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Text File | 1992-07-02 | 27KB | 605 lines

THAT SPACEGAME MANUAL June 1992 Version 1.0 Copyright 1992 Terry B. Foster and Associates Consulting PO Box 50293 Amarillo, Texas 79159-0293 Why? There aren't that many games that let you play against more than one player. Some games allow you to connect with modems or cables, but you can still only play against one another. This game was designed specifically for multi- player network play. The single user version is OK, but the real fun is Multi-player action. DON'T LET THE LACK OF GRAPHICS FOOL YOU! You soon forget you're in text mode, and if you don't, I'm planning to write a Windows 3.1 and/or graphics version of this game that will be compatible with other players using the DOS version, provided that there is enough interest. So please register your game. (SEE SPACEGAM.NFO). Object of the game: The object is to destroy all of the enemy ships (including other players for network versions). You have weapons and strategic devices at your disposal. You may also acquire special weapons by conducting mining operations on special weapons planets. You may build alliances during your game by using the messaging system or select a team at the beginning of play. Beware of traitors. (You know who you are!). The playing field consists of 64 Sectors with 100 Quadrant positions in each Sector. You get three ships but after you destroy the first one, your colorful description will be lost and replaced with an appropriate one for other players to see. (SEE REASSIGNING SHIP) Installing the Game: Un-zip the game and copy its contents into a directory that all players have network access to. Run the INSTALL program to set the type of network. Use the BUILD program to design the game field, and run SPACEGAM.EXE. The BUILD program will generate 3 Paradox databases that contain all of the game information. Problems: Most of the time, problems are attributed to networks. SPACEGAM will attempt to solve these problems and will at least try to default to the single user version. Quick Fixes: 1. Make sure that each player has sufficient access rights to the SPACEGAME directory. 2. Remember to run the INSTALL program to initialize the network type (It resides in a file called SPACEGAM.CFG). 3. Use the BUILD program to build a game field. 4. Paradox tables use a file named PARADOX.NET to cover record locks and the like. This file must be in a directory in which each player has access to. It also has to appear to be on the same drive and in the same directory. Use the drive/directory mapping functions of your network to accomplish this. Also see BUGLIST.DOC and README.1ST for additional information that may not be in this manual. Starting a new game: Each universe will be designed by you using the BUILD.EXE program. It will prompt you for the number of starbases, planets, enemy vipers, special weapons, time limit, and game level. It would be wise to try the defaults first, and base special weapons planets on the number of players in the game. Planets and starbases are resources that will get used up during play so always remember to generate a new universe after each game. In order to facilitate an end to the game, new players will be accepted only if they log into the game within 5 minutes of the last player. Hints: If you're playing above level 3 and you specified more than 450 enemy vipers, you may spend more time licking your wounds than conquering other players. The more starbases and crystal planets you have the easier it is to refuel (of course), and it will be more difficult to destroy other players. If every player can obtain all of the special weapons, their affect on the game is diminished. For example if all players have anti-cloaking sensors, then cloaking is not as useful. It is also to your advantage to move around and find the weapons and destroy enemy vipers. Winning the game: When you are confident that all enemy vipers are destroyed and that other players are terminated, you can contact THAT SPACEGAME headquarters for a reply. This will cost you 1000 units of energy, so don't get too cocky! You contact headquarters by pressing ALT+W or W. Game Levels: Game levels affect only enemy viper's ability to attack the players of the game. If you just want to pit yourself against each other, select 0 for enemy vipers. Level Description 1 Enemy vipers rarely target your ship 2 More aggressive 3 Worthy opponents 4 Vipers target specific systems 5 Enemy vipers are anal retentive HELP: Get a command summary by pressing H or ALT+H On subscreens, F1 will tell you what the game is expecting. It will also