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Inter-Stellar Wars ** a highly detailed ** ** tactical space combat adventure ** Instructions BEFORE YOU BEGIN- Inter-Stellar Wars requires: -640k RAM -DOS 3.xx and up -VGA 256 color We reccommend that you have: -A 286 processor or better -A Microsoft compatible mouse -Hard Drive Optional Equipment: -Mouse or Joystick -Adlib or Sound Blaster compatible sound card If you wish to use the Adlib/SB soundtrack, begin Inter-Stellar Wars by typing ISWA at the DOS prompt. This will automatically load the sound driver and then execute ISW. Otherwise, just type ISW. When a song is playing, the sound will be muted. When the song stops, sound will resume. Using the Adlib music requires a lot of memory so if you're having problems freeing up enough memory and you have DOS 5.0 and high memory, use ISWH instead of ISWA. Important Note- If you have a Sound Blaster Deluxe, you will not be able to use the soundtrack support. This is a limitation to SOUND.COM, which is why we were unable to remedy this. A representative of Creative Labs Inc. said it had something to do with a new DSP (Digital Signal Processor) chip in the new SB. If you wish to persue this matter, contact Creative Labs. BACKGROUND- In the year 2249, humans colonized the Renzaar system. Colonization of Omicron began first because it was remarkably like earth. Soon after, the other four planets were colonized with the help of huge Plexi-tron Glass Composite(R) domes and underground facilities. The Renzaar system is also unique in that three other star systems are unusually nearby. Two of them have been found to have intelligent life and peaceful relations were established. They are the Ordan system and the Alpha system. The fourth system, the Creendok system, is mysterious. (The opening animation to ISW illustrates what happened to the Alliance scout exploring that system.) The closest planet to Creendok, Regulus, is completely encircled by a dense asteroid belt. These asteroids are usually smaller than baseballs, and cannot be seen or detected, but they can destroy a ship easily. In a typical day in this region, hundreds of traders pass back and forth between Renzaar, Ordan, and Alpha. The basic rule of the galaxy is: don't bother anyone, and they in turn won't bother you. CONTROL DEVICES- The mouse is the best pointing device for use with this game. To use the mouse, a mouse driver must first be installed, and then 'control' on the menu is toggled until 'mouse' appears. Using a joystick is slightly more difficult. The joystick is used to simulate a mouse pointer. Use 'control' on the main menu until 'joystick' appears. When the game starts you will be instructed to calibrate the joystick. Follow the on-screen instructions. If you use the keyboard, the arrow keys are used to move the pointer, and SPACE is the button. Shift+Arrow keys will fine- tune the pointer position. All keyboard hotkeys are supported in all control modes. ^/0 THE INTERFACE SCREEN- When Inter-Stellar Wars (ISW) starts, you will see the main interface screen, which consists of a main viewer, a galactic map in the upper-right corner, the message center below it, and two icon bars. The main viewer is where the action occurs, and is also where various menus are displayed. The galactic map displays the four nearby star systems and all ships. The map is color-coded: Yellow: Sun Lt Blue: Planet Red: Alliance Ship Lt Red: Alliance Base Green: Insectia Ship Lt Green: Insectia Base Gray: Misc. Vessels White: Torpedoes Purple: Asteroids The message center is where all incoming messages from your ships or the game will be displayed. Three beeps precede the message to inform you that a message is coming in. Old messages will scroll off the top of the message center as new ones come in. The top icon bar only has one icon. It is the game speed icon. Clicking this icon toggles the speed between normal speed (18fps), half speed (9fps), and unlimited (operating at the maximum speed for your computer). Pressing 'R' will produce the same effect as clicking this icon. The bottom icon bar has six icons. The hot keys for these icons are F1-F5 for the first five: Open a communication channel, activate the trading interface or receive a shield recharge from base, squadron menu, zoom, and ship/base menu. The last icon (ESC key) returns you to the main menu. ^/E THE MAIN MENU- There are several choices on the main menu. To select them, move the alliance symbol up or down with the keyboard, mouse, or joystick, or press the first letter of the choice. Play the game returns you to the game you were playing when you went to the menu. If you weren't in a game it starts a new game. New game loads the save game file 'DEFAULT.SAV' and