OVERVIEW

Omnitrend's Universe is an incredibly detailed and complex science fiction role-playing game strongly reminiscent of the original Traveller hard science fiction pen-and-paper role-playing game, the likes of which have not been seen since. It is based in the same fictional universe as Omnitrend's well-regarded Rules of Engagement (1991-93) and Breach (1987-95) series, and was the basis for two sequels, Universe II (1987) and Universe 3 (1989).

Running in the same vein as games like Elite (1985), Starflight (1989) and SunDog: Frozen Legacy (1984) (as well as more modern ones like the X: Beyond the Frontier series (1999-2005)), its gameplay involves freelance space exploration, trading, space combat, planetary mining, and other economic activities. However, where its similarly-themed contemporaries focused on graphical interfaces and, to varying degrees, action, Universe was sparing with graphics and left more to the imagination, instead focusing on deep gameplay, strategic elements, and sophisticated modeling. Indeed, at least half of gameplay is conducted via textual menus.

THE STORYLINE

In Universe, you are a new independent starship captain in the Local Group, a cluster of stars colonized by Earth in the relatively near future. Mankind has had the hyperdrive for almost four hundred years, but hyperdrives have ship size and range limitations that effectively prevented exploration and colonization beyond a 40-light-year radius. However, in distant orbit around Tau Ceti, an exploration ship found an enormous alien artifact called the hyperspace booster, which allowed one-way travel at a distance of thousands, rather than tens, of light years. The discovery of the hyperspace booster allowed a great Second Interstellar Expansion, and Axia, a star system specially noted in the hyperspace booster's starmaps, was colonized. The Local Group is the cluster of stars surrounding Axia.

For over two hundred years, Axia has received regular packages from earth via the hyperspace booster, but the packages mysteriously ceased arriving four months ago. The Local Group, considerably behind Earth technologically, is dependent upon the packages and has its own political and economic problems, so this is a grave problem. Panic is spreading as rumors fly about what happened to earth.

Recently, Axian Central Educational Institute announced that there is evidence of a second hyperspace booster in the Local Group. You, with your new ship and your enormous new debt, are one of those who hope to find the hyperspace booster and collect on the large reward for it. However, operating a starship is expensive, and you will receive no funding. Thus, you must make your own way however you see fit.

THE GAMEPLAY

When you begin the game, you must choose the terms of your 300,000-credit mortgage and select a starship hull from various models that differ in size, layout, visibility to other ships (and therefore the likelihood of receiving undesirable attention) and sturdiness. Then, after a copious bit of disk-swapping, you proceed to drydock, where you can equip your ship and place all your ship's parts (hyperdrive, bridge, crew quarters, weapons, shuttles, cryogenic storage, et cetera) in its different sections (each of which has differing capacity and visibility -- this matters when a hostile starship hits you and the game must determine where you got hit and what got damaged).

From there, the Local Group is wide open. Trading, passenger transport, ore mining, smuggling, contract cargo transport, and even piracy (or pirate-hunting) are all lucrative options, and gameplay for all of these is deep and has a Traveller-esque feeling to it.

As is oft-said, the game is complex. Of course, there is the much-cited fact that you must plot your own orbits, calculating the minimum safe orbit (planetary diameter plus five percent) yourself to avoid wasting energy in long and inefficient transits to the planet's surface. This is less difficult than it sounds in the game, but does take some thought.

Beyond that, a good example of Universe's gameplay is how planetary surface mining is handled. To go into mining, you must first equip your ship with ore processors, and, if you want to mine low-tech populated planets, assault capsules. You must also hire sufficient crew to run them all. Then, you must find a planet rich in resources and go into a low orbit around it; start the computer's Resource and Amphib Assault software packages (which may necessitate turning off Hyper Navigation or Sub-C Navigation to make space); convert Ore IV to energy to charge up the assault capsules; and launch them. When you have done this, an abstract isometric grid representing the landscape is displayed, with each assault capsule is shown with a vertical line extending from it to the landscape representing its altitude (see the screenshots). Here, you give them orders as they go down to the planetary surface to secure the area, being careful to scan the landing surface repeatedly to ensure it will support the ore processors (the scanners aren't 100% accurate, and you don't want your landers to sink into a swamp, fall into a thermal vent or tip over on jagged landscape). Combat is conducted abstractly, in a manner vaguely similar to a strategic board game. If you win this fight and secure the landing sites, you then charge up, crew and launch the ore processors. Once they land (assuming they landed safely), choose which type of ore each one mines, and then let 'em rip until they run low on energy or until they are too damaged to continue, at which time you launch them and they return to the ship with their valuable cargo. If you've done well, you've got a substantial load of precious ore you can sell at the next starport.

Finally, Universe is noteworthy for its rich texture, which can be seen in the way the game designers handled trade commodities and the different brands of ship parts you can purchase. You can buy and sell cargoes of such exotic goods as Ghan Eggs (very tasty, don't you know), KCLA Lambate, Instashelters, Replent 433-435, Arbist PECIL, and the exotic and mysterious Pupbapy. Indeed, throughout the game, all items are named as they normally would be in a commercial context. When you buy shipboard weaponry, you can choose from such items as the Franklin IV laser, the Sunstorm laser, or even a Giaparelli missile launcher. When you upgrade your starship's hard drive (an irony given the game's frequent disk-swapping), you'll sell off your Skandis and purchase a Datar, which can run more operational software simultaneously and require less software swapping, which you must do manually (more irony).

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