Bugs and potential improvements

Bugs as of version 3.2e

• When running warp engines at a speed higher for which they are rated, they will become damaged over time. When changing warp speed after the warp engines have been damaged, the helm will report that the warp engines are damaged, and recommend you not travel over a particular warp speed until repaired. At that point, your warp speed will be set to that recommended value, even if your command was to go to a lower speed (or stop completely). Ideally the game would only override the warp value you entered if you enter a speed over the new recommended top speed.
• Several informative screens, such as the player roster and HELP CLASS, do not take into account the length of some values, leaving a jumbled display.
• If you fire missiles with "MIS @ <flux value>", but do not have your weapons lock targeted on a ship, the helm will respond that you have no missile launcher on your ship, even if you do.
• Tax revenue stored on a planet is stored as a signed integer and can overflow, resulting in the value appearing as a negative number. While this can likely only occur on a game that has been running for years without a reset, it would perhaps be wise to implement a limit to the amount of tax revenue a planet can accumulate. (TO DO: what is the max value, better explain this behavior).
• Neutral zone planets can have their names configured by the sysop, yet still appear as "Zygor" and "Tahanian Station" throughout the help screens and many in-game messages.
• CPU ships are capable of going to "hyper-warp" in order to quickly move into areas populated by human players. When scanned, these ships read an nonsense value (such as warp 1.657) when actually traveling well over warp 100. The release notes acknowledge this bug and claim a fix was implemented, however the fix doesn't appear to work properly.

Potential improvements

• Messages from the helm could be cleaned up and have a more standard appearance, including spelling fixes and consistent capitalization and punctuation.
• The helm could notify the player that the hyper-phaser is ready to use again, similar to how that is reported when using the phasers at impulse.
• (TO DO: flux running out when you still have flux pods. explain why this happens and how it could be corrected)
• Warp engine damage is not currently reported in "REP SYS."
• When firing phasers at a ship in the neutral zone, the phasers will not hit the ship, which is the correct behavior. A message from the helm indicating that the phasers were dissipated by the neutral zone would be helpful. (TO DO: can you fire phasers *through* the neutral zone? i think you can, but you probably shouldn't be able to)
• If you fire torpedoes at a ship and it goes to warp, the torpedoes simply go away. A message from the helm indicating that the torpedoes didn't reach their target and have self-destructed would be helpful.
• When missiles that have been fired run out of flux power, they simply go away. The helm should report that missiles did not reach their target so the player knows they may fire more.
• When torpedoes or missiles are fired at a ship and that ship enters the neutral zone, the torpedoes or missiles simply go away. A message from the helm indicating that the weapons were destroyed by the neutral zone defenses would be helpful.
• When a planet revolts and becomes **FREE**, their work assignments, tax rate, item pricing, and trade password remain the same. Thus, a player can set up a planet with a extremely high tax rate, allow it to revolt, and still obtain goods from it for a reduced price or perhaps take it over again later to raid the tax revenue which has continued to accumulate at a rate which is normally not allowed. Ideally, a planet that has revolted would implement its own trade policies and stop taxing itself.
• When changing from warp to a complete stop, the helm could report if you are within the gravity pull of a planet or wormhole (within 250 units), similar to how it does when you are traveling at impulse.
• Using fighters to attack a planet that has troops but no fighters results in the attack being unsuccessful and all the fighters returning to the ship (TO DO: as of which version), but the game doesn't do a very good job of explaining this.
• (TO DO: what sections of the online help need to be rewritten to account for changes made to the game during its development)
• The PRICE command will not show the price of the goods as requested if you can't actually hold that amount on your current ship, which isn't necessary. A message like "(quantity) (item) will cost (amount), but that would put us overweight" would be more helpful.
• The ROTATE command accepts both relative headings such as "ROT 45" (rotate 45 degrees to starboard) and "ROT -45" (rotate 45 degrees to port), and absolute headings such as "ROT @45" (rotate as needed to face 45 degrees). However, the WARP and IMPULSE commands only support relative headings, with something like "WARP 10 @90" not supported.
• Since it's (generally) impossible to be within orbiting range of two different planets, there's no reason for the ORBIT command to require a planet number.