17 Bit Software 4: Phase Four

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Colonial Conquest II Colonial Conquest II has been written in 1993/94 by Christian Mumenthaler. This program is giftware, which means that you can make a donation to the author if you like it. All rights remain by Christian Mumenthaler, but everybody is allowed to copy it for other people as long as he/she includes the "Copyright"-file and doesn't ask more than the nominal fee of 4$ (5 Sfr/5 DM) for the disk. Please read the "Copyright"-file for more details and all exceptions! System requirements: Colonial Conquest is a PAL game and runs on all Amigas (tested on A4000, A2000, A1000 & A500) with MORE than 1MB of memory. It runs perfectly with all kinds of turbo boards and expansions. You'll have to switch off your mouse blanker if you are running one as CCII will not run properly with it. Thanks to Paul Hickman for his precious help in making this manual more readable. 1. Introduction Colonial Conquest is a space-strategy game for one or two persons. The basic idea and concept have been heavily influenced by the shareware game "Conquest" and the Microprose game "Civilization". The aim of the game is to spread your civilization through the 26 earth-like planets of the universe map and to defend it from other civilizations by building weapons and war ships. Unfortunately - like all half-realistic simulations and strategy games - Colonial Conquest will reward primitive destructive behavior and colonial instincts without leaving much room for cooperative actions and peaceful living. Take it as a game! As Colonial Conquest is quite easy to handle, I suggest you first have a look at the program before returning to this long (and boring) manual with a lot of fresh motivation... BACKGROUND STORY: Hundred years ago, your ancestors fled in a huge colony ship from the GREAT EMPIRE, the only lasting "state-system" that human kind had managed to keep upright for some centuries since the beginning of star colonization. This Empire however was not only corrupt and totalitarian, but also extremely repressive against minorities of thinking people (thinking people are generally minorities, aren't they?). Anyway, your idealistic and valiant ancestors (others called them subversive and religious fanatics) founded a little colony very far away from the Empire and lived more or less in peace until today. The new generations (to which you belong, of course!) however, feel more and more frustrated to be confined on a small planet while the universe gets conquered at the same time by other guys. Adventure calls and as you finally come to power on your small planet (through corruption and intrigues), you immediately show a less wise behavior than your ancestors and start to develop industry, military research and build a space fleet... You also recontact the Empire as you'd like some humanitarian help (which you would use to build weapons, of course) for the development of your poor planet. The Empire doesn't seem to be interested at all. People there just amuse themselves by watching violent games or floating around in cyberspace and feel not concerned about foreign politics. You realize that you'll have to start without any help... 2. Getting started After the title screen, three options will appear on the screen: - Start a new game. - Load saved game. (Only if you have a saved game on the disk!) - Create new universe. This menu allows you to change the aspect of the planets as the program will choose all the 26 planet surfaces among the pre-designed ones in the "planets"-directory. If you start a new game, the program will ask you if you wish to play alone or with another player. Unnecessary to say that it will be much more fun to play with a friend, but as these are not always present, you may wish to play anyway. In this case, the game will simulate an alien race that colonizes planets like you. If you choose the two player option, you will have to answer two additional questions: 1) Do both player start with identical planets? If you choose "yes", the planet of player 2 will look exactly like the planet of player 1, which will prevent one player from having an advantage over the other from the beginning, as some planets might be more difficult to start with. 2) Give Empire rating at which the game should end: (No limit, 800, 1200, 1600, 2000) As two player games that go until the bitter end (No limit) usually last VERY long and get boring as soon as it is clear which player will win, you now have the possibility to give another aim to the game: The winner will be the one who first gets incorporated to the Empire, which will happen as soon as a certain Empire rating is reached. By setting this aim, you will therefore have the possibility to win without annihilating or even attack the other player, which might be helpful for your personal relationship to her/him. After these questions, you will be asked for the difficulty level of the game which is more relevant when playing against a computer opponent who gets really mean on the "suicide" level. Now the main screen will appear for player one. From now on, there will be game turns during which first player one and then player two can order some actions that will then be evaluated by the program. At the beginning of each turn, the players will get a report of everything that has happened. 