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| This was a pretty good character. He lasted 15 minutes. |
Empire II: Interstellar Sharks
United States
Interactive Fantasies (developer); Edu-Ware Services (publisher)
Date Started: 6 February 2014
Date Ended: 7 June 2021Total Hours: 45
Difficulty: Hard (4.0/5)
Final Rating: 29
Ranking at Time of Posting: 227/414 (55%)
Empire III: Armageddon (1984) came up recently when I went searching for a random game. It would have appeared on the "upcoming" list via the natural course of time soon anyway. I'm eager to try it, but before I did, I thought I'd take another run at Empire II: Interstellar Sharks, which I first covered about seven years ago. You'll want to review that entry before finishing this one, as this builds on that one without re-explaining key concepts.
I spent about seven frustrating hours with the game this week, attempting each of the three character classes with a slew of characters. It's a tough game. You can only save by going back to the space station, and I never saw a commercial flight to the space station, so you have to play long enough to get your own ship if you don't start as a pilot. When a character dies, he's immediately erased from the disk. You can't forestall this by popping the disk out of the drive, as the game continually references the disk, and it crashes--it doesn't ask for the disk; just crashes--if it can't find it. You can't really use save states because it's constantly writing the character and world state to the disk, and if it finds discrepancies between the memory and the saved files, things go wonky.
Winning the game involves making your way to the imperial home planet, Triskelion. This is tough because its location is secret. No commercial flights ever go there; no navigation program will take you there; no "flight planning service" will help you plan a flight there. To get there, you have to have your own ship. Of the three classes, the pilot comes with one, and the businessman and diplomat can buy one after enough financial success.
Making money is a major objective of the game, and each character class has a way of doing it legitimately. The businessman buys and sells stocks and runs missions for his corporation. The diplomat carries messages and handles negotiations. The pilot sells commodities. But there are some sinister implications to the "legitimate" means of making money. Every once in a while, the businessman gets a mission to bomb a rival corporation. The diplomat is asked to assassinate an ambassador or the priest of the Lord of Light. If the pilot wants to make any serious money, he has to trade in weapons or slaves (this is theoretically possible, at least; I never found any place buying or selling slaves).
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| This isn't what I got that MBA for. |
An interesting element is that any character class can become a businessman simply buy purchasing a seat at the stock exchange. He'll be assigned to a corporation and start getting missions from his corporate masters. A businessman or diplomat can also purchase a ship and start trading cargo. However, I couldn't find any way that a non-diplomat can obtain the things that a diplomat starts with, including high-level passports and diplomatic immunity. Thus, you probably want to start as a diplomat for the most options.
Nonetheless, even the diplomat or businessman eventually gets a quest that requires them to go to Fyrokken, and you can't do that without your own ship. Purchasing a ship from scratch is expensive. At minimum, you need a hull, rockets, a fusion drive, a computer, a navbeacon, and an environmental shield. If you don't want to put your life in the hands of 1d20 roll every time you take off and land, you also need a navigation program. The sum of this equipment is about 10,000 credits, or roughly 5 hours of game play doing diplomatic missions or trading stocks.
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| You need almost all these parts. |
The game's message seems to be that doing things legitimately is for suckers. The easiest way to make a bunch of money in this game is to roll a character with a high dexterity and then STEAL at the bank. The game rolls a 1d20, and as long as it rolls less than your dexterity, you get 100 x the roll. Seven or eight successful thefts can leave you with enough for a ship by itself. Also lucrative is killing criminals in the black markets and playing a gambling game called "Fizzbin" in Denieves. On the other hand, punishment for crime is harsh if you can't BRIBE, ESCAPE, or NEGOTIATE your way out of it.
