Netrek is case sensitive in everything!!!

If you're not in combat, fly around with your shields down. This enables you to repair a little damage, and you use less fuel that way. But beware, you are very vulnerable if you are surprised.

Each additional warp halves your turning speed. Slow down to turn.

Watch your galactic map to get the "big picture." Pay attention to cloakers. Enemy ships near you will cause you to go to yellow or red alert. This can be used to tell if the cloaker by you is an enemy or not.

Torpedoes you det won't hurt your teammates.

How to Conquer Planets: You conquer planets by first bombing the armies on enemy planets down to less than four. Below 4 you cannot bomb them. (Neither can the other team pick up from them, however.) Here is one time where the AS is useful: the AS always bombs at least two, so if the planet is at 5 and you bomb it with an AS, it will always go to three or less! If the planet is at 6, however, you should first bomb it down to 5 with a normal ship and then have the AS bomb.

Then you need to get some kills -- you can only carry armies if you have killed with your current ship -- and beam up some armies from one of their own planets with the 'z' key (you can only beam up armies if the planet has more than four armies, so you have to keep your enemies from bombing your planets!). Once you have armies, orbit the enemy's planet and beam them down with the 'x' key. Each of your armies destroys one of the enemy's armies, so you will need more armies to capture a planet than the planet currently has. Usually, as a rule of thumb, it takes 5 armies to capture a planet, unless of course, it has fewer armies than that on it.

Some planets are more important to capture, too. Fuel planets are good planets to capture, because capturing them prevents the enemy from refueling on them. Similarly, repair planets (look for the little wrench symbol on the planet) repair ships orbiting them much faster than normal. Agricultural or "agri" planets -- press 'i' on the planet or bring up the planet window with 'P' -- are most valuable because they generate armies 4 times quicker than non-agricultural planets.

What to do when the game starts:

1. Bomb: The teams have all their planets and usually about 30 armies per planet. So, the object in this stage is to bomb out as many of the enemies' armies as possible, while preventing them from bombing out your own.
2. The planet capturing stage: Most of the armies are bombed away, so the players concentrate on capturing the enemy planets. It's kind of pointless to try to capture enemy planets while they still have a lot of armies, so this is why players don't try to capture planets until this stage. If the enemy has lots of armies, it is very easy for them to simply recapture their planets.
3. The Desperate wait for armies: The players have used up most of their armies trying to take planets, so they are waiting for more to grow on their own planets so they can take the enemies'. What few they do get often end up dying, as the ship that was carrying them is hunted down by hordes of enemy ships.
4. The Last Planet Defense: One of the teams has lost several of its planets. It only has a few of the ones near its homeworld. They don't have many armies to recapture their worlds because they don't have many worlds to grow them. But their worlds are well defended because they come back real close to them when they die. This stage can last for hours if the winning team isn't aggressive or well-enough organized to take those last few worlds.

How to win:

In order to win you must,

1. BOMB
2. Work as a team
3. BOMB
4. Read, so you can work as a team.

There is more to improving your game then just skill and connection speed. The single biggest advantage a team can have is a few players that work together. The reason most people / teams don’t win, is because they are do greedy for DI. And thus everyone hangs out in their core looking for armies, as soon as you begin to fight over armies you will begin to lose. The best thing to do when you first start playing is start making friends. Be nice to people and do not think that you are the best. No matter how good you are or how long you have played. Cause sure enough as soon as you start to think that you are better then someone or know more then someone else someone will come along and ogg you.

I have seen many really stacked teams over the past several years. But that does not matter. Sure they may have people that totally understand the game but that does not mean they work together. The biggest problem with having to many really good people on one team is most of them are to conceded. They want to carry and take, cause that is how they will get more DI and thus get rank.

The way to succeed at Netrek is to make as many friends as possible. Go help them and cover for them. Don’t be afraid to do die while defending an them, and when you do die, rush back to them as quick as possible. Netrek may appear to be a totally offensive game, but it is not. It is a mix of offense and defense.