Terminus F.A.Q.
Version 0.4b
Mar.,01. 2000
Since i am not native to the english language there are surely many horibble
spelling and gramatical errors in this F.A.Q. If you find one, it would be
very nice if you could mail it to
me. Thanks!
New items in this version are marked with ** and everything new since the
last version is marked with *. Changed items are marked with !! or !
Terminus is an Universe in which you
can play the role of a starship pilot exploring space. You can trade and fight
against other players and computer enemies. You can buy new ships and have a
good time. To play this game you need the program
XShipwars which runs on different Unix
flavors and is currently ported to Windows.
XShipwars is a game which allows you to
set up universes and play in those. The Program is freely available and
contains not only the client needed to play the game but also the server,
which you will need if you plan to set up your own universe. It also
contains some tools to create and administrate an universe.
If your question is about XShipwars
and not about this universe, you better check out the
XShipwars F.A.Q. first.
The latest version of this F.A.Q. is available at the
Terminus Homepage or at
My Homepage.
Mail me (Mindflayer) your question
and I will try to answer it and add it to the F.A.Q. If you already have the
answer to your question, please mail it nevertheless (of course with the
answer ;)) and I will add it to the F.A.Q.
Well, it means exactly what it says. At the moment, nearly everything,
including ai-enemys, economic system and the like are still very experimental
and the universe gets reset about once a week, which at least will cause
every player to loose everything and maybe even the universe gets changed.
There are two mailing lists for terminus. The first one is a very low-traffic
moderated list that supplies you with announcements. It is mandatory for
every player and you are subscribed to it as soon as you get an account. But
there is also a free mailinglist for discussions concerning the universe.
You can subscribe to it by sending a mail to
majordomo@terminator.net with
the body "subscribe xsw".
To get a permanent account register your player
here. You will have to
provide the name you want for your player, a password, your email-adress
and which empire you want to join. Because the accounts need to be set up
manualy it may take some time until it gets activated. Just try to login
after some time. If you still can't login with your name and pwd you have
to wait a little bit longer.
The right one of course ;). There are four empires. A short description can
be found here. However,
since the universe is still in the testing-phase, it doesn't matter that much
which empire you choose yet.
If you just got your account activated you should not go to battle
immediately. Instead you should do a little trading until you have enough
money to buy a good ship. If you buy a new ship you should sell of all
Antimatter of the old one first, to get some extra money.
Hmm, this is indeed a very easy question at the moment. If you want to make
money fast (this is no spam-mail ;) ) and don't want to fight, you will
surely want to get the Ferengi Trader. If you want to fight, get a defiant
class ship. It has only medium armor and shields, but it has good weapons,
nice speed, cool maneuverability and a cloacking device.
Just type "e" (which will bring up the server prompt) and then "who" to get
a list of all players online.
If you want to talk to someone near you, press the h button to hail him.
This will tell everyone near you, which frequency you use.
Then he must enter the communication frequency you use (or you must enter
the frequency he uses by pressing the "k"-Key) and after that you can talk
to each other using the "'"-Key. If you want to say something to everyone,
you have to bring up the server prompt by pressing the "e"-key and then
enter "wall yourmessage". This will send your message to EVERYONE online. It
is not possible (yet) to talk only to selected persons if they are to far
away to use the normal (i.e. '-Key) communication.
Well, there are several things that can have happened. First, if you are
using a GUEST account, you will of course loose everything after logging
out. If you have an account but get killed, you will have to start over with
the same stuff a new player gets. If the universe was reset, you will also
loose everything (see here for more details. Or maybe
your ship was blasted away while you where offline, because you didn't
hide your ship. This is not allowed in the game,
but unfortunately it is still possible.
You can only set course for an object in scanner range. To do that, either
press "I" and enter the objects name or middle-click on the object in the
scanner-window. Unfortunately it is not possible to set course to specific
coordinates or to an object too far away yet.
Terminus is featuring a (still beta, like most of the game ;) ) economic
system that allows you to buy and sell stuff for profit and also to buy new
ships or new armament for your weapon system. To trade you have to bring up
the "Economy Window" for the object with which you want to trade. To do that
first select the object as target and then press the right mousebutton to
bring up the popup menu. Now select "Economy..." from this window. A new
window will pop up and show you what, how much and at what price you can buy
or sell from the targeted object. You can also bring up the window by flying
near (very near) to the object. To trade with the selected object, get near it
(about 0.1 au), select the cargo you want to trade, enter the quantity in
the bottom line and hit the buy or sell button.
There are 5 different places to buy or sell objects.
