Fish 'n' More 2/fishmore-publicdomainlibraryvol.ii1991xetec.iso/dirs/conquest_432.lzh/Conquest/Conquest.doc

Text File | 1991-01-12 | 15KB | 341 lines

                Conquest
                --------

COPYRIGHT NOTICE:
  Conquest is Copyright © 1990 by W. Michael Bryant
  All rights reserved.

  This software is provided AS IS.  No warranties or guarantees
  are expressed or implied.  Michael Bryant cannot be held
  responsible for ANY problems arising from the use of this
  software; use at your own risk.

=======================================================================
Please see the end of this file for the latest update notes
=======================================================================


BACKGROUND:
  This program has been in the works for quite some time now.  It was
  originally inspired by a program on the Radio Shack CoCo.  My first
  version of this program was called Conquest and was written in BASIC.
  Next came a version that ran on a PDP 11/45, then finally this
  version on the Amiga.  The program has grown quite a bit since its
  first conception.  Unforunately, it has taken so long to get this
  program done for the Amiga that other games called CONQUEST have
  sprung up.  For a while, this game was renamed to "Dominion", but that
  still didn't feel quite right.  For now the game is called
  "Lore of Conquest", if there are any suggestions for names, let me know.

  Special thanks to John Nowak who created the original version of the
  combat system for Conquest.

INTRODUCTION:
  Conquest is a war game similiar in concept to the board game Risk.
  You are the lord of an entire world, destined to rule the galaxy.
  Some worlds are virgin fruits, ready for you to colonize.  Some
  worlds have natives who do not wish to accept your rule, these you
  must conquer for they will yield more valuable resources.  As you
  claim the galaxy you will find, you are not the only one extending
  your dominion.  This is a two-player game.  Be prepared to defend
  yourself and take what is yours!

            ----------------

  The following instructions give only a brief description of game
  play.  Experiment with the program and find out how the program
  runs and what strategies will lead you to victory!

PLAYING THE GAME:
  Dominion is a two player game where each player secretly enters their
  moves for each turn.  When Dominion is started, you are asked for
  each player's name and the number of turns you wish to play.

  Next, the galaxy map will be displayed and each player will be asked
  to select their homeworld.  Available worlds will be outlined.  Select
  your homeworld by clicking on the letter of the world.

  The game has now started.  At the beginning of each turn you will be
  displayed your income for the turn.  You earn income for each world
  that you control.  Each world has a class value assigned to it.  The
  higher the class, the more income the world generates.  A homeworld
  is a minimum of class 7.

  After closing the income window you will see the galaxy map and command
  window.  On the galaxy map you will see the first letter of each
  planet's name, and a number or a question mark next  to it.  The
  number indicates the class of the world.  A question mark indicates
  that the world has yet to be explored.

  You need ships in order to explore and conquer other worlds.  Select
  "Buy Ships" from the command window.  The following are the types
  of ships available:

    Scout        - Fastest ship.  Non-combative.  Flies past one
              or more worlds, to gather information on each.

    Cruiser     - Fast ship.  Average fighter, but cheap.

    MissileShip    - Average speed.  Excellent fighter but must
              wait to reload every other turn.

        Dreadnought    - Big, slow, awesome battleship.  Best fighter,
              best defender.

    Railship    - Slowest.  A High-Tech piece of hardware.
              A huge flying cannon that will automatically
              destroy one other ship in reverse order.
              ** More on this later.

  Send ships to other planets using the "Launch Fleet" command.  Fleets
  of ships will only move as fast as the slowest ship.  If you wish
  to launch a scout use the menu command "Launch Scout".  Scouts can
  scan multiple planets before finally landing on one.  They can be
  invaluable for keeping track of enemy fleets.

  When more than one enemy fleet is present on a planet, combat occurs.
  The offensive capabilities for the entire enemy fleet are compared to
  the defensive capabilities of your fleet.  This determines how many
  casualities you will sustain.  Casualties will be first removed from
  ships in the following order:
    Cruisers, MissileShips, Dreadnoughts, Railships

  This means that all casualties will be taken from cruisers until none
  are left, then from missileships, and so forth.

  Railships are a special case.  These ships can attack from long range
  and destroy a ship with a single shot from their massive cannon.  These
  ships can only fire once a turn but destroy ships in the reverse order
  of normal casualties:
    Railships, Dreadnoughts, MissileShips, Cruisers

  This means that after one turn of combat only one side will still have
  any railships in combat.  These ships can be an extreme strategic
  advantage.