returns you to the game at the very beginning. Load a game loads the save file with the name you specify from the disk. To play it, select play on the main menu. The default extension '.SAV' is used. Save a game saves the current game to the file you specify. '.SAV' is appended to your filename and the game can then be loaded with the Load option. Control changes the pointing device used by ISW: Keyboard, Joystick, and Mouse. Read This reads this. Quit exits you to the operating system. It DOES NOT ASK you if you wish to save your game, so if you don't save your game first, it will be lost. THE VIEWS- The main viewer can support three views. The Real mode view shows what the active ship and its surroundings actually look like. Unfortunately that range is severely limited, so there is a more useful tactical view which is a computer representation of the active ship and nearby objects. From center to edge is approximately phaser range. In the map view, each object is a dot (using standard map colors). Its size is about 2 pixels of the galactic map. Use the view icon (F4) to cycle through these modes THE SELECTION SEQUENCE- At many points in the game, you will be required to select a ship or location. When the message center informs you that a ship is to be selected, find the target ship on the main viewer or the galactic map. When you click on a point, the ship which is closest to that point will be selected. When you are instructed to select a location, the exact location you have selected will be used. SHIP INFORMATION- At any point in the game, you can get information on the current ship by pressing 'I'. SELECTING MENU CHOICES- In any of the menus during the game, there will be many numbered choices. To select with the mouse, click on the number. To use the keyboard, type the number and press Enter. To exit a menu at any time press ESC or the Esc button at the bottom- right corner of the display. To get help on a menu during the game, press 'H'. If there is help available, it will be displayed. (It will actually display the part of the manual which pertains to the current menu.) To get a list of keyboard hotkeys, press 'K'. THE CREDIT SYSTEM- When the colonization of planets by humans occurred, a monetary system of credits was designed. The credit (CR) is the basic form of money in all the known galaxy. Prices constantly vary on all the planets depending upon their economic situation. THE SHIPS- In ISW, there are basically 3 types of ships. Fighters are the basic ship. They can carry 4 SIPs (explained later) and 3 items in its cargo bay. There are three types of fighters: alpha, beta, and gamma. These vary in mass and hull strength. Command Vessels are huge all- purpose (expensive) ships. They can hold 6 SIPs and 6 items in the cargo bay. There are also three types: T1 through T3. Cargo ships are transport vessels. The have 1 SIP (hopefully used for an engine, but it is not required) and room for 10 items in its cargo bay. It is most likely used for trade, and base construction. Again, there are three types: Standard, Deluxe, and Ultra-Haul. The capacity of a ship to carry crew is always twice the amount of hull. Therefore, the ship which can carry the most crew at once is the standard cargo ship with a hull strength of 400 and can carry 800 people. SIPS- SIPs are Standard Interface Ports on a ship. On them you can mount phasers, torpedo bays, tractor beams, or engines. On fighters and command vessels there are two dedicated phaser SIPs. You can only put phasers on these SIPs. Dedicated SIPs are handled automatically by the purchasing menu. Phasers are the basic weapon used by the alliance and insectia forces. They use the power allocated to them and fire a destructive energy beam at a target. The phasers are computer controlled and always hit. The more power given to them, the more damage they do. Torpedo bays require that there be torpedoes in the cargo bay. They fire these torpedoes charged with the allocated power. They are more efficient than phasers and do more damage, and they travel at 500 (which is approximately equivalent to 9.4 million kilometers per second). This is half the theoretical maximum speed of the universe. Unfortunately, torpedoes use the power given to them for navigation and thrust, and can be destroyed by phasers (or other torpedoes) or outrun. You can only use one torpedo bay per ship, so having more than one is really stupid. Tractor beams have two modes: normal, and station-keeping. In normal mode, the beam will draw the target toward the source ship. In station- keeping mode, the tractor beam will attempt to equalize both ships' movements. That means the target ship will match the source ship's speed and direction. A tractor beam's