Talk:Netrek

Single-source historical fact
At one point during another long, well-balanced Bronco game on the United States West Coast in the mid-1990's, a chat message to immediately dock at the nearest planet was issued, something similar to the total aircraft stand-down on 9/11. During the ensuing chat messages from various locations, players at several California and other Western US universities determined that a large earthquake had just occurred as felt by all, and from the times reported by those starship captains, our collective best guess was that its origin was somewhere in the San Bernardino mountains. Media images televised later that day (this was long before the advent of streaming Internet video) showed one of those Southern California mountain tops to be completely shrouded in a large dust cloud caused by the violent shaking. This was probably the first known usage of Netrek or any video game as a geological tool for earthquake origin detection resulting from a multi-ship long-range sensor scan during a real-time rift between us and an alternate universe. Unfortunately, the only verification for this other than my own participation is from the personal logs of other dawn patrol starship captains who have since lost their commissions or were re-assigned somewhere else in the known galaxy. Hotfeba 17:50, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Poetic way of saying that much of Netrek's history is not documented? There are files out there, if you bang your head against the archives hard enough. thejeffnelson

Cited by?
This article isn't cited much, just about anywhere else on wikipedia. As the first team Internet game, first Internet wide MMORTS, first organized intercollegiate video game tournament, seems like Netrek deserves a few more cross-link citations from other articles. thejeffnelson

pulled links
I pulled the following links for the following reasons:

these utils are outdated and also archived at netrek.org.
 * Some utilities and documentation

site decommissioned.
 * Netrek Australia

their netrek entries are pretty messed up. they don't quite have the concept of one game with many clients in their architecture, so shoehorning in accurate entries may be a challenge.

--Akb4 06:48, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

game basic
I have two questions which are not covered in article:


 * How does a player actually begin playing this? Do they download software? Is there a fee?


 * What is the manner of gameplay? are there multiple deaths and kills during gameplay? How do players regenerate?

thanks. --Steve, Sm8900 (talk) 18:02, 12 December 2007 (UTC)


 * You start playing by going to a distro website (netrek.org or playnetrek.org) and downloading a client. Like the opening paragraph says, there are no fees. When killed, a player drops back to the ship selection screen, chooses a new ship, and pops back into the game next to their home planet. Getting killed is a frequent occurance; the main costs are that you lose any armies you were carrying, lose your kills (and thus must destroy other ships before you can carry armies again), and your position changes; it might be a long flight from your home world to the battle front, and every second you spend flying there is a second the enemy might be creaming a planet or your team-mates. On the other hand, getting killed gets you a brand new ship, and if you can get opponents to chase you to someplace remote and then kill you, then they are left off in a corner with no fuel while you have a fresh ship closer to the action. -- Akb4 (talk) 20:11, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

First released version for Mac in 2006?
I don't believe that's accurate. My first exposure to Nettrek was on the macintosh SE in the early nineties. Was there not an old OS6/7 version of the game long before the open source project for OSX? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ryansturmer (talk • contribs) 05:20, 20 February 2008 (UTC)


 * You're thinking of nettrek (with two t's). It's similar, but a lot more primative, and plays over appletalk. -- Akb4 (talk) 20:11, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

There was a netrek client for the Mac written around 1993 by Neil Cook, and another client (using some code from the 1993 client) was released in 1996 for the PPC by Joe Rumsey and Steve Sheldon. I played on that one in 1996. There's plenty of evidence in the rec.games.netrek archive. -Dan Damouth —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.30.146.233 (talk) 17:51, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree. I played on Neil Cook's Mac client at home until 1994, when I finally bought an old SGI.   -Jeff Nelson (Miles Teg) thejeffnelson

50 frames per second?
I've removed the paragraph about moving to 50 FPS because it hasn't happened and shows no signs of happening. Like some other parts of this article, it seems to have been written by an optimistic coder. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.30.146.233 (talk) 10:11, 16 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Incorrect. The code has been working for ages; at least two clients (paradise 2000 and XP) support it and the server code does as well. The most-used servers still run at 10fps to please players who like it that way; as with IPv6, it's unclear how long it will take for the new technology to uptake. -- Akb4 (talk) 08:57, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Ship classes
Older versions (2007) of this article had more accurate descriptions of ship classes. It looks like they were removed at some point and then re-added again later. I think we should bring back the old descriptions.

69.231.230.60 (talk) 07:32, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 1 one external link on Netrek. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive http://web.archive.org/web/20100517052357/http://www.galacticcombat.com:80/ to http://www.galacticcombat.com/

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at Sourcecheck).

Cheers.—cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 05:52, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

translation into Chinese Wikipedia
The version 02:41, 7 June 2020‎ InternetArchiveBot of this article is translated into Chinese Wikipedia.--Wing (talk) 07:51, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

Netrek vs. Net Trek
The "Reception" section refers to a DIFFERENT game on the Mac called Net Trek - it's a more arcade style game that was for three players (Starfleet, Klingon, Romulan). If you go to the issue of MacWorld that's cited, on page 172 there's a screen cap from that game. 2601:642:4A00:B080:6DBA:6D8C:BEE4:2945 (talk) 06:10, 20 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Agreed. The author of the Mac game talks about its history on his website. Any chance that the mention can stay here?  The MacWorld article gives it notability but I don't know if it's enough for a stand-alone article. (Also found a brief mention in The Secret History of Macintosh Gaming.) – Reidgreg (talk) 20:52, 20 January 2021 (UTC)