The Dreadnaught Factor

Dreadnaughts

Each shape of dreadnaught ("delta", "jaws", "coke bottle", "bat wing") has a first-time-it-can-appear value. There is a dreadnaught shape that can only appear after 10 other dreadnaughts have been defeated, which means it only shows up in the highest level.

High score reward

Like many early Activision games, you could earn a patch for high scores in The Dreadnaught Factor. If you could destroy an entire dreadnaught fleet on level four or above and sent in a photo of the screen to Activision, you would receive the "Activision Dreadnaught Destroyer" patch.

Version differences

In the Intellivision version of the game, both the bolts from the guns and the tracking missiles were shown using the Intellivision hardware's 8 "sprites". Because the Atari 400/800/5200 hardware only supported 4 sprites, the game was turned sideways. The sprites are used for the tracking missiles (and the bolts fired at an angle), and the normal bolts were displayed with a different trick that required they be horizontal.

Information also contributed by Eric Nickell