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| Bank security sucks in the future. |
Unfortunately, your problems are only beginning when you purchase your ship. First, the sheer number of commands to get from one place to another is annoying, and if you forget one of them, you might die. Even if you do everything right, systems fail all the time, usually killing the character. With every single character, I ran into an issue by which the game decided the power no longer worked, and I couldn't load any programs without a battery backup. The problem is, the game only lets you buy one at a time, and it's consumed every time the power fails. If you find yourself on a planet without a Coronal Shipwright (the only place that sells batteries), you can't get anywhere else. And yet the repair service insists that the power is okay. Fortunately, this particular problem seems to be fixed by returning to the space station, saving the character, and reloading. More random failures of power, engine overheating, and environmental systems failures don't have such an easy solution except start again with a new character.
Combat is extremely rare in the game--you basically have to go looking for it, or attack police officers when they try to arrest you for another crime. It's too bad because the system is strong, allowing the character to attack with a variety of weapons, to target specific body parts, to attack recklessly or take AIM, and so forth. The game also offers a staple of tabletop RPGs that we rarely see in CRPGs of the era: frequently rolling against your attributes. If you're trying to escape customs officers, you roll against speed. Trying to negotiate a trade agreement? Roll against charisma. Stealing from the bank? Check your dexterity. Combat uses both strength and dexterity.
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| I guess I'm playing a vigilante. |
For all the extra time I spent, I still couldn't figure out how to win. I frankly hoped someone else would have figured it out in the last seven years. I did, however, find my way to Triskelion. It turns out that the galaxy is only 6 x 6 locations. The manual warns that the planets move over time, but I always found them in the same places. Finding Triskelion is just a matter of exploring by GO RIGHT, GO FORWARD, and so forth. This process is fraught with a little danger. Systems seem more likely to break when you're manually exploring, and every time you move manually, you have to roll against your "Senses" to see if you were successful in going the direction you intended.
In any event, Triskelion for me was only two moves from either Denieves or Agrosphaire. The problem is, when I arrive, the game just says I can't penetrate its force fields, and then kicks me into a random region of space. There's no opportunity to enter any command.
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| My map of the galaxy. |
Now, I know something else is supposed to happen here (see below), but since there's no opportunity to do anything between your arrival and forced departure, I assume the game must be checking for something that you have. But I've tried buying absolutely everything sold in every store, legal and illegal, to no avail.
For a while, I thought the answer must be the WHITE ROCK. The game calls attention to this specific item, which is only found in the possession of the priest of the Lord of Light or the alien ambassador. You can try to steal it from them or kill them for it. (You can also have fun with the disciples of the Lord of Light by yelling PRAISE THE APEX or PRAISE THE EMPRESS at their meetings.) But it turns out if the rock is in your possession when you arrive at Triskelion, the planet blasts you out of the sky and you die immediately. So that's worse.
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| The closest I can get to winning. |
While we're on the subject, here are some other mysteries:
- I can't for the life of me figure out how to use either the LASERADIO or NETHERADIO. If I turn them on in the ship, nothing happens. The manual suggests that the laseradio will tell you the name of the planet you're orbiting, if you don't know, but I can't get this to happen. No commands I enter seem to allow me to communicate with other ships with either radio. [Edit: I later figured this out. You turn them on by typing ON LASERADIO and ON NETHERADIO. The netheradio tells you what planets you're near and the laseradio tells you what planet you're orbiting. Each works by scrolling a message in the "communications" window. I had the emulator cranked up too fast to notice it.]
- There's a ship-to-ship combat mechanism, but you encounter other ships extremely rarely, and it's illegal to possess the items necessary to fight them. Since there's a chance those items will be discovered at customs every time you land on a planet, it doesn't seem worth it.
- The manual gives SLAVES as one of the commodities that you can trade, but I've never seen them for sale anywhere.
- You can buy something called a MACROPHONE, "a covert listening device," but I can't figure out any situation in which to use it.
- You can buy vacuum suits and airtanks to go outside your spaceship, but I can't think of any reason to do that.