range is displayed on the buy menu in TM (terameters, which are trillion meters, or billion kilometers). There are ineffective beyond this range. Tractor beams are also little use on ships with a good, or even low engine performance, as the engines minimize the effect of the tractor beam with their inertial dampeners. Engines make it possible for ships to travel through space. Important factors in buying engines are power, and maximum speed. Power, combined with the mass of your ship, determines the ability of your ship to maneuver (engine performance). Maximum speed is just that: your top speed. When buying multiple engines, the power is added to create a higher engine performance, but the maximum speed of your ship is determined by the maximum speed of your fastest engine. Note: the engine per- formance calculations are based on 7 as the normal performance. CARGO- Cargo you can have consist of: shields, cloaking devices, sentry pods, various instruments (junk), torpedoes, and most importantly, reactors. One note: There cannot be more than one sentry pod unit or control per ship. ^/16 Shields are the basic defensive equipment. The use shield recharge (purchased from the buy menu) as a sort of fuel to absorb enemy fire. The power determines how much of the enemy fire will be absorbed. For example: If your shields are powered at 20, and a phaser blast hits you for 30 damage, 20 will be absorbed by the shields and subtracted from your level of shield recharge, but 10 will be absorbed by your hull, possibly killing crew members and destroying SIPs. This reflects the importance of a high shield power. Multiple shields can be purchased, and the power will be added. Having more shield power than shield recharge is useless, since when the recharge is used up, shields are ineffective. You can see this relationship on the 'Shield and Structural Integrity Status' display available from the ship menu (F5). ^/E Cloaking devices are a secondary defensive mechanism. They make your ship invisible on the real, tactical, and map view on the main viewer, but you can still be seen on the galactic map. Cloaking devices must have their maximum power to operate at all. You can press 'C' or select cloak on the ship menu to toggle the device's status. You can't fire phasers when you are cloaked. If you do, the cloaking device will automatically disengage. Torpedoes, on the other hand, will fire in cloak, giving you a huge strategic advantage. Sentry pods when in your cargo bay are useless, but using the ship menu to deploy them will make them follow your ship (in strict formation) and fire their phasers when you fire your phasers. The power allocated to their control unit (left behind in the cargo bay as the pods are deployed) is beamed to the pods giving them power to fire. Instruments are basically junk. They are most useful for trade. Instructions for their use (if they can be used on a spaceship) will be provided upon purchase. Torpedoes are fired by torpedo bays. They usually come in packs of 4 or 7, but sometimes there are partially used packs left over at planets. Reactors are among the most important items for sale. To use your equipment to its full potential you must choose a reactor with an equal or better output than the sum of the powers of all your equipment. A lesser reactor can be bought (for mass or price restrictions) but then your power must be managed in a strategic way. ^/1 THE SHIP MENU- All functions relating to ships is accessible via the ship menu. Any menu options with hot keys display the hot key after the menu choice. At the top is your current ship, and a visual inventory of your SIPs currently mounted. ^/E TARGET BY LOCATION- Target by location is the basic form of navigation. Select this option from the ship menu and click the pointer on your desired location. If your engines are powered and a target speed is set, the ship will begin flying there immediately. You can also use the 'L' hot key. You can keep selecting locations until you switch to another mode. If you select a new location, it will forget its old target and fly toward the new one. TARGET BY OBJECT- This is the same as target by location except it will target the closest object (ship, planet, sun, torpedo, etc.) and fly toward it. The useful part is if the target object moves, it will follow it and then match its speed as close as possible. You can use the 'O' hot key for target by object. You can keep selecting objects and it will target the last one you selected as long as you don't switch to another mode. FIRE PHASERS- To fire your phasers, select phasers on the ship or base menu then select the ship you wish to fire at. You can fire as many times as you want, although phasers have a recharge cycle