ship planet types. TOP LINE: The top line displays the name of your ship, your current position, and the current level of play. POWER BAR: The ship's power is presented in the upper right portion of the screen. The maximum is 5000 units and if you go below 0 your ship is destroyed. In some cases, your ship can hold up to 7500 units. (SEE INCREASING POWER) SHIELDS BAR: This indicator shows your current shield strength. Your shields will protect your ship against the weapons of other players up to a point. Use F8 to raise and lower your shields. If the shields are up, they drain the ships power at a rate currently set a 12 units per stardate(seconds). Shields can be boosted by entering ALT+S or S. An adjustment window will allow you to modify your current setting. The energy level will show you how much the boost will cost. Use left and right arrow keys to adjust. HOME and END keys will also work. Press ESC to cancel or hit RETURN to accept. If your shield level hits zero, Your shields will go down. (Boost shields and press F8). COMPUTER BAR: shows how functional your computer is. The computer gains energy per stardate and is not adjustable. Levels below 50% force you to use manually over-ride on your weapons systems (SEE PHASERS or PHOTONS). MESSAGE CENTER: The message center is the black box at the lower right of the screen. All messages from your ship and other ships will be displayed here. Green color indicates normal ship messages. Red colors may indicate messages from other players or hits on your ship. Other colors are also used. Pressing ALT+R or R will clear this area. Messages will scroll from bottom to top, meaning the most recent messages will be on the bottom. COORDINATES: During the game, you will be asked to supply coordinates in X,Y formats on order to move or fire weapons manually. X formats are across, Y formats are down. Here is an example of moving from 2,1 to 6,7. Select F5 Impulse, Enter 6 in X and 7 in Y, and press F3 to execute move. A is from, B is to. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1 A 2 3 4 5 6 7 B 8 9 10 SCANNERS: The scanner is in the top left corner of your screen. Two types exist, Short range, and Long Range. The scanner is real-time, meaning it always refreshes itself, usually multiple times a second, depending of the speed of your PC and your network; therefore it is not necessary to keep pressing F1 or F2. Short range scanning: SRSCAN Pressing F1 will toggle your short range sensors to become active. You will use this screen to identify enemy vessels, planets, stars, and starbases. If you have a color monitor here's the stuff: Your ship: The 3 letters you started the game with colored in WHITE. Enemy ships: YELLOW. The 3 letters other players started with or O≈O for enemy vipers. (They are not friendly, especially in level 5). Planets: GREEN - - with dashes on both sides Stars: GREEN * Starbases: GREEN [¥] Cloaked Vessels with blink if you have special sensors and other players don't know if you have them or not. Long Range Scanning: LRSCAN The long range scanner will display your sector and any other sector within 1 of your ship. The number in GREEN indicates the number of enemy ships in that sector including you. The White number displays the number of Starbases for re-fueling and the YELLOW number show the number of Planets in that sector. NOTE: Special weapons planets only show up in SRSCAN mode, so you will have to hunt for them. WEAPONS: Normal weapons consist of Phaser's and Photon torpedoes. (ALSO SEE SPECIAL WEAPONS). The computer (if above 50%) will allow you to target up to 3 ships during one use. After each use, weapon systems must recharge themselves. Phasers take 4 stardates, Photon Torpedoes take 2. Manual Phasers or Photons do not require a re-charge. The weapon is useless until it says Online. Alternating your weapons will help. TARGETING: You have the ability to select what systems you want to target when shooting at another player. With enemy vipers, it makes no difference, they are worthless and weak. Pressing ALT+T or T will bring up the targeting menu. Use the arrow keys to highlight, RETURN to select, ESC to cancel. (SEE WEAPONS VS. DAMAGE GRID). Individual systems can be damaged only for a certain amounts of time. Subsequent hits only maintain a maximum damage level (average 90 seconds). Therefore, it is necessary to target different areas to destroy a vessel. Phasers and Photon torpedoes can target different systems. Use the TAB key to alternate between them. The top of the window will show you which weapon you are targeting. Example: Target Photons on shields and target phasers on Warp Drive. The computer