3. Main screen On the main screen you will see all earth-like planets of the universe. There are 5 types of planets: Unnamed: A world that does not belong to your empire and where you have no space ships orbiting. Named: A world you can access the planet surface screen of, either because you have colonized it, or have some ships in orbit. Green Circle: A world that you have colonized. Yellow Circle: A world where a conflict may be imminent because the spaceships orbiting it do not belong to the same civilization as the people that live on it. Red Circle: A world where a combat is taking place. At the left side of the planet is a yellow point or line that signals the presence of space ships that belong to you. A similar line in red will appear just next to it as soon as enemy troops are orbiting the planet too. The length of this line is proportional to the strength of your fleet until it reaches the maximal height of 15 pixels. Above this line, a tiny hammer-symbol will be drawn if the planet is currently producing something. Every planet has a number and name, but you will only see the name of the planets that you can actually look at. At the bottom of the screen, you will find some menus that will be explained in the following: MOVE SHIPS: ("m" on keyboard). You have to select a planet from where you want to send a space ship and also the destination planet. After this, all available space ships will be listed and you can click on those you wish to send away. Once you have chosen, you can click on the "OK" button to get out of this menu. TRAVEL ROUTES: ("t" on keyboard). All travel routes of the ships actually in flight will be drawn on the screen with red lines. A tiny yellow circle will show the actual position of the ships on this route. Ships traveling trough stargates will not appear, but a yellow line will show their analogous route in normal space. FLIGHT STATUS: ("f" on keyboard). All ships in flight will be listed together with their source and destination planet. At the right, the remaining turns needed to reach the destination will be shown. The ships are automatically listed in order of arrival. Ships that will arrive in the next turn are highlighted and those travelling through stargates will have a red star at their right. PLANET LIST: ("l") All colonialized planets are listed. You will see your real population, the last turn population growth (in %), the Food/Material/Energy production and the object that the planet is actually constructing. REPORTS: ("r") The report that you get at the beginning of each turn will be printed again. This is useful if you have forgotten its content. STATUS: ("s") Will show you your actual Tech-Level and the Research Status along with all the ships you own. Besides this, you will see your actual EMPIRE-Score. This score represents the judgement of your performances by the EMPIRE. Many factors are taken into account among which the number of colonized planets, population, production, reserves, science, fleet force and the discovered life forms. Below this, you will see a list of all planets you have explored and the life form you have discovered there (if any). After this, the program will give you the possibility to see where all ships of a selected type can be found. SPECIAL COMMANDS: ("c") Here comes the menu all action freaks have waited for! If you have hi-tech machines on one of your planets, you will be able to give up to three commands that will be executed at the end of the turn. (The result will however only be shown at the beginning of the next turn!). You can do the following: - Short Range Scan: (Needs Planet scanner). The space around your planet will be scanned in a range of 60 pixels and all discovered spaceships drawn as little arrows pointing toward their aim. Enemy ships will appear in a flashing color and your own ships will be drawn in red. - Long Range Scan: Same as above excepted that the range is 120 pixels which allows a wide view into the flight-activities of your enemy. - Energy Cannon Shot: (Needs Energy-Cannon). Three focussed high-energy-beams will be fired toward a selected planet. The impact will completely destroy one surface-unit together with the machine that has been built on it (if there is any!). As I didn't want to make this game too bloody, the colonists that worked on that surface-unit will always be able to escape from the catastrophe! - Destroy Planet: (Needs Planet Destroyer). The "Planet Destroyer" belongs to the class of hi-tech gravity-disruption-weapons and is a result of the advanced quantum-gravity-theory founded by