Star Command: The Manual Magazine Demo Version v.01 NET PLAY IS ENABLED (up to 4 players)--You don't need the CD UNLIMITED INSTALL Demo Limitations: Nomad and Triumverite Races Not Included, No Campaign, No Battle Randomizer PUBLISHED BY: GT Interactive Software 255 Shoreline Drive Suite 520 Redwood City, CA 94065 (415) 596-3932 DEVELOPED BY: Metropolis Digital, Inc. Games and Post Production Offices 12 South First Street, 11th Floor San Jose, CA 95113 (408) 286-2900 Copyright GT Interactive Software (publisher) 1996. All Rights Reserved. This material is the property of GT Interactive and is intended and restricted solely for use of GT Interactive Personnel or authorized appointees. The sale, copying, or reproduction of this material in any form is prohibited. STAR COMMAND is Copyright of Metropolis Digital, Inc. (developer) 1996, all rights reserved. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS: 486/66 PC or higher (Pentium Processor is recommended) MS-DOS 5.0 or higher 16 MB RAM required 25 MB of free hard drive space 1 MB of VRAM on your video card Double-speed CD-ROM or higher Sound Blaster sound card compatible Network play requires IPX -compatible network card INSTALLATION: 1) Run INSTALL.EXE 2) Choose a destination path for installation (DEFAULT=C:\STARCOM) 3) Press RETURN 4) Go to the directory containing the file STARCOM.EXE (DEFAULT=C:\STARCOM) 5) Run STARCOM.EXE THE STORY SO FAR: Four cultures met in the deep void. Weary of endleess exploration, and eager to peacefully colonize the fertile worlds of the Zeta Galaxy, they formed a non-aggression pact and engaged in limited trade. Thus, the programming Computrons, the disposessed Nomads, the questing Triumverites, and resource-hunting Terrans were able to co-exist quietly and autonomously. Then came the Age of Solinite. Computron mining vehicles chanced upon a method of transforming the warp storms that plagued the Zeta Galaxy into an awesome source of energy. They freely shared this knowledge with their nearest neighbors, the Nomads. Armed with this unprecedented source of energy, the Nomads constructed a fleet of devastating warships known today as Mass Driver Cannons. The Nomads sought to rain fiery death upon the manipulative Terrans. The Terrans suspected that the Nomads harbored animosity against them for their frequent espionage. Terran spies within the Nomad government confirmed this suspicion. These spies not only provided the Terrans with status reports on the Nomad fleet, but also revealed the secret of Solinite. The Terrans incorporated this technology into shield piercing mini-shuttles which could deliver special mechanized operatives deep into enemy ships. The Nomads soon found that their own destructive technology was being used against them. The Triumverites emerged from their cloaked colony worlds to examine the wreckage of the Nomad/Terran war. They soon unlocked the secret power of Solinite. The Triumverites used Solinite to develop weaponry that destroyed all systems of propulsion. Terran and Nomad ships began disappearing from battlezones. Computron scanners determined that the Triumverites were harvesting frozen Terran and Nomad ships for research. The Computrons also detected huge surges of energy emanating from the Triumverite homeworld. They discovered that the Triumverites were using an unidentified technology to structurally enhance Triumverite warships, making them virtually indestructable. All this data led the Computrons to the conclusion that the Triumverites would eventually achieve galaxy-wide domination. To preserve balance, the Computrons initiated a program to develop the Tech Disruptor. The Computrons allied themselves with the Nomads in order to optimally combine their shield repair and Disruptor technology with the Nomad's raw firepower. The Computron/Nomad alliance held back the Triumverite threat until each of the four races' central governments collapsed after a series of mysterious bombings and assassinations staged by the elusive Ahkun Vek Warlord, Narvek. Narvek quickly absorbed the four races' technology. The Ahkun Vek had been secretly fomenting hostilities between the races for so long that Narvek's single dreadnaught was able to defeat the great multitude of divided Terran, Computron, Nomad, and Triumverite forces. Narvek's reign of terror began, and the Zeta Sector trembled in his iron grip. Using the four races' technology combined with Ahkun Vek dreadnaught design, Narvek began constructing four super- dreadnaughts. Some of the Terran survivors banded together to stop the Ahkun Vek nemisis. Together they formed a secret revolutionary military group called Star Command: an interstellar peace-keeping force dedicated to protecting their ideals and destroying the mysterious Ahkun Vek. GAME MODES: MULTI-PLAYER CAMPAIGN: (not available in DEMO) In the Star Command Campaign, you have been chosen to lead the crew of a commandeered Ahkun Vek Mothership. Your mission is to command an advance group of Terran insurgents and stir rebellion against Narvek's violent rule. Along the way, build treaties with the Computrons, Nomads, and Triumverites. Victory is achieved when you successfully demolish the four super-dreadnaughts under construction and destroy Narvek himself. Carefully study