will target up to three enemy vessels at one time. The targeting system does not update itself until after you have fired or canceled. (You can miss if you don't shoot fast enough and it is to your advantage to move often. PHASERS: Pressing F3 will initiate phasers. If there are enemy targets on your screen and your computer is not damaged, a window will come up with the target and the suggested amount to fire. The computer is inaccurate 20% of the time with a + or - 5 units error factor. A hit on an enemy viper will always do some damage. If another player is targeted, you must supply the amount of power to use. The units here will directly affect your ship's power and the phasers won't fire if you don't have enough energy. Pressing ALT+F3 will activate manual phasers. Use these to fire when the computer is down, or to fire at a CLOAKED vessel. Even if you have special sensors, you must fire manually at a CLOAKED vessel! Manual requires that you supply the coordinates (SEE COORDINATES). You may fire at any coordinate on the screen, but targeting planets and starbases will have no effect in this version. PHOTONS: Pressing F4 will initiate photon torpedoes. The computer works the same as Phasers. You have 10 torpedoes at your disposal, and can renew these only by docking. Pressing ALT+F4 will activate manual photons and manual Phaser rules still apply. A photon is equal to 1000 units of phaser power and are formidable weapons if used wisely. MOVEMENT: Movement is accomplished by using impulse engines or activating warp drive. If you supply coordinates that another ship occupies, you will get a message: 'Sensors do not allow this move'. In later versions, crashing into other objects will damage your ship. The amount of POWER required to move will be displayed on the WARP and IMPULSE pop-up window. Hitting enter on any field will re-calculate requirements for you. Power requirements: AMOUNT = an average of 30 units per quadrant (dots) With Shields UP: 1.5 times AMOUNT With Cloaking Enabled: 1.5 times AMOUNT With Both Active: up to 2.5 times AMOUNT IMPULSE: Impulse engines are used to move from one quadrant position to another, and will not allow you to move into another sector. If your Warp Drive is damaged, you may want to move around in the current sector so that other players can't get a fix on you. WARP: Warp drive is for movement across sector boundaries. It can also be used like the IMPULSE engines by supplying the same SECTOR coordinates and the new QUADRANT coordinates. MISC: DOCKING: As long as docking capabilities are not damaged, you may dock at an adjacent starbase. For example, if you are at quadrant 3,3, you would be able to dock with a starbase at (2,2), (2,3), (2,4), (4,4) etc. You recharge your entire system, including photon torpedoes, but damages are not fixed. When docked, you are protected by the starbase's shields, but other players can still dock at the same time. When a starbase's resources are used up, it will disintegrate and will cause your ship to not be docked. If your ship causes the starbase to disintegrate, you will immediately be un-docked. Other players will have several seconds to decide what to do. It may not be advantageous to use up the last resource. DAMAGES: Damage to your ship's devices will be shown at the lower left portion of your screen. The current 'Online' display will be changed to the number of stardates (Show in negative Seconds) it will take to fix the current subsystem. Upon completion, it returns to 'Online'. MINING PLANETS: You can mine any of 7 different planets to get energy crystals, or special weapons. The planet can be mined using the F9 key and you must be adjacent to the planet just like when docking. Occasionally, you will attempt to mine a planet and it will disintegrate. This means that only an empty shell of the planet was left after the last ship used up its resources. Each crystal planet starts with a random amount of available uses. It may have over 15 or not even 1. Special weapons planets can be mined only once and they are left wasted. Also, you will not be allowed to mine for weapons you already have; the message will be 'No new planets'. If a planet disintegrates, it may cause slight damage to your ship. In addition, other players' sensors pick up the sound of the explosion and where it came from. (They know a ship is damaged!) Use the 'H Command Summary' key to identify what each planet has. Here are the different types: -Θ- 1. CRYSTALS: - once you have mined crystals, you may use them by pressing 'F10 USE CRYSTALS'. The crystals will boost your ships power to maximum. The crystal has a guaranteed first