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Text File | 1994-02-28 | 31KB | 607 lines

Stellar Conquest ]I[ Hostile Takeover. (C) 1994 Ed T. Toton III All Rights Reserved. If you're like me, then you probably usually just run the games you download without reading the documentation. For that reason I made the instructions below as brief as possible, but you should skim through it anyway since it is chock full of details that might take you a long time to discover yourself. Please note that I'm no technical writer, so please bear with me. Important Note! F1 through F3 are useful function keys! Read on! OVERVIEW: Stellar Conquest II wasn't as much a sequel as it is a remake of the first Stellar Conquest game I made several years ago, with many improvements. The first one was written in Quick Basic and used EGA graphics and keyboard input only... Stellar Conquest II introduced a flexible interface in VGA with "clickie buttons". Stellar Conquest III, is also a VGA-only, and "Microsoft compatable mouse" -only strategy game for 0 to 4 human players. The game consists of 2 to 4 active players, any of which can be either human or computer controlled. The Stellar Conquest universe is a map containing 50 stars, 4 blackholes, and 3 wormholes. Each player starts with one or more starbases and several ships. Your goal is to protect your base and destroy everyone elses' base. To do this, you must build ships. You will have the opportunity to build them to your own specifications, within your allowed budget of course. To get more money, build more cargo ships to do mining. You can also build combat vessels and scouts. The ships belonging to other players will not be visible unless within the scan range of one of yours, or under other special circumstances (such as civilian ships (which don't appear on the map) informing your base). TECH NOTES AND CHANGES FROM Stellar Conquest II: Many changes abound! The "Cloak" has been renamed "Stealth", since a new and more powerful Cloaking Device has been created. Additionally, there are many more types of pods, which are explained in more detail further down. Another new feature is "Flotillas" which allows you to very easily move entire battle groups around simply by telling the leader where to go. The game consists of over 8,900 lines of Turbo Pascal and Assembly source code (excluding comments and remarks), including the libraries of functions I made for use in all my games. The button interface is designed such that except for detecting where you click in the map area, and hiding the mouse for graphics drawing, the main program thinks there is only a keyboard interface. The mouse routines automatically handle animating the clicking of buttons, and simply return the corresponding keypress when you click on a button. I'm quite pleased with the results I've acheived with this game. I like the idea of building ships to your own specifications so much that I couldn't resist making another one, and the system I created for Stellar Conquest II was pretty well balanced. But it lacked certain things. Specifically, if was possible for multiple human players to reach a virtual stalemate because there was a way to create a practically inpenetrable defense. Also, the strategy was limited since all of the offense and defense was focused on but one base per player. Now that there are multiple bases, things have been decentralized enough to allow for more possibilities. Additionally, the new pods I've created give the players more options about how to deal with the enemy. Likewise, having more bases increases your mining efficiency allowing you to have larger fleets, and the 'flotilla' option allows you to move those fleets more easily. All these new options combined with the superior, more powerful, and easier to use interface makes the game much more effective than Stellar Conquest II. I actually felt butterflies in my stomach during a test run in which the cyan computer player wipe out the other three computer players with a battle flotilla of 15 or 20 ships. GETTING STARTED: At the main menu you have the choice of setting the player options, which is where you select how many players there will be, human or computer control, and what the computer cargoship ratio is. Select "Game" to play. Once in the game you can press ESCAPE to quit, F1 for the game options, F2 to toggle sound on/off, and F3 to toggle Fast-Combat on/off. At the start of the game, you will be shown your starbase menu. At the bottom of the screen is a picture of a spaceship. You don't own that ship, that's there for ship construction. By using the buttons on the right of the screen you can add and remove pods, and above it will show what effect that has on the ship's stats, while the picture below will show what it looks like. This is the primary function of your starbase, ship construction. At the bottom right of the screen are 4 buttons that never change. By clicking on "Base" you can go right back to a starbase menu. By clicking on "UpShip" or "DnShip" you can page through the menus for all of your other ships and bases. Clicking on "EndTurn" will end your turn, and the other players will get to do their thing. On the left is the map window. This is where you select destinations and torpedo targets for your ships. Clicking on "Zoom" allows you to zoom in on a specific region of the map. "Grid" allows you to turn the grid on and off. Note however that the grid settings are individual to the zoomed in and zoomed out modes, and is individualk to each player. Pressing "Destruct" allows you to blow up your ship, if it is equipped with explosives. The explosives will damage ANY ship adjacent to the one that is being blown up, both enemy and friendly. Selecting "Jettison" allows you to jettison a pod, thus decreasing the ship's mass, thus speeding it up. This option is included so that the ships may have the means to retreat if necessary. Clicking on the "Repair" button allows you to repair damage to the ship if you are within the "action zone" of your starbase (action zones are explained further down). All of the ships damage will be repaired for a base-cost of 1500, plus 500 for the replacement of each pod that was jettisoned. Pressing the "AutoMine" button will toggle the ship to between automine and manual mining. Automine means it will continuously perform mining missions independently without your needing to do anything. If you decide to do something else with the ship later, you can toggle it back to manual by clicking the button again. Any ship that is set to automine automatically defaults to "Anybase" and "Anystar", but those can be overridden with the buttons of those names, then you can place the destination cursors according to what you need. Selecting "Rename" let's you override the randomly generated name given to the ship at construction. SELECTING THE GAME: On the game menu, you can change all sorts of settings that define how the game will work. Most of the settings are self explanitory, so here are but a few suggestions: * Bases should rarely be set to speeds 3 or greater. * It's pointless to give the starbases Torpedoes, Loaders, Jumpers, Cloaks, Shields, and Minelayers since they have no effect (in most cases because there is no way to turn them on). Stealth could work, but bear in mind that it would be very difficult to find the enemy bases. * Make sure the players always start with at least one cargo ship, so that they can get started on getting money. * If the computer players seem to easy to defeat, try fighting two or three of them teamed together, or try one-on-ones with alternate base distributions with bases having stealth pods. PLAYING THE GAME: There are several nuances and details you should be aware of before playing the game. Particularly action zones: Action Zones are areas of space 9x9 in size (square radius 4), that indicate the range you must be within near something to do something. For instance, you must be within your bases action zone to repair the ship. You must also be in the action zone of the base to off-load materials from the cargo holds (done automatically) or in the zone of a star to mine it (also done automatically). Likewise, you must be within a ship's action zone to fire at it, or to see a "stealth"-equiped ship. The grey borders drawn around the bases and stars on the "Zoom In" map show their action-zones. On the Zoom-Out map, you will have a little green cursor. This cursor shows the destination of your selected ship (the selected ship will be shown in flashing color, starbases in yellow, and all other ships in their team color). Pressing the "Mode" button will toggle which cursor you are currently selecting locations for. Cargo ships set to "automine" have two cursors (which are invisible at first, until you change the "anystar" and "anybase" settings), one of which base to return to, and which star to mine. Having the ship set to "AnyStar" allows it to mine any star, and "AnyBase" allows it to return to any base. Ships that have a torpedo launcher also have a red cursor, which indicates where the torpedoes will be fired. Clicking the left mouse button on the map screens will select a new location for the selected cursor for the selected ship. The right mouse button allows you to select ships, scan enemy ships, and scan stars. Ships set to Automine will have different destination cursors, as noted above. They can only be set to point at stars or your home base, nowhere else. If AnyStar is turned off, then the ship will mine ONLY the star that the square cursor points to. If AnyBase is off, then the ship will return ONLY to the base the diamond-shaped cursor points to. You will need to check on the ship later, so that it doesn't waste time mining a star that it has depleted. Ships set to automine will always return directly home after filling their cargo holds, and will then head out to a star again. Setting your ships to mine specific stars has great tactical advantages under certain conditions. Specificially, you can make your ships avoid stars that are gaurded by the enemy, or drain stars that are near the enemy, and so forth. The "Zoom In" map, supports the same functions of scanning and selecting as the "Zoom Out" map. It also has arrow buttons you can use to scroll the view around to view other areas of the map. In combat, each ship will move, then fire at the nearest target if there is one, and assuming it has weapons. Since targets are chosen in this manner, you can control, to some extent, which ships your ships fire upon simply by positioning their destination cursors to plant them right next