http://web.archive.org/web/20010721011842/http://www.netdiaspora.co.uk/
_____________________________________________________________ ||THE (MOSTLY) COMPLETE GUILD TO BEING SUCCESSFUL IN DIASPORA||
||___________________________________________________________||
VERSION 1.2 SEPTEMBER 6TH, 2000
________________________________________________________
Created by Jason Hemlow (JayJay)
Any question, comments, questions, queries, qualms, quos or quarrels should be e-mailed to JayJay
at: j_hemlow@hotmail.com
For updates on this document please visit JayJay's Diaspora News Page at:
http://diasporanews.cjb.net
Thank you to anyone who helped me in the creation of this document.
Please give credit to JayJay if you use this guild.
CHANGES THIS VERSION:
~ Spell checked
~ Added Glossary section
~ Fixed Guild Prices
~ Fixed Arachne plan amount
===1.0: Getting started in Diaspora
>1.1: Creating a character
>1.2: Moving around your home
>1.3: Trading
>1.4: Gen Zone
>1.5: As you get more money
>1.6: Your first journey out of the gen zone
>1.7: Private Chats
>1.8: Sending Money
>1.9: Other newbie things to know
===2.0: The next steps
>2.1 Guilds
>2.2 Guild Messaging
>2.3 Player Killing
>2.4 Best Ship Hierarchy ~Fixed
>2.5 Gen, Neutral and Velic Players
>2.6 Experience System
>2.7 Salvaging and Jettisoning goods
===3.0 Advanced Play
>3.1 Guild Ownership ~Fixed
>3.2 Owning your Own Planet
>3.3 Role Playing
>3.4 Galactic Council
===4.0 Glossary ~New
===5.0 Other Help
Prefix:: I created this as a beginner's guild to Diaspora. By no means is this the entire extent
of the game. I purposely have left out SOME information to discover on your own although what you
will find here I have tried to complete as close to the truth as possible. Not everything will
be perfect I imagine, and some things may be downright wrong! Just keep in mind the time that has
gone into this guide and that it is created to help you. In no way is this document associated
with the creators of Diaspora, and in no way are they responsible for the contents of this
document. Before you start reading this document I would like to encourage you to download the
full map of Diaspora. I have not included detailed instructions on how to get places in Diaspora
and I am making the assumption that you HAVE downloaded the map: http://diasporanews.cjb.net
Enjoy and of course,
See you in space!
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============================1.0 getting started in Diaspora==================================
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1.1 Creating a character:
In Diaspora you must create a character in order to play. Double click the Diaspora icon in your
Diaspora directory. A screen should come up with a big white ship (Endymion Behemoth) in the
middle and text fields saying Login name, password and create new character. You're going to want
to click the "create new character" icon field.
This will then take you to a field in which you have to enter information. Two things that are
misleading on this page are the differences between the "Login name" and the "Character name".
The "Login Name" is the name in which you will be typing in to log onto the game. It is entered
in the screen that you saw just previous to this one. The Character name on the other hand is
the name people will see as you fly your ship around in the Diaspora universe.
Enter the information and click submit, if something is wrong a message will be displayed in the
top bar of that screen. If everything is fine you will be asked to re-enter your password and
your character will be added to the cloning banks. Click Clone character and you have started
Diaspora
1.2 Moving around your home.
When you first clone you will be placed on one of the three gen planets in the gen system. You
can see what planet you are on by looking in the top bar of this screen. Please refer to
http://www.geocities.com/diasporajay/map.html to know where you are in the gen sector. If you
look to the right hand side of this screen you will see a bar of options available. First of
all you will want to click "character name's Home." In order to buy your ship.
Welcome to your home. Here you can buy new ships, and check you messages. To buy your very first
ship click the blue and gray door that says: "Go to Your ship hangar."
This screen is used to sort out your ships (when you have a few) and select which one you would
like to use. At this time you will have to buy one so click "Buy new ship from Workshop."
This is the ship buying screen. As you collect BLUEPRINTS (we'll talk more about these later)
you will have more ships available to you. First off you're going to want to buy a zephyr carrier
do this by click the yellow arrow twice. Click buy. You have now bought your first ship! Soon
you're going to be making some money so you'll need a large cargo space to hold your goods.
Click on misc. and click the yellow arrow three times. Buy ONE cargo pod and exit the ship area
. When you get back to your hangar you will notice that you can now see your ship. Name your ship
something cool (you don't have to but it's fun) and hit enter, then exit this area. Leave your
home.