I was frustrated enough trying to figure out this game that I installed an Apple II disk file utility so I could read the programs. Unfortunately, I only know enough of Apple BASIC to confuse myself. The critical lines seem to be in the program labeled IS.4:
242 IF NOT PEEK (16126) THEN FOR I = 0 TO 50: PRINT "@5Y" FN D(20) + 20"XNSSSS@": NEXT :RP$ = "YOU CAN'T PENETRATE THE IMPERIAL": GOSUB 59:RP$ = "FORCE FIELD": GOSUB 57: GOTO 229243 GOSUB 236: IF LR THEN LM$ = "WHAT IS THE WAY?":CM = 1: GOSUB 26: GOSUB 60: IF OB = 72 THEN LM$ = "YOU ARE PREPARED FOR ARMAGEDDON":RQ = 0:CM = 0: GOSUB 26:LM$ = "PASSWORD 2: 'ERGO'": GOSUB 26: FOR J = 0 TO 9: POKE AR% + J,15 + FN D(3): NEXT : GOTO 229244 RP$ = NM$ + " IS SPACE DUST": GOSUB 261: GOTO 61
"You can't penetrate the imperial force field" is the message I get if I try to visit the planet; "Chester is space dust" is the message I get if I try to visit with the white rock. What I'm not sure is how I get the messages in line 243. There are a bunch of conditions in here using language that I don't understand, with values that are set in other places in the programming.
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| Coming to the CRPG Addict in June! |
If anyone with more Apple BASIC skills (or knowledge of the game) wants to help me figure it out, I'd be very grateful. The disk can be downloaded here, and I used CiderPress to inspect the files. I'll give it a week or so to see if anyone responds, and then give Empire III a try either way.
*****
As usual, my commenters came through, and I've been able to see the end, although I'm not 100% sure what to make of it. As you read above, I was able to find Triskelion by exploring space. It turns out you need a) the white rock in your inventory, b) the laseradio on, and c) the CODEBREAK program running when you approach the planet. The white rock must do something to negate the shield, but heaven knows why.
A ship appears as you approach. If your laseradio is not active, the ship simply destroys you. If it is active, you get a message. If CODEBREAK isn't running, you can't read it, but if it is running, the message is "WHAT IS THE WAY?"
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| I don't feel prepared. |
I had to inspect the source code to get the answer. I tried a lot of objects and verbs first, including APEX, EMPRESS, LIGHT, LORD OF LIGHT, FORWARD, SNUFF, and INFINITY. All of those, plus any other incorrect answer, results in the ship blowing you out of the sky. If you type HOME, it takes you back to the space station and you can save the game, but it's not a "win." The winning word is TORCH. At that point, the ship radios: "YOU ARE PREPARED FOR ARMAGEDDON. PASSWORD 2: 'ERGO'." The game then takes you back to the space station on which you started.
So why "Torch"? Code elsewhere in the game suggests that the "Way of the Torch" is affiliated with the Lord of Light, the worship of whom is illegal in the empire. In some encounter--I don't know how it's triggered--you can be visited by the Lord of Light who says, "Remember the Way of the Torch." TORCH is also given in the game manual as one of the many objects that the game recognizes, although I never found an actual torch during the game.
So it was a bit of a cheat, but I'm still going to call it a win. I now feel much better prepared for Empire III, where presumably the ERGO password will get me something.
This game actually seems pretty cool, if it had a bit more to do (monsters to fight etc.) and was a bit less janky and punishing it feels like it would be fun for the right sort of person and somewhat ahead of its time.
ReplyDeleteReally a cool game. It has something of the oddness of TERA.
