Getting Started
-
Netrek Newbie Manual
A guide for the Newbie Netrek player. -
Charlie's Beginner's Guide to Dogfighting
A very good readable guide on the do's and dont's of dogfighting. -
Newbie Manual Appendices
The bits that were cut from the Newbie Manual to make it shorter.
Quick References
- Keymap Quick Ref. Default keymap for most clients. (Author's site)
-
Table of Distress Calls
From the Message and Macros Guide -
Ships of Netrek
A brief overview of all the standard ship types, and links to specific clue files for each ship type. -
Netrek Glossary
This is a list of all the terms and abbreviations used in the game of Netrek. Very helpful if you try to find out what everyone is sending to the team message board!
Getting Clued
Want to get clued? Here are some great resources on how to get better at Netrek game play.Also, don't forget about observer mode; watching can be a good way to pick up clue.
-
Dantes Dogfight Guide
Basics, Mechanics and strategy are all covered. -
KIA's Clue Guide
Valuable advice from Jan Sandorf, one of Europe's best players. A good read for the novice player, covering all basic situations in Netrek; Ogging, Taking, Basing, Bombing, LPS and more are concisely discussed. - Grey Elf's Guide to Planet Taking
is a very extensive guide. (It's around 350 lines of text, 20k). - Lance's Dogfight Guide
formerly the standard dogfighting intro, still has a lot to offer, assumes little game knowledge. -
The
Netrek Take File (mirror here)
This site has a number of animated GIFs that show how to improve one's play. Quoted from the page, "This page is provided for all those people who want some examples of Netrek play to discuss. Whether the plays are largely good or bad is irrelevant. The examples are not presented as templates to follow during play, instead they may be considered by players wishing to look in more detail at the way team strategies work (or don't) in the heat of battle. Alternatively this may be a useful resource for getting on a learning curve." -
Message and Macros Guide
This guide explains more than you ever wanted to know about distress calls and message macros and how to customize them. -
Red Shirt/Bert Enderton wrote a nice series of clue guides.
Includes:
- A (slightly out of date) outline list of Clues for Beginners
- Solid Strategic advice
- Two "game plans" used to prepare for league games; one is a game plan for the "Buddhist Jihad" team,
the other is simply called Game-plan with Anti-bombing
-
Get a Clue!
Archive
Quote: "Clue is the word that Netrek players use to indicate how much understanding one has of the game. Players that know what to do in different situations are considered cluefull, players that fool around are often called clueless twinks. These pages contain articles and notes that might help you to raise your clue-level. " -
JCH's
Netrek Information Archive
This archive, although a bit old (1996 and earlier), contains a lot of info on Netrek. -
Netrek Continuum
Big collection of netrek stuff, much of it derived from the JCH materials. - And More! mifiq's Team Strategy Guide, Ogging 101,
Client Documentation
- Documentation for the COW client
- The COW Manual
Note that the Windows clients are based off of the COW client, so this manual, while slightly dated, may be the most detailed configuration guide available for Windows players. - COW.DOC.txt, some additional documentation notes.
- older default XTREKRC configuration file
- older fully annotated example XTREKRC configuration file
- READMEs for Versions 1.02 1.03 2.00 2.02 3.00 3.01
- CHANGES through version 2.99, ChangeLog through version 3.2
- The COW Manual