User:Rivard.M

What is Subspace?

Visually, the game is a top-down view space shooter. The expansive high-resolution playing field is made up of various obstacles, power-ups and safe zones. Players maneuver through space collecting power-ups that will increase their ship's fire power, armament, maneuverability and special weapons. With hundreds of people vying for the same power-ups and flags, players must be prepared to defend themselves constantly. To help in battle, players can form teams or have themselves assigned to one through the computer. In true team fashion, each player benefits when they or another teammate absorbs a power-up, which can help arm a weak beginner's ship rapidly. Points are scored for collecting power-ups and destroying opponents.

To maximize the gaming experience, SubSpace is divided into many different game types called "zones." Each zone has unique team or player goals and levels of difficulty that accommodate everyone from beginners to expert pilots. All zones contain arenas, accommodating hundreds of people playing at the same time. Through a unique on-screen chat system, players can communicate in real-time with each other. Individuals can address everyone in the arena, everyone on their team or specific individuals. This chat system allows teammates to plot strategies, build attack plans and taunt other teams.

Controls

Basic movement & weaponry

• Left arrow Rotates your ship counter-clockwise
• Right arrow Rotates your ship clockwise
• Up arrow Activate forward thrusters
• Down arrow Activate reverse thrusters
• SHIFT+Up arrow Activate forward afterburner
• SHIFT+Down arrow Activate reverse afterburner
• CTRL Fire your gun (if available)
• TAB Fire a bomb (if available)
• SHIFT+TAB Drop a mine (if available)

Weaponry and special items

• Shift-CTRL Activate Repel
• Delete Toggles multifire ON/OFF
• Shift-Delete Uses a Burst
• Insert Warps your ship to a random spot on the map
• Shift-Insert Drops a Portal
• End Toggles Xradar
• Shift-End Toggles Antiwarp
• Home Toggles Stealth
• Shift-Home Toggles Cloak
• F3 Fire Rocket
• F4 Drop a Brick, perpendicular to the nearest wall
• F5 Launch a Decoy
• F6 Fire a Thor's Hammer
• F7 Attach to ticked player
• F11 Change your ship to the Spectator mode (you need full energy for this; turn off stealth/xradar etc..)

Communication

• F2 Display the player list
• PageUp Scroll up the playerlist (list will automatically popup if not present)
• PageDown Scroll down the playerlist (list will automatically popup if not present)
• SHIFT+(F1-F8) Store text macro number F1-F8. Type something and press SHIFT-F#. The game will notify you that the macro has been stored. Press SHIFT-F# again to recall the macro you just stored.

The communication system in SubSpace is rather advanced. The commands section lists all in-game commands one should know about.

Miscellanneous options

The following commands are available ONLY after you have pressed the ESC key.

• F1 Cycle through the help menu.
• F2 Cycle through the player stat boxes.
• F3 Cycle through the types of name tag display.
• F4 Switch your radar on/off.
• F5 Toggle messages on/off
• F6 Turn message ticker on/off. (newbies should turn this helpful tool on)
• F7 Toggle background stars on/off.
• F8 Toggle engine sounds on/off
• F9 Cycle through four levels of gamma correction. (gamma correction makes your screem brighter)
• A Bring up the arena select menu.
• B Bring up the banner selection menu. Only available if you are in spectator mode.
• C Change server options. This will work only if you are a sysop.
• I Toggle public macros on/off
• Q Exit SubSpace.
• 1 Change your ship to a Warbird.
• 2 Change your ship to a Javelin.
• 3 Change your ship to a Spider.
• 4 Change your ship to a Leviathan.
• 5 Change your ship to a Terrier.
• 6 Change your ship to a Weasel.
• 7 Change your ship to a Lancaster.
• 8 Change your ship to a Shark.
• S Change your ship to the Spectator model. Selecting someone in the playerlist and pressing FIRE will make you spectate that specific player.
• Pgup/Pgdown adjusts the size of the playerlist.

Spectator options

These are options that are available ONLY when you are in spectator mode.

• F3 Free movement mode. Now you can move around freely using the arrow keys. Press and hold the SHIFT-key to move around faster.
• F5 Soccer mode. You will keep following the soccer ball.
• CTRL Spectate the person your ticked in the player list. Press Pageup/Pagedown to select someone.
• arrow keys Move the view around the map. Press SHIFT and an arrow key to move around faster.

A Newbie's Plight

Getting Better

So you suck. You've been playing the game for three weeks and can't even hit a wall, let alone a 100-bounty player. Or you maybe you just installed the game this afternoon, and are frustrated by miners, neg-killers, and pbomb-throwing demigods. Although it is certainly true that some amount of natural talent is needed to succeed in this game, practice and experience are eighty percent of what makes a good pilot. There are dozens, uncountable legions, of people out there that could be much better than they are now, save for the fact that they don't listen, they don't learn, and just don't care.

It really isn't that difficult to survive in SubSpace. A few simple tips and pointers will get you to the point where you have a powerful enough ship to fight. From there on, mastery of a few basic strategies will put you ahead of at least 75% of your opponents. Once you are comfortable with those, and can hold down a 1:1 win/loss ratio, move on to the more advanced strategies. Tackle those high-bounty players. Practice that long-distance pbombing. Play the flag game if you want. Above all, remember that all of us were once as inexperienced and frustrated as you are now.

Neg Etiquette

It is frustrating, isn't it? Your ship begins with close to nothing, forcing you to spend a good fifteen minutes gathering the green before you have a hope of winning any important fights. Unfair as this may seem, the process of upgrading and downgrading is an integral part of the game's design; patience is something needed in spades if you want to succeed. While you are weak, pretend the gun and the bomb keys do not exist. Leave the more powerful ships alone, and they will leave you alone. Most of the time. As you become more experienced, you will often find yourself plagued by negs who follow you around for no other reason than to snag a lucky kill. Countless times I have fired a bomb at an opponent only to have it detonate on one of those nearby pests, lowering my average instead. Such behavior benefits neither party; you may feel some satisfaction out of seeing the guy with 12 flags dodge your level 1 bullets and plow straight into a minefield, but your gameplay, score, and reputation will suffer for it.

