Tutorial
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| The Three Suns |
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| Acrador |
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| Mattas Head |
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Contents
Flash tutorial
You can access the flash based tutorial here
Hints and Tips
This section of the game contains various little tips and strategies that I've found through playing TVS and been given by other players. Note that there are no cheats or bug exploits here - if you know any they should go on the bugs forum at www.violetsector.com, and if I find any out they'll be reported there. If you think anything posted here is a bug exploit, let me know and I'll look into it. Also, if you've got any good strategies for the game, email me and let me know. Other strategies may appear here as I think of them.
ChiliDog's New Player Tutorials
Introduction
Welcome to one of the most addictive and yet free and easy-to-learn games on the Internet.
Relax. As a new player, no one can hurt you until you make your first move. So read around, ask questions and then join the fun. Don’t worry if you make mistakes, it won’t disturb the balance of the universe. The game is simple and you’ll become a good player within a few days.
Following this message are some hints to help you quickly master this game. Read them in addition to the online TVS (The Violet Sector) manual to get a good idea of what is going on. It won’t take long either.
This is a team game and we win by working together. Always listen to the LC (Legion Commander) and the VC (Viceroy Commander). They will change from time to time (we vote for our leaders), but if we follow the person currently in charge, we will win together. Tutorial 1: How to speak
There are two places you can speak: (1) bulletin board, and (2) inbox. For now, just use the bulletin board or what many people refer to as the BB.
Here is your first exercise (read it entirely before you begin)
At the top of the middle frame are the words POST NEW TOPIC. Click it and make your topic "New Player (yourname)". So if I was writing it, I would put "New Player ChiliDog" as my pilot call sign name is ChiliDog.
For your entry, try to include these things:
(1) where you are from [east USA, London], (2) how many turns you can play each 24 hour period [there is one turn every three hours, hence 8 turns each day. You have five action moves each turn, but if you miss your turn, the moves are lost. Look at the top of this window to see how many hours/minutes remain in this current turn], (3) something about yourself (maybe tell about any other online team games you have played before - you really don’t need any to do well in this game).
Although, we want you to ask any questions you have in the next few days, you should hold your questions for now, as many will be answered after you have read the manual and the other BB messages.
With the information you give us, we’ll try to match you to a squadron where you’ll fly with similar pilots. You don’t have to be in a squadron to play, but it makes the game even more fun.
Throughout a game we will be at war and allied with almost all of the other three legions. So read the current bulletin board messages (at the top) to see whom we are fighting at this moment.
It is strongly recommended that you don’t share your surname, email address or phone numbers. We are all friendly, but you never know where the bad apple is. In time, you will trust certain pilots, and at that point use your discretion. Some will laugh at this warning, but I teach elementary students and I just can’t shake the protective parent nature I have.
How to move
Caution: Although, we want you to fly around the universe, helping us save the cosmos from our enemies...
Once you make a move - two things will happen: (1) you’ll be able to give and receive private messages with everyone using your INBOX, and (2) enemy pilots can shoot you. But, who cares if they do, you can re-spawn or come back as a new ship right away (you can even get a new type of ship at that time). If you feel nervous, remain near our base until you feel surer of yourself.
Ask lots of questions on the BB (Bulletin Board). We’ll guide you; we WANT another informed pilot flying with us. Winning is fun.
Pickups: A safe first turn move would be to press ::SCANNERS:: on the left frame, then on the middle frame press "Pickup Scan", these are random events - some are good, some are bad. You’ll gain levels faster by fighting, but it’s a good experience to see how it’s done, and why not use them as your first moves while you can remain in the base sector. Most experienced pilots are too busy doing other stuff to do pickups unless there is a reason. The online manual has a good description of pickups you can find. Hypering: Whatever you want to call it (warping, sector jumping, capsule jumping), if you want to move to another sector, you need to click ::NavCom:: on the left frame. A separate window will open up showing our galaxy. You should PRINT IT out for future use (it has the names of the 26 universe sectors, so it’ll help understand messages from people and it’s good to refer to when the server is lagging slowly. Trust me!). As you can guess, the colors represent which legion is dominating that sector at this moment. At the bottom of this page, you will see a box where you can scroll to your choice of which sector you can hyper to. Hypering takes all your moves for that turn. But, watch out - you can NOT hyper in the last 15 minutes or first 5 minutes of a turn. It’s a built in game feature to allow 20 minutes of high combat each three hours.