to the target. Firing is done automatically. One of the new features is "Flotillas". To create a flotilla, select a ship to be the leader and click on it's "F-Leader" button. It should now say that it is a leader, and it will have a distinct flotilla number. Then, select all of the ships you wish to have in the flotilla, and click on the "F-Number" button on them until the "Flotilla-Number:" field shows the correct flotilla number. You should see all of the ships linked by dark grey lines on the map (easier to see on the zoom-in map). All ships in the flotilla will follow the leader, so you will need to tell the leader where to go. Also, the leader will slow itself down to the speed of the slowest ship in the group, so as not to leave anyone behind. If the flotilla leader is destroyed, the flotilla will be disbanded and will have to be re-created. There are a lot of new pods, as well as old ones, so they are described in detail in the charts below, and in the section following that. There are 3 wormholes in the game, for a total of 6 hole-openings (2 per wormhole). These can be used to travel great distances across the map very quickly. However you must find them first. Use scouts for this. Also note that there are 4 blackholes in the game, and they look identical to the wormholes! These will destroy any ship that enters. Remember, 4 black- holes, and 6 worm-hole openings, that means any given anomaly has a 40% chance of being deadly. Remember to build little junk ships to test them before sending your main fleet through... Well, that's about all that I can explain here, to understand the rest you'll have to go play the game! Go on.. Go! What are you waiting for!?!? Play it!! Go on! Oh yeh, read the charts first....... CHARTS: Weapons: Name: Hit Prob: Damage: Avg Dam: ----------------------------------------- Laser 1/2 2 1 Missile 1/3 3 1 Plasma Cannon 1/2 4 2 Torpedo 100% 3-5 4 Mine 100% 3-5 4 Pods: Name: ID: Cost: Mass: ------------------------------ Cargo C 500 300/700 Laser L 1000 600 Missile M 1000 600 Plasma P 2500 600 Sensor S 1200 200 Increases scan radius by 6 Shield A 800 250 Adds 4 to ship's armor factor Stealth I 6000 1000 Ship invisible until in action zone Bomb B 2500 1250 Targeter T 2000 250 Adds 1/12 to your hit probability. ECM E 1200 250 Subtracts 1/12 from enemy's hit prob. Thruster F 2300 500 Increases speed by 1 (compensates 750) Cloak X 7000 1500 Ship invisible until it de-cloaks. Torpedo O 4000 1000/1150 MineLayer W 3000 650/850 Jump Pod J 2000 850 Teleports ship once each. Torp Loader K 3000 350/600 Extra Torp ammo, gives to other ships Viper-ATC V 1500 500 Fires at up to two incoming torpedoes. Add-ons: Name: Cost: Speed-increase: Accuracy-increase: ----------------------------------------------------- Boosters 7000 4 0 Engine-2 3000 2 0 Robot-Crew 5000 1 1/12 Ship Speed = 18 - (total_pod_mass / 250) + (boost_from_add_ons) Ship Armor = 6 + (3 * number_of_pods) Ship Cost = 5000 + total_pod_cost + total_add_on_cost Scan Range = 4 + (number_of_sensors * 4) PODS: This section explains each pod in detail, including the various nuances and ambiguities that may not be apparent to the casual observer. Cargo: Cargo pods are quite simple. They weigh little when empty, and are heavy when full. Every ton of cargo you carry translates to 1 credit of money. Missiles, These are the main weapon types. Except for the Lasers, difference in hit probabilities, damage ratios, Plasma Cannons: and color, they are practically the same in terms of the game. They do not use up ammo. Shield/Armor: Though called both "shield" and "armor", it all means the same thing. This type of pod simply makes it tougher to kill your ship. Sensor: Sensors, Scanners, various types of detection equipment. This type of pod allows you to "see" further on the map, and detect ships and incoming torpedoes. Stealth: The stealth pod renders your ship invisible to all outside of it's action zone. It can not be seen until within weapon range. Cloak: The Cloaking Device makes your ship invisible at ALL ranges. However, a cloaked ship can not fire unless it turns the cloak off. The cloak starts out turned off anyway, and must be turned on to be used. Bomb: Bomb pods allow you to have a nasty surprise for those who blow up your ships, and also makes an effective means of using "kamikaze" tactics. The radius of the blast is (number-of-bombs/2)+1, rounded down. Keep in mind that due to the unstable nature of bombs, they will instantly detonate if you try to use a jump pod, and will therefore never reach its destination. Targeters: These miracles of science increase your odds of hitting your targets by 1/12 each, or 1/24 when shooting at torpedoes. ECM: ECM (Electronic Counter Measures) distorts the sensor readings of enemy ships so that their chances of hitting you decreases by 1/12 for every ECM pod you have. Thruster: Thruster pods are addition engines which may be attached to your ship to increase it's speed. Note however, if you build a large ship, then add even more pods to compensate the speed loss, you will have one MIGHTY EXPENSIVE ship. MineLayer: Minlayers can hold up to 10 mines each. A ship equipped with one or more of these pods will deploy one mine per turn (if "minelaying" is turned on) until it runs out. Mines can only be detonated by other