Prof. Von Hirt. This high energy weapon can cause the gravitational collapse of any very large object (like planets!) by sending focussed disturbing gravity-waves that interfere positively on a calculated point and cause such irregularities into the gravitational field that the object is torn apart and explodes. This command is therefore the ultimate immoral command of the game as you simply blow away a whole world, possibly populated by thousands of innocent human beings! So, if you play together with a friend, just don't use it if you still want to be his friend after the game! (I can take no warranty for lost friendships!) ESPIONAGE: Through this menu you have access to the espionage (spy mode) of other worlds with spy satellites. Spy satellites can be built on every planet that has a starport. They are however NOT sent to orbit like normal space ships (and do therefore NOT appear in the "orbit window" at the top right), but remain at the starport until they are sent to a specific destination. In the spy mode, you'll see all the colonized planets with the usual planet icon. Planets with one or more of your spy sats in orbit will have a small blue EYE on them, while planets that you can't look at will appear in dark grey. At the bottom, there will be a menu to quit the spy mode and return to the normal view of the starmap. In spy mode, the planet number will be replaced by the number of sats that are currently in orbit or in your space port. You can now click on all planets that have a spy sat present (EYE symbol). A small pop up menu will appear with different options: - VIEW. Every spy sat is equipped with a small camera that allows an optical view of the planet. You will see a rough image of the planet map and the "real" view of the rotating planet from which the computer has constructed the map. As spy sats are kept far away from planets to be undetectable, the image quality will not allow deep analysis, but on the other hand you can not be "seen" when using this method as no scanner beam is necessary. Your computer will automatically analyze the pictures and detect nuclear power-plants and population (if above 5000). He will also try to detect alien ships, but as they might be orbiting the planet on the other side, chances are high that you won't detect all of them. In 50% of the cases you will not detect anything, even if there is a huge fleet present. Besides this, you will not be able to tell what kind of ships are present. - SCAN. To get a detailed view of the planet, you'll have to send a scanner beam out from your spy sat. By getting back the reflected part of this beam, your computer will be able to reconstruct the planet surface with every detail unless some scan beam disturbers are in use on the planet. If there is a space port on the planet or any spy sat antenna, you will be detected!!! If your enemy has some space ships in orbit, your satellite will be destroyed, probably even before having been able to transmit all data. The same thing happens if planet defences are installed, but there is a chance that the ground cannons will miss you and loose your position. As your enemy may have positioned his anti-spy-sat-antenna anywhere on the planet, you will have to choose the planet surface spot where the scan will begin. The beam scans from left to right and from top to the bottom. - SEND. If you have a space port on the planet, you'll be able to send the satellites to other planets, which will need a certain amount of energy depending on the distance. It is important to notice that the satellites have nearly no propulsion system and can therefore not been moved around once they arrive at a planet with no starport. They also can not be detected with planet scanners and will not be listed in the normal fleet flight routes and statistics. They are something separate and will only appear in the spy sat menu. Once a sat is sent somewhere, you'll see a dotted line to the destination planet. If there were already spy sats in flight when you entered the spy sat menu, their routes will automatically be drawn. The part they have already crossed will be drawn as a full line. -EXIT. To exit this pop up menu. LOAD/SAVE: ("L"/"S") You'll get to another menu with different options: 1) SAVE GAME. Allows you to save the game and to continue later by using the "Load game" menu at the beginning or during the game. Please note that your file name should not contain dots (i.e. type "GameSave" instead of "Game.Save") 2) LOAD GAME: Loads a previously saved game. Note that (as only the actual GAME TURN) is saved to disk, game control will always go to the player who actually loaded the game, regardless of which one of the two players has saved it! (If player 2 saves the game at turn 100 and player 1 loads it again in turn 101, he will find himself back in turn 100!) 3) GAME MANUAL. The ASCII file "game.manual" will be loaded and displayed. The program will automatically find the titles and list them as indexes. 