Ember Reach

What it is

Each player starts with one settled world, a few ships and charts that will soon be out of date. From there they settle more worlds, build fleets and buildings, research, trade on the Exchange, make treaties with other houses and fight the Hollow, a hostile faction that raids from its nests.

The lanes between systems drift: some close and new ones open, so a safe route this week may be gone next week. A game runs 60 days by default, or with no last day, for up to 12 houses. It can be won early by holding most of the worlds, by gathering every relic, or by being the last house left; otherwise the best score on the last day wins.

Computer houses can join each game, so a small BBS still has rivals. There's a Hall of Fame and nightly news for posting on the BBS.

Play it here

The Kalgoorlie Retro BBS runs Ember Reach for any registered user. Telnet to bbs.theiguru.au (port 23), log on, press X for the games, choose Games Hosted by Kalgoorlie Retro and pick Ember Reach. How to connect.

Features

Computer houses

The sysop names the computer houses that join each new game (Varro and Ostrel by default). They give orders under the same rules as everyone else, see only what their own worlds and fleets see, and get no extra resources. Two settings make them easier on new players:

• PeaceDays (10 by default): for this many days after a player joins, the computer houses don't attack that player's worlds. They still defend their own systems. The player's report warns them on the day the peace ends.
• Difficulty: Easy, Normal or Hard. Easy computers wait longer before they attack and only attack with much bigger odds; Hard ones attack sooner and take more risks.

They also play under the same fog of war as players: they only attack systems their worlds and fleets saw at the last turn, and only settle where they know (or last saw) an unclaimed world. They keep scouts out to see what their rivals are doing.

Both are in REACH.CFG and on the reachcfg settings screen, for the next game or the one running now.

Installing

1. Make a folder for the game and unzip the version for your system into it.
2. Start the first game: run reachcfg in the folder and choose Start a new game now, or run ermaint new. This writes REACH.CFG (the settings, with a note on each) and REACH.DAT (the game).
3. Add the door to your BBS (below).
4. Add a timed event that runs ermaint daily in the game folder once a day. On Synchronet for Linux, run reachmaint.sh instead: it also keeps a dated log and every finished game, and can post the news to a message area.

The door

; Synchronet, Linux: native, DOOR.SYS, I/O through stdio
reach.sh %n %#
; Synchronet, Windows: native, DOOR32.SYS, I/O socket
reach.exe -d %n -n %#
; Mystic, Windows: menu command D3 (DOOR32.SYS)
reach.exe -d %P -n %N
; DOS: FOSSIL driver, or the serial port when none is loaded
REACH.EXE -d C:\BBS\NODE1 -n 1

Players can stay in the door while maintenance runs; it tells them to come back in a few minutes. Everything else is in README.TXT and the documentation.

Downloads

Version 0.5, 1 November 2026. Each zip has the door (reach), the maintenance program (ermaint), the set-up program (reachcfg), README.TXT, WHATSNEW.TXT and the licence.

Also on the BBS in the file area Heisenbergs Files. Read first if you like: README.TXT, WHATSNEW.TXT.

The Lua bot

emberbot.lua is a script for SyncTERM-Lua, the BBS terminal with Lua scripting. Start Ember Reach, press Alt-S and give the path of the script: it plays one day for the house of the BBS user you're logged on as (or founds one), then quits the game. It scouts, settles free worlds, orders ships and buildings, sets research and reads the report, news and messages.

It keeps a log of what it did each day, and a separate log of problems: errors, refused orders and screen lines wider than 80 columns. Press Alt-S again at any time to stop it and play yourself. More in EMBERBOT.TXT.

What's new

0.5: the computer houses play under fog of war, choosing targets only from what they have seen, as players do.

0.4:

• New settings for the computer houses: PeaceDays and Difficulty (see Computer houses).
• Computer houses now build troops and land on the worlds they blockade, instead of blockading for ever.
• Blockades now cut a world's production, and patrols that arrive home join the guard fleet.
• Settler fleets stopped at a guarded system look for another world.
• Research moves on to another track when one is finished.
• Ember Reach is now free software under the GNU GPL, and the source is released.

The full list is in WHATSNEW.TXT.

Licence and source

Ember Reach is Copyright © 2026 Michael Slater. It is free software: you may copy, change and share it under the GNU General Public License, version 2 or (at your option) any later version. It comes with no warranty. The source is in REACHS05.ZIP above; it builds with Free Pascal 3.2.2 for Linux, Windows and DOS.

The door's console code follows the design of dorkit.js from Synchronet BBS, and its line editor is a translation of dorkit.js's, by Stephen Hurd (Deuce), also under the GPL.

Contact

Questions, bug reports and suggestions are welcome. Email slaterm@theiguru.au, or leave a message for the sysop on the Kalgoorlie Retro BBS (telnet bbs.theiguru.au).