— STAR RAIDERS —
The Ultimate Strategy Guide

The Addicted

Star Raiders strategy.

My name is Andrew Lenz Jr. I grew up and live about 30 minutes south of the Silicon Valley. (Yes, here in California, we refer to distances in driving time!) My parents bought our family an Atari 800 8-bit computer around 1980, and an Atari 800XL a few years later. Aside from using the computer to learn programming, we purchased a number of games for it, but only one would consistently end up on lists of the most influential video games ever: Star Raiders. For instance, in 2007, Stanford University’s History of Science and Technology Collections included Star Raiders in their list of the 10 most important video games of all time, games which they recommended to the U.S. Library of Congress for preservation. Written by Doug Neubauer in 1978-1979, Star Raiders is considered to have been ahead of its time and it pushed the Atari hardware to its limits with its first-person 3D shooter flying-in-space strategic adventure.

As a teen, I remember reading an article in a magazine about Star Raiders. In it, though I can’t seem to find now, was a reference to the author completing the Commander level without shields. “Wow!” This became a quest. I completed the Warrior (2nd hardest) level without shields, but never made it more than about halfway through the Commander level before either falling prey to the enemy or getting destroyed by a random asteroid. Life moved on. I earned a university degree in computer science, made a living, got married, had kids.

Decades later, in the late summer of 2020, I pulled out the old family Atari 800XL and started work on a “bucket list” item—that elusive no-shields Commander level victory. I played 30-50 games—some lasting less than a minute!—on a weekend then after a few weekends, I started keeping track of the games: the date, kills before dying, was I killed while facing forward or aft, was it a regular ship or a basestar or an asteroid, was it a crossfire, was I warping in or chasing down a ship, was the shot an orphan (from a now-destroyed ship). Each game provided insight where to improve. Patterns emerged.

424 games later, on October 12, I finally had success: STAR COMMANDER, CLASS 1 on Commander level, No Shields. I had joined the Star Raiders elite plus added a check mark on my bucket list. And I believe that achievement allows me to share successful strategies with you and you can trust that they work.

Playing the Game

There are emulators and virtual ROMS available to play Star Raiders on a modern computer. Or you can buy a vintage Atari computer and a game cartridge online then connect the system via an adapter to a modern monitor. Or you can track down an old CRT monitor like I use. (It seems the old Amdek monitor I have is listed online for hundreds of dollars!) And you’ll need a joystick, of course.

The Game Manual

Due to the sophistication of the game, reading the manual before playing is practically a necessity. There are scans of the original Star Raiders manual online. Here is one:
https://oldgamesdownload.com/wp-content/uploads/Star_Raiders_Manual_Atari-8-bit_EN.pdf
And another archived copy:
https://archive.org/details/agm_star_raiders
And an online version:
http://www.sonic.net/~nbs/star-raiders/docs/

Links to Magazine Strategy Articles

A number of articles were written in the early 1980s providing strategy advice for Star Raiders. I recommend reading these. I don’t believe all their given advice is perfect, but most is.

Analog (January/February 1981, see page 24)
http://www.atarimania.com/mags/pdf/analog_no_01.pdf

Byte (September 1982)
http://www.massmind.org/techref/article/byte/sep1982Star_Raiders_Tutorial.htm

Antic (July 1983)
http://www.sonic.net/~nbs/star-raiders/star-raiders-academy.html

Andrew’s Strategy Advice

My goal here is not to repeat the advice found in the above articles, so do read those. Below is what I’ve learned through my own play and analysis.

Warp Arrival. Warping into a sector and steering right smack into enemy ships is reckless. Patience is key. Leaving distance is mentioned in one of the above linked articles, but it’s so critical, so I’m emphasizing it again here. Many of my no-shields games ended when I got careless and warped right face-to-face with Zylon ships. As you decelerate and you approach to within 200-250 units of the target, turn your ship to the right or left and continue to turn completely around until the ship(s) are back in front of you. It’s easy to get cocky or impatient, but not getting hit by enemy fire requires discipline.

Rotating Your Ship. When turning around to face a distant ship at your ship’s front instead of its back, turn left or right—or, if you must, down. You never want to pull up—pulling up means when the view switches to the front, the enemy ships will be above the centerline of your crosshairs, never a good place for enemy ships to be since you can almost never successfully shoot them there unless you manage a risky and elusive target lock.

