I'M AN ADMIRAL - Stellar Track

[Butt_Rogers]

After hours and hours and hours of playing, checking the manual on AtariAge constantly, and surrendering to the aliens again... and again. And again... I just beat Stellar Track for the first time.

And I have to say.

I love this game.



In this last game I screwed up a few times, trying to Quadrant Warp, only to run into a star - which wastes a stardate. Then you have to Sector Warp to get a clear path to the quadrant you want to warp to, then initiate another Quadrant Warp. It only takes a few failed quadrant warps for you to eat up enough stardates that you no longer have enough time to complete your mission. Then Starfleet has to surrender to the aliens because you're an incompetent starship driver.

Well, I made it to the final sector. 1 enemy ship left. 1 stardate left. I had 2 photon torpedoes, around 1,000 energy. I lined up my photon shot, aimed, fired. Nothing. My photon launcher was disabled. I'd have to do it the hard way with phasors. I was a ways away from the enemy ship, and phasor damage dissipates with distance, so I charged up a 300 energy phasor blast, and bam, by the grace of almighty Kirk, I destroyed the final enemy ship.

Not only did I beat the game, I got the highest ranking somehow (cadet, ensign, lieutenant, captain, commodore, admiral).

For the last few sectors my heart was racing. One wrong move, one wrong warp jump, any engine damage, any short range scan damage, and I was dead, having come so close but so far. It was exciting. Thrilling. Nerve wracking.

Review.

I've had a great time playing this game - but there is a hell of a learning curve, and I have to keep a piece of paper with the numbered course direction wheel on hand in order to play.

I feel really sorry for anyone who ever tried to play this game without reading the manual. Even with the manual it took me quite a few games to figure out all the nuances and commit all the rules to memory.

Quadrant warps take 100 energy and 1 stardate per quadrant. Sector warps take 10 energy per space. And if you initiate a quadrant jump, and run into a star in sector, your warp is aborted, you lose 100 energy, you lose 1 stardate, and then you have to sector jump away from the star, and do it all over again, losing yet another 100 energy and 1 stardate. It's very, very easy to do this.

You have to be vigilant in this game. Don't enter a quadrant jump when you mean to enter a sector jump. Don't run into a star and waste time and energy. Move around in-sector as little as possible. If you have to destroy an enemy ship with phasors, it might be advisable to damage them from a distance before moving in for the kill, as damaged enemy ships aren't able to damage you as much. If you warp into a sector, and are extremely close to more than one ship, it's probably advisable to kill them all with a high powered phasor shot because phasors will target all ships in sector at once - but beware, the phasor shot power is divided among all enemy ships. If there are three enemy ships, each ship one space away, then a 300 power phasor shot should be enough to destroy all three (in theory) as each enemy ship has 99 health. If they're further than one space away, you have to guesstimate how much additional power will be required.

It's a surprisingly deep game with quite a bit of strategy. Plotting the shortest course, knowing how low to run your energy & torpedo reserves before docking at a starbase, whether to use torpedoes or phasors, how much power to commit to your phasor shots, etc.

But there's also a lot of chance. There's a random number generator in there somewhere, and if an enemy ship scores a -7 hit to your engines, that means you have to spend 7 stardates in-sector to repair them. That's seven lost days. That's very likely to cripple your chances of defeating the enemy.

If your short range scan is disabled, you can't fight, you can't even dock at a starbase, so you have to putter around for however many days is required to effect repairs and hope you don't get trapped in a cage of stars wasting stardates because you can't see where you're going.

It's a quirky game. It's a complicated game. It's got some issues. It's easy to make mistakes that cripple your chances of winning. There are a lot of rules and you're never going to remember them all after reading the manual just once.

But it's probably one of the most replayable games on the 2600. It gets your brain going a little bit. It's a thrill when you win.

I don't just think this is a good game, I think this is a great game. I'm happy I finally took the time to figure it out and really get to know it and understand all the quirks.

[Flojomojo]

That is awesome!

 

I have noticed that this game is getting a lot of attention on here lately -- enough that I've noticed it seems to have a little cult following.