players ships, though your ships can get caught in the blast if nearby. An effective means of creating a mine-sweeper (a ship that clears away mines) would be to build a ship with large amounts of shielding. Torpedo-Launcher: Torpedoes are extremely long-ranged. They can be fired at any location on the map, regardless of where the torpedo ship is located. Torpedoes travel at speed 24, and explode somewhere near the target (accuracy is not something torpedoes have), and once they reach the destination they explode in a different manner than most other exploding things. There are gaps in the blast, and ships can block the blast from hitting other ships. You can take advantage of this to protect your bases. Simply by placing ships next to the base, they can take the brunt of the explosion. These pods can only hold 3 torpedoes, and can only fire once every 5 turns. By using 4 launchers, you can fire 4 out of 5 turns. Ships equiped with torpedo launchers will fire one torpedo every turn it is capable of firing (it won't fire if the launchers have not yet completed their load cycle of 5 turns) until 'torpedo-firing' is turned off or the ship runs out of ammo. Torpedo-Loader: Loaders hold 5 torpedoes, and are less expensive than launchers, but they can not launch the torpedoes. They can be used for holding extra ammo, but they can also be used to carry ammo out to your torpedo ships. Ships with multiple launchers tend to get very slow, and it's not practical to keep hauling them back to base to be reloaded. Ships witch have loaders will automatically give torpedoes to any of your torpedo ships within their action zones. Jumper Pod: Jumpers are strange twisted and jumbled masses of coils made of various materials, and are used to twist, fold, and distort space. The result is the ability to teleport the ship to any location on the map. However, the jumper burns out in the process, and must be replaced at FULL cost (which happens to be 2000) (as opposed to the usual 500 credit pod replacement fee + 1500 service and armor), unless of course it is jettisoned instead of used. Of course this works out to about the same cost for one pod, but if you are reloading multiples of them the cost is 2000 each. Viper-ATC: The Viper Anti-Torpedo-Cannon is a small array of omnidirection laser cannons designed to track and fire upon incoming torpedoes. Each pod may fire at up to 2 torpedoes per turn. The V-ATC will not fire at your torpedoes. Using the V-ATC takes a little effort on your part, since the ship has to be positioned such that it will be within firing range at the end of the turn. Engine-2: The Engine-2 is a more powerful version of the normal engine, thus allowing you to travel slightly faster than normal (+2). Since your ships are slowed by 1 for every 250 tons, and this pod weighs 250 tons, the speed increase is acheived by compensating 750 tons. Boosters: The Boosters are externally added engines witch provide your ship with a considerable speed increase (+4). Robot-Pod: The Robot command-module allows the ship to fly faster (+1) since the robots don't require the same types of safety features to be installed (such as a low-radiation engine) as humans do. Robots are also faster to respond, and therefore add a 1/12 to your hit probabilities in combat (but not when shooting torpedoes). Note that use of a Robot pod + 5 targeters is the only way to get a 100% chance of hitting an enemy, assuming that enemy isn't using ECM. NOTES: The following are a bunch of details that aren't made clear during the game, as well as some hints and tips: - Once all of the stars are depleted, one will be moved to the center of the map and it will regenerate it's supply. - The stealth and cloaking devices are the only pods that don't have a cumulative effect for carrying multiples of them. It is absolutely pointless to put more than one on a single ship, and for that reason you can't. - Each type of pod has a limit on how many you can have on the ship. Most pods allow you 6 each. Cloak and stealth pods allow only one, ECM and targeters are 5, and mine and torp pods have a limit of 4, and Viper-ATC pods are limited to 3 (with three only one in eight torpedoes will survive). - If you find the computer player too easy to defeat, then put yourself against 2 or 3 of them teamed together using the Custom Game options. - Setting the game configuration to "Bases can Fire" will equip each starbase with one of each [standard] weapon. - Starbases can travel through worm-holes, however they will not be destroyed by black-holes. - The score value displayed on the starbase menu is the value of that particular players force with the rapair costs subtracted from each ship (and base), plus the players money level. - The cargo-ship ratio for the computer players determines what fraction of their fleet will be cargo ships. Setting this to a low number will slow down the computer players ability to replace its lost ships. - At the bottom right of the game screen, 'cargo-ships' counts every ship that has a cargo pod. 