4) QUIT GAME. Exits the game and returns to the Workbench if you have started it from there. END OF TURN: ("e" on keyboard). You end your turn and give the game control to your friend. If you are player two, the game will first make the end of turn evaluation. NEXT IDLE: (Return, Right mouse button) Once you have colonized more than 4 to 5 planets, it is often difficult to remember which planets had events reported and require some attention this turn. To help, a "duty-list" is maintained of planets where: - A colonist has been produced. - Production of an object has completed, and planet has not been instructed to repeatedly produce the same object with the "Permanent" option. When you press the NEXT IDLE button (or Return / Right Mouse), the planet surface screen for the first planet in the duty list is displayed. When you return to the main screen, and press NEXT IDLE again, the planet surface of the next planet in the duty list is displayed. Please note that once the planet surface is displayed by the next idle button, it is removed from the duty list. If you accidentally leave the planet surface screen, and forget which planet it was, display the REPORT again. VIEW HIGH-SCORES: Press the ESCAPE-key to see the high-score list. 4. Planet surface If you click on a planet from the main map, you will see the planet surface together with three windows. (Important note: hit the HELP key there to get a screen with a short information about all menus!) On the planet surface, you will see your colony with everything that you have built there. Over every object, you will see the number of food, material or energy (yellow lightnings) it produces and/or how much energy it needs (red lightnings). Some objects (as granaries) do not produce at all, but have other purposes. Some objects are automatic and need no human help to work (it is therefore impossible to place a human on them!) while others like food-robots and greenhouses need assistance. By clicking on a surface-square, you can place a colonist on it. You will see at once how much food and material this colonist will produce at this place. If no helping object (as robots) is on this place, the production will usually be quite low, as the colonist will only have simple instruments for his work. Of course, the production strongly depends upon the terrain type. If you click on a colonist, he will disappear from the surface window and appear in the window below as a "free" colonist (red and white cloths) at the right of the working colonists (blue cloths). "Free" colonists work in the city complex or in the colony station for the science research. Normally, each free colonist produces one "science unit" that will make progress research at each turn and rise your TECH-LEVEL after a certain amount of time. The Tech-Level is important for the performance of your fleet (see "Space battles") and also to build Hi-Tech equipment (Battlestars, Stargates etc). It is important to note that each colonist represents 1000 real people (a planet with 6300 people will therefore have 6 colonist units!). Below this, you will find the food production (yellow symbols). Each colonist unit needs one unit of food per turn. If you produce more, the surplus will be seen at the right. If you produce less, you will see green symbols for each missing unit. BE WARNED: If the food production is not sufficient and no food reserves present, a colonist unit will die at the end of the turn! Besides this, you will see the (raw) material production, the energy production (= energy of all power plants minus all energy needed for machines and other stuff) and the science "production". The reserves of the planet are listed at the bottom. Note that there is always enough room to deposit raw material, but if you want to make food reserves or energy reserves, you will need special equipment (granary and energy storage unit). At the right side of the screen, all space ships orbiting the planet are listed above. The attack and defence values of the planet will also be printed here. In the window below, you will see what the planet is producing actually and also find all accessible commands ("Install stargate" etc). This window will be called "command window". 4.1. Planet production The first button in the command window is the "Producing" button. By clicking on it, you will get a list of all objects, machines and space ships you can build on the planet. At the right, you will see how many material units will be needed to finish the work, how much energy unit it will cost at each turn once it is built (red lightning), how much energy it will produce (yellow lightning) and if a colonist is needed to make it work (you will have to place a colonist on this machine!). Note that you can only build space ships if your planet owns at least one starport. The strength of each space ship type will be listed near the "Fight" symbol (crossed swords). If you choose an object whose production depends upon the surface type it is