User:Cashto/Intro

Welcome to the best game you never played!

Objective of the Game

The objective of the game is simple: destroy all enemy bases. To accomplish this, you must first gain map control with your own bases, as well as research superior weapons and technology to overwhelm the enemy. Both of these tasks require money, which is generated by special non-player ships called "miners", which retrieve a resource called "Helium 3" (or He3) from asteroids. Much of the game revolves around finding enemy miners and destroying them before they can safely dock the He3 cargo at a home base -- while at the same time protecting your own team's miners. Games usually take between 30 minutes to an hour.

Each team is lead by a veteran pilot called "the commander". The commander receives all the money in the game, and is in charge of buying bases and technology as well as coordinating the team around specific objectives. Most ships in the game are free, but some of the more important ones are not. To fly these ships you must request money from the commander, and he may deny that request if, for example, he is saving to buy something else, wants a more skilled player to fly it, or doesn't believe that ship will be effective at this stage of the game. As a new player, you should stick to flying free ships for the first few weeks.

Joining a Team

When you log on to Allegiance, there may already be a game going. If the upper right hand corner displays "Time elapsed" and a counter, the game is already underway! All you have to do is join a team.

But which team should you join? Take a look at each team's tab. It will look something like this:

Team 1 (12/100)[131]

What this means is that there are 12 people on Team 1. There can be up to 100 people on this team, and the sum of the ranks of all the players on that team is 131.

As a new player, you want to join the team with the higher aggregate rank to keep both sides as balanced as possible. Sometimes, however, you will not be able to join this team, because it has more players than the other team. If that happens, it may be a good idea to wait for a more skilled player to join the weaker team first.

Now, sometimes you may log on to Allegiance, and there will be lots of people in the lobby, but no game going. Please be patient! This can sometimes be frustrating for new players, but it's probably just people need to take a short break from the previous game. There is usually some downtime between games as players want to discuss the previous game, get a snack, change teams, etc.

How to Communicate

To talk to your teammates, begin by pressing Enter. This brings up a box which you can type your message. By default, your chat goes to your team; to change who can hear your chat, press Tab. To pick a specific player to chat with, type the first few letters of his or her name before typing Tab. (Some players have special characters such as ^ or * next to their names. In order to talk to these people, you will need to include those characters too).

Through the course of the game you will frequently see the commander (or sometimes other players) giving orders in bright red text which can be "accepted" with the INS key. You can safely ignore these orders for the time being. The vast majority are not for you, but for your teammates often times in distant sectors. Once you get more accustomed to the game, these orders will be very important for team coordination -- but since you are new, don't worry about them right now.

You should, however, always be on "command" wing. Being on command wing allows you to see where the commander is sending miners and constructors. If you're not on command wing, you can switch to it with F6.

Your First Ship: The Scout

The scout is an excellent beginner ship. Scouts are very fast and unlike most ships, they have excellent sensors which are capable of seeing most everything within a sector. Scouts don't stand up very well in a dogfight -- but that's okay, since it takes a while to learn good dogfighting skills in Allegiance, you should try to avoid or escape conflict as a new player.

So you've just joined a team. Hit F4 to go to the loadout menu. Pick the scout as your ship. Hit the launch button and away you go!

Basic controls:

Switch to mouse control	Num Pad 0
Full speed	/
Halt	Backspace

The Minimap

At the bottom left should be a little map. If it is not there, hit F7 to bring it up. It looks like this:

This is a map of the game universe. Maps usually contain 12 to 16 sectors connected by wormholes called "alephs", with enemy homes on opposite ends of the map. At the beginning of the game, the map is undiscovered: teams can only see their home sector and adjoining sectors. The first phase of the game involves scouting the map. This usually only takes a few minutes, since there are only about a dozen maps in common use, and alephs are located in predictable locations -- usually forming regular triangles or squares around the center of the sector.

Tip: To see how alephs are arranged in the sector, use F3. You can do a lot of things from this screen, such as give orders to yourself or other players.

Your current location is indicated by a small yellow triangle (). Colored sectors indicate sectors which contain at least one (known) base belonging to that team.

There are lots of symbols that can appear on the minimap. Here are a few of the most important ones:

Base
Teleport receiver (a.k.a., "ripcord")
Constructor (a non-player ship that builds a base on an asteroid)
Miner
Bomber
Eject pod (stranded pilot)

How to Probe

One way to immediately be useful to your team is to drop probes from your scout. Without probes, you won't know what's going on in enemy-held or neutral sectors. The enemy will be able to build bases, mine freely, and amass giant bomb runs without your team's knowledge.

Despite the fact that "probing wins games", it seems few players can be bothered to do this simple task. Hence, probing is a way you can have an immediate impact on your team.

At home base, in the F4 screen, locate the cargo area on the lower right-hand side:

Now fill all slots with probes. Here's how you do it:

EWS Probe icon

1. Click on the dispensor slot
2. From the dropdown menu choose "EWS Probe"
3. Do the same for each slot in the Cargo area.

Now, launch and head out to your destination. Once you arrive, press 0 to drop each probe.