and can't fire constantly. You can fire the phasers until you select another mode. You can use the 'P' key to activate phaser mode. FIRE TORPEDOES- To fire torpedoes, select the torpedo option on the ship or base menu, or press 'T' then select the ship you wish to fire at. You can fire torpedoes constantly until you run out. There is no recharge time. When you run out of torpedoes it is a good idea to deallocate the power to your torpedo bay and give the power to other equipment. ^/4 SHIELD AND STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY STATUS- To display a bar graph depicting the status of your ship's shields and hull, select choice 6 from the ship menu. Three bars will appear. The light blue bar shows your shield recharge level, while the overlaying darker blue bar shows the power level allocated to shields. The number on top of this bar shows how much of your shield recharge could be used in a single hit. If it is over 100%, then too much power is allocated to the shields. That will do no harm, but the energy could be used for other equipment, since the power over 100% is merely wasted. The red bar is the status of the ship's hull. When a ship's hull reaches 0%, the ship is destroyed. ^/E The shield and structural integrity status of a base is displayed right on the base menu. DEPLOY SENTRY PODS- Select this choice on the ship menu to deploy the sentry pods, or if the pods are already deployed, retract them. Sentry pods have their own propulsion, so when they are deployed, your ship is actually lighter and engine performance improves. It is a good idea to retract your sentry pods when you cloak your ship since your pods will not likewise cloak. CLOAK- To cloak or reveal your ship select cloak from the ship menu or press 'C'. TRACTOR BEAM- To use the tractor beam select 9 or 10 from the ship menu depending on which tractor mode you want to use. Then select your tractor beam target. You must figure out your own use for the tractor beam. It is almost useless when the target has a working engine. ^/3 ENGINES- This choice on the ship menu, also activated by the 'E' key, selects your desired speed of the active ship. Normally you would set it to the maximum speed, but you might want to lower it for some reason. ^/E ^/18 TRANSPORT- There are two forms of transport: crew transport and equipment transport. ^/E ^/5 To transport crew, select transport from the ship menu, and then crew from the transport menu. Then you must enter how many people to transport, and select the target ship. If the target ship is alliance, the crew will be transported, and the experience of the target ship's crew will be affected by a differently experienced group. If the target ship is insectia, the group is a boarding party and attempts to capture the ship. If the crew's number and experience are high enough, they can capture the enemy ship and it becomes alliance owned. If the whole group cannot fit on the target ship, only the people that will fit get transported. If you do take over an insectia vessel, it will be operationally identical to an alliance ship, and since the computer sofware from your ship is downloaded to the newly conquered ship, the ship menu will display the image of an equally equipped alliance ship. ^/E ^/19 You can also transport cargo and SIPs between ships. Just select cargo/SIPs from the transport menu, the equipment to transport, and the target ship. You cannot transport to a ship that is out of transport range or has active shields. ^/E SELF DESTRUCT- If all is hopeless then select self-destruct from the ship menu. You will be given five seconds to abort by pressing TAB. If not, the active ship will be destroyed and nearby ships may be damaged or destroyed. INSTRUMENTS- If you get an instrument you could possibly use, select 14 from the ship menu, and then follow the onscreen instructions. BASES- Bases are highly fortified outposts with almost the same (and sometimes better) offensive and defensive capabilities of planets. Because of gravitational restrictions, bases cannot be located near planets, suns, or other bases. Bases are very difficult to build and destroy and make very good defensive outposts to protect trading and invasion routes. In addition, bases can provide free shield recharge to any friendly, docked ship. By pressing F2 while on the ship wish to recharge, 250 shield recharge units (or whatever is available) will be subtracted from the base and added to the docked ship. CREW- Crew are needed for the repair and the operation of ships not on manual control. Crew experience is the crew's relative abilities. A crew with higher experience can fix the ship faster than a bigger, stupider crew. They can also do better in battle, and experience has