How to scan and attack
Most of your future moves and prayers will focus on this tutorial. On the left frame, press :SCANNERS::, then you will have four choices from the middle frame: (1) enemy scan - you see the non-cloaked ships that may be present [Warning: even ships we are allied or NAP’d with will appear here, so you can’t shoot everything in this window], (2) friendly scan - you see our legion ships (not decoys though), (3) Hypering In - indicates which ships are moving into your sector for the beginning of the next turn, (4) Hypering Out - which ships are leaving your sector to go to another adjacent one. If you are a fighter/bomber/cloaker, you ATTACK by viewing an enemy in the enemy scan. You’ll see the button on the right side. If you are a repairship, you can’t attack (normally) and you REPAIR by selecting a friend on the friendlies scan. Attacking or repairing is one move; hence you can attack or repair up to 5 times every turn (3 hours). Repairships can attack if they find the pickups, free attack or triple attack. It’s rare, better to stick to your job of repairing people. By the way, everyone loves repairships. If you are one of those insecure people who is craving positive attention, be one of these ships!
Target Lists and Rankings
So what you can attack, but a winning legion must have coordinated attacks, here's how grasshopper..
When you are in a battle, your heart rate will probably increase and you’ll feel a rush, but to ensure our legion’s chances of winning, it’s important we focus all our firepower on 1 or 2 enemy ships. If we destroy them, their pilots will return as wimpy level-one ships. And while you are helping kill them, you get more points and get more powerful. I can’t describe how good it feels to enter a battle and take out the top two targets, while a few of your mates gain levels - team morale just soars!
The "target list" is just a message on the bulletin board, legion news and/or in your inbox that explains which pilots to shoot at. Different leaders show it in different ways, here’s one way:
PIE 4 Tibran 12643 5400/6000 Bomber PIE 4 Tibran 12143 5400/6000 decoy Boris 3 Tibran 10433 4324/6000 Cloaker
Each line stands for [read from left to right]
- pilots name:, :ship level:, :legion:, :current score:, :hitpoints/maxhitpoints:, :shiptype:
It is foolish to shoot decoys for many reasons: (1) sure it is destroyed when you hit it, but you could take damage as a result for hitting it as some have explosives on them, (2) it’s one wasted shot which could have been used hurting a live enemy, (3) a dead real pilot can’t hurt you or our team, (4) you get no experience points for shooting decoys, (5) our repairships like to have decoys because they get bonuses for having any enemy present, even a decoy, when they are healing us.
So, stick to the target list; which is usually given by the LC, VC or some bossy mouthy person who thinks they know a lot. Usually, we’ll hit the higher level enemy ships, but not always, so read your inbox and the bulletin board before you shoot.
Now, not to be confused with target lists are scouting or intelligence reports on sectors. Anyone can post these on the bulletin board (even you!) Just copy and paste your enemy scan, friendly scan, hypering in, and hypering out. I like to include scrap in sector for our repairships, too.
How do people know if it’s a decoy or not???
Do an enemy scan, highlight and copy the name of the pilot (some characters are hard to type), then click ::Rankings:: on the left frame. Near the bottom, you’ll see Search, paste the pilots name and hit enter. It will list the real pilot’s info. Compare it (in another window or using a pen and paper) to the ship that you see in your sector. If the pilot in the rankings has more points then you’re looking at a decoy. If the points are the same, 98% of the time, you are looking at a real enemy ship. In rare circumstances, the decoy is still the same as the real pilot (bad luck). Also, if the pilot does not show up and you see a zero point ship - you are usually looking at a new freshly painted, but very real ship.