the Ahkun Vek, learn their plans, build counter-technology, and blast them back to the nebula they came from. Your Campaign game is saved each time your Mothership enters Hyperspace. To enter Hyperspace, move your Mothership into the green glowing area at the border of the sector you currently occupy. Only Motherships may travel between sectors; in two-player Campaigns, if either Mothership enters Hyperspace, both Motherships will travel to the new Sector. If you wish to get a better idea as to where the Hyperspace jump will take you, right click on your mini-map--this changes your mini-map into a global map detailing where you have explored during the Campaign. If your Mothership is destroyed you will return to the Campaign Selection screen. If your plans go awry during the course of a battle, you may quit the game and restore your save slot. A save slot will always start you at the point where you have just exited Hyperspace. BATTLES: Your specific goal in sector Battles is to collect asteroids (NOMAD), crystals (TERRAN), plasma (TRIUMVERITE), gaseous anomalies (COMPUTRON), and Solinite to build a military force of highly specialized warships, defensive stations, and droids to protect your colony from leaders who oppose your way of life. Command Mass Driver Battleships, Shield Resonators, Point Laser Towers, Fighter Carriers, and a vast array of alien technology to tactically outmatch your opponents. Victory goes to the survivor. When you click on Battles on the Main Menu, you will first be asked to enter your log-in name. After typing your name, click OK. You will then see the Battle Selection screen. Here you will have the option to Create or Join a Battle. If you click Create, you will enter the Gathering Screen. At this time, all other players on the network will see your name appear under the Battles banner as a valid game to join. Click on the name of the Sector where you wish to do battle. If you wish to add computer controlled commanders, left click on an empty slot under the Commanders banner. If you wish to toggle off a computer, left click on the slot you wish to purge. If an unwanted human player has intruded on your gathering, left click on their name to eject them from the game. Choose which race you wish to represent in the battle by left-clicking on their insignia, depicted in the lower left quadrant of the screen. Send a message to the group asking if they are ready, then click the START button. Joining a battle is very similar to Creating a battle. To Join a battle, on the Battle Selection screen click the name of the battle you wish to join under the Battles banner. You will then see a screen very similar to the creating player's Gathering screen, except you will not be able to choose the Sector, nor will you be able to eject Commanders from the game. Whether you are joining or creating a game, the most important decision to make before the battle begins is which race you will control. Each race has unique technologies and provides a different strategic approach. The Terrans are a culture of explorers who would rather conquer than kill their enemies. They use an arsenal of guided missles and Infiltrator Tech to capture their enemies' units. The silicon-based Computrons are Experts at healing themselves and transporting themselves out of danger. They possess Tech Disruptor weaponry and the fastest vessels in the Zeta Galaxy. The Nomads have developed the mercilessly destructive Mass Driver technology and long range warp torpedoes. They also use point laser defense and droid transport vessels to aid in their lightning fast onslaught tactics. The Triumverites use stealth weapons to harrass their enemies at long-range and cripple their engines. Through repeated structural realignment, the Triumverites can bring their ships to a near state of invincibility. PLAYING THE GAME: THE COMMAND SCREEN 1) Main View Screen Where you observe all the action within a particular sector of the galaxy. Moving either your mouse or arrow keys adjusts your view. In Campaign, in order to move to another sector, you need to find the hyperspace entrance to that sector. You will then see your ship disappear from one sector, then shift to the next. 2) Oval Red Pause Button Pause the game. Click again to un-pause. Paused mode brings up exit option. Click on the 'EXIT' text to exit the game. 3) Mini-Map Friendly vessels and structures appear in your ownership color. Enemy units appear in their ownership colors. The terrain depicted in the mini- map varies in color depending upon the type of terrain. Shield flickers (damage/healing effects) blink.The red rectangle on the mini-map indicates your current Main View Screen area. You may click on the mini-map to quickly jump the Main View Screen to a new area. 4) Current Piece This displays an image of the current single piece selected or the leader of a group. 5) Damage Gauge (to the right of the Current Piece) The current selected unit has four systems which effect its operation. Shields protect the unit from being destroyed. Engine allows the ship to keep moving. Tech effects how often the unit may use its technology. Control allows you to maintain command of the unit. Each system displays two status values. The red bar indicates the current amount of damage that the unit has sustained in a particular system. The green bar indicates that system's maximum capacity. Many high-level units inflict permanent "green" damage when they hit, while low level units usually do more temporary "red" damage. Repair units can only repair "red" or temporary damage. Only the Triumverite Repair Matrix can repair "green" or permanent damage. 