a tremendous impact on the success of a boarding party on an enemy ship. When a ship is operating on its own (it is a squadron) the following operations can only be performed with the proper number and experience of crew: Operation Number Exper. -------------------------------- Navigation 5 0 Phasers 30 0 Torpedoes 40 450 Tractor Beam 50 750 Cloaking Dev. 35 1150 Boarding Parties 200 2500 However, when you are controlling a ship manually you can use any of those capabilities of a ship. (But you obviously can't manually control every ship.) THE ACTIVE SHIP- Almost all actions controlled by menus and hotkeys occur with the active ship. The active ship is the ship (or any other object) which is in the center of the main viewer. Its name also appears in the upper-left corner of the viewer. To select a new active ship, use the select object choice on the ship or base menu. You can also press 'A'. ^/15 COMMUNICATIONS- To communicate with a ship, select the comm icon (F1) while on the ship you wish to communicate with. The comm screen will display what the person is saying. Then you will get a list of choices for your response. Select one, and the conversation will continue. ^/E ^/10 TRADING INTERFACE- To buy or sell anything, select the buy icon (F2) and a menu will appear. If there is no trading post within range of the active ship, the game will inform you of where to go to trade. Valid trading posts in ISW are: Omicron: The home planet of the alliance, also where the game starts. Cstai: another alliance planet Dnosta 2: yet another alliance planet Ordervia: a neutral planet in the Ordan system Beta: a neutral planet in the Alpha system. ^/E ^/11 To buy anything (except a ship) a ship must be the active ship and parked near a trading post planet. To buy a ship, lock on to the planet itself. Select 1 on the trading menu to actually enter the buy menu. The buy menu consists of a list of categories of things you can buy. At the bottom are the available items at the planet in the current category. Scroll the list by using the arrow keys, and to buy an item, press Enter. Before you can buy items for a ship, you must first buy a ship. Select 10, 11 or 12 on the menu, then select the type you wish to buy. The new ship will automatically become the current ship and a standard crew compliment will be transported aboard. When selecting an item to purchase, you must strike a delicate balance between price, mass (weight), durability, and power. The higher the mass of your ship, the lower your engine performance will be, but usually an item with more power will be heavier (and more expensive). Durability is the percentage chance that a SIP will survive a direct hit from weapons fire. It is only important when a ship has no shields. Power is the amount of energy which the item can use. Generally, the more power it uses, the more powerful it is. Cloaking devices on the other hand require the maximum power to operate, and less power is better. ^/E Buying many ships in this manner would be very difficult without option 3, clone a ship. With this option, the active ship is cloned (a new ship is purchased and equipped equally if the parts are available). Just type in the name of the newly created ship. You can clone a ship if any of its equipment is unavailable but the the ob- jects won't be on the ship. ^/12 To sell items select choice 2 on the trading menu. A new menu will appear listing the SIPs and cargo on the active ship. To sell one, select it. Select choice 17 to sell the whole ship and everything on it. ^/E BUILDING A BASE- Building a base is a major undertaking. First, nine base hull units must be purchased and loaded onto ships (of any type). Also you need to buy a single base reactor unit. These are all found in the base section of the buy menu. These ships must then rendez- vous at the same location away from planets or other bases. When all the ships are together and not moving the ship menu will gain a 16th choice: build a base. Select it and a base will automatically be constructed and you will be asked for the name of the base. To supply a crew to the base, several flights of ships are needed to transport the necessary crew members to the base. POWER MANAGEMENT- Power management is how you tell the ship how much power is allocated to each piece of equipment. If the reactor output meets or exceeds your equipment needs, you can simply give each piece of equipment the maximum power. But this is an ideal situation. Most of the time, to save money and mass, the reactor will not be enough to do this, so not all equipment can get full power. Power management allows you to specify what gets how much power. One idea is, in a time of travel, the engines and possibly a cloaking device