built on, an extra button will appear ("Help on") which will give you access to a "help-mode". In this mode, the additonal production expected by the object will be written on each surface square (unless it is zero, of course!), which will make your decision much easier. Once you have selected an object and no error message has appeared, the production will begin. A white bar will be drawn under the object name and from now on the whole material production of the planet will be put into the construction of the object. Once the bar is full with material symbols, the production will be finished. On a small button at the right, you will see in percentages to what extent the production is completed. Clicking on this button will give you more detailed informations about the material already invested in the production and the number of turns it will take to produce it considering the actual raw material production of the planet. If you have some raw material left in your reserves, you can use it to accelerate the production of the object. To do this, you have to click into the white bar. As the raw material in the reserves has to be re-worked to be used, you will need two units of material reserves to get one unit for the production! (It is therefore recommended always to build something with the material that is produced and not to stock it in the reserves!). As space ships do not need to be assigned to a planet surface square (like all other objects), the planet can produce them permanently without your intervention. If you wish the planet to do so, click on the "Unique" button which will then change to "Permanent". 4.1.1. Planet surface objects For reasons of pollution it is not allowed to build more than 35 objects on one planet! The number of objects already built can be seen in the "?" menu. Here is the list of all surface objects: Food-robot: Simple but very efficient help (irrigation etc.) for food production on fertile ground. Needs a colonist. The effect is dependant on the ground it is built on. Greenhouse: Complicated but efficient, very important on planets with no fertile ground. Needs a colonist to work, but it will produce the same amount of food on every ground. Granary: Helps to store 200 units of food. Mining-robot: Helps colonist to get raw material. Effect depends upon ground. Energy collector: Transforms radiation energy from the sun into electric power. Efficiency depends on the ground. (Efficient in deserts, not efficient in forests!). Coal power-plant: Produces 4 units of energy. Nuclear power-plant: Produces 8 units of energy. Fusion power-plant. Produces 16 units of energy. Energy Storage Unit: Stores up to 300 units of energy. Colony Station: Basic unit carried by each colony ship. The integrated greenhouse produces enough food for two colonist units (only if one colonist stays there!). City Complex: Provides room for 8000 people. Needs energy. Spy Sat Antenna. Allows you to detect a beam sent by any enemy spy sat. This information will automatically be sent to all ground defence units and to all space ships in orbit. They will try to destroy the satellite. If you have only ground defences, you may miss the sat and loose its track. Scan Beam Disturber. Will permanently send out disturbing beams that will prevent spy sats to scan a certain area around the scan beam disturber (about two other objects in each direction). This will allow you to make sure that your enemy will under no circumstances see secret installations. The exact range of these disturbers can bee seen with a menu on the planet surface. Irrigation Unit. If you have a colony on a planet with deserts and half-deserts, you may wish to transform this desert into more fertile ground by using this energy consuming object. After the installation, the eight squares next to the unit will be improved every 4 game turns. (Desert -> 2/3 desert -> 1/3 desert -> grassland) Snow Melting Unit. This is the analogous of the irrigation unit for planets with cold climate. (Ice -> 2/3 snow -> 1/3 snow -> grassland) Ground Defence Unit: Automatic ground defence. Not very strong, but quite resistant. (Attack: 2, Defence: 12). Will allow you to win some time if a very strong enemy attacks your planet. Planets without ground defence automatically fall into the hands of the enemy once you have no space ships in orbit anymore! Barracks: Following my own experience, barracks have the most ugly icon of the game. It is probably impossible to imagine nice barracks as this seems to be a paradox in itself. Barracks are here to train new army units. Every barracks unit can form one new army unit every turn. (= poor and pacifist students that get trained to be killers). If barracks are destroyed, the armies will not be disbanded automatically, as I assume that tough guys like these will be able to camp outside of barracks. Planet Scanner: Will allow you to scan the space around your planet. Requires Tech-Level 6! (See "Special Commands"!) Energy Cannon: This