jps@rayssd.UUCP (John P. Schroeder) (01/03/86)
Recently, there has been some interest in this newsgroup about Starweb. I've previously, posted looking for information and hints to playing the game. The following is probably the best collection of advice I received. My thanks to Brian Sutin (...!astrovax!sutin), and Noah Falstein for their help. Never build industry. Building industry is almost always a waste of time. Build lots of ships, then build more ships, and then go get someones homeworld and get it into production as fast as you so you can build more ships. Trade away worthless planets to apostles and artifacts to collectors and take whatever you can't trade for by force. Merchants are good at the beginning of the game, but always stab them later. You should always be able to move all your raw materials yourself. Create a stockpile at your homeworld just in case you need ships later and can't transfer more RM's. The more DM's you send, and letters, the better, but phone calls are the all time winner. Nobody ever wants to trade, so you have to do lots of talking to get them to do anything. Tell them exactly what you want to trade, exactly what you want, and where do do it, etc, or it will take forever to finish the trade, if ever. The end game is based on the bomb (PBB). Nuke your enemies homeworld, and prevent him from nuking yours is the basic strategy. Keep careful maps. Trading map information or using it to your advantage is one of the keys in battle. If you are a berserker, be a very friendly one. Don't kill people off early on- there's little point to it, and your ships are best used expanding. Expand as fast as possible whenever possible. Some players will be very slow and cautious, and they'll be englobed by any aggresive players. If you're a collector, your strength lies in your simplicity. Grab lots of planets early on - you can trade them later for artifacts, as well as trading ships and keys. You can win as a collector with only one ship if you play it right. If you're a pirate, one strategy is to split your ships with half of all your ships on one key, and the rest on all the others. Use the small fleets for exploration and to keep from antagonizing others with captures. Use the large fleet as a vacuum cleaner on your enemies, growing ever larger. Most games only last 15-25 turns.