Moving Through the Menus

Press one key to choose. You do not press Enter to pick a menu item. Each item shows its key in parentheses, like (1). Press that key and it runs at once.

Every menu leaves with the 0 key, labeled "Quit". On a turn menu (Spending, Attack, Covert, Trading), Quit moves you to the next step of your turn, and the turn does not come back to that step. On a side menu (like the Bank or the System Menu), Quit takes you back to where you were.

The System Menu opens with the * key from the Spending menu. It holds extra options like Preferences, Set Tax Rate, and Show Instructions.

Pressing Enter with no other key also chooses Quit. The prompt shows "Quit" so you can see what Enter will do. On the Spending menu this happens only if you turn on "Use Enter To Exit BUY Menu" in Preferences. On the Entry menu, Enter chooses Play while you have turns left. On every other menu, Enter always chooses Quit.

The help browser and other pick-a-topic lists move a highlight with the arrow keys: Enter chooses the marked row, typing a few letters jumps to a title, and Backspace or Q goes back. If your terminal cannot show color and cursor control, those lists are numbered instead — type the number and press Enter.

Typing an answer

Where a prompt takes something typed rather than one key — a number of troopers, a realm name, a line of a message — Backspace erases the last character and Ctrl-U erases the whole answer, leaving you back at the prompt with nothing typed. It is quicker than holding Backspace down over a mistyped 1000000000. In the message editor it clears the line you are on, not the message — /C still does that.

Choosing who an action goes to

Send Message asks (A-Y,Z=All,?=List) Send to: and takes a whole list, not one name. Press a realm's letter to add it and press the same letter again to take it off. Z marks everyone at once, ? shows the roster, and * marks your treaty partners. Press Enter when the list is right — that is what opens the editor. Enter with nothing marked leaves without sending.

InterPlanetary Ops -> Send Message -> Single Planet uses the same prompt for the barons on the planet you named.

Every Diplomacy option that names a realm takes the same list: offer a treaty to several realms at once, or declare war on several. There ? shows your relations rather than the scores. Mark one realm only, and you negotiate with it: you propose the pact, or accept it if that realm has already offered it to you. To end a pact, use Declaration Of War.

The letters belong to the realms, not to the rows, so a letter may be missing from the list: it is either yours or a realm that has fallen. A realm keeps its letter for as long as it stands, whoever else joins or falls, and it is the same letter on every screen — the Id column on See Scores is that letter too, which is why those rows are not in letter order. The letters of everyone a message went to appear at the top of it when it is read.

A letter is freed when the realm holding it is swept from the map, and a later baron may be given it. So a letter names whoever holds it today, not whoever held it when an old message was written.

Who else is on

An O beside a realm's letter — on See Scores, the attack and message target lists, and the View Treaties roster — means that baron is on the board with you. Your own realm never carries it. It clears when they log off, and also a few minutes after their last keypress, so someone sitting on one screen can drop off the list without having left.

On a menu that lists Help, press ? to open this help.