When you get time, find yourself in the rankings. Simply type your name in the search box and see where you rank in the big pilot pool.
You may notice some pilots have cool pictures besides their ship graphics. Often a squadron will fly with the same logo.
Improving your ship
After several battles, you will earn enough points to get a better ship. It will miraculously appear when you reach 4000, 8000, 16000, 32000 points. You don’t have to return to the base to get it either, you can get it mid turn as well. Should you be lucky enough to reach 75000, you’ll earn yourself a wicked cruiser or carrier (for this premium ship, you will have to return to headquarters)
Every time you go up in level, you ship gets better shields, speed and firepower (five points to each). In addition, you get 10 skill points for every level you go up. You use it on combat/repair or piloting. Both are good, but as a rule of thumb, it’s wise to put all your FIRST TEN SKILL POINTS in combat/repair, and all future level gains, put half in combat and half in piloting.
Now, some people go all for attacking, while some play it conservative and do more piloting. The advantage of more attacking skill is you inflict more damage when you attack and therefore get more points and go up in levels faster. The problem is you are lousy at evasive maneouvers and enemy pilots do more than normal damage to you. Piloting is more defensive, so you need both to win the game. We do have to kill the enemy to win ya know.
If you are a bomber with no piloting skill, the base defenses will rip you apart when you attack the base near the end of the game. As a new player, enemy pilots may not target you right away, and you may "get away" with spending more on combat skill in the beginning. Personally, I say go for it, but listen to what the current LC is saying.
Some ships have special missions - repairships that pick up scraps, they should have lots of piloting skill because they’ll need it to avoid enemy fire and flying asteroids. Another use for high piloting skills is if you were a scout ship or someone who likes to lurk in the asteroids shooting people who come by.
Sometimes you’ll get enough points to go up a level, but you won’t see your new ship - you may have to load ::SHIP COMPUTER:: to begin the process. Hit the plus and minus signs until you are happy. Then, launch that shiny new ship!
Preparing to die
Weird title, but everyone dies comrade. If you aren’t in danger of dying, you aren’t close enough to the action. The first time you die, it’s very personal - either you left your ship in an area you shouldn’t have or really bad luck. When it happens, you’ll want to post a message to everyone saying how upset and sorry you are and you’ll want to use a lot of profanity to just show how much! (happened to all of us)
Forget about it, try to move on - get another ship and jump back into battle. Don’t fall in love with your ship, instead fall in love with your legion. Some pilots get killed 5-6 times before the beta is over. I remember one popular player everyone loved to kill, died 16 times in a four-week span, including one turn where he was killed 2 times!!
When you do die, you’ll begin as a new level one ship at our home base. If our base has been destroyed, you’ll be in a new legion at their home base.
As the game progresses, certain ships become more useful (bombers towards the end of the game). When it comes time to pick your second ship, remember what the LC has been asking players to return as. He or she will choose to fight battles that he thinks their legion will most benefit from. We want to keep our team balanced. We want to win.
Now that we got that out of the way - don’t go dying on us!!!
Because when people kill you, not only do we lose your ship, but the enemy got more experience points killing you. Bad for the team...
Wrapping things up
There is a lot to absorb here, so you may want to come back to it from time to time.
Avoid Profanity - it’s poor form, plus we have many parents playing and we don’t want their kids seeing that stuff. Also, some players take their moves from work. Finally, it can get you kicked out of the game. Wingee, the creator, wants a clean game (as is his right)
Short forms: lol (laughing out loud), rtfm (read the fat manual), rotfl (rolling on the floor laughing), RSC (Red Sky City), TMC (Tibran Mining Colony), NSA (New Alpha Sector), Krils (Krilgorian pilots), Bors (Boraxian pilots), Ajax (Ajaxian pilots), Tibs (Tibran pilots), TVS (The Violet Sector), NAP (non-aggression pact)
Scrap Runners: repairships that collect scrap in the universe and then put it on our base to make it stronger. Often the person will write a message saying the base is NOT under attack.