time use, after that, you have a 1 in 10 chance of cracking the crystals. Once cracked, you must mine more crystals. Advantages: Gives the ability to refuel without having to dock. Disadvantages: Crystals have a guaranteed 1 time use, after that, a 1 in 10 change of failing. Once the crystals crack, more have to be mined. -Φ- 2. CLOAKING: Use the cloaking device to hide from other players and enemy vipers. Once you have the weapon, ALT+C toggles cloaking on and off. NOTE: ALL ships will appear in the LRSCAN but not necessarily in the SRSCAN. Advantages: Others can't see you unless they have special sensors and even then, they must fire all weapons at your ship manually. You can dock, move, or mine crystals while Cloaked. Disadvantages: Being cloaked requires approx. 7 units of power per stardate. Combining that with the shields up is a considerable drain. You CAN'T fire at other vessels while Cloaked. The cloaking device is susceptible to damages just like other subsystems. -Ω- 3. ANTI-CLOAKING SENSORS: Once anti-cloaking sensors are installed, you will see any ship that is cloaked and it will appear in the SRSCAN monitor and blink. Advantages: You can see all ships and the sensors can only be damaged by a direct SRSCAN hit. Other players do not know you have this capability unless you give it away. Disadvantages: If other players know you have this capability, it will be not be necessary for them to cloak and waste their ship's power. -α- 4. EXTENDED LONG RANGE SCANNERS: The LRSCAN will only reach out to within 1 sector around your ship. With Extended you can see the whole universe. This is a powerful weapon and we usually allow a planet for each player, but they still have to locate and mine it. Advantages: You can watch for activities in other sectors. You can spot planets and starbases in any part of the universe. (EX. if the number of ships in sector 1,1 drops from 5 to 1, you can assume that another player has just destroyed all of the enemy vipers in that sector and may be low on energy. Disadvantages: Only that by staying in LRSCAN mode, you won't be watching you SRSCAN. You may not notice that another player has entered your sector until you get hit. Short range scanners update faster than long range scanners. -δ- 5. SENSOR PROBES: Sensor probes force another player to update his player status, whether he wants to or not. (Player status is obtained by pressing ALT+P or P SEE PLAYER STATUS). Activate a sensor probe by pressing ALT+L or L. Advantages: Forces a player to update his player status. You have an unlimited number of probes. Disadvantages: You have know way of knowing whether or not another player has Anti-probing Sensors, and you could be setting yourself up for a trap. You can only probe a ship in your current sector. Other players know if you probed them whether you are Cloaked or not. (It warns them of trouble in some cases). Depending on network speed and what other players are doing will affect how fast their status are updated. -æ- 6. ANTI-PROBING SHIELDS: These will cause Sensor Probes to update a status that you supply using your ghost trails. Ghost trails can be activated by pressing G or ALT+G. Use arrow keys to move up and down, U and D keys toggle or adjust each system. Ghost trails can (and should be) changed at any time. Advantages: Other players will know only the status that you supply with your ghost trails. Disadvantages: If your shields are down, Anti-probing shields are down also, and your player status is updated. If you fail to change you ghost trails, eventually other players will catch on. -Σ- 7. COMMUNICATION FEEDBACK TRACKING: Communications feedback can be tracked to show location of another player. Activate by pressing F or ALT+F, enter the player you wish to track. Advantages: Tracking down wounded players after they escape from your sector. Disadvantages: Tracking can be masked by the use of ghost trails. PLAYER STATUS: You can obtain a list of the current players in the game by pressing ALT+P or P. The list includes the players name, description, and (sometimes) useful information about his systems. Photons and energy levels are shown. Unknowns: The only time a players status is updated automatically is if you register a hit on his ship. Therefore, if a player docks after a hit, the player status screen shows low values, but he actually may have a full load of everything. Use sensors probes to force another player to update his status. STRATEGIC INFORMATION: 1. WEAPONS VS. DAMAGE GRID: 1 Photon = 1000 units of phasers. A Ship's individual systems have a MAXIMUM damage time per system. Subsequent hits will never exceed the MAXIMUM, so