5a) Shield Damage - A unit is destroyed when its shields are reduced to zero. 5b) Engine Damage - A unit moves more slowly as its engines take more damage. 5c) Tech Damage - A unit will use its technology less frequently as its tech is damaged. 5d) Control Damage - A unit will change ownership or self-destruct when its control is destroyed. 6) Piece Name Name of currently highlighted piece. 7) Rank (under the image of the Current Piece) A unit will improve its Shield, Engine, Tech, and Control, as well as its accuracy, movement speed, rate of fire, number of shots, damage, shot range, responsiveness to orders, scanning range, and gain unique abilities as it gains rank. 8) Description Lists the highlighted piece's capabilities. 9) Selection Storage (red buttons on the far right) Click on a memory slot to store a selected group in memory. Hit the corresponding function key to bring up the selection again. Click on an already defined slot to reassign a new selection group. 10) Resources A green bar indicates the quantity of a particular resource that you possess. When you select a piece to build in the Building Options Bar, a blue highlight indicates the amount of resources necessary to construct the unit. The amount appears red when you don't have enough resources. 10a) Solinite - All 10b) Gaseous Anomaly - Computron 10c) Radioactive Asteroid - Nomad 10d) Plasma - Triumverite 10e) Crystal - Terran 11) Production Meter (giant glowing green light on the lower left) The Production Meter must be fully charged in order to build units. Smaller units like droids cause the meter to drop slightly, while larger units such as Ultra-Tech devices deplete the meter nearly completely. 12) Race Selection (on the right of the Production Meter) Indicates which race's units are displayed in the Building Options Bar. At the beginning of the game, only your race appears bright and the other races gray. The buttons light up as another race's technology is ready to be acquired. Click on a race to view their building options. 13) Building Options Bar At the outset of the game, only your Base is available for construction. Once you build a Base, you have access to an Academy, a Battle Station, and an Explorer class ship. In order to learn new technologies, move your Mothership adjacent to an Academy. It is useful to build multiple Academies, since after you havelearned all the technologies in your race, then the Mothership will proceed to learn an alien Base technology. The Terrans will research Computron technology. The Computrons will move on to study Nomad tech. The Nomads research Triumverite tech. The Triumverites will learn Terran tech. When you learn an ally's tech, you gain the ability to construct their command center. Further study requires that you build their academy for that race. THE MOTHERSHIP The Mothership allows you to gather resources, build, and learn new technologies. While she is not armed herself, she is capable of instantly generating well-armed structures to protect herself. You maneuver your Mothership as you do the other ships in your fleet. Just highlight her on the Main View Screen when you want to move her into position to build a structure, gather a resource, or gain knowledge. BUILDING STATIONS Click on the station you wish to build in the Building Options Bar. The cost of building the structure is represented in the Resource Level indicator. The Main View Screen will now center on your Mothership. You may place the structure in an unoccupied space in proximity to your Mothership. The Main View Screen will not scroll while you are in build mode. If you do not wish to build, right click the mouse to cancel the build operation. To place the structure move the green highlighted image of the building into the position where you wish to build. It appears green when it is valid to build. Invalid areas will appear red. If all parts of the structure are green, click and the structure is built. CONSTRUCTING SHIPS Move the mouse over the ship you wish to build on the Buildings Option Bar. The amount of solinite required to build the unit is noted in the Resource Levels indicator. The ship's functions are also displayed on the status screen. Click and the ship is produced adjacent to your Command Center. When you're ready to deploy, either highlight a single ship or click and drag to highlight a group of ships with your Laser Pointer. Left click in empty space and the ships will proceed to that destination. If you want them to target a specific enemy unit, right click on the target enemy unit and all of your currently selected units will attack. When you target a friendly ship, your highlighted ship will be linked to that ship and will follow it everywhere. You can link as many ships together as you wish. Repair ships will prefer to fix damage on the ship which they target. COMBAT Hostile forces automatically fire at each other