-Starbase - sells Weapons, Hull repair, buys cargo
-Starport - buys and sells cargo
-Stardock - sells ships, buys cargo
-Planet - buys and sells cargo
-Headquater - sells ships
Cargo means stuff like Textiles, Food, Electronics and the like.
However, prices and wares are also differ from one object to the next, so
you have to do a little exploring by yourself to find the optimal trade
routes.
There are three different taxes on each trading post. One for friendly
units, one for neutral units and one for enemy units. They are displayed at
the top right corner of the economics screen. Currently all trading posts of
your empire see you as friendly, while all others see you als enemy. So you
would most times want to trade with trading posts of your empire, unless you
don't have the time to get to one.
The economy window will pop up everytime you cross a trading post.
Unfortunately, if it is allready open, it will reload the data for that
planet again and again, while you pass over it. So it will of course slow
down your client. The solution is simple. Just add (or modify) the line
AutoMapEconomyWindow = no
to your .xshipwarsrc-file. After that, the eco-window will only pop up, if
you press the right mouse button and select "Economy" from the pop-up menu.
Simply enter your name in the upper line of the economy window and press
refresh.
If you buy anti-matter or raw materials, you have to wait some time, until
everything got transferred to your ship. To see how much you have loaded at
the moment, press the "e"-Key and then enter "ex me" to see your current
status including your cargo.
If you disconnect from the universe, your ship stays where you left it, so
it could be that maybe someone will run into it. It is however forbidden to
attack players that are not online, so leave him alone. Of course it is best
to hide your ship when you disconnect
Simply get as near as you can (.01 AU or closer)to an home object (which is a
planet or base belonging to your empire) before you disconnect. If you
disconnect now, your ship will be safe from attacks until you return.
Unfortunately there is no full map accessible from the client, but there is
one on the bridge on the
webpage If you move your mouse-cursor over an object, you will get the
coordinates of the object.
Well, if you are in real trouble and just need to get away, you can either
activate your cloaking device, if your ship is equipped with one, which will
depending on its streng dramatically reduce the maximum distance at which
you are visible on enemy scanners, or you can fly as fast as possible to the
next nebula, which will have a similar effect if you are inside. After you
are sure that your enemy can't see you anymore on his scanners, turn and
escape or try something else to outnavigate him. (It's somewhat like in those
old submarine-simulations).
Well, if they are of an enemy empire, you can kill them, if they are of your
empire, you can fly near them. They will start following you and that way
you can build up a small armada or the like.
Sometimes, there will be a time-limited mission game, in which there are
several mission to be done (which are set up by the host). If such a game
takes place, you will be informed by mail, when it will be, and what the
missions will be.
If you are unlucky, you will run into a biiiig (and I mean big!), bad cubic
thing, which will take about 500 photon torpedoes to kill, and which will
kill you very easy. Those cubes are called borg. As you see, it is a bad
idea to attack them alone. You should better get some players who are
willing to help you and attack together with them. So if you like to be
killed, go there. However the borg stuff is changing very fast, and it is
possible that there are no borgs in the current game.
Well, we all want to see many features added to the game. Unfortunately the
game developers and the universe creator can't work all day on the game (and
even that may not be enough time..). So it would be best if you are able to
add your feature yourself and then mail the sourcecode or the
universe-change to the person in charge. However, better double check with
them, if your feature is really wanted. If you have an idea concerning
Terminus, you can discuss it on the mailing list
(see also 1.7). I have put up a list of things
discussed on the mailing list on my
homepage
Well, it depends. If you want to help developing the client/server, go to
the XShipwars Homepage and look there
for further instructions. If you want to help with the universe, send an
email to Stein and ask him what
you could do, or even better, what you would like to do, if you already have
an idea what should be added to the universe. It would also be great if
someone out there could do some additional artwork for the universe. And
last but not least, if you want to help
me, the F.A.Q.-Keeper, you can do
that in many ways. First of all, I would really appreciate it if you tell me
any spelling or grammatical bugs you found at this document, and also all
bugs found in the HTML-code of the F.A.Q. Unfortunately neither English nor
HTML is my mother tongue, and therefore this whole document is surely
somewhat fucked up. It would also be great if you would mail me any
questions (preferrable with answers ;) ) of things that are not mentioned
here but that you think should be in the faq.
Without the following people, this F.A.Q. would not have been possible:
Stein (TGI), the great master and
designer of this universe and currently the only contributor to the F.A.Q.,
who pointed out many things that I could add to the F.A.Q.
PyroGX (PKU), for providing me with
many spelling fixes and also some improvements to the answers.
The following people for sending questions and answers:
Michal Szczotka a.k.a psivirion(CMC),
Al Arduengo a.k.a. ?
Mindflayer