ReplyDeleteI wanted to use the opportunity to state how many games are called Empire, of wildly different genres :
- Empire by Peter Langston (1972) - multiplayer strat game on HP2000 (a computer I never heard about)
- Empire by John Daleske (1973) - multiplayer space 4X for PLATO
- Empire by Walter Bright (1977) "earth" 4X for FORTRAN
- Empire, Wargame of the Century (1984), port of the above for all the computers of 1984
- Empire, published by CLOAD (a magazine) in 1981, an Hammurabi kind of game
- Empire I, World Builder (1981), which you covered
- Empire II and Empire III, follow-up of the previous one
- Empire by Shards Software (1984), risk-like for BBC Micro
- Empire! by Andrew Glaister (1986), a space trade game
- Empire by Larry Scott and Mickey Brian (1980s) for Atari, a 2-player space campaign game
And that's ffor the "Empire" alone. Don't get me started on the "Galactic Empires"
Galactic Empire(s) big problem is that searching for that term gets you a ton of stuff related to Star Wars that isn't easily removed for. I spent a lot of time looking up a walkthrough/info on Coktel Vision's adventure/FPS hybrid passing between increasingly bizarre Star Wars-related websites.
DeleteThere is also "World Empire" series (for some reason, I can only find mentions of II, III and IV), which is a Risk variant for PC. I used to play it a lot all by myself (without a human or computer opponents), inventing stories for all factions under my control. I'm... not big on losing. Ever.
DeleteThanks for mentioning that Galactic Empire is a Coktel Vision game! I saw an advertisement about it in an early nineties magazine and it seemed a cool game (the covert art was very memorable) whose requirements were way above the capabilities of my compute. Decades later, any try to find more information about it (as I still remembered the title) meet the same problem that you experienced: all my searches returned only Star Wars webpages.
DeleteIts worth mentioning that if you do play Galactic Empire is that all the English DOS rips that I know of don't work in DOSbox, but the French ones do. I don't know if that's because all the English rips are bad or if there's something different about the English version, but it is what it is. The Amiga version works fine.
DeleteAs far as I can tell, line 242 gives you the forcefield message if memory address 16126 contains a zero value. If that address is non-zero, it should skip that line and move on to stuff in 243. But, I can't find anything in the BASIC code that sets memory address 16126. There's one other reference to that address in IS.7, but it's just being read there too and used to manipulate a variable called "VT", whose meaning I can't follow.
ReplyDeleteI can only speculate that there's also assembly code on the disk that is running whatever logic actually sets that address? Hence why it's just a memory address instead of a BASIC variable.
That, or the game does something like "POKE 16120 + X, 1" where X is some other variable that happens to be set to 6 at some point. I mean this is sloppy coding at its finest, but maybe 16120 + something is the array of inventory items. Or maybe it's 16114 or some other arbitrary value.
DeleteSo it looks like the peek(16126) is checking if you have the white rock (if it returns 0 then you get the message about the force field), then the Gosub to line 236 is doing a check which must write to the variable LR. That that’s false then it skips the rest of the line and your space dust. So whatever is in that line will say what you need
ReplyDeleteIt's really NOT that simple. Line 236 is simple printing routine, LR variable is being set elsewhere. And that 'elsewhere' is the spaghetti code mess that is almost impossible to follow.
DeleteFor what I can see, the only lines on which LR value directly depends are 136 and 144. In line 136 TP value (which probably means something like 'temporary pointer', as it is being used in many different ways across the file) is being initialized to 10. And then if VB = 29, TP is reinitialized to 138. On line 144 LR is set to TP - 138. So, if VB is not 29 (and maybe some other conditions satisfied), then we'll probably get the right value for LR.
Unfortunately, without some serious reverse engineering effort it's very hard to figure out what exactly VB stands for and how to influence that variable. I can only guess that VB is something like 'verb' and you need to give the game a specific command or word at some previous time.
