerful. Is it still in the rules, I hoped I had deleted it

...(Useful because you have to see the enemy ship to fire an attack drone, which constantly homes in on it's original target.)

Combat mass(CM) is never seen, you just activate your scoops and pick some up. (You fill hold with mass scoops at a ratio of 1:1.) This cannot be done in gravity wells, so use that to your advantage and beware. (Avoid gravity wells if your running low on CM, and use gravstars to keep your foe from getting CM.)

DL is gained by sitting in a gravity well(GW), which are those colored hexes you see around planets andwhen you use gravstars.(Use the X key to see a GW's power.) If the GW power is 1, you ship will gain 1 DL per turn, if the power is 2 your ship will gain 2 DL per turn. Also, it takes a GW's power+1 to move through a GW. If an attack drone cannot move in a GW, it is destroyed. I'm not sure about other drones. But this means that if you hide behind a strong GW or create one with a gravstar, you might be able to avoid a drone.

A word of caution when firing a drone: No matter where you and your opponents are, you can all see the path a drone takes, from when it is launched to when it reaches it's target. That means fly like your trying to escape a blackhole when you launch drones! (I know it works for attack drones and beholders, not sure of the rest.)

I think that's everything I can tell you... I've got to leave the house in a few minutes anyway to go to church, ciao.

EDIT: Thanks for the correction, Jonathan. Also, I had said asteroid belts produce a gravwell with a power of 1, when actually it is not limited to only 1. (I just encountered an asteroid belt with a gravwell with a power of 2 in the demo.)

Thank you both of you have been very helpful.

one thing tho is "attack drone" the name of one of the drones I can fire???

I dont see "attack drone" as a drone i can fire

Zecha

The attack drone option only appears when your shooting at an enemy ship. The attack drone follows it's target until the target is either reached, or somehow the drone is destroyed.