heavy energy gun will give you the possibility to shoot from one planet to another, making craters on the planet surface where nothing can be built on. If the energy beams hits any machine or object, this will be completely destroyed! Requires Tech-Level 7! (See "Special Commands"!) Planet Destroyer: Can destroy a whole planet of your choice if you have 1000 energy units left. Requires Tech-Level 8! (See "Special Commands"!) Planet Defence. This is an efficient defence against energy cannons and planet destroyers, provided you have 1/2 of the energy that was used to attack your planet in your reserves. This energy will be used to absorb and reflect the attack. Medical Center: If the population of a planet grows beyond 8000 people, chances for a plague to arise will grow rapidly. A medical center will prevent all sorts of plagues. University: Increases the science production for up to 5 free people. (If you have no free colonists, a university will not help anything!) Space Port: A space port is necessary for building space ships and sending them into orbit! 4.1.2. Space ships Provided your planet has a space port, you will be able to construct different kinds of space ships: Colony ship: Allows you to send up to 4 colonist units (4000 people) to another planet where you will be able to establish a colony. It can also be used to transport people from one planet to another. Stargate ship: Allows you to install a stargate on any planet. Requires Tech-Level 5! See "Install stargate" in the next section for more details. Transport ship: Allows you to transport food, material and energy to another planet. Exploration Ship: When sent planets with no colonies, this ship will explore it and sometimes find interesting stuff like alien life forms! Of course, you would discover these things if you would establish a colony on the planet too, but the difference is obvious: With exploration ships you are faster and can explore more planets in a given number of turns. Every planet that is explored for the first time gives a special bonus in the EMPIRE ranking. If you find intelligent life forms, this bonus is going to be very high! Troop Transporter: Allows you to transport up to 4 army units. In some way it is the same as the colony ship for normal people, but as it doesn't need the stuff necessary to build a colony station, the production costs are lower. Besides this, these ships have better defence and attack values than colony ships. Fighter: Small warship. Attack: 4 Dreadnought: Huge warship. 4 times stronger than Fighters. Attack: 16 Cobra Ship. These powerful ships are an intermediate stage between the Dreadnoughts and the Battlestars. Attack: 32 Pulsar Destroyer. Huge Warship. Attack: 50 Battlestar: Incredibly powerful combat station. 4 times stronger than Dreadnoughts! Requires Tech-Level 6! Attack: 64 Mothership: When you play against a computer-simulated enemy, you will once encounter the most powerful and terrifying of all space ships ever built: The Mothership! Ten times stronger than one of your mighty Battlestars, this enormous space station has been designed to cause fear to human minds. As it will stay orbiting around its planet-colony, you will have to face and destroy it one day, to be able to conquer the planet and win the game! The mothership is the only space ship in the game which is able to repair itself. 4.2. Commands If some actions are possible on the planet, the command menus will appear right under the production button. Here is a list of the possible commands: Establish Colony: If you have a Colony ship in orbit and no colony is presently installed on the planet, you can do so. The ship will land on the chosen place and be transformed into a colony station unit that will provide room for up to four colonist units. The internal sun-energy collectors will provide enough energy for the internal greenhouse that produces 2 units of food if one of the colonists is put on it. This way, you will have at least one of the colonist free to do some mining or research. Install stargate: If you have a Stargate ship in orbit, you will be able to transform it into a stargate. As stargates have to be controlled from the surface of the planet, you will have to colonialize or conquer the planet before you can install the stargate! The high-energy singularity will be taken out of the Möbius-box and placed into a hexagonal Von-Hirt-field. Thanks to the principle of singularity convergence, it will automatically be connected to all other singularities of the universe and therefore to all other stargates which will allow all ships to travel at zero-time from one Stargate to another. Note that due to the complicated physics that are behind the phenomenon of singularities captured in Von-Hirt fields, you need to control BOTH stargates if you want to use them with your ships! (For the interested reader: It has to do with the quantum fluctuations of the singularity that have to be compensated for at least one nanosecond