NHA Message Board (revised)

This is a place for Newbies to get help on anything they're not sure about. Don't be afraid to ask!
Baalzamon
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Post by Baalzamon »

Avoiding Minefields

Enemy mines are something you will encounter on a regular basis in SMR, and there are a couple of things that can help prevent you dying to them.

1) If you hit a mined sector, you always have a safe way out. Going back the way you came to your green highlighted sector will spare you from hitting any more mines.

2) Use a scanner. If you are working in an area where there are mines and trying to avoid them or work around them, scanning potential sectors to move to will give you an idea of how heavily mined they are - a higher force scan usually means more mines.

3) Work from UNO. If you are travelling a long way, it is often a very good idea not to plot your route directly from A to B, but to plan it so that you pass UNO shops along the way - this will allow you to refill your defenses as you go if you take some damage. This is especially important when travelling through large neutral galaxies.

4) Use your maps. If you encounter heavily mined sectors, retreat to safety, then take the time to look carefully at your maps to see if the area you were in is close to something an alliance would want to protect (usually a galaxy warp or a Combat Accessories shop). Then plan a new route avoiding this area.
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Baalzamon
Destroyer of his own FU
Posts: 2068
Joined: Tue Jun 20, 2006 10:57 pm
Location: 1261
Contact:

Post by Baalzamon »

Experience

There are many ways to play SMR, and many different aspects of the game to enjoy - but experience points are important whether you play with a high ranking as a goal in itself, or whether you see it as just another tool to help achieve other goals.

Experience (xp) is gained through both trading and combat, but trading is by far the most effective and efficient way to accumulate experience (especially early in a game). Refer to the trading section on this message board for details, but the best way to get lots of experience fast is to trade long routes with perfect trading relations. This is not always possible, and often dangerous (and you lose significant amounts of xp when you die), so it is often a good idea to look for decent traderoutes but stay off the best ones.

The main benefits of experience are:
1) Higher weapon accuracy when you fire, and lower weapon accuracy for your opponents.
2) The ability to cloak from lower ranked players.
3) Demonstrating the ability to accumulate and keep a good experience level. This last benefit is especially important for new players since climbing the rankings and avoiding too many deaths will get you noticed.
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Baalzamon
Destroyer of his own FU
Posts: 2068
Joined: Tue Jun 20, 2006 10:57 pm
Location: 1261
Contact:

Post by Baalzamon »

Safe Parking


Before logging off, it is very important to ALWAYS check that your are as safe as you can be. Until you join a major alliance, you should all be parking safely in federally protected space every time you log off. Before leaving SMR, ALWAYS check your main screen protection message and/or click the "Trader" link to make sure you are in fact protected.

The two things that can prevent you from having federal protection are carrying illegal goods (slaves, weapons or narcotics) or having an attack rating that is too high. At neutral alignment, that is +/-149, you can park safely with an attack rating of 3 or less. The attack rating you can park with increases with increasing alignment and decreases with decreasing alignment.
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Baalzamon
Destroyer of his own FU
Posts: 2068
Joined: Tue Jun 20, 2006 10:57 pm
Location: 1261
Contact:

Post by Baalzamon »

Multiple Accounts

Multiple accounts are NOT permitted in SMR. The game has admins who actively look for multiple accounts and suspicious activity. If you are caught playing more than one account, you risk losing all your accumulated stats and being banned from the game.

One of the results of this strict policy on multiple accounts is that you should try to avoid logging into your account from any computer also used by other SMR players. Even though you are not actually playing more than one account, it can seem as though you are when the connection logs are checked.


If you have a sibling who wants to play, talk to the admins prior to them setting up an account. Current admins are:

Prince Valiant
BOB
Siege
RandyOrsolo
RedCrossKnight
Jester
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Baalzamon
Destroyer of his own FU
Posts: 2068
Joined: Tue Jun 20, 2006 10:57 pm
Location: 1261
Contact:

Post by Baalzamon »

News and Current Player List

Whether you are a trader or a hunter, it is very valuable to know as much as possible about who is currently active in the game, and where they might be. Two of the resources you need to learn to use, but also know the limitations of, are the news and the current player list (CPL).