Neg Killing

When you start with a new ship, your ship begins with a bounty of 50. Generally, any ship under 60 bounty is referred to as a 'neg', a term held over from the old days when ships used to start with -12 bounty. Most pilots respect a target bounty limit that can be set with the target feature. You can either set the target within the game by typing "?target=#" or in the Options screen before playing. On your radar, enemy ships below this bounty will appear as dark blue and ships above this bounty will be light blue. The more skilled a pilot is, the higher he will set his target. However, it is absolutely unacceptable to set it below 60, and most good players will become pissed if you set it below 80.

People are neg for a reason - to discourage others from killing them. It is simply a fact that nobody can put up a decent front against a high-bounty, reasonably good player with a ship that has less than 50 or 60 bounty. You can't fight, and you can't run if a bully decides to chase you. Think about it, is there really any reason to kill a negative player? Points are certainly not the reason. Yes, it does increase your win/loss ratio, but at the expense of your score and your rating.

There is little or no actual fun in blasting away a weakling. You are not displaying any effort on your part, and you are wasting his time and yours. Wait until he has powered up, and then meet him in a fair fight. By getting killed by that pilot in an equal match, you will learn more and become a better player than if you had destroyed him when he was a neg. Of course, it is perfectly acceptable to annihilate a neg who attacks you first, but whether you wish to ruin your average kill rating in this way is up to you.

The issue of neg killing is closely related to that of engine shutdown and 'Mavis Beacon' killing, as they all involve the killing of a defenseless, or near defenseless, ship. 'Mavis Beacon' killing refers, of course, to the attacking of a pilot who is obviously typing, and thus unable to defend himself.

A player who decides to compose a love poem in the middle of a battle has no excuse when someone marches up and pops a cap in his ass. However, if you find a ship in some far off corner that just seems to be drifting, be a nice guy and just leave him alone. One of the most despicable breed of vermin you will find are those Spider pilots who will cloak and follow around a ship until he stops to type, at which time they will unload with a stream of L3 bullets.

Please don't shoot at anyone who has picked up an engine shutdown. How can you tell this? If your opponent picks up a green, and then suddenly coasts in a straight line, he probably picked up a shutdown. If you are the victim of the unlucky green instead, rotate your ship to signal to other players that you are defenseless. Engine shutdown vastly decreases your rotation speed.

Gun Follies

There are two common ways in which 'newbies' will get themselves killed. The first involves the dreaded 'one-shot' kill. Basically, our newbie will find himself with level 3 multi bullets, a very powerful but very energy-consuming weapon, and will home in on the nearest high-bounty player and proceed to fire a dozen or so rounds in his direction. More often than not the 'victim' will step to the side, and as the newbie passes nearby, he will let off one or two shots and the newbie will explode. The most common response to such an event is a whine that goes like this: "He killed me with one shot! That's not fair!" Yes, he did kill you with one shot, but no, it was not unfair. The most important thing to remember in a fight is that your weapons draw upon the same energy source as does your 'life'. Whenever you fire a bullet, a little bit of your life-force goes along with it, a force that can only be recovered over time by recharging. It is all too common to see someone waste so much of his energy firing ill-aimed shots that he is easily killed by a pilot smart enough to conserve his power.

Bomb Follies

Firing bombs to a close target will cause you to lose energy, and will not harm the opponent nearly as much as it will harm you. If someone does this to you simply fire a few shots and more likely than not the suicider will die (having reduced his energy to zero with the bomb).

Be very careful when and where you fire your bombs. Bombs are an extremely dangerous weapon, both to the bomber and the bombed. On average, a bomb will exert an energy drain on the bomber of about 70% of the damage it will cause the victim. Also, of course, your bomb is equally likely to do damage to you if you aren't a safe distance away. The more powerful a bomb is, the farther away you should be from the point of detonation. Luckily, due to a feature called the pbomb fuse, you are required to be a certain distance from another ship to fire a bomb, but this distance isn't large enough to serve as a substitute for good judgment.

Ships

Warbird

The Warbird is one of the original ships of Subspace. It is the most maneuverable ship in the game, which makes it a great dog fighting ship. In addition, it has the highest thrust speed, which allows it to escape, or dodge all other ships. Because of its increased maneuverability, it is common to see turret drivers using this ship to strafe and dodge incoming attacks, while their gunners take down the enemy. This ship is the most common ship to use for advanced pilots, but new players should use this ship because the maneuverability makes it easier to learn how to steer.

Subspace Chaos Quote

The Warbird is the ideal craft for the beginner. Easy to learn and packing a good punch, an expert Warbird pilot can run rings around less maneuverable opponents. A good tactic for a Warbird pilot is to actively seek out heavier opponents then dogfight with them dodging bullets and bombs until he believes the enemy has depleted his energy then striking the killer blow with his guns. The Warbird’s excellent acceleration and turn rate makes this tactic possible. Warbird pilots should be very wary about using their gun. Although it is powerful it should not be used for "spraying" a target with bullets as each round is expensive in energy and the Warbird has little energy to spare. The gun is best used in short bursts or even better as single "ranging" shots to keep an opponent distracted until you get nice and close then the killing burst. When on the defensive, remember to use your maneuverability to cling to the edges of walls and always turn around a wall at the very last moment. The chances are that a clumsier craft will hit the wall and lose valuable moments allowing you to escape.

Rincewind Quote

I and many of the better players regard the Warbird as the best ship overall. Since you've read the help file, you will know that the Warbird is the most maneuverable craft; it has the highest maximum rotation and thruster speeds, and a decent top speed. It doesn't have any unusual abilities like the other ships do. However, in tight battle situations, maneuverability is by far your most important weapon, since the difference between your victory and your death is frequently measured in fractions of a second. The capabilities of the Warbird will allow you to avoid bombs that others can't, and navigate terrain that would stymie a Javelin or a Spider.

Yes, a high top speed is nice for the chase and the escape, but if you had killed the guy in the first place you wouldn't have to do these things at all. The Warbird starts out useless, however, with a pitiful charge rate and energy capacity, and needs to be upgraded mercilessly. If you're a newbie, begin with the Javelin, and then after you are comfortable with the game, switch over to the Warbird.

