Duke of Alpha Centauri

Duke of Alpha Centauri is a space shooter in which you fight hordes of enemies, take on bosses and upgrade your ship. You progress through distinct levels and can test your ship in an endless mode. Difficulty settings offer different levels of challenge.

Levels and enemies

The game has distinct levels with different enemies. It features 13 enemy types, each with three styles. Enemies use plasma weapons, photon weapons, lasers or missiles, and some can cloak. Bosses use a range of tactics to attack you, and asteroids can also threaten your ship. Your shields cannot block asteroids, so they hit the ship directly.

Weapons and defenses

Your ship has mechanical weapons, including bullets and missiles, and energy weapons, including plasma bullets and lasers. Each draws power from a different source, so you need to upgrade both power supplies. Missiles and lasers activate when you target enemies with the auto-guided system, and you can change targets at any time.

The ship also has holoemitters and system overload. Holoemitters increase your damage and project three or five holodrones to help you damage enemies more quickly. System overload uses nanorobots and high-temperature plasma reactions to recharge your shields or weapons power supply, or repair the hull. If the shield fails and the hull suffers a critical breach, the reactor core explodes and destroys your ship.

Upgrade your ship

Each time you level up, you gain one system upgrade point. Every 10 levels, you can unlock additional ship upgrades. System upgrades cover mechanical-weapon and energy-weapon power supplies, shields, hull and weapon damage.

Ship upgrades include:

• Tactical: auto-aim plasma turret, auto-aim missile and auto-aim laser turret.
• Science: holoemitter improvement, shield energy converter and phase shift.
• Engineering: faster shield recharge, faster hull repair and faster weapons power recharge.