MTREK Info

MultiTrek...Trek's First Massively Multiplayer

So, your a busy bee whizzing around in your Sovvy in BC (ya sad noob...use a Vor'Cha), engaging fleets and fleets of ships in Armada 1 and Armada 2, or even running around fragging in Elite Force.

You may even be one of the numerous Taldrenites who live and breath by the Starfleet Command series of excellent games. Ever wondered where it all started from? Most people think 'Star Trek: 25th Anniversary' when they think of the FIRST game out for the PC, and in a way it is true, it WAS the first 'game' out for the PC...that is, the first PRODUCED game.

In the mid 70's to early 80's college's in the USA were hogging up hours and hours of resource time playing a simple text based Star Trek game...simply called 'Star Trek' all you did was tell your ship to go to such and such a co-ordinate and blow up the first Klingon your seen, nothing fancy to it and it was generally used on old main frames in colleges so basically there was little or no graphics. It did however do one thing, start a storm...

MTREK was the next logical step up from the old text based Star Trek game, being planned and written and made available on college networks and an infant Internet the game started to spawn numerous simple layed out website's, most of which are STILL open today. MTREK (and soon after NetTrek) were the FIRST true user friendly games out for the PC, and it didnt cost a thing but phone line time and patience to get the controls right, and the controls were a bit freaky on the early versions. MTREK's first version were based off the premise of that Starfleet Battles (yeah the board game) it is all to do with tactics and specs. The game was originally written by Chuck L. Peterson at the University of California at Santa Cruz and played there from 1986 through 1990. When it went on the net though the tactics involved in the game was deepened. Still generally text based (there's no graphics involved) many people said the game would vanish into obscurity once Interplay released the first graphics based Trek game but to this day MTREK still stands out as a piece of Trek gaming history and can still be played today.

Recently, since the original developers have since moved on from the project due to real life work and other commitments a group of core fans took over the game and rebuilt it from scratch renaming it to JTrek and building a new site along with new servers. Many new ship classes have been added, the game has a webpage for displaying fleet statistics, helping new players, and a lot of other cool stuff. There is a forum for discussing gameplay, strategy, alliances, or anything else that has to do with the game. They have recovered the player base to about 750 players (still not quite what it was in the 90's) The game is growing in popularity again and it turns out that new players can become addicted to this text based game just as easily now (in the age of graphics), as they could when it was the only thing going.

The online versions of the game are immense and deep in strategy and specs, you cant just blunder your way about, you have to KNOW what your doing. There are 14 ship types in the game from several races and each ship has it's own unique properties. With those 14 different ships comes a massive learning curve but most people usually stick to one ship and play it through. All ships functions can be altered and varied by the user, from sensors to warp speed and firing arcs for the torpedoes. Although you don't actually SEE your ship (remember its ASCII and Text Based) you do get the feeling that you are running this ship as an actual captain and not just blindly flying around blowing up anything that comes near you, although that's an option as well.

The games points is based on the amount of gold that you collect, the more gold you get the more supplies you can receive from your starbase...and yes, there are starbases in the game. One of the neat points of this game is when your ship gets destroyed. Your gold does get kept by you, but you don't lose it either. When your ship gets destroyed by another player the gold floats around in space as parts of the debris of your ship...salvage rights come into effect here, first come, first get.

All in all MTREK has been forgotten about by the general gaming public cause most of them haven't heard of it. The game itself is still being played by a hardcore gaming club who are still playing it in there college networks or online during the weekend.

MTREK stands the test of time as being the FIRST mainstream net connected game for the Star Trek genre, and it didnt even cost a penny to produce and STILL is a freeware open source game.

For more details....

The new official JTrek/MTREK site: http://mtrek.game-host.org/

MTREK Old Site No longer used): http://www.aros.net/~rumour/mtrek.shtml

Write up by V1ctor1st with some input from Obituary

21/10/2002
Updated 12/6/2005