Javelin

The Javelin's strongest trait is its speed. It is by far the fastest ship in the game, which makes it a great ship for chasing, or running from, the enemy. It has low acceleration, which makes it difficult to drive, but a good Javelin pilot can use the map’s layout to avoid getting tripped up or out maneuvered. The Javelin is generally used as a ‘hit and run’ type ship because it can escape quickly after it has attacked. Generally, beginning Javelin players should be aware that the lack of rotation speed makes it tough to steer in tight areas; to counteract this, use walls or other obstacles to quickly bounce back into battle.

Subspace Chaos Quote

The Javelin is a fast, well powered craft that is hard to handle due to its relatively weak acceleration. Speed is what the Javelin is all about. Not only does its speed allow it to reach powerups before other ships but it gives a decisive edge in combat if used correctly. Against other ship types, the Javelin can use its speed to decide where and when to pick a fight. When the Javelin pilot decides to engage he should use high speed slashing attacks then use his speed to stand off until he is recharged to strike again. Using these tactics a Javelin can wear down and frustrate even the most powerful of opponents. The Javelin’s high speed also allows it to orbit near dogfights then when one opponent is killed the Javelin can sweep in and finish off the loser who is presumably damaged after the fight.

Rincewind Quote

The Javelin has the highest top speed of any ship. It also starts out with the best upgrades - a high charge rate and top speed, both useful for avoiding the legions of neg-killers out there. However, its maximum rotation speed simply sucks, and its thrusters aren't as powerful as the Warbird's. This is not to say that a Javelin will lose to a Warbird every time; there are many good Javelin players who kill more than their share of Warbirds. But although it is unmatched in its ability to hunt down and overtake those who dare to run, the Warbird is simply the better ship once the fight has started. In the flag game, however, the Javelin has a great advantage when it comes to outrunning opponents. It is also an excellent ship to use in combination with single fire guns, which can mean instant death to a slower victim. It is usually a bad ship to fly in the War Zone due to the constricted areas within bases, but it can outrun most antiwarpers with ease.

Spider

Spiders require a great deal of skill to fly well, but they can be extremely deadly (and annoying) ships to fight against. They are they only ship that can obtain cloaking. Cloaking allows the spider to be invisible on the screen to all enemy ships (teammates can still see you). Cloaked ships have many tactics that allow them to take advantage of weak enemies, or sneak up on unaware opponents. In flagging zones, they can also be used to attempt to infiltrate the enemy base and remain undetected. Enemies can reveal cloaked ships by using X-Radar, but this requires that they actively enable the item and look for you on screen. The downside to cloaking is that it does take energy to cloak, which means when cloak is enabled, your recharge rate will be slower than normal. Combining the Spider’s Cloak with Stealth allows the spider to be totally undetectable to enemies without X-Radar turned on.

Subspace Chaos Quote

The Spider is of average speed, average handling and weakly armed. Its one great advantage is that of cloaking. The cloak device, when turned on, makes the Spider invisible to the naked eye, giving it a huge advantage in terms of intelligence. The Spider’s best form of attack is to zoom in from the side of the targets vector, deliver a volley of rounds, then egress to the rear of the enemy and disappear again. The rearward egress forces an additional delay on the enemy that he has to reverse his vector to follow you costing him precious moments that allow you to change direction again and give him the slip. Once at a safe distance, the Spider can turn off the stealth, recharge his batteries and repeat the process until a kill is achieved. The Spider requires great self restraint however as you must always hold in reserve enough energy to remain in stealth until you are a safe distance away. A disciplined Spider pilot will wait until he sees the enemy visually then pound him with 5 rounds before disappearing away again into the black. One particularly sneaky tactic a Spider pilot can use is to hover around a powerup while cloaked (without actually picking it up) and when an enemy approaches the powerup, the spider pilot can fire a volley of bullets at the unsuspecting pilot, potentially killing the player before he even realizes he is being shot at. A Spider with Stealth and the Cloaking device, which makes the ship invisible to the eye and on radar, is one of the most potent weapons in the game. The nemesis of the stealth is the X-RADAR which reveals all stealthed and cloaked ships on radar. However X-RADAR costs energy to maintain and you should not assume that even if a ship has already demonstrated XRADAR that it is always on. To fight and win with the Spider takes cunning and skill but there is great satisfaction destroying an enemy without him ever knowing of your existence until its too late.

Rincewind Quote

The Spider is special because it starts out with stealth built-in, and can alone receive the cloaking upgrade. Other than that, however, it is basically an average ship. It is certainly not crippled, and indeed has decent maximums in most upgrade areas. However, if you fly the Spider and do not use cloaking frequently, you're missing the point. The Spider is unmatched in its ability to deceive and annoy the enemy with its cloaking device. You can perform stunts of such excessive ferocity and/or cheesiness that they will make your opponents gasp in dismay. Since the advent of the base-oriented flag game in the War Zone, the Spider has become a spectacular ship to play. It is indispensable for stealing your opponent's flags undetected, and no team should be without several Spider players.

Leviathan

Leviathans are long range bombing ships. They always start with bombs, and can be upgraded to have Level 3 (L3) bombs, which do a large amount of damage, and have wider proxy wider proxy than any other bomb. Their downfall is their low maneuverability, and the huge amount of energy an L3 bomb takes to fire. In addition, the wider proxy, and more powerful L3 bomb make it easier to PB yourself. Generally, new players like to use this ship because they find the powerful weapons more attractive.

Generally, a Leviathan should be flown at a distant from the battle. Fire L3’s into the fray (this is called vulching). Try not to directly engage more maneuverable ships such as the Warbird, and make sure to watch your energy.

Subspace Chaos Quote: The Leviathan is the only craft to start with bombs and it has the energy capacity to use them. The Leviathan’s whole strategy is centered around bringing this weapon to bear. Leviathan players should be wary however as bombs cost a lot of energy to use and this can leave the Leviathan like a beached whale ready to be destroyed. Leviathan is best suited to crowded terrain. Remember that bombs explode when they hit walls so if you are fighting and enemy in an enclosed space then you have an advantage as even a near miss will cause him damage. Also bombs can inflict damage through walls. It is always amusing to corner an enemy hiding behind a wall then explode a bomb next to him and watch him whine when he dies.

Rincewind Quote: The Leviathan is the most commonly chosen ship among newbies, but rarely used by experienced players. It is said in the help file to be the most powerful ship, which seems to lead many new players to the conclusion that they are in for a few easy kills. Even though the Leviathan has the ability to upgrade to L3 bombs, its subpar piloting capabilities make it difficult to win a close battle. Furthermore, L3 bombs require massive amounts of energy to fire, which puts the ship in great danger of being killed by a retaliatory shot.