Reading the news before you trade can be valuable in letting you know which hunters are currently active in the game, even if they don't show on the CPL. If there has been a recent kill near your trade route, or a hunter that knows where you like to trade has recently been active, it is often a good idea to wait and trade another time.

The CPL will let you know who has recently accessed the database, and also how many players are "lurking" (logged into the game, but not moving). It is a good idea to check the CPL for hunters you believe are a threat to you before you trade, and also every so often while you trade (especially if you are trading over a scout drone).
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Baalzamon
Destroyer of his own FU
Posts: 2068
Joined: Tue Jun 20, 2006 10:57 pm
Location: 1261
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Post by Baalzamon »

Planets

Except for your ship and what it carries, a planet is the only thing in SMR that you can claim for yourself or your alliance. This means that planets and planet galaxies are often the main focus of the rivalries and wars between alliances.

At the beginning of every game planets are weak and planet galaxies are easily accessible, but as a game progresses planets become stronger (the strongest planets will regularly kill attacking warships even when being attacked by a full fleet) and some galaxies (alliance territory) become heavily fortified by minefields. Planets become parking spots for fully armed warships as well as being used to generate cash, and therefore become attractive targets for enemy alliances.

Kill counts and experience are important measures of success, but many veteran players feel that the only true measure of success in alliance wars is the ability to hold and/or take territory from enemy alliances.

It is important to note that weakly defended planets should NOT be considered safe parking spots.

Planets are made up of three parts: Hangers, Generators, and Turrets.

There are a maximum of 100 hangers and generators per planet, and a max of 10 turrets.

Hangers hold combat drones, 20 drones per hanger, maximum of 2000combat drones on a planet
Generators hold shields, 100 shields per generator, max of 10000 shields per planet.
The more hangers you have, the more accurate your turrets will fire.

Building plans for planets vary from person to person, but it is a general rule that the deadlier the faster the better. So most people build hangers heavily, then turrets, then generators. However, this varies greatly from alliance to alliance.
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Baalzamon
Destroyer of his own FU
Posts: 2068
Joined: Tue Jun 20, 2006 10:57 pm
Location: 1261
Contact:

Post by Baalzamon »

Racials

As long as you are ranked newbie or beginner, players ranked fledgling or above cannot see you in the racial galaxies. This makes these galaxies considerably safer for you, and I recommend avoiding too much time spent outside them. To see your ranking, click on trader, then user rankings, or simply look at the CPL. If your name is in italics, you are ranked either newbie or beginner.

Racial galaxies are the galaxies belonging to your race, or other races...so the Alskant, Creonti, Human, WQ Human, Nijarin, Ik'Thorne, and Thevian galaxies. Any other galaxy is considered a neutral, and you are not safe there.
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Baalzamon
Destroyer of his own FU
Posts: 2068
Joined: Tue Jun 20, 2006 10:57 pm
Location: 1261
Contact:

Post by Baalzamon »

Respect

SMR has a very active and social player community, and one thing that will get noticed is how you treat your fellow players. If you send polite messages to other players asking for advice or just to make some contacts, they'll remember your name, maybe mention you to their teammates, and you have taken the first step to becoming a respected player. However, if you, for example, react to being killed (it happens to everyone, get used to it) by sending an abusive and angry message then you will quickly lose the respect of your fellow players.

If you do get killed, it can be useful to politely message your killer and ask what you did wrong - most veteran players will be more than happy to advise you on how to avoid the same thing happening again, plus it shows them that you want to learn how to improve at the game. If you get a kill, it is considered impolite to send messages gloating over the fact, although some veteran players will sometimes message newbies they have killed with offers of cash to get them back on their feet or advice on how to avoid the same thing happening again.

There are all kinds of ways to play and enjoy this game, different players choose to emphasize different aspects of gameplay - but whatever choices you make, the bottom line is that if you treat your fellow players (both allies and enemies) with respect, then they will respect you.
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Baalzamon
Destroyer of his own FU
Posts: 2068
Joined: Tue Jun 20, 2006 10:57 pm
Location: 1261
Contact:

Post by Baalzamon »

Ships

Everything you do in SMR is done while you are flying some kind of ship - it can be anything from an escape pod to a huge IkThorne mothership, but you are always the pilot of something. In addition to the neutral ships, each race also has unique ships that only race members can purchase. You can find the SMR shiplist here:

http://www.smrealms.de/manual.php?52

It is important to choose ships to match your budget and your needs, and the biggest or most expensive ships are not always the best ones for all purposes.