1.3 Trading
This is a very difficult area to discuss in writing so I will try and put it as plainly as
possible. The main way of making money in Diaspora is through a process of buying and selling
goods from planet to planet while making a profit each time. We're going to make our first
attempt at trading now. You're going to want to click "Trade Floor" From the planet screen.
You will now see your trading screen showing your money and cargo space, click "Go to trade store"
now. Here is the difficult part to explain. You will now see several (10 exactly) types of
goods to choose from at the top of your screen. The idea here is to purchase the least expensive
goods while selling them for the highest price at other planets, thus creating a profit.
Generally, anything in the low to mid 40's is a good buying price, and anything from low 50's to
60's is a good selling price. Once you have found the least expensive good, enter the amount you
wish to buy. At this point in time you won't be able to afford a few cargo space of goods so
start at a low amount (try 50) by entering "50" in the buy field, hit enter and click buy. Keep
going to a lower amount until you can't afford any more goods. Leave the store and click launch.
After launching you are now in space. By now you should have checked out the map and you should
have an idea where you are. Welcome to your first space flight. This is the panel of your space
craft. You will see a red bar slowly rising to the left and a blue bar (shield) which is half up
at 33% indicated by the number above the bar. The higher your shields are, the slower your jump
meter will rise. click the smallest shield bar and your jump bar will rise more rapidly. Do this
now. The yellow bar indicates your hull. If that bar disappears you'll have to start all over
so don't be getting in any fights just yet.
Once the jump bar fills up and the word "Jump" is above it, click that. This is now your jump
screen where you can choose in which direction your want your craft to fly. Your goal is to fly
to the closest planet to you which you can find out on the map I told you about. click one of the
circles in the direction of the closest planets and you will jump towards it.
Jump in a straight line to the planet. Once you get to it click the planet and enter it's trade
floor. Sell your goods using the same process as you bought them, and again buy as many of the
cheapest goods available and start the process over again.
You will notice that this process is very tedious in the beginning because you are not getting
very much money each time. But as you can afford more and more goods, profits become larger. When
trading always keep one thing in mind "BUY LOW, SELL HIGH" You may even want to write down the
prices of the goods at the three planets and compare which trips will get you the most profit.
Over time you will learn how to do this process faster, but it is the backbone of how to make
money in Diaspora.
1.4 Gen Zone
You may be wondering why all these people that have bigger ships than you aren't attacking you.
That's because the routes between the three main planets in the gen zone are protected by "gen
fields". You can always tell if you're in a Gen Field because the sector is covered in a series
of interlocking gray lines. The Gen Zones stop any person from firing their weapons. BE ADVISED:
If you leave the Gen fields at any point you are running the risk of being ambushed by AI
(Artificial intelligence) players, or by human players who would just love to steal the goods
you are carrying inside your ship.
1.5 As you get some money
Before you decide to venture out and explore Diaspora, I recommend you trade back and forth
between the gen planets for several hours until you have about 50 000 credits. By then you will
have enough to buy your next trading ship. But first you will have to buy the arachne plans
which are located in a totally different zone. Before you do this you are going to want to buy
some guns to fend off AI characters. Go to your home, your hangar, and "take selected ship to
workshop" Click "Guns" and buy a K-14 Cannon.
1.6 Your first journey out of the Gen Zone
There are three zones in Diaspora:
Gen Zone: Your beginning home. AI characters include Gen Crusaders. Trade routes are protected
Gen fields. There are three gates, all leading to the neutral zone. Poor trading in the gen zone.
Neutral Zone: No users can live here. AI Characters include: Klyn, Rin, Militia. Militia provide
protection from attackers, but will destroy anyone who attacks first. Best trading zone.
Velic Zone: Home of characters who are "bad" and attack gen characters. AI Characters include:
Gen Raiders. 3 gates all-leading to neutral zone. *I'll talk more on being "bad" later on.
Your first destination will be Lauis Metis. It is there that you can buy the arachne plans. By
now you should have 50000 (50k) worth of credits, so buying your plans will be easy because the
arachne plans only cost 5k. In the gen zone, travel to any of the three gen gates (follow map)
and then make your way to the central planet Lauis Metis (follow map). Be sure NOT to attack any
militia characters because they don't take well to being attacked. At Lauis Metis (LM) buy your
plans and make your way back to your home. When you get back, go to your hangar and you will
notice that there is a new type of ship available to you. You are going to want to buy an arachne
carrier with all cargo pods. You may now resume making money in the gen zone. Or if you feel like
you are ready, you may start trading in the Neutral zone.