Does this mean the Leviathan sucks? Certainly not. If you come up against some of the better Leviathan players, you will be in for the fight of your life. Their strategy is to always keep a screen or two away from the enemy, whom they will constantly bombard with L3 bombs. This makes it extremely difficult to approach close enough for a kill, and it frequently takes three or more players to nail down an errant Leviathan. If your tastes run more towards the excitement of close combat, make another choice.

Perhaps what this ship is best at is controlling large areas of territory. If, for example, your team has a base with one entrance, and there is lots of space around this entrance where enemies like to hang out, have a team member take a Leviathan out there and canvas the area with his bombs.

Terrier

Terriers are generally the ship that new players start with. Their main advantage is that they have double barrel guns, which means you don’t have to have as much aim when you are attacking the enemy. The terrier is also a great ship to use when you are fighting in close quarters, because the double barrel bullets will quickly fill tight spaces. Also, when multifire is enabled, Terriers will shoot four bullets instead of three, which is a big advantage for long distance attacks. One downside is that their rate of fire is slightly slower than other ships, which means that in a direct gun duel, other pilots can inflict more damager per second than the Terrier.

Subspace Chaos Quote: The Terrier is another great beginner’s ship. Its twin guns allow it to spray an enemy with bullets and keep him on the defensive. A great ship to have near walls and closed in areas. The Terrier is also that rarest of ships, one that starts out strong. This means the terrier pilot is less likely to be negged than other types of ships.

Rincewind Quote: The Terrier is about as maneuverable as the Leviathan but instead of L3 bombs, it sports double-barreled guns (and starts off at L2, instead of L1). With single fire, instead of shooting out a single stream of bullets, it emits two parallel streams. With multifire, though, it only fires four bullets at a time, not six as you would expect. One disappointment with the Terrier is that it fires these guns at a slower rate, and that if one bullet hits its target the other one(s) will automatically disappear. This means that in a gun duel with a Terrier, a good Warbird pilot has the upper hand because he can simply do more raw damage per second. However, the Terrier's advantage lies in the greater area he can cover with his fire. You're only going to win a battle if you are good at avoiding most of what your enemy is shooting while hitting him where he wouldn't expect a ship to be able to fire.

The Terrier is most at home in the War Zone; in claustrophobic bases those extra bullets become deadly. It's an OK ship in the Running Zone, although a Terrier with rockets is a sight to behold.

Weasel

Weasels are great ships for the experienced player. For new players, they also offer the benefit of having less PB damage than other ships. A Weasel’s main ability is that it has EMP bombs, which freeze a ships recharge for a short period of time. To finish the kill, Weasels can then attack with bullets (or have their teammates attack). Generally, when an enemy is hit with an EMP bomb, they back off to recharge, and the Weasel’s lack of speed and maneuverability make it difficult to finish the attack. Additionally, the Weasel is a great team ship, but EMP bombs will also freeze your teammate’s energy if they are near the explosion, so pilots need to be careful that they only aim at targets that won’t hurt nearby teammates.

Subspace Chaos Quote: The Weasel is a superb ECM craft. Not only does it see minefields on radar (displayed as white dots) but it also fires special EMP bombs that cause damage upon impact and stop the enemy from recharging. The weasel is very much a thinking pilot's craft. Craft pilots use this ship to incredible effect. The EMP not only disables recharge, if the player is using cloak, xradar, stealth, or antiwarp, their energy will go down unless they turn off these energy draining systems.

Rincewind Quote: The Weasel is another variant on the low maneuverability/special weapons theme. It fires a special variety of bomb called the 'EMP', which upon detonation prevents the target ship from recharging for a number of seconds. The caveat is that the bomb itself doesn't do much direct damage. Instead, what a Weasel pilot should do is first disable their victim's charge with an EMP and then home in with guns to finish the job. Also, the Weasel has the ability to see mines on radar as small white dots, a useful advantage when on the run.

In the hands of a good pilot the Weasel is more effective in battle than a casual player might first think. Since it doesn't maneuver that well you'd think it would have trouble squeezing in those few bullets needed to finish off a damaged enemy. However, an opponent with no charge rate only needs to eat two or three bullets to die anyway, and it isn't hard to hit with that many. Never underestimate how vulnerable your ship after being hit with an EMP; usually a couple easy deaths at the hands of a Weasel will serve as proof. This ship is perhaps best in the Running Zone where several people are chasing one target, or in the War Zone situations where one person is trying to get in or out of your base.

Lancaster

Lancasters are one of the newer ships to be added to the game. Their unique attribute is a bouncing bomb. When fired, the bomb will bounce off nearby walls for a certain number of times before detonating (the number of bounces depends on the zone). Bouncy bombs allow Lancasters to excel at close quarter fighting, and also offer it a great advantage in long range attacks. For this reason, the Lancaster is an extremely versatile ship. Unfortunately, its lack of maneuverability sometimes makes it a difficult to fly well.

Subspace Chaos Quote: The Lancaster has one remarkable feature. Its plasma bombs are timed and thus able to bounce off obstacles allowing the pilot to attack targets not normally available. Lancasters are very useful in closed areas and invaluable in WARZONE games.

Shark

Sharks, like Spiders, have the cloaking ability. The difference between the two lies in their maneuverability and energy requirements. Cloaking on a Spider takes far less energy than on a Shark. Conversely, Sharks are the second most maneuverable ship in the game (behind the Warbird), while the Spider is only mediocre in this area. These differences make the Shark a good ship for fast paced attacks. Generally, because of high cloaking energy restraints, once a Shark becomes uncloaked, it remains uncloaked during an attack, and then retreats to recharge.

Subspace Chaos Quote: The manuverabilty of the shark is second only to the warbird. Athough the shark can cloak, like the spider, the recharge cost of cloaking prevents the shark from constantly recloaking while fighting.

Zones

Subspace is unique in that the gamestyle can vary depending on the zone. Some zones are just free-for-all style gameplay, while others are capture the flag, or even powerball style.