are given their full power, but during battle, energy is taken away from them and concentrated in weapons and shields. ^/2 On a ship, the power management menu is selected as number 15 on the ship menu. The left and right arrow keys are used to select which piece of equipment to modify and up and down keys vary the amount of power. PgUp and PgDn keys change the power much quicker. You can also use the mouse to select the exact point on the bar which represents the amount of power to supply. ^/E ^/7 In a base or planet, the power management menu is selected as number 5 from the base menu. This is almost the same except all bases have only four devices: phasers, torpedo bays, shields, and tractor beams. Up and down specify the equipment, and left and right vary the amount of power. PgUp and PgDn are still fast change keys, and the mouse is still valid. ^/E ^/8 SQUADRONS- A squadron is a group of ships, although it can actually be a single ship if you wish, that are controlled by the computer (actually the crew aboard that ship) and carry out the flight and battle as you command it. As a commander, you tell the squadron: * Where to go * Whether to inform you that: -The squadron has reached your specified location or target. -The squadron is nearby an enemy ship or base. -The squadron is attacking -The squadron is being attacked * Whether to attack all enemies encountered Squadrons cannot buy or sell at a planet. You must do that manually. ^/E ^/9 TO BUILD A SQUADRON- To build a squadron of a single ship, merely go to the squadron menu and select choice 2, 'command squadron.' At this point, the active ship becomes a squadron. Then you may give the ship a location or object to navigate to, and also, with the last three options, tell the ship whether to inform you that it has reached the target locations, or is detecting a nearby enemy. You can also tell the ship to attack all encountered enemies. You can even give the ship multiple commands, for example: to tell a ship to circumnavigate a dangerous battlezone, tell it to target by location at several waypoints along the flight path. It will then follow your path waypoint by waypoint. Or perhaps you want a ship to attack several ships. Target by object on each ship you wish to attack and make sure auto-attack is on. The ship will navigate toward each ship in the exact order you specified and attack them one by one. To create a squadron of multiple ships, select the squadron leader as the active ship. All references to the squadron will be named by this lead ship. Then select 'add a ship to a squadron' from the squadron menu. Select all the ships you wish to be part of this squadron. The ships will automatically move toward the lead ship at maximum speed. Care must be taken that the lead ship is not faster than any of the following ships, or the following ship will not be able to stay with the squadron. (Although it will relentlessly follow until you tell it otherwise.) All ships in a squadron must be previously equipped and the power management set. ^/E ^/99 HOTKEYS- Key Function ---------------------------------------- A ! Select an active object C ! Cloak the ship E ! Set new speed H ! Bring up online help I ! Information on current ship K ! Bring up hoykeys L ! Target by location O ! Target by object P ! Fire phasers R ! Change game speed S ! Sound toggle T ! Launch torpedoes F1 ! Communication F2 ! Trading or shield recharge F3 ! Squadron F4 ! Change view F5 ! Ship/Base F10 ! Exit at anytime Esc ! Exit all menus and when in game go to the main menu ^/E REGISTERING- As you might know, Inter-Stellar Wars is a shareware distributed piece of software. You DO NOT OWN this game. You only own the media it came on. To have the legal right to use Inter- Stellar Wars, you are required to pay a registration fee of $10.00 (US) to the authors. When you register you will recieve Inter-Stellar Wars II, a dynamic version of ISW. You can build your own: -Planets -Ships -Battles -Asteroid Belts -Suns -Systems When you beat ISW, the adventure is not over. Inter-Stellar Wars II gives you unlimited dimensions of adventure and excitement! Please remember to give us: - $10.00 - Your name and address - disk size (3.5" or 5.25") - any comments, ideas, suggestions Send to: H/M Software 2925 Birchton Rd. Ballston Spa, NY 12020-2035 Thank you in advance for your support. (How much more pressure can we put on you?) DISCLAIMER- H/M SOFTWARE TAKES NO RESPONSIBIL- ITY FOR ANY DAMAGE, HARDWARE OR SOFTWARE, CAUSED BY THIS PROGAM, AS IT WAS NOT THE INTENT OF THE AUTHORS TO DO SO. IN TESTING, WE FOUND THAT THIS DOES NOT HAPPEN AS A RESULT OF THE PROGRAM, ONLY AS A RESULT OF THE USER BECOMING SO MAD THAT THEY SMASH THE COMPUTER WITH THEIR HEADS. THANK YOU.