1.7 Private chats
Do you have something to say in private to someone in your sector but don't want to be bothered
by Long Distance Messaging them? Click their ship, and click chat. You must now wait for the user
to accept you chat. You will know that they have accepted your chat because the previously dark
orange triangle over their ship will turn bright yellow. You can now chat privately in the
smaller left hand window of your ship screen.
Likewise, if you notice that a dark blue triangle over someone's ship. That means that they wish
to chat with you in a private chat. To accept their chat, click their ship and click "accept
chat". You Can now chat privately.
You can also chat privately with multiple users. Do this by click on each ship you wish to chat
with and click chat. Be sure that all the users that you are talking to have also accepted a chat
within each other or else the conversation will become very confusing as some users will not see
what other users are saying.
1.8 Sending money
Do you owe someone money and want to be nice and pay them back? Simply follow this process to
send the money and avoid nasty confrontations =)
> Click the ship that you wish to send money to
> Click trade
> Enter the amount you wish to send to the user (You must have at least 30k before you can send
money)
> hit enter
> click Transfer
1.9 Other newbie things to know.
Here are a few things that you will want to know just so you're not looking like a TOTAL newbie
when you're in the game.
- Long distance messaging: How do you talk to people that aren't in your sector you ask? simply
do this; charactername:: hello
for example, say I wanted to talk to bob who was in another zone and ask him how the trade
prices are, I would type,
bob:: Hey bob, how are the trade prices
*notice the double colons*
- Missles don't work, don't buy them!
- Planets in the neutral zone have defense satellites. These satellites can be bought by guilds
(I'll talk further about guilds in a moment). The owner of the guild who buys a satellite receives
interest on the goods that are traded at that planet. If you are not in that guild and you click
the satellite, it WILL shoot at you. I repeat, DON'T CLICK THE DEFENCE SATELITES.
- There are 5 blueprints that you must collect (besides the zephyr ones which you start off with,
these include: Arachne, Nisus, Talos, Neried, and Endymion, these are in order of how "good" they
are with nisus at the bottom and Endymion at the top.
That about does it for now, one last thing that I would like to say to all of you starting off
in Diaspora is to make friends. Talk to people as you trade back and forth, and if you have
something cool to say to everyone in Diaspora visit the Diaspora homepage and write on the
message board (http://www.netdiaspora.com).
- Players lately have been tricked into giving money through various scams. One popular one is
when a user will get you to accept a Private chat and type: (user) has transferred 100000 to
you account, and then ask you to pay it back. Take notice that this person has not actually
sent you any money, and has just typed the words in. Always know how much money you have at all
times so you're not tricked.
______________________________________________________________________________________
====================================2.0 The next steps================================
**************************************************************************************
Now that you have the basics down, let's take some time to discuss what you are trying to do in
your future Diaspora career.
2.1 Guilds
Guilds are a very important part of Diaspora. A guild is a bunch of people who have similar goals
in Diaspora, whether it be helping beginners like yourself, or demolishing everyone they see.
When choosing a guild you must be careful to KNOW what you are getting yourself into. Guilds can
come and go very quickly and you don't want to get stuck in a obsolete guild, or one that is
going to get you killed (too quickly). My advice is to join the Traders guild. This is a built in
guild in the game, it won't disappear and most people do not attack traders. Another benefit to
the traders' guild is that you receive a benefit while you are trading between planets. You will
be able to buy goods 1 unit cheaper and sell goods for 1 unit more at every planet. This may not
sound like much, but when you have one of the bigger trading ships and are buying 650 units of
cargo each trip, it adds up.
If and when you feel you would like to join a more "interesting" guild, which I suggest you
should not do until you have the neried plans and a nereid freighter, than you should look around
and see what kind of guild you think you would fit into. As I said earlier, choose wisely because
joining a guild that have one to many enemies, and you might get wiped out faster than you can
say "Endymion Behemoth." Guilds usually have an entry fee ranging from 5-100k to join. This money
is usually put into a guild bank for the members of the guild to borrow with interest. Talk to a
member of the guild you wish to join and you will be asked to go to a local "bar" at a planet.
This is basically the chat area that you most likely have discovered on planets. The longer you
stay in a guild, and more friends you make will usually govern how fast you rise in the ranks of
guilds.
2.2 Guild Messaging
Players in guild can communicate with the entire guild by simply using this: :g:: command,
followed by a message.
Ex.
:g:: is anyone in the guild online?