I'm guessing based on context that LR is LASERADIO because it also shows up in the following contexts:
Delete69 TE = 9:ML = 16012: GOSUB 18: IF NOT (DC - (((SL = 2) AND LR) OR ((SL = 3) AND RD) * 5) < = PEEK (ML)) THEN RP$ = "NO ANSWER": GOTO 58
231 ON RD AND FN D(5) > PEEK (16089) GOSUB 258: IF LR AND FN D(5) > PEEK (16088) AND SL = 2 THEN MS$ = "ORBITING " + PL$(PL):CM = 0: GOSUB 234
240 ON FN D(10) > 1 OR NOT LP GOTO 245: GOSUB 236:TE = LP: GOSUB 40: POKE 16202,LP:LP = 0: PRINT R$"@3V23H@NONE ": IF LR THEN LM$ = "HAR! HAR! GOT ME SOME BOOTY!":CM = 0: GOSUB 26:WS = 0: GOSUB 80: PRINT "@8H5VL"PL"C0K@" CHR$ (11) CHR$ (12)R$
All these seem to be about communication and Line 231 in particular seems consistent with how the LASERADIO is supposed to work.
The test about OB seems harder to figure out from context. It gets set as
60 FOR I = 0 TO 2: POKE 30724 + I,255: NEXT : CALL 30727: PRINT S2$ SPC( 38):TM = TM + 1:VB = PEEK (30724):AD = PEEK (30725):OB = PEEK (30726): ON VB = 10 GOTO 265: RETURN
This seems to be part of the core gameplay loop because it advances time (TM) by one step and each file has some version of this command. I don't know what VB, AD, and OB are tracking though. Are there 3 key statistics of some sort routinely updated?
I also figured out the structure of the memory for PEEK / POKE / CALL. The BIN files have as their AUX information where they start getting loaded in memory. For example, all the of the characters start at 0x3E80.
DeleteSo peek(16126), when converted to hex looks at 0x3EFE. So you can use this to check what slot of the character is being checked and hex edit in appropriate items if desired.
The CALL 30727 looks somewhere in the Parser, but I'm not sufficiently motivated to start figuring out such low level code.
If VB is verb, then potentially AD is adverb and OB is object.
DeleteWell, thanks to your help, I've gotten a little further. Deificus's guess was right; LR probably is "laseradio." I fiddled with it some more and figured out how it works. You have to type ON LASERADIO to get it working. When you arrive at a planet, it quickly scrolls a message about what planet you're orbiting in the "Communications" window. I had the emulator cranked up so fast, I wasn't seeing that.
DeleteIf I go to Triskelion with the laseradio on, I just get the same message about the force field. But if I go with the laseradio on AND the white rock in my possession, a ship pops up and delivers a cryptic message (nonsense characters) in the communications window. I have one chance to enter some command. Everything I try just gets me destroyed, but I'm sure this is the point I was supposed to reach. Now I just have to figure out what I'm meant to say here.
Even closer! If I run the CODEBREAK program before reaching the planet, the "cryptic message" becomes WHAT IS THE WAY?
DeleteI think Radiant's guess is correct from this chunk of code:
Delete93 GOSUB 60: ON AD < 5 AND VB < > 22 GOTO 105: ON SL > 9 AND (VB < > 29 OR OB < > 24) GOTO 100: ON VB = 2 GOTO 65: IF VB = 5 THEN GOSUB 42:RP$ = Q$: GOTO 58
94 ON VB = 3 AND OB < 65 GOTO 107: IF VB = 4 AND OB < 65 THEN ON ASC (PS$(OB)) > 96 GOTO 109:RP$ = "YOU CAN'T DROP THAT": GOTO 58
95 ON VB = 1 GOTO 111: ON (VB = 28 OR VB = 29) AND OB < 64 GOTO 133: ON VB = 30 AND ((OB > 26 AND OB < 31) OR OB = 56 OR OB = 59) GOTO 147: ON VB = 33 AND SL = 1 GOTO 151: ON VB = 31 GOTO 154: ON VB = 32 AND SL = 2 GOTO 166
96 ON VB = 22 AND OB = 64 AND FL GOTO 193: ON VB = 22 AND AD < 5 AND SL < > 1 GOTO 194: IF AD = 11 AND SL = 1 THEN POKE 16185,PL:RM = 41:IS = 2:TE = 8: GOTO 62
