On-Line Diaspora Guide: Part I - Getting started in Diaspora

From:  http://www.home-brew.freeserve.co.uk/diaspora/chapters/part1.htm :

Part I - Getting started in Diaspora 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.

Contents Create a character Moving around your home Configuring your ship Trade Gen Zone As you get more money Your first journey out of the Gen zone Private Chats Sending Money Other newbie things to know Missions

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 which you will be typing in to log onto the game (note this is not related to the forum login name). In the below example it is my login name of FLINX 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 (once again mine ie Philip Lynx, if you look at the in game screen shot futher down, you will see that my character name Philip lynx is displayed). 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 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 THE MAP 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 your messages. To buy your very first ship click the blue and grey 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 (for an explanation of why you choose this ship see The Maths of Diaspora) to 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. For now you will need all the money you can get so exit the ship area. Once you can afford a full cargo bay then you can increase your potential with 3 cargo pods. (If you wish to know why this is the best strategy refer to The Maths of Diaspora) . 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. Configuring your ship When buying equipment, you need to think about what you wish to do with your ship. 1) Trading the Gen Zone. The Gen zone has a complete unbroken Gen Field and therefore you can configure your ship for maximum trade ratio, without worry about getting killed. (although there are short routes (2 sectors) between all 3 GEN planets these have no gen fields but offer a slightly quicker way to make money (with a risk involved) Please Note:-Do not sit at a planet asking people for money, this is a sure fire way to make enemies fast. 2) Trading the Neutral Zone. The problem with trading the Neutral zone is that without the protection of the GEN field, you WILL get attacked by PKers. In this case the best policy is (usually) to have as much speed as possible. Since with speed you can lower your shields and run for it. If you had shields all you could do is stand and fight this is not a good course of action when faced with a ship several classes above your own. Please Note:-Some ships (particularly the Arachne class) are quite fast to start with but have very little hull In this case it might be prudent to split the equipment ports between speed and hull, the choice is up to you. 3) Rin Hunting  Some ships need you to have a certain level of experience before you can buy them, in order to get this experience you need to kill things (particularly bigger ships), most of these are owned by the RIN (and now also the Kaydin), these ships have strong hulls but weak guns. When Hunting, it is usually best to have maximum shields, since you will be fighting and if you "Max out" on shields, then it is probably prudent to have extra hull, the reason for this is that with more hull you will not have to land for repairs as soon and if you're a long way from a planet that extra 50+ may just save your life Please Note:-Missiles do not work at present do not buy them Best Gun List (lowest choice to highest) K14 (fast firing rate) Lance Ray fast and accurate Powerful but not as fast as Razor Rays Razor Ray, Fast accurate powerful (recommended fitted to small ships) Fury Mk3 Powerful, (recommended fitted to large ships) Xen Silenus (superb guns, not sure about fitting to small ship though) 1.3 Trade 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 "Goto 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 (beware selling and buying prices are different buy 2 credits). Once you have found the least expensive goods, enter the amount you wish to buy. At this point in time you won't be able to afford a full cargo space of goods so start at a low amount (try 100) by entering "100" 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. (click on areas for more information) 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 (In this example it is at 0, this allows the jump meter to rise faster), 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 to another planet, which you can find on THE MAP. click one of the circles in the direction of a planet and you will jump towards it. At the moment avoid any areas outside the cyan area on THE MAP or those on the jump screen that do not have either planets or concentric circles in them. Note:- that at times you will be told a code and asked to repeat it. Basically (in either the Public chat box or private chat box), type the 3 or 4 digit number. If you do not do this for 16 concequtive tries then the game will log you out. This is extra code, added post crash, to help prevent people using a macro to do all their trading for them while they sleep, go to work, eat lunch etc. Additional note:- You will also notice that near the top of this screen is a find player box, if you know the name of a friend (or an enemy) you can type it in here to see where they are, if they are in the same zone. If not you will be notified they are either in another zone or cannot be found. 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 (or if there are goods cheaper than ones you noted on the first planet buy them) 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. Additional note: - you may also like to try using the DIASPORA multitool written by AMO the link to his website can be found in section 4.1. Additional note:- Every so often the prices will suddenly change, you will sometimes hear moreexperienced players talking about the PC, this is what they mean. When this occurs it is a good idea to note what goods are expensive on the planet your are currently on then buy cheap goods and head for one of the other planets. Hopefully one of the items you have noted will be cheap when you reach your destination. 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 grey lines. The Gen Fields 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 human players who would just love to steal the goods you are carrying inside your ship. As you get more money Once you can afford to fill your cargo bay, it is time to expand your ship, Go to your home, your hangar, and "take selected ship to workshop", next select misc. and step through the items until you find the jump drive, buy 2 of these and 1 cargo pod. (see The Maths of Diaspora for an explanation.) 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 (50K). 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. Click "Guns" and buy a K-14 Cannon. Your first journey out of the Gen Zone There are three zones in Diaspora: Gen Zone: Your beginning home. Trade routes are protected by Gen fields. There are three gates, all leading to the neutral zone. Poor trading in the Gen zone. Additional note: - You may have noticed that there are 3 very short routes in the gen zone these run between each of the gen planets and make for better trading but they do not have the protection of the gen fields. depending on different factors the risk may prove worth it. Neutral Zone: No users can live here. AI Character include: Klyn, Rin, Kaydin, Militia. Militia provide limited protection from attackers, but will destroy anyone who attacks first. Best trading zone. Velic Zone: Home of characters who are "bad" and like to attack Gen characters. AI Characters include: Gen Crusaders. 3 gates all leading to neutral zone. *I'll talk more on being "bad" later on. Your first destination will be Lauis Metis (LM). 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 and a Arachne carrier costs 26K. In the Gen zone, travel to Gen Gate 1 , this is the closest to LM (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 2 jump drives and 1 cargo pod. 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. Additional Note:- You may notice that in the neutral zone your jump screen is much smaller than the map you have This is because of the jump range of your ship. Zephyr Carrier has a jump range of 3, any sectors outside of this range will not be visible to you, therefore to reach other places you will need a ship with more jump range (see listing). To use your newly acquired guns, firstly click on the ship you wish to shoot at then click engagethis will turn the picture of your ship into a picture of your guns, click them to start firing. From this point on firing is automatic, to stop fire click disengage 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 with each other or else the conversation will become very confusing as some users will not see what other users are saying. A word of Warning:-There have been several players using private chat to pretend to send money to you, then they ask for it back Be very careful if you are chatting to someone and they transfer money to you, check they really did send it, before you consider returning any 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 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* - Planets in the neutral zone have defence satellites. These satellites can be bought by guilds. 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 8 blueprints that you must collect (besides the zephyr ones which you start off with, these are: Arachne, Nisus, Talos, Neried, Endymion, Talos II, Nisus II and Helios these are in order of how expensive they are with arachne at the bottom and Helios 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 Xiaspora visit the Xiaspora homepage and write on the message board. Missions. Occasionally when you return to your home planet it is worth clicking on your home to see if you have been given a mission. This will entail flying to a location, usually a Gen gate or a planet in the neutral zone. Once you get there and land you will find an extra option at the bottom (just below launch) clicking this will complete the mission.