Alpha Zone

A simple fly around and kill people zone. Play against other beginning players. After 2000 points you can no longer play here. Collect green prizes to increase the power of your ship. Yellow ships are friendly.

Chaos Zone

The Chaos zone is a natural progression from the Alpha Zone. A no holds barred action arena. The idea is for you and your team to kill as many high bounty people as possible.

Running Zone

In this zone there are 16 flags. The first team to get all 16 flags wins the game. When you carry a flag you get triple points for each kill. When you kill a player you get his flags.

War Zone

In this zone there are 8 flags. The first team to get all 8 flags wins the game. After you pick up a flag you have a certain amount of time to carry it to your teams base then you drop it. Once dropped a friendly flag cannot be moved again

Speed Zone

A fast 30 min game. You start with some bounty and the winner is posted after one hour.

Turf Zone

Hold your turf!!! - Rod Humble

League Zone

League games hosted, season information is located on the subspace website.

Philosophy Club

Private, For scenarios and other special events - Philosophy conspiracy.

Sheep Cloning Facility

Even more Private, For scenarios and other special events - Maintained by einexile.

How to Fly

Ship Systems

I, like many others, will not begin fighting until I have achieved the maximum or near-maximum upgrade in all ship systems. However, due to bad luck or damage, sometimes I'm left with a less than ideal craft and must make do with what I've got. In this section, I will discuss the importance of three upgrades and their effect on maneuverability: top speed, thrusters, and rotation. Be aware that you can use the ?status command to easily determine in which areas your ship is deficient. Also keep it in mind that you can always ask a teammate if you can become a turret if you find yourself stuck with a bum ship.

Top Speed

A high top speed is frequently more useful for getting away from or getting to your opponent than it is for killing him. The exception is when you or your team is chasing someone who just won't fight, in which case you can speed a couple bombs and bullets into his back.

If you play with a low top speed, then you are handing your enemy the advantage of being able to choose when the battle is to begin or end. Attempting to run from someone with much greater speed is a recipe for frustration, for you will see yourself quickly and easily succumb to a barrage of smartly aimed bullets and bombs. Likewise, if you attempt to chase a faster ship, he'll disappear from your map before you say "coward". If you find your self stuck in a losing situation with no top speed, control the urge to run, and instead turn around and fire back at your pursuer. Running is the worst thing you can do, because your pursuer will be able to keep up and he will be able to hit you with several rounds of bullets per second.

Thruster Power

Don't even think about combat until you have upgraded your thrusters. Otherwise, you will find yourself unable to make the sharp twists and turns needed to position your ship for battle. If you've spent most of your time in play with good thrusters, you have learned a certain set of responses and instincts, much like riding a bicycle. If you then play with low thrusters, these same instincts will betray you at every turn; your bombs will go wide and your turns will lead you into dead-ends instead of routes of escape.

Rotation Speed

Rotation speed is an important part of what makes a ship maneuverable, although not as important as the other systems. With low rotation, you're unable to respond quickly to attacks that come at you from the side or from behind, and will find it difficult to navigate rocky territory. Be assured that if you are fighting any reasonably good opponent, he will take note of your poor rotation and will circle around you faster than you can keep up. It is also is difficult to pull off tight turns with no rotation. If you find yourself being chased with low energy and need to get away quickly, a good tactic is to quickly dive into the nearest corridor, hoping your opponent won't have time to follow. A poor rotation speed, however, will give the enemy several second's warning of your intentions.

Basic Concepts

Physics 101

Although you will quickly develop a 'feel' for the physics of SubSpace, it's important to understand what is going on behind the scenes. SubSpace works on simple Newtonian principles. Basically, a body in motion will stay in motion. One anomaly is if you are flying in one direction, and turn in another and accelerate, you will slowly lose momentum in your previous vector.

Walls and obstacles are about 80% elastic; that is, when you rebound off a wall, you will be traveling at 80% of your previous speed. Strangely enough, ships do not collide, but pass right through each other, a phenomenon disconcerting to the experienced Descent player. Your bombs and your bullets inherit your vector when fired, and in addition gain a speed increase in the direction pointed. In other words, you have inertia, and so does everything you emit. Be aware of these facts, for there are certain attacks and maneuvers that take very specific advantage of them.

Timing

There are two skills that separate the great player from one who is merely good.

The first is an acute sense of timing, and the second is the ability to predict what other ships are doing. Since you need good timing to act on your predictions, the first skill is perhaps more fundamental.Almost everything you do in battle will succeed or fail based on your judgment of where things will be one or two seconds in the future. You ship is traveling along one vector, your enemy along another, and your bomb will form a third. Whether or not you score a hit will depend on how accurate your assessment was of the desired intersection point between the path of your shot and that of the enemy ship. You must also take into account the possibility of his changing course, not to mention the probability that you can avoid anything he may be able to lob your way. Shooting at a faraway target is even more difficult, since you must make an educated guess at where things will be five or six seconds from now.

As you can see, you must perform a delicate juggling act between three or four variables just to keep up with the crowd. There is little you can do to improve your ability to handle these calculations outside of practice and experience. Gradually, you will become better able to predict what someone is going to do next and where your bullets are going to hit, but be aware that this takes time. There is nothing more satisfying that to see an opponent slam into three or four of your bombs after he's run far enough away to think you could no longer be a problem.

Lag

One of the phenomena that you will become intimately acquainted with is the problem of lag. First, some background. SubSpace is an online game that uses the Internet's TCP/IP transport protocol to communicate with the host computer in Washington. Your SubSpace packets usually must hop past a good number of routers before reaching their destination, and each one slows it down. The time delay introduced by this hopping is referred to as latency, and can be from anywhere to one tenth of a second to four or five seconds. SubSpace is programmed in such as way that the client must know the location of some or all of the ships in the game, and thus the more ships there are in the arena, the greater the load on the network connection. Like most NAPS that connect major internet backbone providers to one another, it is overloaded and underfunded and thus adds something like 100ms to any packet that it handles.

Ping? Packetloss?

