Version 1.3 marked a major turning pointing in the development of Artemis, eliminating the LCARS-inspired UI, and giving us the appearance for the Artemis and the Kraliens that we still see today. It was such a milestone in the development that a brand-new demo was created on this new baseline, and would continue to be the demo of Artemis throughout the 1.x series. There was only the one 1.3 release, the next Artemis version released would be 1.4.
Helm and Weapons remained unchanged from previous versions, although torpedoes had evolved from 1.0 to have their current range and behavior, and Mines and Nukes had been added in 1.2. Nukes were unguided, and fired straight out from the ship until they hit something, enemy or base.
Engineering had a selection of controls for DamCon and Energy, which distributed the available resources between the systems. As shown in the image, Energy had to have a least one point of power in all systems or they would not work. Damage Control could be more concentrated since systems that had no damage did not need repair. Systems turned yellow when damaged, and red when destroyed. The ship silhouette showed hull damage, which like shields was divided between front and rear. (Note this silhouette had been fixed in 1.1, but the Artemis changed design, so it is once again wrong. It continues to be wrong until the new Engineering Console comes out in 1.5)
Science used a "sweep arm" to scan the sector, and only the immediate area was visible on the console, as with Helm and Weapons. The box to the right would show the ships present in the "sweep arm", no matter the distance from the ship, so you would have to move the arm in the direction of enemies on the LRS and kind of swing it back and forth to "zero in" on the enemies you wanted. Shield frequencies were shown from the start, there was no need for a "second scan". The sweep arm would lock onto a target if you clicked on its info in the panel, but it could still be hard to keep track of enemies in close combat.
Comms, like Science, has a background image of the immediate area around the ship, and enemies in range. Messages would appear over this background, as shown. The scrollbar to the left could be used to scroll through messages. A display of the menu options can be seen on the Version 1.4 page. Neutral ships would not appear until version 1.4, so Comms does not have that menu option in this version.
The new Artemis and the Deep Space Base
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The Server Select Screen - Ship names cannot be changed
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Helm
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Weapons - Unlike Helm, Weapons can't see nebulas, although it can see asteroids
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Engineering - Note the Torp to Energy buttons
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Science - Now you can see the nebulas
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Comms - Note the Mainscreen controls
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Long Range Scanners
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Tactical
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Client Select Screen - the client could finally select which console(s) to control
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Enemies in Version 1.3
The Kraliens were the main enemies in Artemis 1.3, just as they would be in all following versions. The Arvonians (called Argonians back then) and Torgoths were very different, however. Rather than being support vessels for Kralien fleets, they had ships that looked identical to the Kraliens, and formed into their own separate fleets. The Argonians had tougher shields than the Kraliens, and added a long range beam for their battleships and dreadnoughts. (The Kralien dreadnought did not have a rear beam at this time) The Torgoth had extremely tough forward shields, but weak rear shields, encouraging players to circle around behind them. The Torgoth battleship had a forward firing beam like the Argonians, but their dreadnought had a rear firing beam, making circling around behind them more of a challenge.
Interestingly, when the Argonians and Torgoth were changed, the Kralien Dreadnought inherited the Torgoth's rear firing beam. The game manual released at that time stated that the Kralien dreadnought had a powerful forward firing beam, presumably a reference to the Argonian dreadnought. In fact, the Torgoth Leviathan inherited that powerful forward firing beam. The Kralien dreadnought is sort of a combination of its predecessors, as it does not have weak rear shields as the Torgoth did.
Here are images of the different races' ships. As noted above, they are identical to the Kralien ships, but have a different paint job.
Argonian Cruiser
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Argonian Battleship
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Argonian Dreadought
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Torgoth Cruiser
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Torgoth Battleship
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Torgoth Dreadnought
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