Common Problems

"Spaceward Ho! starts up but then quits immediately."

Occasionally the preferences file will get corrupted. Throwing it away will often solve this problem. See See Preferences .

"The computer players are naming their ships things I used to call my ships that are really stupid."

They're supposed to do that. If you don't like it, throw away your "Spaceward Ho! Prefs" file. Again, see See Preferences .

"How do I move ships around?"

Click on the star where the ships are and drag to the star you want them to go to. A line will appear between the two planets. If there is an arrow at the end of the line, just let go of the mouse, and you'll hear a "Hyaa!" sound. The ships are on their way. In a couple turns or so, they should arrive at the destination planet. If there is no arrow at the end of the line, the planet you want the ships to go to is too far away for you to reach with the selected ships.

You can hand select a route for the ship by holding down the option key as you click a step-by-step path.

"Aliens keep attacking my home planet and killing all my people."

Build some defense satellites, and keep them technologically current wherever you may get creamed by the bad guys. Also, don't start out with a small galaxy with lots of opponents.

"What are the secrets of the game?"

If we told you, they wouldn't be secrets, would they? So don't ask us. Figure them out for yourself, if you must.

"The game goes too slow."

Make the galaxy smaller. In general, the smaller the galaxy, the harder a time the computers will give you. Don't just automatically put the galaxy size at "Humongous." Also, you can play against fewer computer players. More players isn't really harder, it's just more crowded.

"I crash all the time."

Don't look at us -- our software never crashes. It must be somebody else's fault. Seriously, if you throw away your "Ho! Prefs" file and turn off all your system extensions, you'll probably find that the Ho! is bullet-proof. On the other hand, if you do find a reproducible crasher, call and tell us about it so we can fix it in later versions.

"I need more screen space."

You can close the Graph Window and Report Window when you don't need them; this helps. It's also reasonable to work in the second-most zoomed out mode -- choose " Zoom out " from the " Windows " menu a couple of times. Lastly, you can " Show Info " in the " Windows " menu to toggle whether all that information on the left is shown or not.