BattleStar

BattleStar is a fleet search-and-combat game for DOS, published by Softdisk Publishing in 1992. Each commander places five ships on a grid and fires at the rival's map to discover where they are hiding. The computer returns fire after your turn. The first to destroy the opposing fleet wins.

The title screen carries the On Disk Monthly heading and credits the original idea to Dan Harrison, the programming to Nolan Martin and the art direction to the Softdisk team. The copy is in English. The menu offers One Player, Two Players and Exit; to start against the computer, select One Player and enter your name.

Placing the five ships

The first phase lets you deploy BattleStar, Destroyer, Sentry, Fighter and Scout. Their silhouettes come in different sizes. The bottom panel shows how many are left and names the one you are placing. You can move it with the keyboard arrow keys or, according to the help, with the mouse.

Enter fixes the proposed position. Before moving on to the next ship, Are You Sure? (Y/N) appears: Y accepts and N lets you correct it. Repeat the process until the fleet is complete. The computer then prepares its own, and the search begins on a grid where its ships remain hidden.

Choosing a weapon and a target

The tracker marks the target square. The arrow keys move it across the map; Enter fires at the chosen position. The three icons at the bottom correspond to the weapons: 1 selects Nitro, 2 the plasma ray and 3 antimatter. The help uses the names Nitro Warhead, PlasmaRay and Anti-matter.

After the shot, the game shows the result and moves on to the enemy's reply. A Miss indicates a miss. The square stays marked, so you can check the places you have already tried before choosing the next one. During the computer's action you see your fleet again; wait for your commander's target prompt to return before continuing.

It pays to search in a recognizable pattern and to review the marks from each turn. A ship occupies several squares, so finding it and destroying it are not the same action. The game combines the initial placement of the ships, the choice of weapon and the search for their positions.

In-game help

F1 opens instructions adapted to the current phase. During deployment, it explains how to move and confirm a ship. In combat, it offers five pages on the objective, the turns, the tracker, the weapons and the controls. PgDn and PgUp change pages; Esc closes the help. S turns the game's sound on or off.

The gallery shows the original menu, a deployed fleet and the result of a plasma shot. The background image comes from the DOS menu itself. The download keeps the three original files, including BATTLE.TXT; detailed instructions can be read with F1 inside the program.