V0.2 Quick Play Guide

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Revision as of 12:21, 11 February 2005 by 62.154.194.134 (Talk) (The System TrashPanel)

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A Quick Start Guide to Playing FreeOrion v.2

The Galaxy Setup Screen Options

  • Stars The total number of stars in the galaxy. Use the spinner to adjust, or click on the number and type an amount.
  • Galaxy Shape The shape the stars are arranged in.
  • Galaxy Age Older galaxies will tend to have more blackholes and other inhospitable stars.
  • Starlane Frequency The number of starlanes per star. Ships in FreeOrion must travel by starlane.
  • Planet Density The number of planets per star.
  • Specials Frequency Has no effect in v.2.
  • Empire Name & Color Self explanatory

The Galaxy Map

Click with the left mouse button and drag to move the map around. The scroll wheel zooms the map in and out. If you don’t have a scroll wheel, use the plus and minus key on the numeric keypad to zoom. (The E and R keys can also be used to control zoom.)

FreeOrion is a turn-based game. Clicking the “Turn” button in the upper left corner will advance to the next turn.

You’ll see a bunch of stars on the map, but at the start of the game only one star is explored: your home-system. Clicking on this or any other star with the left mouse button will pull up the System SidePanel. Clicking on empty space or pressing the S key dismisses the sidepanel.

You can press the D key to pull up the Sidepanel for your empire's home-system. This also centers the galaxy map on the home-system. The X and C keys will walk through each star system with colonies owned by your empire.

There’ll be a tiny triangle hovering near your home-system. This is a fleet: you begin the game with two scout ships and a colony ship. Clicking on a fleet will pull up the Fleet Window. Right clicking on empty space will dismiss the Fleet Window, as will left clicking the tiny X in the upper right corner.

The V and B keys will walk through each fleet owned by your empire. The F and G keys can be used to walk through each fleet owned by your empire that is idle (as in, not moving).

When playing multiplayer, press “Enter” to send to type a chat message. Press Enter again to send the message.

See Manual for an overview of keyboard commands.

Game Menu

Pressing the menu button in the extreme upper left of the screen or pressing F10 will open the game menu. You can save or load games from this menu, or turn off the background music.

Siterep

Pressing the siterep in the upper left of the screen or pressing F2 will open the "Situation Report". This is a listing of events that occured in your empire during the last turn.

The System SidePanel

At the right side, you will see a collection of garbage flying through space. This is usually radioactive trash that was released from larger space ships.

The Fleet Screen

You can see fleets hovering near stars: tiny triangles colored depending upon which empire they belong to. Click on your fleet to pull up the fleet window.

The top of the fleet window is a listing of fleets at the current system. Every ship is in a fleet. Clicking on a fleet will display the ships contained by that fleet.

You can drag-drop ships to change their fleet. Click on a ship and drag it to a fleet name. Drag a ship to “New Fleet” to create a new fleet. You can select multiple ships to drag by clicking on each ship: clicking once selects the ship, clicking again deselects the ship. CAREFUL: in the release version of FreeOrion .2 the game will crash if you move the *last* ship in a fleet to a new fleet.

You can also drag-drop fleets. Dropping a fleet on to another fleet will combine the fleets into one.

Just like planets, you can rename fleets and ships by right clicking on them and selecting “Rename”.

You can move fleets to a new system by selecting the fleet, then right clicking on the star you wish to move to. You’ll see an animated dashed line marking the path the fleet will take. There must be a known starlane leading to a star system in order to move ships to it.

You can right click on stars that are many starlane hops away—FreeOrion will automatically suggest a path for the fleet to take.

Each turn, you’ll see the fleet triangle move along the starlanes to its destination. When a ship enters an unexplored system, your galaxy map will update with newly discovered starlanes.

If a military ship enters a star system containing ships or planets belonging to another empire, combat occurs. In v.2, there is no tactical combat: this will change in v.4. For now, you’ll just receive a brief overview of the combat results.

Victory

In v.2, victory is achieved by eliminating all planets belonging to other empires. There is no AI currently implemented, so computer players will just sit around and wait for the inevitable.

Last Word

Have fun experimenting with this early demo of FreeOrion, and thanks for helping test it.

Feel free to drop by the FreeOrion forums if you have questions, want to share you experiences playing the game, or want to pitch in and help build the next version of the game.

If you discover bugs in the game, please use the Sourceforge bug tracker to report them.