automatically. The damage inflicted on a particular unit can be determined by highlighting it and checking the Damage Gauge on the Command Screen. A piece that specializes in damaging a particular system will also do some residual damage to other systems. For example, a higher level tech damage weapon will also do some shield and engine damage. A ship's fighting ability is determined by its rank. As it gains rank, it fires more rapidly and accurately, and responds immediately to deployment commands. When a ship is first produced, it's rank is Recruit. Be careful - it's inability to shoot with complete accuracy could cause friendly fire casualties during battle. Every time a ship scores a hit, it earns an Experience Point. Accumulating points moves the ship up in rank. The best way to train a new unit is to place it adjacent to a university, where it can train up to the fourth level. After that, a unit must actively use its technology to gain experience. RESOURCES While exploring the galaxy, your ships will carve through the Unknown and chart new regions that become visible on your Mini-Map. You will also discover the resources necessary for building your miltiary machine.Solinite is the most important resource in the Zeta Galaxy. You use solinite for everything you build. They are found inside two sources: Warp Storms andenemy units.You must first detonate a warp storm before you can harvest the raw solinite within. Each race has one ship which can crack open a warp storm by selectingthe ship and right clicking on the warp storm. All races' first ship has the ability to target warp storms (big packs of Solinite). Also, if you detonate an enemy unit, you cansalvage its engine core for Solinite.To harvest the solinite, maneuver your Mother Ship close to a destroyed warp storm or engine core. The Mother Ship sends out a shuttle that uses a magnetic tractor beam to lock onto the resource, then tows it back into the bowels of the Mother Ship. The solinite gauge on your Resource Levels increases each time you harvest a resource. The Mother Ship gathers natural resources in the same manner it gathers solinite. The other natural resources are required for the construction of each race's structures and ships (not droids): Terrans= Crystal Computrons= Gaseous Anomalies Nomads= Radioactive Asteroids Triumverites= Plasma UNIT OVERVIEW: TERRAN SHIPS 1. "Terran Base"-- newly constructed Terran ships appear adjacent to the Terran Base. 2. "Explorer" --Fires guided shield damage. Can target warp storms. 3. "Tech Fixer"--repairs tech. 4. "Switcher"--swap locations with target friendly ship or station. 5. "Nuker"--destroys structures, shield dam, radial blast. 6. "ROC4"-- fires twin guided rockets. 7. "Infiltrator"--control dam. 8. "Infiltrator Carrier"--control fighters. STRUCTURES 1. "Academy"--train Terrans. 2. "Missile Base" --fires twin guided rockets. Non-mobile. 3. "Target"--friendly attack ships may attack this station. 4. "Droid HQ"--build Terran Droids. 5. "M-160"-fires a guided missle, shield damage. 6. "Special Ops"-shield damage, long range, bonus against droids. 7. "Controller"-launch long range shuttle to take over enemy units COMPUTRONS 1. "Computron Base"--All Computron ships are created adjacent to the Computron Base. 2. "XPLR"--Fires guided shield damage. Can target warp storms. 3. "Shield DOC"--Shield Repair 4. "Reflex Weapon"--fires one shield damage shot at all enemy ships in range. 5. "Tech Disruptor"--deals tech damage to enemy ships. 6. "EMP Launcher"--radial shield damage blast. +10 Tech dam v droids. 7. "Penetrator"--Shield dam. Heavy permanent damage. 8. "Disruptor Carrier"--Fighters launch to seek enemies and deal tech damage. STRUCTURES 1. "Programming"--trains Computrons. 2. "Techpost"--fires twin guided tech damage shots. Non-mobile. 3. "Teleportal"--transport target friendly ship adjacent to teleportal (target a friendly ship by right-clicking on it). 4. "Droid Factory"--build Computron Droids. 5. "ComDroid"--fires a guided shield damage rocket. 6. "Scrambler"--cannot be targetted by structures, shoots a shield damage shot. 7. "Foldspacer"--fires a radial blast shield damage shot. It can jump to any previously explored location. NOMAD: NOT AVAILABLE IN DEMO TRIUMVERITE: NOT AVAILABLE IN DEMO Space centers main view screen on currently selected unit Enter centers main view screen on Mothership Arrow Keys scroll main view screen F1-F4 load saved unit selections (those red buttons on the right) F5 toggle speed L center on and select the last piece you built H halt all selected units CTRL+left click destroy friendly station SHIT+left click toggle add/subtract from group select Alt+(Player Number) your units will not harm that player/ your healers will help them TECH SUPPORT--call GT CREDITS MDI CREW GAME DESIGN Roger Fang Mark Jordan PROGRAMMING Roger Fang Herbert Ong ART Mike Withem Mark Jordan Steve Preeg MUSIC/SOUND Jeff Hofmann at J.D. AUDIO POST CINEMATICS Steve Preeg Mike Withem Jessi Chan Rick Sevy Dan Casey Stephanie Mulqueen BUSINESS Stephen C.H. Lin GT CREW FOR GT INTERACTIVE Kurt Busch Robert Wong SPECIAL THANKS VOICE TALENT Effie Alexandrou Ken DeGrande Jeff Hofmann Staci Takiguchi PRIMARY TESTERS Steve Preeg Kurt Busch Robert Wong John Byrne Robert Dorsett Chris Garske