  Planets of class 4, 5, or 6 will have natives.  These natives when left
  alone will slowly build ships of their own.  A player discovering a
  class 6 planet late in the game might find a mighty native fleet to
  contend with!

  All planets generate income each turn.  If you own the planet, you get
  all the income stored for the planet.  It is therefore a stategic
  advantage to conquer the natives before your opponent does.

  ----------------------------------------------------------------------

  There are many stategies and finer points to this game.  If you can't
  seem to figure out the game, or have questions about it, send me a
  letter at the address below or contact me on BIX as mikebryant.

  If you like this program and would to show your appreciation, send
  me a letter.  If you REALLY like the program, send me money!  I can
  be reached at:
            Mike Bryant
      37 Adna Road
      Bristol, CT  06010

  This program has been evolving for a number of years now.  Please feel
  free to send any comments or wishes for enhancements for future
  versions.

========================================================================
5-21-90  Release of version 1.0 of Lore of Conquest

Lots of changes with this release.  Special thanks to Doug Walker
(DJWalker on BIX) for the suggestions.  New with this version of Conquest
are:
  Ability to scrap planets.  If you are going to lose a planet, you have
  the ability to lower the planet a class level.  You get 15 credits
  per class of the planet for scrapping the planet.  It can also be used
  when you REALLY need some extra cash.  Since it costs 25 credits to
  raise the planet up one level, this is not a recommended option with
  the exception of dire emergencies.

  Distance command.  You can now get the time it will take a fleet to
  travel from one planet to another.  This was (and is) built into the
  launch ship requester but you had to have bought the ship in order to
  see how long it took to get somewhere.  The distance command doesn't
  have this problem.

  Intelligence History.  Intelligence on past battle reports now goes
  back to the last three events.  This will allow you to get a better
  grasp on what is happening to a specific planet than the old 1 level
  intelligence report.

  Stargates have been improved!  The old version of stargates were not
  even documented in this file.  (Sorry.)  Stargates allow you to travel
  from gate to another in just 3 turns!  It doesn't matter what type of
  ship you send through the gate, three turns later it comes out the
  other end.  To use a gate you must own both ends of it.  To build a
  gate you must have a class 9 planet as your homeworld.  Each gate
  costs 100 credits.

  Battle report has been revised.  I've changed the format of the
  report to better display important information.  Battles will have
  Start Fleet, Casualties, and Survivors listed so you don't have to
  do any math in your head.  The Next and Prev gadgets also enable
  or disable depending on the available information.

  The command screen has a new look.  Hopefully it is more attractive
  that the previous version.

  Mail has been fixed so that messages don't get lost from turn to turn.
  Note that Mail is NOT saved with a save game command.

  There is now a tally command to compare two players at the end of the
  game.  When you quit the game you will be asked if you want to see
  the final tally.  Traditionally when I end a game of Conquest, we agree
  to watch each others screen for the last move to see what lands.  The
  tally command is a quick display to see who has more territory and ships.

  Well, that's about all for now.  If you have any suggestions for the
  game, send me a letter or leave me E-Mail on BIX to MikeBryant.

                             ----------------

  In the future...  I plan on adding a two player feature to Conquest
  that allows you hook two Amigas up via DNET and play Conquest
  head-to-head.  This mean that while you are entering your moves, your
  opponent can do the same thing.  No more waiting!!!  Considering that
  I only have 1 Amiga at the present, this feature may be a while.

  Anyone interested in computer opponents?  I'm considering splitting the
  current Conquest screen into 4 quadrants.  You could play 1 to 4 people
  with computer opponents filling in the empty slots.

========================================================================
9-30-90 Release of Lore of Conquest 1.1

Thanks to Mark Burton on BIX for his many suggestions to enhance this
version!

With this version I upgraded to SAS/C 5.10.  This was a rather painful
process because it reveals several shortcomming of the software design.
(Bad habits from Microsoft Windows programming... ;( )  Anyways, the
new system promises to be much more robust and consistent.