Tip:   Always drop probes in enemy or neutral sectors. You don't need probes to see what's going on in friendly sectors -- your bases do that job well enough for you already. Put probes next to high traffic areas: alephs and helium asteriods especially. Probes have a limited scan range -- about 900m or so. But they aren't invisible, and they are easy to destroy once found, so to avoid detection you should place them about 900m from the target. Scouting is a high-mortality mission. If you see an enemy closing in on you, your best bet is to ripcord (teleport) out. Do this by clicking on the minimap on a sector that contains a teleport receiver. Don't stray too far! If you do get podded, it may be a long, long walk home.

How to Repair Ships

Scouts have a unique ability to repair friendly ships. Repairing ships is another way you can be immediately productive on your first day of flying.

Let's say you're flying around, when all of a sudden you hear voicechats such as "need scouts" and "defend bombers". You look up, and see that your commander has ordered the team to bomb a nearby enemy base. Now is the time to spring into action! Here's how you can help the bomb run:

First, get to the nearest base and dock your ship. Immediately. Time is of the essence with a bomb run; you may only have 30 seconds or so to get in the right area before the opportunity is lost. As you are flying home, read the chat carefully to determine where the bomber will launch at.

Next, when you are docked in base, use the F8 key to transfer to the sector where the bomb run will start from.

Then, use the F4 key to go to the loadout screen, where you will load up your cargo with proximity mines ("prox"). Finally, put one nanite repair gun ("nan") in cargo.

Proximity mines
Nanite repair gun

After launching, use Ctrl-1 to switch your normal gun with the nanite repair gun.

Note Scouts of one particular faction, the Ga'Tarran Federation, have a permanently mounted nanite repair gun. If you are flying a GT scout, use 1 to enable the regular gattling gun and 2 to enable the nanite repair gun, instead of switching them in from cargo.

Now, all you have to do is find the bomber and fly towards it. Stick with it like glue! You will want to be around 200m away from it at all times. Targeting the bomber with C and matching its speed with M often helps. When the bomber starts taking damage, start shooting your repair gun at it.

Note that nanites only repair hull, not shields. You will notice that the bomber has two "health" bars, one above the other. Fire your repair gun ONLY when the bottom one starts taking damage.

Meanwhile, you should also drop proximity mines with 0. Mines generate a field of 100m in radius which damage any enemy ship flying through it -- and the faster the enemy flies through it, the more damage it delivers! Mines do not damage friendly ships. You might not get any kills, but you will definitely slow the enemy down.

Tip: If you are carrying both prox mines and probes, use Ctrl-0 to switch between them.

Momma didn't raise no fools on the enemy's team, however. Savvy players know there's no sense attacking a bomber when their damage just gets immediately repaired by the cloud of scouts surrounding it. Instead, they'll start shooting at YOU -- and when the tables are turned, you should do the same: shoot the enemy's nans first. The life of a bomber nan is nasty, brutish, and short. But if it keeps the bomber alive even five extra seconds, it's often quite worth it. When you see through the grungy window of your pod the enemy base exploding in a ball of flame, you can take pride that it couldn't have happened without your help.

Tip: Sitting with your team's miners and defending them when attacked works very much the same way as defending bombers, and is every bit as helpful to the team.

How to Pick up Tech and Cashboxes

Sometimes there are pieces of technology floating out in space: . If you pick up this tech and bring it home, sometimes your entire team can start using it, for free!

Not all tech is very useful, however. When a piece of tech is far out of your way, ask your team first if it is worth picking up.

In order to pick up tech, you need to have empty cargo space. Use F4 to bring up your ship's manifest (cargo is at the bottom, under the S. section). If you don't see an empty slot, use S to cycle through your cargo , and Ctrl+S to eject an item. Alternatively, dropping a prox mine or probe may open up a cargo slot.

Another symbol you will see floating in space is the cashbox: . Unlike tech, you don't need extra cargo space nor do you need to dock it at home. All you have to do is run it over. This gives your commander $500 more to invest with -- it's not much, but every little bit helps. Be sure to pick up cashboxes if you see them on your route.

Also be sure to pick up friendly pods: . As your probably have figured out by now, getting podded is the punishment for not aiming very well or not running away fast enough. Pods are out of commission, unable to do anything but limp slowly back home. You can get your teammates back in action quicker by picking them up. (For the same reason, you don't want to shoot enemy pods, as this is a favor to them, sending them back home immediately).

The one thing you usually shouldn't bother picking up is the powerup: . These repair your hull and replenish your ammo and fuel -- but if you already have full hull, ammo, and fuel, they do nothing.

What's Next

This simple introduction has just barely scratched the surface. Hopefully by now you know enough to not be totally lost while you're trying to figure out what's going on. Allegiance is a very complex game, with a steep learning curve. (But that's what makes it so fun! ;))

Here's some ways you can learn more:

• People with @Alleg or @Help in their callsigns are here to help you! If you see them, feel free to ask them questions at any time in-game.
• Not a fast typer? Get on Teamspeak! There's almost always someone online who can help get you up to speed.
• Sign up for Allegiance Flight School, a structured course for new players.
• Want to feel less of a noob? Check out this page on common mistakes.
• Read juckto's classic series chock full of pro tips, "You Suck At Allegiance"
• Learn more about the eight factions in Allegiance, each which has its own unique characteristics.
• Learn about the five techpaths, each which leads to a different way of winning the game.
• Learn about all the different types of ships you can fly in Allegiance.