Fast Tracking So, you have read a few IGN's and maybe even played some PBM's or PBeM's in the past and have pretty much sussed out what it's all about. You may only be halfway through your first mission and not even got access to the 'create a political' mission along with the other training missions, but you are savvy enough to know you want to dive right in. In fact you are somewhat surprised that most of the literature you have read to date seems to advise caution, playing for a bit longer before committing to either joining an affiliation or for that matter, even paying money. So, following questions from a couple of people looking to leap in at the deep end, I have written a short article on fast-tracking.

The curse of the Phoenix Bug
It's easy to see that there is a lot of depth to the game � just reading some the obscure questions that are posed by veteran players of five years and more indicate this. It is also easy to see that a lot of players are passionate about their affiliations. Swapping Private Messages (PM's) can quickly draw you into wanting to join them. They may have quizzed you about your background, enthusiasm and probable commitment. They may have offered you a role in their faction and even waved a reasonable starbase under your nose along with ancilliary holdings and shipping. You are hooked and eager to join. You have also been playing the game for less than a week...

So, how do you get from one ship somewhere in Halo, a bucketful of PM's and a vague understanding of the mechanics to serious player in less than a week?

First and foremost you can complete your training missions even if you have already joined an affiliation. We feel that these give you some clue to the mechanics of the game and may be worth completing after you join an affiliation. Joining an affiliation is a simple matter of going to the recruitment forum (can be found at the bottom of the forums) and clicking Join on the appropriate affiliation. You then have to wait for the affiliation to accept your join request. They may send you a PM question first, especially if you have not already discussed joining them.



Getting a Political
Yup, it's time to start paying to play. This does of course open up so much more of the game and makes life a lot easier (IGN2 Politicals - Being taken seriously). You will need a KJC Account (go to Library > KJC) and create one if you have not already got one. If you have changed email address, postal address and not used it in years, then a PM to Mica is probably your best bet. This will link your credit account (used to play all games run by KJC Games) to Phoenix.
Next � pay some money into your account if necessary. It does not need to be a lot though you can qualify for 10% free credit bonus if you pay 50.00 GBP. This will prevent your account from being suspended as soon as you create your political position!
Creating a political (at a weekly cost of 2.00 GBP) can be achieved either through the Create Political Mission (if you have only justed signed up, this may not even be visible) or the order Create Political. Both amount to the same thing though the former is nice for reading material. For speed however, the order is preferable. Whichever you use, you will qualify for 100,000 stellars, a 10,000 stellar weekly income and get a few more ships.

So now you have a political and have presumably been accepted into the affiliation (possibly in less than 2 days). If you have discussed the situation with them, they will now transfer to you all the assets they promised if this was part of an agreement. A word of warning though, it is almost certainly an idea to first check that they will swap the positions if you quickly discover that they are not what you want. Just because you have charged in, you should still get to play the game you want. That's it, that's all there is to it. By joining the right affiliation, you may well have a starbase or two, a dozen outposts and 50+ ships by the end of the first week playing the game!

Disasters
Everybody makes mistakes. In Phoenix these can prove disastrous such as sending your fleet through an asteroid belt or using the Mass Produce order to set the number of factories building an item to 10 rather increasing from 200 to 210, resulting in 190 factories untooling. A quick PM to the GM begging for kindly intervention will generally work while you are still new to the game.

Benefits The major benefit to immediately scaling up is tackling the Learning Cliff (IGN1). The more positions you control the more mistakes you will make in a shorter period of time due to submitting more orders. The important thing is, because you are doing a lot more orders you will learn how they are used much quicker. If you have a couple of ships, some orders you may only encounter every few months (maintaining, repairing, refitting etc) and as a consequence you may keep forgetting quite how they work. If however you have 20 ships, you get the initial trial by fire, but are regularly undertaking these actions so that soon you are issuing them instinctively. There can be overwhelming frustration when you only own one position and every turn seems to come back with 'there was a mistake on your turn' and once again you seemed to do nothing. When you own a fleet, this becomes a minor niggle you will come back to once you have dealt with the rest of your ships. Another benefit is getting to know the universe - both in terms of knowing where affiliation bases are, how to get from one end of the Peripheries to the other and to some extent the distribution of other affiliations. The latter is especially useful if you intend to moonlight as a pirate. Having more positions also brings you into greater contact with other players which in turn immerses you into the game a lot quicker and at the end of the day, gaming is all about escapism and entertainment.