Trade Wars 2002

Trade Wars has a reputation for being impenetrable. It isn't — there's just one loop underneath it, and everything else is what people built on top of that loop over the years. It's all keyboard, so it's best on a computer.

Getting in

1. Press the play button. You'll get the Trade Wars title art and a [Pause] — press Enter.
2. Show today's log? — N your first time, since there's nothing in it yet. Later on it's how you find out what everyone did to each other overnight.
3. First visit only: "You were not found in the player database. Would you like to start a new character?" — press Y.
4. It offers you a new alias or your BBS name. Just press Enter to take your board handle — that's what gets you the same trader back every time you call.
5. Name your ship (30 letters), then name your home planet. Both are permanent-ish, so pick something you'll enjoy seeing. You start with a Merchant Cruiser and your own planet.

The loop

Every port buys some goods and sells others — Fuel Ore, Organics, Equipment. The whole game starts with finding two ports near each other where one sells what the other buys. Then you fly back and forth between them, hauling, and haggling every time. That's a trade pair, and it's how everyone who is rich in this game got rich. Find one close to home and work it.

• To move, type a sector number and press Enter — you can only warp to sectors your current one connects to.
• Press ? at any prompt for the full command list. That's the real manual; nobody memorized it from a text file.
• Useful early ones: D redisplays the sector, P docks at the port to trade, L lands on a planet, C opens the ship's computer (it has a course plotter — use it), and Q quits the door and hands the line back.
• Sectors 1–10 are FedSpace. The Federation doesn't allow shooting there. It's the safest place to leave a ship, and the StarDock is where you eventually go to buy a real one.

Things that will get you killed

• You have a limited number of turns per day. When they're gone they're gone until tomorrow. Don't burn them wandering — plot a course.
• Sitting on a pile of credits and a full cargo hold in an unarmed ship is an invitation. Bank it, or upgrade.
• Other traders can lay mines and fighters in a sector. If a route suddenly gets expensive, somebody did that on purpose.
• The Ferrengi are not friendly, and they get bolder as the game ages.

The board runs overnight

Every night the board runs the game's own maintenance pass, same as it did in 1994: ports restock, planets grow, the Feds patrol, and the universe generally gets on with its business while nobody's logged in. So the galaxy you left is not quite the galaxy you come back to.

One housekeeping note from the game itself: if you don't play for 30 days, your ship and assets get removed to make room for someone else. That's Trade Wars' rule, not ours.