Make sure you are buying the right ship before you hand over your cash to the ship dealer since you only get a partial refund for the ship you are selling, which means that you lose some money every time you switch ships.

Ships fall into a few basic categories, and I will try to give you a basic overview here - but I encourage everyone to look at the shiplist themselves, experiment with different ships, and talk to experienced players about what they recommend buying.

Trade ships: This class of ships emphasizes trading capacity over fighting ability. They generally tend to be relatively slow, have good cargo capacity, very limited combat ability, and varying defense. These ships are basically only used for trading, and should run from pretty much any fight.

Warships: These are the largest and most heavily armed ships in the game, and are ideal for combat situations where you expect someone (other ships) or something (ports and planets) to be firing back at you. This class of ships includes the racial warships and the Federal Ultimatum.

Hunting ships: These combat vessels are slightly smaller than the warships but are usually faster and have the added ability to carry scout drones for gathering information and tracking other ships. Hunters are useful for killing tradeships or other hunters, but should generally avoid combat with warships.

In addition to these basic classes, many ships are especially good at specific things like clearing mines, transporting forces or exploring the universe.

Some of the ship concepts you should be familiar with:
- Cost. Unless you have a lot of spare cash, buy a ship to suit your budget. The most expensive ship is not always the best choice, especially if buying it leaves you with no cash reserves.
- Defense. Ship defense is made up of shields, armor and combat drones. The higher the defense, the harder you are to kill so more is better.
- Offensive capability. Ships attack (and defend) using weapons and combat drones. Weapons are mounted on the limited number of hardpoints (HP) a ship has, meaning that more HPs give a higher offensive capability.
- Speed. Ship speed determines how fast your ship will accumulate turns. Faster ships gain more turns per hour and vice versa.
- Hardware. Most ships can use one or more hardware items, each of which adds certain capabilities to the ship. These are Scanners (see scanner thread), Cloaks (invisibility from lower ranked traders when activated), Illusion Generators (the ability to disguise your ship), Jump Drives (allows you to jump from place to place without traveling through the sectors between), and Drone Scramblers (improved defense against combat drones).
- Restricted ships. There are restrictions on who can buy certain ships. These include racial restrictions, top racial restrictions (the top racial ships cannot be purchased until you reach fledgling status), and alignment restrictions (Underground and Federal ships require you to be evil or good respectively, Federal ships also take half damage from forces).
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Baalzamon
Destroyer of his own FU
Posts: 2068
Joined: Tue Jun 20, 2006 10:57 pm
Location: 1261
Contact:

Post by Baalzamon »

Turns

Many of the basic actions performed in SMR cost turns, the most common examples being moving, trading & attacking. One of the keys to success in the game is good turn management, no matter what you are busing the turns to accomplish. If you are a trader, you want to get as much cash and xp as possible per turn used. If you are a hunter, you want to spend as many turns as possible efficiently locating targets and getting kills, and as few as possible chasing traders around without getting the final trigger shot off. In an alliance, you will often be expected to save turns for op's, where it is often crucial to have plenty of alliance members show up with plenty of turns.

Turns are accumulated constantly, whether you are logged in or not, and are a product of ship speed and game speed. When you click the Trader link on the left of your screen, one of the things you will see is how many turns you get per hour in the ship you are in, and also the maximum number of turns you can accumulate in the current game. It is important to manage your turns carefully - make sure to always leave yourself enough turns to get back to somewhere you can park safely (preferably with some to spare in case you run into trouble on the way). It can sometimes be a good idea to save up a large number of turns so you can use them all in one session, but be aware that this is not always possible or even ideal. You should try to avoid reaching the maximum number of turns, since you will then stop getting more and will basically be wasting the turns you would usually have accumulated.

A good way to get a few extra turns and help the game at the same time is to click on the voting links at the bottom of your screen. Voting for SMR helps our rankings, which brings more players to the game - making it better for all of us.

Turns used:
Trading: 1 turn for each transaction
Fighting: 3turns for every trigger
Traveling: 1 turn per sector, 3 per warp
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