 | This article needs to be cleaned up for the following reason: May 2008. Additional information may be found on this article's talk page.(May 2009) |
Galaxy Trek is a space game written by Larry E. Jordan in 1982 for Capital PC Software Exchange.
Description
In Galaxy Trek, the player commands the USS Columbia on a mission to stop a group of warships from attacking Federation Headquarters. The game uses ASCII graphics and can be played using RGB, monochrome, or composite graphics.
Ship control is limited to navigating between a set of quadrants by setting a course and a speed for each jump. Upon entering a sector with an enemy, or enemies, the commander can engage them in battle using phasers or photon torpedoes.
Alerts
Condition Yellow means that the ship has a low amount of energy not being used by the force field. If force field control is knocked out during Condition Yellow, the ship could become stranded.
Condition Red means the ship is under fire. The force field needs to be up at all times during Condition Red, or the ship will be destroyed.
Strategy
A limited supply of energy is available for phasers and shields, so it may be necessary to stop at a space station to resupply. On advanced levels of difficulty, time efficiency become a crucial factor. There is generally only enough mission time to make one or two stops at starbases, so it becomes important to aim torpedoes accurately and carefully manage energy supplies. It may be better to slightly overestimate the amount of phaser power needed to destroy a Megaton in one shot rather than risk having to take a second shot. To save energy, most expert commanders try to use torpedoes whenever there is an unobstructed path to the enemy (although some like to keep a few torpedoes on hand in case phaser banks get damaged in combat).
It is also important to avoid collision courses when navigating. Even though the Columbia will automatically stop before hitting any object, the aborted maneuver wastes precious mission time.
Destroying a starbase normally leads to the message, "STARFLEET COMMAND REVIEWING YOUR RECORD TO CONSIDER COURT MARTIAL!" However, destroying the last starbase left in the universe leads to the message, "THAT DOES IT, CAPTAIN!! YOU ARE HEREBY RELIEVED OF COMMAND AND SENTENCED TO 99 STARDATES OF HARD LABOR ON CYGNUS 12!!".[1]
Miscellaneous
Galaxy Trek was designed for 4.77 MHz processors. The game runs so fast on modern computers that if the ship starts out in a sector with Megaton cruisers, it will be destroyed before the captain has a chance to raise the force field.