Scraping planets has been revised.  You now get 15 credits per level that
you scrap.  You can only scrap your own planets.  You can only scrap your
home down to class 7.  Scraping now takes time.  You get the money right
away, but the planet will be unavailable to be scrapped again for
(class / 2) + 1 turns.  This is to prevent the wholesale scraping of
the entire universe just to buy a stargate or other such nonsense.

You can now save the status of Conquest at any time.  This means that
you are able to make a move, save the game, and post the file on a BBS.
Your friend can download the file, make his move, save the game, and
post it back.  This might make for some long games, but should allow almost
anyone with a modem to play.  (I considered direct modem support for
Conquest but considering that most of my games take 4-6 hours to play...)
Save files are 46448 bytes long.  LHARC, however will compress them
97% to 1619 bytes!!!  The size of the save file will not change as you
play the game.  The data within it, though will change.  You mileage may
vary.

  Other quick notes:

Stargates will only be used if they shorten distance.
Scouts now show up to 10 destinations in the hyperspace list.
Scounts also show destination list as you select planets to scan.
Current home planet, and bank balance are on the main screen.

I've included some short cut keys for main menu commands:
  T   Tally
  S   Launch Scouts
  D   Distance
  I   Intelligence

The "Confirm" requester can also be answered with "Y" or "N".

The default names for the game are pseudonyms for a friend and myself.
(I'm Alexis.)  If you really find this annoying, I can change the default
names to something else...

            ** REMEMBER : SEND ME YOUR COMMENTS ON THIS GAME **


========================================================================
11-5-90 Release of Lore of Conquest 1.1a

Minor bug fixes and a few enhancements.

Although you were able to save a game of Conquest at the end of either
player's turn, there was no way to select home planets without both
players being present.  Ooops!  Now you can select SAVE GAME from the
menu after the first player selects his home planet.  (The first player
will still have to enter the names for both the players.)

Now the Tally command will display a SCORE!  For those games that are
close, you can now declare a true winner.  (For those whose game ends
before utterly exterminating their opponent.)  Scoring works as follows:

  Each planet you own adds to your score:  Class * Class * 10
  All the ships you own:  Cost * Number of Each Ship Type / 10

As you can see, it really pays to hold high class planets.  Ships don't
count very much in your score but do add a little bit.  Scrapping planets
will hurt a bit more now...


Please feel free to post this file to any local BBS's you wish.  I'd
be happy to see it spread around!  Thanks.

--Mike B.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
11-7-90 Release of Lore of Conquest 1.1b

Ooops.  A minor fix to this version to allow players to start the
game correctly.  Now the second player selects a home world first.
When the first player is asked to pick his world, you can save
the game to disk.  When the other player starts the game he can
choose his homeworld and then begin his first turn.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------
12-22-90 Release of Lore of Conquest 1.2

Discovered a bug in the SAS/C compiler that was generating wild
memory writes.  If you found that Lore of Conquest crashes your system
or caused bizarre behavior, this bug was probably the cause.  Fortunately
the nice people at SAS fixed the compiler as soon as I reported the
problem.

I enhanced the hyperspace listing so that the list is sorted by turn
number automatically.  Ships that arrive next turn are highlighted
even if you use Turn or Destination listing options.  You also should
not ever see a blank page.  (I now count the number of entries before
displaying the page so if the page is full but there are no entries for
the next page, the window closes.)

Stargates are not revealed on hyperspace listings,
or planet listings unless you own the planet.  (Previously, you could
simply send a ship to a planet to find out if it had a stargate or not.)
Battle reports will now correctly report if a stargate is on a planet
or not.  Careful use of Intelligence can help you determine when a
stargate appeared on a planet.  (Scouts can detect a stargate on a scan.)

Just for flavor, I've added a signature to all mail messages.

In addition to drawing a border around planets that have battle reports
for the current turn, I've color coded those borders so you can
easily recognize what is going on around the entire screen.
    White     = Victory / Re-enforcements / Colonization
    Blue      = Rebellion
    Green     = Scouting Report
    Cyan      = Battle Loss
    Yellow    = Battle in progress

There are other misc cosemetic bug fixes...

I hope I've wrung the bugs out of this version.  Sorry if the SAS bug
caused any grief.  I've also included a version number in the save
game files so that the program can recognize what files it can or can't
load due to revision changes.  This version is incompatible with previously
saved games.  (Hopefully I'll run out of things to add to the data structure
and the save format won't change again.)

--Mike B.