97 ON VB = 7 AND OB = 48 AND SL = 7 GOTO 201: ON AD = 11 AND SL < > 1 GOTO 120: ON VB = 22 AND OB = 65 AND SL = 2 GOTO 223
98 IF VB = 22 AND OB = 64 AND SL = 6 AND DS THEN PX = SP(DS - 1,0):PY = SP(DS - 1,1): GOSUB 220: GOSUB 68: GOSUB 66: GOSUB 83: GOTO 207
99 ON VB = 26 AND OB = 13 GOTO 218: ON VB = 44 AND SL < > 1 GOTO 152: ON VB = 42 AND (SL = 2 OR SL = 3) GOTO 69: IF VB = 17 AND OB = 65 AND SL = 7 THEN DS = PL:EO = EO - 1: GOTO 224
100 IF AD = 10 AND SL > 10 THEN 204
101 IF VB < 255 THEN RP$ = "THAT WORD IS NOT USED NOW": GOTO 58
It seems to be looking at the command entered and handling it in various ways. In particular, this chunk is revealing:
IF VB = 4 AND OB < 65 THEN ON ASC (PS$(OB)) > 96 GOTO 109:RP$ = "YOU CAN'T DROP THAT"
VB 4 Must be DROP and Objects 0-64 are the possible inventory items. Apparently items with upper case names internally cannot be dropped. So the question is what noun corresponds to Object 72 (not an inventory item) which is the answer needed.
I was following that exact logic, Deificus, and I got it. I still don't understand the answer, but I'll amend this posting in a bit.
DeleteIt's truly humbling that this language is known as "BASIC".
DeleteBasic languages often end up being cryptic when you use them to do non-basic stuff.
DeleteBut if you have/make a map of the jump locations and the variables and memory locations, the code isn't that hard to understand. Kind of like a dungeon becomes easier to navigate if you have a map :)
Just in case you weren't tired of Star Trek references in Might&Magic yet: the cardgame Fizzbin is a Star Trek reference, and it also appears in Might&Magic.
ReplyDeleteAh, fizzbin! The game Kirk made up in the glorious ridiculousness that is the mobster planet episode.
DeleteIt's only ridiculous taken at face value. ;)
DeleteThematically it is a really good allegory for the NATO/Warsaw Pact arms race.
If you open PARSER.BIN in hex dump mode, you'll get a list of commands and inventory items that game can recognize. Maybe some of them can give you ideas.
ReplyDeleteIndeed it did. Thanks!
DeleteThe comments above this one were made before I won the game and attached the addendum.
ReplyDeleteIs perhaps the password "TORCH" given by the Lord of Light in the first game?
DeleteGood thinking, but it doesn't appear so. I just searched the files, and the only reference to "torch" is to an "electorch" that you can mine with.
DeleteThis may be a dumb question, but what happens if you go back to Triskelion and say "ERGO?"
ReplyDeleteYou die.
DeleteThat's your answer for everything in this game!
DeleteIt's so satisfying to see how gaming mysteries like this get resolved by the addict and this great community.
ReplyDeleteThe Basic and HEX edit Force is strong with this group of young Padawans... ;-)
ReplyDeleteIf it is PASSWORD 2, does that means what the first game had another password in it's ending? You haven't won the first game, so maybe you should check its files before tackling the last one.
ReplyDeleteThe first game doesn't have a winning condition. There is no mention of a password in its files.
DeleteSeeing as Ergo is the second word in Cogito Ergo Sum, maybe it’s hinting that’s the whole password?
DeleteThat would make sense, but if so, the other two must come from the third game. COGNITO doesn't appear in the code for the first game or the second, and nothing about a password or passcode appears in the code for the first.