Sector’s Ship Count. Always know how many ships are left in your sector. You are facing aft, you think you are done, you check the galactic chart and—a stray Zylon destroys you. Oops! So keep track. For example, when I warp into a sector, I’ll say to myself, “22 going to 3” . . . that is: 22 kills, going to a sector with 3 ships. After you’ve killed the last of your visible targets and you know there is more than one remaining enemy ship in the current sector, press “M” to manually cycle through the remaining ships and moving your joystick to determine which is closest and/or which is going to arrive first. If you don’t, you may be waiting for a ship but get attacked by another ship you weren’t paying attention to.

Targets in the Photon Path. You want to have the enemy ship in a position where you can shoot it while accepting the least amount of risk. Your photons originate at the lower left and the lower right of the screen and converge at the center of the screen as they get farther away. Newbies always try to move enemy ships to the center of the crosshairs regardless of distance. Pros keep the enemy ships along the path that the photons travel . . . the closer the enemy ship, the closer to the lower right or the lower left you will want that ship to be.

Picking Targets. If you are engaging two ships at once and both are in front of you, engage the ship closest to the center of your screen. Move that ship to a lower corner of your screen, pushing the other ship further out where it cannot shoot you.

No Target Lock. While some strategy articles recommend it, don’t go for target lock on any ships. This requires the ship to be in the center of the screen—where they are the most dangerous! High risk, same reward, so why risk it? Just be patient.

Photons First. Incoming photons should always be your priority to hit with your own photons, unless you are 100% sure that they will pass by you. It’s a drag when you think a photon will miss you and you instead take out the enemy ship but that photon actually does hit you! You get very good at judging, but if there is even a glimmer of doubt, shoot the photon.

Approaching Targets. Approaching a stationary enemy ship at a speed of 8—the most efficient speed—then cutting your engines to 0 when you are about 180 units out will coast you into visual/targeting range of the sitting enemy ship.

Distance Shooting. Develop your ability to guide a photon to an enemy ship when it is just inside of visual range. This is about the only time you’ll want an enemy ship near the center of your crosshairs . . . when it is far away!

Asteroids Can Be Your Friends. As an enemy approaches from a distance, if you have an asteroid on your screen, shoot the asteroid just before the enemy becomes visible at 120 units. This will slow that ship down as the asteroid slowly dissipates and make the enemy easier to hit.

Orphan Photon. If you destroy an enemy ship and tracking flips you while a photon was approaching you—though see my suggestion about instead prioritizing incoming photons!—keep turning in hopes that the unseen photon will miss you.

Aft Firing. Develop strong aft shooting skills. You should be able to engage and fairly comfortably destroy enemy ships while facing aft. If you don’t have these skills, play practice games destroying every ship from the aft view. The forward view will always be your primary attack preference, but whether it’s a crossfire or a ship that insists on attacking you from the back, aft skills are necessary.

Starbase Docking. When a starbase is close enough to dock with, three windows will appear on either side of the center of it. Turn your engines off and center the starbase. But it doesn’t need to be perfectly centered to dock; the instant the screen announces “Orbit Established” stop steering your ship. I generally approach a starbase at speed 5—too slow, you waste time, too fast, the starbase will appear on screen and already be behind you by the time you cut out your engines. As the starbase gets close, you can drop your engine speed to 4 or 3 and stop when you see those three telltale windows.

Jump then View. It’s only a fraction of time, but you’ll be more efficient if when at the Galactic Chart, you tap “H” (hyperwarp), then “F” (front view) instead of the other way around.

Running Ships. If enemy ships are running away, you’ll save time and energy just rewarping back into the same sector. If, when you warped in, the ships were nearby, just tap “H” and start your jump. If, when you jumped in, the ships were far away—meaning you didn’t warp into the center of the sector—tap “G”, recenter your warp marker, then hit “H” and “F”.

Chasing Ships. While tempting for a ship that gets close, chasing a ship that turns and runs is dangerous. The instant that you come within visual range, that ship with turn and attack you, closing the gap very quickly. If you cut the engines too soon, the enemy will continue to run and you’ll have to restart the chase. Cut the engines a second too late, you’ll be on top of the closing enemy ship with your hand just coming back to your joystick from the keyboard. It’s best to simply pick a different target in the sector or rewarp into the sector.