Ping isn't everything, however. Packetloss generally has a greater negative effect on gameplay than ping. Packetloss is simply the percentage of packets that are lost in transit from your computer to vie.com, and vice-versa. To determining what your packetloss is, type '?packetloss' into SubSpace. Packetloss from the server to you doesn't matter much, but loss from you to the server is crucial. If 4it is %10, for example, %10 of all of the shots you fire are not reaching your opponent. This is the cause of all those bursts that the enemy doesn't see and all those repels that don't move his ship. Your connection to the server is very dependent on the ISP you are using. If your loss is above %15 and your ping more than 300ms, consider switching. There is a feature available in the main screen that can be activated by pressing “trace”, this may help you determine the state of your connection to the servers. Generally any broadband connection will be able to handle subspace fine, but some older or slower dialups do have problems. If your opponent's packetloss is very bad he may not be seeing many of your shots, which also means that you probably aren't seeing many of his. Certain players, and even whole squads in league games have at times manipulated their connection to simulate such packetloss.

Map Elements

Each map is divided into a number of sectors in a rectangular grid. A sector is identified by a letter and a number; the letters run from A to T from left to right, and the numbers from 1 to 20 from top to bottom. Thus, the top left corner is sector A1, and the bottom left is sector T20. This coordinate is displayed on the top of your map at all times, in small type.

You should be aware of the several different varieties of map terrain and what they do.

Empty Space: Duhh. It's all around you.

Walls: Walls behave in exactly the same way even though there are many different looking wall graphics. They tile either horizontally or vertically, and if you hit them you bounce right off.

Fake Walls: These are tiles that look like walls but actually allow ships to pass through them. While under a fake wall you will be invisible on the screen but still visible on radar. And no, you can't lay mines under them (damn).

Gates: Gates are straight lines that look somewhat like strips of fluorescent tubing. They appear and disappear at regular intervals, even though they always appear closed on your radar.

Safe Zones: Safety Zones are greenish tiles that protect you from damage if you move your ship into them. For some sadistic reason the designers of most of SubSpace's maps decided to make them infrequent and difficult to enter.

Wormholes: Wormholes look like big black holes in space. They exert an enormous gravitational force and will suck bombs, bullets, and ships right in. Unlike bombs and bullets, ships that are sucked in will then reappear at some random location on the map with a depleted energy bar and frequently a downgrade. You can even orbit a wormhole if you want.

JeffP On: Downgrades Ship damage is defined as losing a prize you have acquired. If a ship has full energy (or very near full energy) when it takes a hit from a bomb or bullet (or from going through the wormhole) it will not take damage. (Note, the shrapnel after the bomb may cause you damage though...). The odds of your ship actually taking damage are a function of how much damage is occurring. Once the odds of taking damage are calculated a random number is used to determine if your ship will actually take damage or not.

Once it is determined that you ship will take damage, one of 17 systems is picked to take the damage. If your ship does not have an upgrade to that system, then no damage occurs. A fully loaded ship (with all systems upgraded) is more likely to get a system hit than a weaker ship. You can never be damaged below the minimum levels (you cannot lose your L1 guns for example or drop below 1000 max energy).

Straight shootin'

A great deal of your game time will be spent chasing after or running from an opponent. The one thing you can do that will almost guarantee your death at the hands of a veteran pilot would be to fly in a straight line. Your opponent knows exactly where you are by looking at his map, and the more predictable your actions are, the easier it is for him to hit you.

Travel in a straight line, and you will almost surely run into a mine laid by the enemy or worse yet, a string of bombs fired right back into your path. It is typical of the newbie to chase a pilot and fire two or three pbombs at him, only to run into an enemy shot and die instantly. And if you are known as someone who likes to run straight, your pursuer will be able to tell his teammates exactly where you are heading should they be looking for you. Avoid this (and similar) fates by swerving back and forth as you fly, and by traveling in an arc over long distances. Even as you do so, assume that your enemy has anticipated this and never lower your energy to the point that just one chance hit could kill you.

Eye on the Map

Never, ever take your eyes off of the map for more than a few seconds at a time.

Before an enemy can kill you, he must first come near you (unless he's a miner), and the map will always give you at least five seconds warning before you must fight. An experienced SubSpace player will constantly be analyzing the behavior of the ships around him; based on their patterns of movement, he can tell at a glance whether a group of ships is an enemy team bent on his destruction, or just a bunch of negs having a tea party.

When you are engaged in a one-on-one, every so often glance at the map to see if there are any other ships that appear to be purposely heading in your direction. If so, you should assume that they are coming for you, and it would be wise to temporarily break off and move away from their line of fire. This is especially important if you have flags to protect, because in such a case a quickly approaching ship will frequently bring his entire team with him. Use what you see of your opponent's movement to your advantage. If he is coming in a straight line, lob bombs in his path. If there is a large group of ships nearby, and you are losing the fight, lead him into it in the hope that he will be delayed by the melee.

Tight Spaces

Every arena is a chaotic mixture of large open areas and claustrophobic corridors. Many people tend to stay away from the smaller spaces because they either fear being ambushed, or are not confident of their navigational abilities. However, these are usually the easiest places in which to lose a crafty pursuer. Next time you are being chased, turn into one of these areas and fly as unpredictably and as erratically as you can.

Several of these regions, though, are so cluttered that they cannot be flown through without paying full attention to your screen. This means you've got to temporarily violate the cardinal rule that tells you never to take your eyes off the map. When approaching, take a quick glance at the map to assure yourself that there is no one waiting in ambush, and then fly through quickly but carefully.

If you are precise enough with the arrow keys and make liberal use of the afterburner, you can execute some quite spectacular moves. Do this correctly, and often you can gain a substantial lead over even the most determined pursuer. Do it wrong, and you will bump into a wall and bounce right back into a hail of bullets.

One of the worst things you can do is to skillfully outmaneuver your enemy in a maze only to stumble upon a cloud of ammunition let loose by his stealthed teammate. Toggle your x-radar often if you want to avoid such a fate.

Dead Ends

If you don't watch where you're going, you may find yourself turning into a dead end. If your opponent has been playing the game for any length of time, he will most likely have his eyes on the map and will note your mistake. He'll then slow down, and as you struggle to get out, he will let off a haze of bouncing bullets and pbombs that will kill you instantly. Careening into a dead end is one of the most reliable ways to die or at least downgrade your ship to the point of uselessness; even players who know the terrain extremely well will make this mistake, since on approach the entrances too many such places look similar to those of corridors.

