Omnitrend's Universe Details - LaunchBox Games Database

Overview

Universe is a complex space exploration game, reminiscent of the original Traveller hard science fiction pen-and-paper role-playing game. It is based in the same fictional universe as Omnitrend's later Breach and Rules of Engagement series. Running in the same vein as games like Elite, Starflight, and SunDog: Frozen Legacy, its gameplay involves freelance space exploration, trading, space combat, planetary mining, and other economic activities. When you begin the game, you must choose the terms of your 300,000-credit mortgage and select a starship hull from various models that differ in size, layout, visibility to other ships (and therefore the likelihood of receiving undesirable attention) and sturdiness. Recently, Axian Central Educational Institute announced that there is evidence of an enormously prestigious hyperspace booster in the Local Group. You, with your new ship and your enormous new debt, are one of those who hope to find the hyperspace booster and collect on the large reward for it. However, operating a starship is expensive, and you will receive no funding. Thus, you must make your own way however you see fit. Combat is conducted abstractly, in a manner vaguely similar to a strategic board game. If you win this fight and secure the landing sites, you then charge up, crew and launch the ore processors. Once they land (assuming they landed safely), choose which type of ore each one mines, and then let them rip until they run low on energy or until they are too damaged to continue, at which time you launch them and they return to the ship with their valuable cargo. If you've done well, you've got a substantial load of precious ore you can sell at the next starport.