Welcome to the Frontier

This is a game of both skill and strategy in which you explore the various star systems of the Frontier while seeking to increase your income and pay for improvements to your ship. There are plenty of opportunities to make money in the Frontier, from escorting freighters, to raiding pirate outposts, to competing in the Spartacus Battle Arena. But the dangers are equally numerous: pirates protecting their territory, zealous miners staking out a claim, terrorists bent on attacking all space traffic, and of course, the ancient war machines of the Mohadjrin, left over from the previous millennium's war. To succeed, you must make the right decisions: Fight now or retreat and repair the ship? Buy a new shield generator or two-dozen tracking missiles? Use the unknown device or sell it? As your skills improve and your ship becomes more lethal, you'll be able to travel deeper into the Frontier to face more powerful opponents and loot ever more valuable treasures. If you survive, you could return to Earth with enough money to buy a small country. If you don't, your salvaged wreckage will finance someone else's exploration of the Frontier.

Release Notes for Version 0.5

Frontier v0.5 is not yet complete. The majority of the game engine is done: various enemy ships, stations, shipwrecks, missiles, and other objects are implemented and, for the most part, work quite well. Similarly, the first four or five star systems are pretty well fleshed out and well populated, but as you get deeper into the game, the amount of detail and variety decreases quickly. Beyond the first eight or ten systems, the game becomes more monotonous and less balanced. Nevertheless, there's quite a lot that is working in this release, and I believe that beginners should be able to play for quite a while before hitting any limitations.

Here're a few things to watch out for in this release:

Overall Game: The most noticeable limitation in this release is the lack of guidance provided for the player. There's no indication of what the player should do to win the game, nor any ideas about what the player should do next. Right now, the player is pretty much left to wander around the galaxy exploring.

High-Level Items and Ships: The beginning part of the game is well populated with interesting enemy ships and items, but later parts of the game are not as well developed. Future releases will have more high-level enemy ships and items.

Shipyard: The screen that allows the player to install new armor and weapons is quite primitive. In future releases, this will be replaced by a more graphical screen.

Attacking Friends: In this release there is not much of a penalty for attacking friendly ships and stations. In the future, the player will be black-listed for such attacks.