Having made such a mistake, don't panic. The worst things you can do are slam down on the thrusters and overshoot the exit, bouncing around like a pinball and hitting every bullet in sight. Your first reaction should be to attempt a warp. If you are damaged or if the enemy has antiwarp on, however, this won't work. Instead, very carefully and very slowly move your ship to the exit and fly it through. You opponent will be shooting at you, but you have no choice but to grin and bear it, or better yet, use a repel. If you know you're going to die, use a burst and take him with you.

Dodging

If you often find yourself slamming into mines and bombs while you saw them coming, then you should consider lowering your speed. Even if you can't dodge the bombs, you can "skim" them, resulting in a less energy loss. You can fight your way through quite a few bombs that way, providing that you are skilled enough to avoid all the shrapnel. An even better way is to dodge all those bombs in the first place. Now that's a bit hard because there are lots of players with excellent aim, but since most of them will be aiming "ahead" of you, you can trick them. Pretend that you're moving into a specific direction, and suddenly change course. If you time it right, chances are that your opponent will waste a good 400 energy on a bomb that isn't going to hit anything.

Shooting

Now that you can keep your ship from falling apart, you should try to kill some. This does not include piling up mines and hoping that someone hits them, but it's about fighting smart. You can keep firing bombs and keep hitting him with a few, but that's not likely to kill him. They will back-off when they are low on energy, and they will come back when they are recharged. If you want to kill someone, you'll have to move quickly when you think he's low on energy. Move in and use single fire and guns at close range, and stop and recharge if he gets away after the first assault. Don't let him surprise you with a portal or a mine. If it was as easy as that, this game would suck :). Fortunately there's a lot of skill involved, as well as a nice chunk of luck (bomb and bullet damage is partially random!). You can be a damn good tactician, but if you can't hit the guy if he's not even moving then you might as well try to kill the nearest asteroid (which, by the way, is quite good aiming practice:) ).

Plotting Techniques

Moving Backwards

It is amazing how many players never use their back arrow key. Skillful handling of your reverse thrusters is one of the hardest things to learn in SubSpace, but it adds much to your ability to maneuver. When faced with a bomb, a newbie will frequently be seen trying to first turn around, and then to use his forward key to run away. What he should have done instead is to accelerate backwards, instantly putting some distance between him and the bomb, and saving precious seconds that would have been wasted in rotation. Your reverse thrusters give you a whole additional 180 degrees of possibility, greatly enhancing your ability to dodge fire and making it easier to aim at your opponent. When running, instead of looking forward, face backwards and fire back at your surprised pursuer, using the back key to navigate. Some very good players have taught themselves to fly backwards for great lengths of time, weaving in and out of corridors, but this is a difficult thing to pull off.

The Afterburner

The afterburner is used to give you that extra push in situations where your thrusters simply cannot get you where you want to go. If you are about to overshoot a power up or are seconds away from being smashed by a surprise pbomb, turn 90 degrees and immediately fly away with your afterburners on. Although they consume a large amount of energy, if your charge rate is at or near maximum, the drain is almost negligible. Frequently you will find yourself with a good charge rate but few speed upgrades; keep your afterburners held down continuously and you can pick up bonuses and fly past battles with ease. It goes without saying that in a tight chase or pursuit situation, your afterburners are invaluable for getting from point A to point B faster than your opponent might assume possible.

The Bounce

One way to amaze and befuddle an enemy is to use the properties of the elastic wall to place your ship in a position that simply wouldn't be possible by use of thrusters alone. Many times you find yourself wanting to reverse course immediately; there is no easier way to do this than to fly head-on into the nearest wall, bounce back, and turn around. Make frequent use of the bounce to put your ship at a needed angle to capture a powerup or to make an exit. You can often save four or five seconds over the time the maneuver would have taken otherwise, seconds that you can use to defend yourself. In battle situations, you can gain an edge by learning how to bounce your ship and your bullets off of walls at opportune moments. The enemy will be amazed when he sees you stringing two or three bounces in a row to end up behind his bombs.

The Swivel

An ill-timed bounce can often turn a carefully planned attack into a nightmare rout. There is nothing worse than overshooting an opening only to careen right back at your adversary and his bullets. Many times you will lose total control in such tight spaces, pinballing randomly until you can slow down and sort out your position.

When making wide turns, there is an often-used technique that gives you a way to avoid pulling such a boner. For example, suppose you are flying toward the entrance to a corridor, but are slightly above it and fear that you cannot fly in without hitting the opposite wall. If you simply went directly at the entrance, you would indeed throw your ship into an uncontrollable series of bounces. Instead, slow down your ship by turning it about 60 degrees to the left. Gently fire your thrusters, and as you near the entrance turn 15 degrees to the right and proceed straight down it. You will have bled off your speed slowly and will not bounce off the wall, and because you started your turn early any bombs an enemy might have thrown at you will have gone high.

The Wiggle

When you are fighting another ship, he will attempt to hit you by predicting your movements based on which direction you seem to be turning. You can confuse your enemy by executing the Wiggle maneuver, which is much like pulling a 'fake' in football. He is facing you, and you are facing him, and he's about to fire a bomb. At this moment quickly wiggle your ship back and forth using your left and right arrow keys and just a little bit of thrust, and your opponent will either fire in the wrong direction or delay his shot for a few seconds, giving you time to counterattack. This is also an excellent opportunity to use your back arrow key by arcing one way, watching the enemy fire into your path, then immediately hitting your back thrusters and your left arrow key. You'll be back where you were and will be in a position to hit him in the side.

In-game Commands

General Commands

These are just some miscellanneous commands that you will find very useful. Write the imporant ones down, so you can access them in-game in case you forget them, or print out our quick reference page.

?usage

Displays the total amount of time you spent playing SubSpace

=10

Join the frequency 10 team. You need full energy to do this. Some zones don't support this ; if it doesn't work, ask other people in the zone. They will tell you which frequency numbers are open for you to join (you can always try 0 and 1)

?sheep

Display sheep message and play sheep sound

?buy

Displays list of things which can be bought (?buy repel buys you one repeller).

?userid

Displays your unique userID

?getnews

Download the news file from the zone you are currently in. The file is available under View>News located in the subspace startup screen.