2.3 Player Killing
This is a much-debated topic in the world of Diaspora. Technically, Player killing (PKing) is the
act of attacking and/or destroying of any human character in the game. This can be in either a
war environment, for profit, or just to be malicious. The most common way players PK is by forming
"blockades". They destroy traders and "salvage" their goods and sell them. Since they did not pay
for those goods, the profit is obsolute. Although this form of making money seems very
advantageous, there can be consequences. Many people are upset at the PK'ers in the game, there-
fore they like to gang up and destroy blockades that PKer's have created. Think hard about
joining a PK guild and if you do, be prepared to face the consequences. Pking has recently been made
unprofitable by the AI Militia being put into Endymion ships.
2.4 Best ship hierarchy.
Here is my personal opinion of the best way to go up in the ranking of ships. Keep in mind that I
am a trading type of player and am not a PKer. If you decided to take a PKing route early on
(not recommended), than you would most likely want to stick to the more quick and fighting
oriented ships.
1) zephyr carrier
- buy arachne plans
2) arachne carrier
3) arachne freighter
- buy Talos plans
4) Talos freighter
- buy neried plans
5) Neried carrier
6) Neried freighter
- buy endymion plans
7) Endymion freighter
9) Endymion Behemoth
Now I realize that some of these gaps are huge, this whole process (depending on the amount of
time you spend in Diaspora) should take upwards of 2 or 3 months seeing as the Endymion behemoth
costs 16 million credits.
2.5 Gen, neutral and velic players
There are three types of players in Diaspora, Gen, neutral and velic. All players' start off as
gen characters, this means that they have access to the gen zone. It also means that they have
killed more velic (rin, gen raiders, velic human players) than they have gen characters (gen
crusaders, gen human players). If these two sides become equal by killing an near equal amount of
Gen and velic players, that means that you become a neutral player. This basically means nothing
because nothing about you changes. If on the other hand you become a velic player by killing more
gen characters that velic characters, you will then become a velic player. What happens you ask?
Several things.
a) Your home is moved to one of the three velic planets in the gen zone.
b) You are no longer able to enter the Gen zone
c) Your Velic experiance is measured in a negative integer.
How do you know for sure if you're velic, neutral or gen? Follow these instructions:
> Go to any planet and find the information banks.
> Click "stats viewer"
> In the text field type your character name
> On the right you will see information about your character. If you look at the top you will see
a scale with two gates, one red and one blue (red being velic, blue being Gen) Below that you
will see a pointer which points to either side of the scale, or in the middle (neutral). The
pointer indicates what type of pilot you are.
2.6 Experience System
Pilots in Diaspora get experience for killing certain characters. Getting more experience
gives your ship better evasion from enemy fire and gives your guns better accuracy. There are 5
levels of pilots in Diaspora, to gain more experience, you must simply destroy a character of
equal or higher level of experience than you have. Use the process in the previous section to
view the level of experience a pilot has.
2.7 Salvaging and Jettisoning goods
You may have noticed buttons on your ship screen like: goods, contraband and a toggle button with
ship and sector on it. These buttons can be a bit difficult to explain but I'll try here. Let's
say a ship was trading between planets and they were killed by a computer character. You may
wonder if the goods that they were carrying in their ship have disappeared, they haven't. In
fact, you can pick them up in a process called salvaging. First, you'll want to see what goods
are in a sector. Do this by toggling the Ship/Sector button to the Sector side. Then Click the
Goods button. A list will appear in your ship viewer window showing all available goods in that
sector. To salvage those goods click the section that show some goods available, then enter the
amount you wish to salvage in the text field above that appears, hit enter. If nothing happens
you may not have enough cargo space.
To check how many goods you are carrying you can go through a similar process. Toggle the Ship/
Sector switch back to the Ship side and click Goods. Now you can see how many and what goods you
are carrying in your ship. In this screen you can also dump some goods by selecting a good and
entering the amount you wish to dump into that sector.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
=======================================3.0 Advanced Play=====================================
*********************************************************************************************
Here's some suggestions for once you feel that you're well grounded in the basics of Diaspora.
Even if you're not out of the realm of being a "newbie" read on, you can see what to look forward
to when you are more established in the game.
3.1 Guild Ownership
Creating a guild must be well thought of BEFORE you decide to go ahead and found one. Not only
your sake, since you'll be spending 1.5 Million to found a guild, but also for Diaspora in
general, too many guilds get really annoying and you must be dedicated to a guild and play
ever day. Never found a guild before you go away on vacation or any other time in which you
know you won't be able to spend time on the guild, because it WILL NOT survive (trust me, I
know first hand, and know some other examples).