 

I wouldn't have given it the time of day as a kid (especially since the Star Trek mainframe game was playable in other places with better production values), but I'm intrigued now. Your enthusiasm helps a lot too!

 

I've had this downloaded to my phone for a long time so I really should play it now that I'm thinking about this game again. Stellar Trek by greg brady

https://appsto.re/us/fm7J1.i

[toiletunes]

Congratulations, Admiral Rogers: I salute you!

Edited July 1, 2017 by toiletunes

[Butt_Rogers]

One neat thing about the "Star Trek Text Game", of which Stellar Track is a version, is that it spawned countless variations and upgrades.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek_(text_game)

It looks like the last new & improved release was in 2014.

I've only played Stellar Track. I'm curious to play the popular variations though or even start with the oldest I can find and work my way towards more modern versions.

From what I read Stellar Track is a close copy of the EARLY version of the Star Trek Text Game. For instance, in the later versions, the enemy ships move on every turn. In Stellar Track they stay in the same spot. This makes lining up photon torpedo shots a fairly simple matter. If they were moving the game would be even more challenging. Stellar Track came out in 1980 but 'Super Star Trek' was firmly entrenched as the most popular version of this game by 1979, so my guess is the programmer of Stellar Track chose to use the older, simpler version of the Star Trek Text Game due to the 4k memory constraints of the game cart.

 

In the Wiki it says Jerry Pournelle even created a version of this game.

It sort of blows my mind that this game has such a complex and interesting history.

[BassGuitari]

This one took me a long time to come around to before I finally sat down one day and resolved to learn how to play it.

Glad I did. Not only did I find Stellar Track to be a fun hidden gem, it gave me an appreciation for the genre of "Trek" games that appeared on computers in the '70s.

[fiddlepaddle]

I think this was the first computer game I ever played, on a teletype in high school. I remember my teacher being worried that I was using paper too fast.

[StanJr]

I absolutely love this game and suck at it. I was the one who had to figure it out as a kid sans manual, but when you're 8 and you've got all summer...

 

Congratulations, Admiral. A truly impressive feat.

 

Lt. Stan

 

Edited July 1, 2017 by StanJr

[+Nathan Strum]

Nice work! I always liked Stellar Track. I had played the Star Trek text game (probably on an Apple II or TRS-80), and when I found there was one for the 2600 I had to get it. It took some time to find one though, as they were only available through Sears, and were pretty rare even there.

 

Mine still has the price tag on it.

 

 

If you're looking for another great text game on the 2600, check out Dark Mage.

Edited July 2, 2017 by Nathan Strum

[Flojomojo]

$15.99 in 1981 is $44.98 in today's money. Ye gods!!

[Butt_Rogers]

I was wondering.

In an earlier post I postulate that an early version of the Star Trek game was used as the basis for Stellar Track due to memory limitations.

That brings up an idea.

How hard would it be to port one of the later versions such as Super Star Trek to the 2600?

Graphics are minimal or nonexistent. Source code for Super Star Trek is readily available. There is far more space to work with than the 4k used for Stellar Track.

I'm not a programmer, but it seems like in the realm of 2600 programming a Super Star Trek port wouldn't be that difficult.

Edit: Damn. As I was typing this I figured I should go learn a bit more about Super Star Trek, so I watched some YouTube videos. Super Star Trek has wayyy more options than Stellar Track.



Stellar Track has 'Galaxy Map, Status, Photon, Phasors, Warp, SR Scan, LR Scan'. 7 commands. Super Star Trek apparently has 36 commands. That's a way, way, way more complicated game.

Still, Stellar Track is a 4k game. I don't see why Super Star Trek wouldn't fit on a 32k cart.

The real issue would be figuring out some sort of elegant menu system... The menu system in Stellar Track would be wildly cumbersome with 36 commands...

Still, it would be way cool, and if done right, would be an improvement over Super Star Trek. Being able to navigate an intuitive menu and selecting which command you want from the comfort of your couch would be vastly preferable to typing in commands for a great many people.

Fantasy rant: Over

[Flojomojo]

Somehow it seems better suited to a terminal with a keyboard than a rubbery joystick with a single button.