DeleteI’m thinking the third game might ask for a as phrase and your meant to infer it from the Ergo part. Will see when you get to part 3
DeleteSomeone finally found a copy of Empires 3? I wonder what it's like.
ReplyDeleteI did a bit more looking at the code that triggers the encounter to give you the password.
ReplyDelete225 DC = FN D(10): ON DC < 9 GOTO 228: PRINT "@0KL@": GOSUB 8: IF DC = 10 THEN RP$ = "SHIP EXPLODES!": GOSUB 261: GOTO 61
226 FOR I = 7 TO 272 STEP 7: HCOLOR= FN D(8) - 1: HPLOT I,8 TO 279 - I,151: NEXT : FOR I = 8 TO 151 STEP 5: HPLOT 7,I TO 272,159 - I: HCOLOR= FN D(8) - 1: NEXT : PRINT R$"@L250Y@": FOR I = 80 TO 140 STEP 20: PRINT "@"I"XN@": NEXT
227 PRINT "@19H9V@" CHR$ (27)"@E2V12H@I AM THE@D7H@LORD OF LIGHT@4H13V@REMEMBER THE WAY@D8H@OF THE TORCH@E@": FOR I2 = 1 TO 1800: NEXT : GOSUB 116
There seem to be various paths leading to this code, so I'm not sure exactly what the "typical" way to get here is, but once here it looks like 10% of the time your ship simply explodes, 10% of the time you get the Lord of Light encounter, and the other 80% of the time you follow some other code paths that depending of you exact circumstances lead to various sorts of death, injury, etc.
So it seems like this is meant to be some sort of lucky rescue when things go wrong that you'll see if you have enough characters die. I noticed on the entry for Empire 1 there was also a Lord of Light random encounter. So if this is really the only way you are meant to learn the answer needed to win the game it seems pretty cheap.
Given how it works in the first game, I am 90% sure that your interpretation is correct. Since I didn't engage in a lot of ship combat in Empire II, it makes sense that I never experienced this encounter.
DeleteCould the Lord of Light be a reference to the novel by Roger Zelazny?
ReplyDeleteThat came up on the original thread. I guess our consensus was: possible, maybe even probable.
DeleteHa. You know what? I have an e-mail from David Mullich saying that no, he had not heard of the Zelazny novel when he wrote the game. I never published the material in this e-mail because Mullich never responded to an e-mail in which I asked his permission to do so.
DeleteA curiosity I noticed: Hwitrokken probably means Whiterock. Hvit is white Norwegian, and I think hwit is old english. No good ideas on what fyrokken is supposed to mean. Shamerock?
ReplyDeleteHa. Even if I didn't know Norweigan, "Hwitrokken" sounds a lot like "Whiterock" in English. I can't believe I didn't mean that connection.
DeleteWhen I covered this game and analyzed its code, I found the answers to the questions you raised:
ReplyDelete- You already solved the ending related to Triskelion, but when you get it something less obvious happens, in addition to giving you the password. The character's attributes all become between 16 and 18.
- The radios not only allow you to communicate with other ships if they are on and tell you the nearby planets, they also tell you if they are looking for you for a crime, but it is a coded message, like the one at the end of the game, and you need the codecracker .
- Combat between ships is useless, it is best to do what the ship asks you to do, or simply not have the radio on so that it does not ask you for anything and does not attack you.
- I didn't find slaves either (the planets most likely to have them in their market would be Denieves, where there is more crime, and Wereguld, where there is civil war), but where they can surely sell them is on the black market, although they only sell one type of merchandise each time and it is random.
- Macrophones can be used in corporate stores to spy on them and know if their shares are going to rise or fall (in fact, this future rise or fall is caused), but it is a crime.
- Leaving the ship is useless (unless a ship asks you to do so and you don't want it to shoot you), but some malfunctions of your own ship leave it without air and it may be necessary to use a suit to survive. Furthermore, in some areas of the Fyrokken mines there is also no air and a suit is necessary.