?owner

Displays the name of the owner of the zone you are currently in

?ping

Displays your ping time to the server

?packetloss

Displays your current packetloss percentages

?arena

Displays list of public arenas

?time

Displays amount of time remaining in current game (only in timed games)

?crown

Displays how many kills you have left/need for a crown

?flags

Displays who is carrying flags

?team

Displays team-mates of player ticked in stat box

?find playername

Find the player named playername. Displays whether the user is online or not, and displays the zone the player is in.

?score

Show score in a soccer game

?ignore name

Ignores person 'name', or ignores ticked player if name is not specified.

?log filename Logs all messages to file (default file will be used if not specified). Type ?log again to stop logging.

?target=x

Sets your target bounty to X (ships with bounty equal to or higher than X will appear as a bright blue dot instead of a dark blue dot)

?status

Displays status of your ship and it's weaponry

?kill

Causes kill messages to be logged to message area

?savemap name.bmp

Saves a bitmap of current map to name.bmp (default name will be used if not specified)

?go arenaname

Go to the next public arena, or a private arena if 'arenaname' is specified. arena's with a # in front of the name are hidden ones. (they don't show up in the ?arena list)

?lines=x

Set number of message lines, or show the amount of lines if x is not specified

?obscene

Toggles the obscenity filter on/off. Only works when you are not playing in offline mode. The default setting for this is on.

?namelen=x

Sets length of name portion in message area

?away message

Sets/clears an away message

?music=x

Sets music volume (0 to 10)

?zone

Tell you which zone you are in

?spec

Display a list of people that are currently spectating you

?password=pw

Change your SubSpace password to pw

Squad management

Squads add a huge element of teamplay to SubSpace. When you join a squad, you (usually) devote yourself to playing with your squadmates, helping each other out, and duel other squads. You can easily make friends this way, and practice some two-player combo's. Creating a squad is one, but maintaining one is something different. You'd be better off if you joined a squad first before creating one of your own. Squad captains that don't know how things work are very annoying for the rest of the squad. For some the commands below you need to be the squad creator in order for the commands to work.

?squadjoin=A

B

Join an existing squad. A is the name of the squad, B is the password

?squadcreate=A

B

Create a new squad. A is the name of the squad, B is the password

?squadleave

Leave your current squad

?squaddissolve

Completely get rid of current squad you own(delete the squad, and remove all members from it)

?squadpassword=pw

Change squad password to pw

?squadlist

Lists the people that are on your squad

?squadkick=playername

Kick player called playername off of squad

?squadowner squadname

Tells you who the owner is of the squad called squadname

?squad playername

Tells you the name of the squad the player named playername is in.

?squadgrant playername

Grants the ownership of your current squad to the player called playername.

Macros

Macros are really important in subspace, especially in team-oriented games. Often you will have little time to call for help, or to ask for someone who is at base. With macros, you can store your most used text lines and retrieve them with a simple key combination. There are a lot of extra variables that can be used in macros to enhance communication, like an energy or coordinate indication that can often provide vital information for your teammates. Good use of macros will give you and your team a considerable edge when fighting enemy teams.

SHIFT-F#

# is a number from 1 to 8. Record the text that is currently at the text prompt. The next time you press SHIFT-F#, subspace will reproduce the macro exactly as you typed it.

?loadmacro filename

Load message macros from filename. This will replace your current macros with the ones stored in the macro file (usually a .mac file)

?savemacro filename

Save message macros to filename. Saves your message macros to disk. The default extension is .mac

%red

Displays name(bty:flags) of the nearest enemy flag carrier

%redname

Displays the name of nearest enemy flag carrier

%redbounty

Displays the bounty of the nearest enemy flag carrier

%redflags

Displays the number of flags of nearest enemy flag carrier

%coord

Displays your current coordinates

%tickname

Displays the ticked name

%selfname

Displays your name

%squad

Displays your squad

%freq Displays your frequency

%bounty

Displays your bounty

%flags

Displays how many flags you are carrying

%energy

Displays your energy

%shield

Displays your remaining shield time

%super

Displays your remaining super time

%killer

Displays the last person to kill you

%killed

Displays the last person you killed

General Communication

In the following text, the actual thing you type is written in italic text. Try to remember all of them, since nothing can be more annoying than not being able to say something to someone if you want. It is possible for you to send messages to someone who is in a different zone. So, if you want to know if your friend is online, you can send him a message and see if he's there.

Hello everyone sends "Hello everyone" to all players in the current arena. This is a public message, which is always written in blue text.

/Hi there

Sends "Hi there" to selected player. You select a player with the red arrow in the playerlist. This is a private message, which is always written in green text.

//Hello team

Sends "Hello team" to your entire frequency (all players in the playerlist that have a yellow name). This is a team message, which will always be written in yellow text.

'Hello team

Same as //Hello team

:doorknot:hi there

Sends private message "hi there" to player named "doorknot". If a player is not in the playerlist when he sends you a message, then use this option to reply to him. (It is possible to send messages to someone who is not even in the same zone)

::hi there

This will send "hi there" to the last person that sent you a message. For example, if someone named "Captain21" sends you a message, and you type ::hi there you will see :Captain21:hi there on your screen. In other words, the game will automatically fill in the right name for you.

"hiya

Will send hiya to ticked player's team. Will appear as blue text, with your name in green.

:#squadname:hi guys

Will send Hi guys to all players in the squad called squadname. A shortcut for talking to your own squad is SHIFT-3. Notice : these messages are NOT sent reliably ; it's possible that your squad does not receive all messages you send if your connection isn't too good.

Chat channels

Chat channels are special channels in SubSpace that allow a group of people to talk to every person using the chat channel. A player can have up to ten chat channels at a time. Players can have a specific channel, for their squad only, or just one for a specific zone. As you start to learn to know people in subspace, you will add more and more chat channels. They are definitely worth the time you spend figuring out how they work.

?chat

Lists the chat channels you are currently using

?chat=name1

Set your chat channel to the one named "name1".

?chat=sheep,newbies,losers,test,hi

Set multiple chat channels, names separated by a comma only. There is a maximum of ten channels.

;hi guys

Send "hi guys" to chat channel number one

2;hello folks

Send "hello folks" to chat channel number 2.

Credits

This subspace guide has been made available under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 License and the GFDL. Contributions and special thanks to those who made this guide possible by providing the materials compiled within:

• Rincewind
• Subspace Chaos
• Jeff Peterson
• Rod Humble