Sector dominance - the online manual explains it very well. Basically, sectors we own can help our base regenerate and cause more damage to enemy ships in our base sector.
Sector Scans - our LC and VC can search the cosmos for all ships. Once our LR (long range) scan tower is destroyed, we loose this great advantage. We use this information to plan our attacks and defenses. We can win without it, but the game is a lot more difficult without them.
Squadrons: You don’t have to be in a squadron to play. Many experienced players avoid squadrons so cheaters can’t follow their movements, but it’s fun to ham it up with your mates in a squadron. They normally have a theme - bombers, cloakers; and have weird names to make it more interesting.
Asteroids, Uncharted Sector, NSA - you take damage doing moves here. Uncharted is hard to get to, but has lots of scrap (you use random jumps from pickups) or find the unknown jump sequence to get there from Garen
The Asteroid Fields are a pivotal sector to hold as it can get to many sectors quickly. It’s a hot spot at the beginning of the game.
NSA is very unusual. All messages going in and out are scrambled. To avoid your message "I love my legion" looking like "my I legion love", you’ll need to put underscores or periods between the words "I.love.my.legion" Just be aware of it!!!!
Low damage sectors: Tripe, Orbital, Garen, Aquarius sectors have lower scores for damage and repairs. And all Outer Ring sectors are the opposite, having greater damage and repairs; plus the random even - anomaly can whip out 33% of your hitpoints, so be careful out there. It can be a valuable shortcut, but don’t sleep out there if possible. One of the eight outer ring sectors gets hit each turn.
Tara’s Bar - don’t give away the family jewels here. You can talk to enemy pilots and friendly pilots here. It’s in real time like ICQ, so it’s fun. If someone asks where you are or who our LC/VC is, just laugh and say "not telling". When you log off, you’ll see TARA’S BAR on the left frame.
Self-Repair - after a fight, you may be told to self-repair, that means for every move you spend on repairing yourself, your hitpoints go up 150 points. Not much, but it adds up, 750/turn. And after a battle, our repairships have enough problems so don’t ask for help - we see you. Fix yourself. If there are no enemies, it’s best for repairships to heal similar level ships.
Main Forums - when you log off, you’ll see the word FORUM on the left side. It works like our legion bulletin board, but ALL legion pilots can read it. Careful what you write, the moderator, Wingee, watches these ones closely. It’s a fun place to be, especially if you are witty person, but don’t give away any of our secrets.
Saving your moves - if you can, it’s wise to use your moves in the last 30 minutes of a turn. Why? So you can surprise someone in a neighboring sector by everyone showing up and then attacking before they know what’s happened. Hypering early can warn them that a larger group may be coming and scare our prey away. Naturally, few people live by their computer 24 hours a day, so you take your moves when you can, remembering that it is best to wait as long as you can. Also, if the enemy is attacking you, you can jump out of the danger.
Trapped - no one can hyper out in the last 15 minutes and the first five minutes of a turn. So you may hear someone say: He’s trapped, shoot him, or hit him in the first five minutes before he can jump away. It’s a great way to knock off great enemy pilots who are too clever to normally watch their moves.
Server resets - sometimes the server goes down. When it does, just try to jump back in. You might get online when the enemy has given up, getting some easy shots at them. Each day it shuts down for 10 minutes at the same time, learn when that time is for you and not to get anxious when you get tossed off the game. It’s a great time to attack someone as some don’t return until it’s too late.
Going AWOL - we hope you don’t hit this button, but if you do (sleep deprivation), hit no. But, if you do hit yes, this is what happens – you become a rogue pilot, you don’t read our messages and everyone gets to kill you. When you do die, you’ll go to the team with the least active players, so you may be back with us. You can go AWOL three times per beta game.
Multiple accounts - some people never get caught using two or more accounts, but the game is a lot more exhilarating only playing one account. It’s that unknown that makes your heart race. If you feel you have extra time on your hand, spend it reading messages or writing poetry while you wait for the next turn to come. Plus, it makes it a fair game. If we don’t play fair, no one will want to play the game.