'Weapon-ships' however only includes the plasma, laser, and missile equiped ships that do not have cargo pods. (cargo and weapon equiped ships are considered armed cargo ships). REVISIONS: 1.01 - First public release. - Starbases don't die in black holes now. - Starbases are no longer counted in your cargo-ship and weapon-ship counters. - Zoom-in map drawing speed increased. (you can make the maps draw even faster if you set "See-All" under 'players' in the F1 menu to 'yes', but that allows everyone to see everything, and cloaks become useless). 1.02 - Using a jump pod on a ship equipped with bombs will cause the ship to instantly detonate. This was added because several players discovered that by jumping bomb ships into the enemy territory, whoever found the location of the other first would win. - Menu screen bug fixed. 1.03 - Attempting a jump with bombs on board will now give you a warning instead of just simply detonating the ship. - Occasionally the screen would get a little messed up in clicking on a button inside a pop-up window. This has been fixed. NOTICE: This program is being distributed on the "shareware" concept. It is by no means completely free. If you think the program is of use to you, or you use it for any reasonable amount of time, please send a registration fee of $10 (US). If you think that is rediculous, then send less (or more for that matter). If you hate the program or found too many bugs, write me and tell me, and include a graphic explanation (but don't be too harsh!! Heheheh). In any event, write to: Ed T. Toton III 7101 Talisman Lane Columbia Md 21045 (USA) We accept cash, checks (ones that are paper, not rubber, if you catch my meaning), or money orders. Please make sure all checks and money orders are from US banks/postal-services, and all cash must be US legal tender. And WHY should you register it? 1. To support my continuing efforts to bring you some level of functional programs. If I get no cash, you get no improvements in these programs, and I won't be encouraged to make new and better software! 2. To get that warm glow for knowing that you supported the author of at least one of the many shareware programs you probably use. 3. To find out if there is a newer version. All you need to do is ask! But letters with money take priority! 4. You could be sick and demented and thus register everything you get your hands on. 5. It's the right thing to do. 6. To get your very own registration number that will make that "please register" screen at the end of the game go away. Remember- Buying one of my games is more cost effective than buying one of today's commercial game packages. A really good commercial game will last you 20 hours of play or so, and cost you $50. That comes out to a value of about $2.50 an hour. Most games don't last even that, many will last only 5 or 10, and cost $40 or more. If one of my games lasts you two hours, it's the same ($2.50 an hour). But if you play it for more than two hours, say 4 or 5, or even more, than you are paying significantly less per hour. The same holds for any other program I create, as my pricing is quite modest and reasonable. I've always been apalled by some of the arrogance used in the pricing of shareware by certain individuals, and I feel you should be able to obtain software at reasonable prices as compared to the quality. I also absolutely abhor those nasty tactics used in various programs of crippling the software or requiring access codes to use the extended features and so forth. You want software that WORKS and I try to give exactly that. If you bought it from a shareware disk vendor, that in itself does NOT mean you own your copy of the program, it is still theft if you continue to use it without paying for it. You are entitled to "try before you buy" only, not to use and abuse. Please don't steal, pay for what you use. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- This Program, Manual, and Data Files, are all protected by U.S. Copyright Law (title 17 United States Code). Unauthorized reproduction, distribution and/or sales may result in imprisonment of up to one year and fine up to $10,000 (17 USC 506). Copyright infringers may also be subject to civil liability. If you mess with us, we'll delete you! The author of this program makes no warranties of any kind, expressed or implied, as to the fitness, functionality, effectiveness, or safety of this software and accompanying documentation. Under no circumstances shall the author and developer be liable for any damages incurred during or as a result of the use of, or misuse of, or inability to use, this software and documentation. All risk is assumed by the user, and we hereby disclaim any implied warranties of fitness or performance of this software. Use at your own risk. The developer and author reserves the right to make revisions and changes to the software and documentation without warning at any time. Any and all changes and revisions will be made without obligation to inform any person or persons of said changes. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- FINAL NOTE: If you have any questions, concerns, suggestions, criticisms, donations, remarks, praise, or opinions, please write! I WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU!! (the address is listed above). Feel free to call my BBS: The Sorcerer's Quarters BBS (410)-290-3752. 300 - 14400 baud, v.32bis, v.42bis, etc.. Ed T. Toton III "Necromancer" Stellar Conquest III Hostile Takeover (C) 1994 Ed T. Toton III All Rights Reserved. ((C) includes the spelling errors)