BEFORE you found your guild you want to establish a few things.
a) What is the main idea of your guild? What are you goals? This must be carefully considered. If
you decide to form your guild under a specific type of game play to early off, you may be putting
a big target on your head for other guilds.
b) Who do you know? You must make sure that you're going to have some help in creating your
guild. Not necessarily direct help, but you must make sure you have some friends who will help
get your guild known in the world of Diaspora.
c) How many other guilds are there like yours? Guilds come and go very fast. You must make your
guild original enough to stand out and make people WANT to join, so you won't have to resort to
enlisting too many beginner players.
d) Image? This part is not a necessity, but the image of your website is quite important. This
may be confusing, but basically you want to ask yourself, does my guild look stable? Is it "cool"
? The main thing that can help you create a good image is a web page. It is advised that you (as
the founder of the guild) know how to create a web page. It is NOT advised to have a friend do a
web page for you because that person no matter how much it seems in the beginning, will not have
the same interest in your guild a few weeks down the road.
That about covers this section. Realize that guild ownership is not for everyone, and even if it
IS for you, it is very difficult to successfully found a guild.
3.2 Owning Your own Planet
If you decide to create a guild you may eventually decide to buy a satellite. These are located
at each of the planets in the Neutral zone. Now, you must be careful when choosing a satellite as
some other guild may own it. If you feel you deserve it more than them, you may wish to destroy
it and take it. Be advised, this almost always results in war! To buy a satellite, destroy it,
click on it to land. Then click "install defenses". The purchase price for a satellite is 500k.
This gives the satellite 10 thousand hull. Each additional upgrade of your satellite is another
500k until level 5. Which will leave the satellite at 50 000 hull, 85 shields and 10 guns.
3.3 Role Playing
Diaspora falls under the definition of a RPG (Role Playing Game). What this means is, that the
users of Diaspora have the option of creating a personality that may be completely unlike that of
the one in real life. Imagination is of course the key here. Role playing can be quite stress
relieving and adds a different perspective to the game. Of course you don't HAVE to role play,
and there is no rules to how role playing must be done, it is just something that can be
considered. It can range from simply being slightly more aggressive than you might be in real
life, to being the brother of Mjr Darius of the militia guild, or whatever! =)
3.4 Galactic Council
This is an area of the game that as of yet, has not quite been totally establish. In the beta
version of Diaspora, it was a (sort of) effective way for the leaders of guilds to vote on topics
in the game, and gather information to present to the creators of Diaspora. If the old system of
the galactic council is used in the new version of Diaspora, there are two ways to get involved.
One, is to own your own guild and grow it so that it is eligible to be represented in the
Galactic council meetings. The second is to be voted by the guild leaders to be a moderator of
the meetings themselves. Of course this is very difficult and is usually reserved for the longer
serving members of Diaspora. This portion of the game can be interesting because it involves
politics and voting etc. If you're into that sort of thing.
________________________________________________________________________________________
===================================4.0 Glossary=========================================
****************************************************************************************
Here's a list of commonly used words in Diaspora that you might not know when first coming into
the game
lo = Hello
Endymoth = Endymion Behemoth
Nerimoth = Neried Behemoth
Endy = Endymion
Neri = Neried
brb = Be right back
lol = Laughing Out Loud
CAD = Control+Alt+Deleting (Not so much an issue now that it's been fixed)
PK = Player Killing
LM = Lauis Metis (Planet)
JC = Jen Cando (Planet)
JK = Jen Kayle (Planet)
DN = Daynow (Planet)
wb = Welcome Back
lmao = Laughing My @$$ off
rofl = Rolling on the floor laughing
bbs = Be Back Soon
bbl = Be Back Later
bbiab = Be Back In A Bit
omw = On My Way
atm = At the Moment
tbh = To be honest
imo = In my Opinion
Ack = Ackknowledged
ty = Thank you
sup? = What's up?
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===================================5.0 Other Help=======================================
************************************************************************************
Here are some sites where you can get additional help in Diaspora. I don't' control these sites
so I don't know what will happen to them in the future.
http://www.netdiaspora.com <~ this is where you downloaded Diaspora
http://www.diaspora.freeuk.uk <~ Diaspora guild website with various helpful things
http://www.doomsdayguild.co.uk/gn.html <~ Galactic News site has frequent updates about
what's going on in Diaspora
http://www.dailydiaspora.iwarp.com <~ Daily info about Diaspora stuff
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=================================== Conclusion =====================================
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I hope this guild has helped you in some way, I plan on updating the information in it as the
game progresses so check back at http://diapsoranews.cjb.net for updates! ** Look for a new
Online version of this guide with easier browsing!**
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