Good luck pilots. For honor & glory!!!
Skill Points
One of the most common questions asked by new players is how they should allocate the skill points gained when you level up. You get ten skill points at each new level to split between combat skill and pilot skill, and the answer to the question is that there is no 'correct' way to allocate your skill points to allow yourself a better chance of a high score. The reason for this is that the two skill are opposite - combat skill makes you hurt enemies more, pilot skill makes enemies hurt you less. Obviously, this means that if you have high combat skill (at the expense of your pilot skill) you will score faster but will be easier to kill. Conversely, if you have high pilot skill at the expense of combat skill you will be more likely to survive if targetted, but may level up quite slowly beyond level 3 or so.
The difference in damage and defence given by skill points is quite substantial once you get to level 3 or above. A pilot who puts all his skill points into combat skill will deal heavy damage even to a cruiser. Unfortunately, experienced pilots will know when someone who has shot them has high combat skill (it'll hurt more) or when someone they've targetted has low pilot skill (again, they'll do more damage). They'll pass this information on to the rest of their legion, and you may attract more fire as a result. And since you have no pilot skill, it'll be relatively easy to kill you. High combat skill therefore is for people who are willing to take risks to level up quickly, and are very active (since leaving a high-combat ship alone in a battle is not a good idea).
Pilot skill, on the other hand, keeps you alive. A pilot with high pilot skill is more likely to survive long enough to claim a cruiser, although this is offset somewhat by the length of time it will take to get there, which is substantially longer than for a high-combat pilot. Piloting skill also (somewhat oddly) causes repairs on you by friendly repairers to be less effective, and when repairers realise this they may be less likely to repair you if you're not on the point of death, meaning that it takes you longer to get your ship back in battle condition. Pilot skill also reduces the amount of damage you take from asteroids and PDS.
Basically, the mix of piloting and combat skill you take should be affected by three factors: The class of ship you are flying, the stats of your ship within that class, and your personal preference. Bombers generally need more pilot skill than other ship types - they tend to be easy targets because of low shielding, and they'll take more damage from PDS than other classes because they'll (hopefully) spend some time bombing bases. Cloakers may well want higher combat skill - they have reduced stats because of having the cloak, and high combat skill compensates for their weapon deficiency while the cloak should hopefully keep them safe - a good cloaker won't ever move until the last couple of minutes of a turn, so that if they're targetted they can simply cloak, and if necessary jump out the next turn. It's often a good idea to bear in mind your ship's strengths and weaknesses when allocating skill points, ships with poor defensive capabilities (such as the Boraxian Bomber or any of the Kril ships) might want more pilot skill to offset their lack of shielding.
Your Ship
Choice of ship is, obviously, almost entirely down to personal preference. However, some ships are better than others within their class. Often the weaknesses of a particular ship can be countered by judicious application of your skill points when you level up, although you might want to bolster your ship's strengths at the price of exacerbating its weaknesses. My personal preference is for bombers, because they are generally not that much worse than fighters in a dogfight and it means you can contribute effectively to a base assault (and score while you're doing it). Bombers were made less attractive with the reduction of bonus points for bombing bases after beta 6, but they're still my preferred ship type.
Of the other ship types, repairships are also vital for successful fleet operations. They also allow you to score more or less constantly (since in order to have a valid target you don't need to put yourself at risk in combat). Low level repairships can score rather slowly, but since they score constantly this is more or less balanced out.
Cloakers have limited use for a player who stays with his legion's fleet. If you're in the fleet then you should not normally be using the cloak, since if you're in a battle you'll often be able to jump out if threatened (or else will have moved, precluding the use of the cloak). They do provide some additional security, since if you are able to hold your moves until the very end of a tick you'll be able to cloak if targetted, whereas other ships are completely vulnerable during the last 15/first 5 minutes of a tick, when they can't jump out. Where the cloaker really comes into its own, however, is in small-scale operations involving only a few (sometimes only one) ships. This is because you can hide yourself in a sector and observe the various comings and goings, making it useful for reconnaisance once LC scans have been lost, and it also means that if you look like you're losing a battle you can cloak and repair or wait for reinforcements.