Leave the Basestar. If you have a basestar and a regular ship attacking you simultaneously, try to destroy the regular ship first so you can quickly go from two attackers to just one. Basestars are much harder to destroy and attacking it first will maintain a bad “two against one” situation longer.

Enough Time to Hyperwarp?

I couldn’t always judge if I had enough time to jump from one sector to another before the ships vacated the target sector. So I did some testing, making a lot of precise jumps and recording the results. This chart shows what I discovered. Basically, if the clock just turned to :41 or :91, you can warp just about anywhere. If the clock just turned to :43 or :93, you can warp within three sectors and make it there before ships have an opportunity to move on. Beyond a few sectors, you aren’t going to take the time to count the sectors and calculate if you have enough time. Plus, it’s costly to jump more than 4 sectors.

So, here’s what the plus and minus means in this chart. “7+” means that the clock just turned to “3” and you have nearly 8 seconds. “9-” means the clock is just about to turn to “2” (you are much closer to 9.0 seconds than 9.9 seconds).

Big Hyperwarp Jumps

I created a spreadsheet to figure out most fuel efficient way to jump from one sector to another. It’s actually quite easy to remember. Here is it is: never jump more than 4 sectors. 4 sectors or less, jump directly. Greater than 4, jump 4 sectors then jump the remainder, provided you never exceed the 4 sector limit. For example, to jump 5 sectors away: jump 4, then 1. 8 sectors: jump 4 and 4. 10 sectors: jump 4, 4, 2. Easy.

The exception to that is if you have a starbase surrounded. In that case, time trumps fuel efficiency!

You may notice that enemy ships will disappear off the right side of the screen and appear on the left or vice versa. You can do that too, but know that you will be “charged” fuel based on the final landing distance across the chart from your starting point to your ending point. Where you put your target marker is irrelevant. For instance, if you are currently in a sector near the chart edge, you can’t cheat by putting your jump target marker next to the edge, steering “badly” so you wrap around to the opposite side of the chart, and only get charged for jumping one sector. You’ll use the same fuel as if you set your target marker all the way across the chart—a very fuel-consuming jump!

Direct Hyperwarping

Sometimes you want to save time and jump directly to a sector without spending any time at all at the Galactic Chart. Generally, this is for when you are playing a game with shields on and you want to get to repairs immediately . . . such as when your shields are damaged/destroyed or your photons are destroyed. Taking even 2-3 seconds to set your target marker on the Galactic Chart could end your game! Fortunately, you can jump directly—bypassing the Galactic Chart altogether.

The diagram below shows where you need to steer your hyperwarp target marker to get to a desired sector. Your desired sector might just be an empty nearby sector, or ideally, a starbase. The diagram doesn’t cover all cases (such as jumping 2 sectors up) but you can extrapolate easily from what is presented.

The Unrecommended Cheat

There’s what I consider to be a bug in the program regarding hyperwarping. I’ve never used this bug and consider it cheating, but I’m including it here for completeness in case you ever hear it discussed or you see it used. (I wrote to Doug Neubauer about this issue in October 2020, but he didn’t get back to me.) This bug feature is not a huge advantage, but it is an advantage. Only on the Commander level, when on the Galactic Chart, you can put your target marker one sector below where you actually want to jump to, press “L” for Long Range Scan, then “H” for Hyperwarp. Once the jump is complete you press “F” for Forward View. The jump will have dropped you into your desired second (one sector above where you put the hyperwarp target dot). If your long range scan goes out, this is supposed to no longer work.

Now, again, I consider this a bad thing to use in practice. It makes the game easier. People like me, who want the authentic challenge, want to make the game even harder, not easier. If you achieve “Star Commander, Class 1” or complete Commander level with no shields using this cheat method, those of us who have done it using the program as intended won’t respect your “accomplishment”. You are expected to steer through hyperspace.

Game Tracking Form

I mentioned tracking the games that I’d played. Below is a download link for a PDF version of the form.

star-raiders-game-tracking-chart Download

In Closing

I believe Star Raiders is one of the greatest video games ever created. I had a 21-year-old man visiting our house recently. The Atari was set up with Star Raiders and I invited him to play. He really enjoyed it and shared that he could see how someone would get hooked on it. Great game play never goes out of style, even with blocky bitmap graphics.