remember to re-target systems! To Inflict Maximum Maximum: Shields Up Shields Down SHIELDS: 2000 2000 SRSCAN 30 2900 900 LRSCAN 120 2900 900 IMPULSE 45 2900 900 WARP 90 2900 900 PHASERS 90 2900 900 PHOTONS 90 2900 900 MINING 120 2900 900 DOCKING 120 2900 900 CLOAKING 120 2900 900 POWER PLANT Based on current level The chart shows the maximum energy required to produce the full effect on a subsystem, however; it may not always be necessary to fire the full amount because all shots are based on shield strength. EX. If shields are at 50%, 450 units would have the maximum affect on any subsystem. It is possible to damage a subsystem with shields at full strength, by punching a hole through the shields, but this requires more power (2900 units SEE CHART). You must exceed the amount of maximum shields plus the amount of damage you want. Ex. 2900 units of power would be required to punch through the shields and produce a maximum affect on SRSCAN. This is usually unwise unless you have crystals or a docking station near by, but it is your choice. Another player's power plant can be damaged up to 90% of the amount of phasers you used, IF TWO OR MORE OF HIS SYSTEMS ARE DAMAGED, otherwise, you will only get a 20% ratio. Skilled players are hard to destroy, but as resources in the game universe deplete, it becomes harder to find energy. It would stand to reason that a stalemate can occur but I haven't seen one yet. Also, if the time limit is exceeded and all vessels are not destroyed, EVERYBODY LOSES! This is the only limitation in this version! Ten minutes per game will be more than enough for beginners, but when players understand the game, it can be played for hours depending on game settings. So, if you want to win the game and have bragging rights for the day, throw caution to the wind. Long Range Tractor Beams: Enemy vipers have the capability to draw you into their sector at certain times during the game. You'll know when this happens! Their tractor beams may not be able to bring you all the way in, and you can possibly end up in an empty sector. The messages will be 'Tractor beam failed' or 'He's got us, Sir'. In either case, 90% of the time, you will not be in the same sector as you were before the tractor beam. Other players don't have this capability in this version. (Maybe the next one). REASSIGNING SHIP: If your ship is destroyed, you have the option to continue playing by re-assigning your ship. You keep all of your special weapons and all of your damages are repaired, plus you keep your current score. However, you lose your total kills which may cost you a chance at increasing your maximum power. (SEE NEXT SECTION). Your colorful description will be replace with one you probably won't desire. Play the game to find out! INCREASING MAXIMUM POWER: You ship starts out with 5000 units of energy. You can increase this number up to 7500 by killing the maximum amount of enemy vipers (specified in the BUILD program). When your first ship is destroyed, your maximum will drop to 6250 and again on your last ship back to 5000. NOTE: Even if you lose you first two ships, as long as you destroy the maximum number of enemy vipers, you can still achieve 7500 units of power. GAME STRATEGIES: This game has an endless supply of strategies, but to get you up to speed, here are a few of my own: 1. Continue to move across sectors in a search pattern to pick up special weapons and increase your enemy kills. 2. Jot down the sectors where planets and starbases are in case you have to 'bug out' for a quick refuel. 3. When mining planets, get your crystals, power up with F10 and get more crystals with F9. That way you always have one good crystal to enter battle with. This strategy can be dangerous because of damages resulting from planet explosions. 4. If you think your level of play is above another player, find him at the beginning of the game (if possible), target his warp engines and scamper off. He can't move until his damages are repaired and you gain the advantage of exploring more sectors while he sits there. 5. Remember what special weapons other players have and try not to let them know what you have. If you can maintain this strategy it may help you to destroy another player. 6. Know your game plan. Un-planned attacks usually result in dissaster. Remember what you are targeting, attack, and then decide if you must retreat. At first, it is difficult to know the keys, therefore, the basic stuff (F1-F10) is listed on the screen. Use the command summary (ALT+H or H) for reference. It took us 2 or 3 games to get the keys down, and 2 or 3 more to start using special weapons and our own stategies.