Universe

Universe is a video game in the strategy genre developed by Omnitrend Software, Inc. and published by Omnitrend Software, Inc. originally released in 1987. It is currently playable on DOS, Apple II, Atari 8-bit.

Universe is a complex space exploration game, reminiscent of the original science fiction role-playing game Traveller. It is based on the same fictional Universe as the later Omnitrend, Breach and Rules of Engagement series. In the same vein as games like Elite, Starflight and SunDog: Frozen Legacy, its gameplay involves do-it-yourself space exploration, trading, space combat, planetary mining, and other economic activities.

In Universe, you are a new independent ship captain in the Local Group, a star cluster colonized by Earth in the relatively near future. Humanity has had the hyperdrive for nearly four hundred years, but hyperdrives have limitations of ship size and range that effectively prevent exploration and colonization beyond a 40 light-year radius. However, in a distant orbit around Tau Ceti, an exploration craft encountered a huge alien artifact called a hyperspace thruster, which allowed one-way travel over a distance of thousands, rather than tens, of light-years. The discovery of the hyperspace thruster enabled a great Second Interstellar Expansion, and Axia, a star system specially marked on the hyperspace thruster star charts, was colonized. The Local Group is the cluster of stars surrounding Axia.

For more than two hundred years, Axia has regularly received packages from Earth via the hyperspace thruster, but the packages mysteriously stopped arriving four months ago. The Local Group, considerably behind Earth technologically, is dependent on the packages and has its own political and economic problems, so this is a serious problem. Panic is spreading as rumors fly about what happened on Earth.

Recently, the Axian Central Educational Institute has announced that there are tests of a second hyperspace thruster in the Local Group. You, with your new ship and your huge new debt, are one of those who hope to find the hyperspace thruster and collect the great reward for it. However, running a starship is expensive, and you will not receive any funding. Therefore, you will have to make your way as you see fit.

At the start of the game, you must choose the terms of your 300,000 credit mortgage and select a starship hull from among several models that differ in size, layout, visibility to other ships (and thus likelihood of unwanted attention), and robustness. Then, after a copious exchange of disks, you move on to the dry dock, where you can outfit the ship and place all its parts (hyperdrive, bridge, crew quarters, weapons, shuttles, cryogenic storage, etc. ) in its different sections (each of which has different capacity and visibility - this is important when a hostile ship hits you and the game must determine where you were hit and what was damaged).

From there, the Local Group is wide open. Trading, passenger transport, mineral extraction, smuggling, contract cargo transport, and even piracy (or pirate hunting) are lucrative options. The complexity of the game is shown in the example of mining: you must first equip your ship with ore processors and, if you want to mine low-tech populated planets, assault pods. You must also hire a crew sufficient to handle them all. Next, you must find a resource-rich planet and place yourself in a low orbit around it (plotting an efficient orbit by hand can save energy resources); launch the computer's Resource and Amphibious Assault software packages (which may make it necessary to disable Hyper Navigation or Sub-C Navigation to make room); convert Ore IV into energy to charge the assault pods; and launch them. Once this is done, an abstract isometric grid representing the landscape is displayed, with each assault pod shown with a vertical line extending from it to the landscape representing its altitude. Here, you give them orders as they descend to the planetary surface to secure the area, taking care to scan the landing surface repeatedly to make sure it will support the ore processors (the scanners are not 100% accurate, and you don't want your landers to sink into a swamp, fall into a thermal vent, or tip over on an uneven landscape).

Combat is played out abstractly, in a manner vaguely similar to a strategic board game. If you win this combat and secure the landing sites, then you load, crew and launch the ore processors.

It is possible that we have multiple downloads available when different versions exist.