Finally, fighters give you the best survivability in battle if you discount repairships and capital ships. Fighter pilots can soak up more damage in a battle than bomber pilots, giving them an edge. Aside from this, however, they don't have any capabilities not available to other ship types, and as such are not strategically crucial - you can win a game with no fighters, but it's difficult to win a game with no bombers since you have to wait until you have a good cruiser fleet before attacking any enemy bases.
Targeting
An even fleet battle will be won by the side with the best organisation. This means that an LC (or other nominated pilot) will issue a list of enemy pilots for friendly pilots to concentrate fire on, maximising the chance of killing them. A legion whose pilots follow these target lists closely has a huge advantage when it comes to battles, since unless the other legion is equally well organised, they'll lose ships faster and consequently lose the battle. However, picking the enemies to go on these lists is an art in itself, since you want to be picking the highest-ranked pilots that you're capable of killing, or else a lot of lower-ranked pilots that you can kill.
Most of the time when picking targets, you should only shoot ships that you're likely to kill. This means that ships who have moved (and hence won't run away until next tick at the earliest) are prime targets, or that you should shoot at ships whose pilots are offline (online pilots have a yellow star next to their names on the scans and rankings), or that you should order your pilots to hold their fire until the last 15 minutes of a tick so that the target can't run away, or preferably all three. It also means that you should take into account the stats of the ship you're shooting at, and whether you know they have high combat or high piloting - a ship with low shielding and high combat can do a colossal amount of damage to your forces if left alone, but will be relatively easy to destroy. On the other hand, a ship with high shielding and piloting will absorb a lot of firepower before dying (possibly preventing you killing another target as well), and will not do as much damage to your forces as another ship might. This means that bombers are generally a good choice, since they tend to be less durable than fighters (although their pilots often have higher pilot skill).
Another important factor to take into consideration is the relative strengths of the fleets involved. If you are outgunned (but still think it's worth fighting, perhaps because you believe you are better organised than the other legion) then your first concern should be to even up the fight. This means reducing the numbers of enemy ships quickly, which in turn means that you should not be trying to kill them, but instead should damage lots of different ships - a pilot who finds himself shot at during a battle will usually retreat, so you can drive a lot of enemy ships out of the battle by damaging them rather than destroying them. Other enemy ships will see their numbers dropping and be less inclined to stay in the fight if targetted, and eventually you'll have evened the numbers and be able to switch tactics to kills rather than damage.
A good tactic to use when targetting is the so-called 'level drain' tactic. The idea behind this is that while a level 3 ship may hit less hard than a level 4 or 5 ship, it's also easier to kill and will become a higher level ship if left alone. Therefore, if you target ships close to levelling up rather than ships which have already levelled up, you may be able to kill quite a lot of them and achieve a similar effect to if you'd killed the same number of higher-level ships.
It's also often useful to kill enemy repairships rather than other ships. Although the repairships won't hurt you themselves, a fleet of high-level repairships can make it almost impossible to kill anyone, and if you get to that situation you're in trouble. It's therefore often a good idea to at least try and force an enemy repair fleet to leave the battle, and if possible to prevent them having too many high-level repairships in the first place.
The final important tactic to bear in mind is that you should not become predictable in your choice of targets. If you always pick the same type of targets, then those pilots will be very careful, and enemy repairships will keep a close eye on the at-risk pilots. Fire at different times in the tick, fire at different types and levels of ship. This keeps enemy pilots nervous and unwilling to leave their ship unattended in a battle (and hence more likely to jump out if they're going to be away). Firing at different times is especially useful - it's often possible to kill ships in the middle of a tick because their pilots are away from the battle and not expecting to be shot at then. The only caveat with that is that you should always shoot offline pilots in that situation (online ones will simply leave after absorbing your firepower), and that if your target comes online you should cease-fire immediately - again, they will leave and you will have wasted your shots.