[BassGuitari]

Somehow it seems better suited to a terminal with a keyboard than a rubbery joystick with a single button.

Stellar Track should have used the keyboard controllers.

 

(For that matter, so should have Blackjack and/or Casino, but that's a separate issue.)

[+Nathan Strum]

I was wondering.

 

In an earlier post I postulate that an early version of the Star Trek game was used as the basis for Stellar Track due to memory limitations.

 

That brings up an idea.

 

How hard would it be to port one of the later versions such as Super Star Trek to the 2600?

 

Could certainly be done... there are text kernels which can handle many more characters than Stellar Track used.

 

Definitely should use keypad controllers.

[Butt_Rogers]

I went and played a version of Super Star Trek as well as an older DOS version of Star Trek that's very close to Stellar Track.

In Super Star Trek they changed the torpedo mechanics so you just input the sector you want to fire on. If there's a Klingon in sector 2-5, you just target 2-5 with a torpedo. This takes a lot of the fun out of it for me and means maneuvering is a lot less important. In Stellar Track it's a lot of fun to realize you can back up and line up with several enemy ships on the horizontal/vertical/diagonal axes and then take them out one after the other from the same firing position. It's also fun trying to figure out the least number of sector hops necessary to bring your torpedoes to bear on all the enemy ships.

The older Star Trek game I played was much closer to Stellar Track, but with some oddities. The background of your Short Range Scan is totally blank. No grid, no dots. So lining up a diagonal torpedo shot is more annoying, to the point that it gives you an option of having the computer calculate the course for you. This just seems unnecessary. The interface is also a bit wonky and not intuitive, although this could undoubtedly be remedied with more practice. Systems break down for no reason. You can just be transiting an empty quadrant and bam. Your phasers break down. I don't think that adds to the fun at all and injects more random number generator frustration into a game that's already tough to beat.

None of these old Star Trek games have any sort of animation. If you fire a torpedo at a Klingon and the Klingon is destroyed, the Klingon is removed from the screen as soon as you fire the torpedo. No torpedo flying across the screen, no explosion, no sound effects. On most versions the Klingon isn't even removed from the map. Due to it being a game that could be played via a paper printout, to see the new state of the quadrant map you'd have to either do another Short Range Scan or clear/redraw the screen for any changes to show up.

I played a version of Super Star Trek that has had countless additions made to it. Many of the popular additions people would add back when this game was super popular in the BASIC community. Probes, the ability to land on planets and mine dilithium crystals (for extra energy), black holes in every quadrant that can destroy your ship without warning, and more. It seemed a bit forced. Have you played those board games where the company keeps adding expansions but the expansions just make the game more complicated without really making the game better in any substantial way? It sort of felt like that. Especially the black holes. I don't want to warp into a new quadrant and fly into a black hole and die my very first turn. Whoever thought this was a good idea is an idiot.

So what am I getting at?

All these Star Trek games, all variations of the same game, have their issues. But I think Stellar Track might be the best of the 1970's / early 1980's versions. There's a lot of little touches that make Stellar Track more enjoyable. It dispenses with stuff you don't really need, like having a separate Shield Energy, while adding torpedo animations and sound effects that make it more immersive.

I started playing these other versions thinking, what with the limitations of the 2600, the "full" version of the game and the expanded and updated version must be even more fun, but at least for me, it wasn't the case at all.

To me Stellar Track seems really polished and streamlined in comparison. I just spent over an hour playing two more good games and each time came within a stardate of winning but still lost. It definitely has a little bit of that original Rogue aesthetic, where the game is definitely stacked against you, and not only do you have to be on the top of your game, but you also have to get a bit lucky. But that's what makes the game so replayable. They managed to hit that sweet spot where you know you can win. You just can't seem able to, time and time again. And then when you do, it's a rush.

[xefned]

There's a no-reserve boxed copy on ebay now if anyone's looking: LINK.

[SIO2]

No Rear Admiral jokes?

 

I mean, I am so glad nobody posted any of those here.

 

Just kidding around. Congrats on your achievement. Cool game.

Edited November 13, 2018 by SIO2