with a fluctuation resonance beam sent from the planet surface, to allow the ships to travel through the zero-space without being annihilated.) Load Transporter/Unload Transporter: If you have a Transport ship in orbit, you will be able to transfer your planet reserves to the ship or unload the content of the ship to the planet reserves. Show Transporter: Allows you to have a look at the content of the Transport ships that are actually in orbit. Load Colony Ship/Unload Colony Ship: You will get a list of all colony ships in orbit. This menu allows you to evacuate people from the planet to every colony ship that is occupied by less than 4 colonists, or to bring back colonists from the ship to the planet. Colony ships can therefore also be used for the simple transport of colonists between colonized planets. (Dis)embark Troops. This menu will show all troop transporters that are currently orbiting the planet together with the troops on board. You can now embark or disembark solders from and to the planet surface. Disembarked troops are put to the rest of the army if the planet belongs to you, or will invade the planet if it is colonized by your enemy. You will only be able to disembark troops on an alien planet if it's defence has dropped to zero and if the enemy fleet orbiting the planet is more than 4 times weaker than yours. Attack Planet/Stop Attack: Once you have your own ships orbiting a planet that has been colonialized by your enemy, your ships will not automatically attack the planet surface. This allows you a larger number of different strategies when you are playing together with a friend. If you wish to attack it (or to stop a current attack!), you will have to click on this menu. 4.3. Icon menus At the right side of the screen you will find some buttons with icons that symbolize different actions that concern the planet surface: - STAR MAP : Go back to the main screen - WHAT IS...? : The program will open a little window in which it will constantly write the name of the surface square the mouse is above together with the object that has been built on it. - DESTRUCT : You can destroy objects that you don't need anymore. Note that you cannot destroy objects that are producing energy which is currently used on the planet - you'll have to destroy the energy consuming objects first! A destroyed object brings back 1/4 of the material units that were necessary to build it. - SCAN BEAM DISTURBERS: You can see which parts of your planet surface is invisible for spy satellites due to the disturbing beams of your scan beam disturbers. - MILITARY OPTIONS : Provided you have some ugly barracks on your planet, you will have the possibility with this menu to make or disband army units. To make one, you'll need one free colonist unit, 30 units of material and 20 units of energy. (Yes, an army is a waste of material and energy...!) Every barracks unit can only train one new army unit per turn. If you want to have 6 army units, you'll therefore need two barracks and three turns to form them or one barracks unit and six turns. Army units will not make any research, of course. 5. Aliens There are two classes of aliens in the game. The first one will be referred to as "Alien life forms". They are life-forms that have never built technologies, even though they might be very intelligent. They represent no danger for the players. The other class consists of a very aggressive and also intelligent life form that will play against the human player in the one player mode. 5.1. Alien Life Forms on Planets Depending on the planet surface (mostly desert, water or ice), some life forms may have come to existence on it during the last billions of years. When you land on a planet for the first time to build a colony or to explore it, you will possibly discover one of these life forms. This will be rewarded by the EMPIRE, as people there are always very interested in curious things. There is a common IQ rating system with 5 different levels that is applied to every life form discovered, where 1 stands for low IQ (Insect-like animals) and 5 for high IQ (Human-like). Of course, level 5 beings are very rare, maybe even inexistent in your current game! To explore a planet without building a colony on it, you will need an exploration ship that you can send to the planets of interest. Every exploration ship orbiting an empty planet will explore 25% of it per turn. Once you have fully explored it, you will know if there are any alien life-forms. To which extend a planet has already been explored by you will appear below the planet surface in the planet view screen. If a scientist appears at the left, the planet is currently being explored (and therefore at least one exploration ship in orbit). Every planet can only be explored ONCE by one player. If it has already been explored by your opponent, this will be noted. When a life form is discovered, Riktors Ashen, chef of the Dept. of Foreign Affairs, will contact you and ask you if you prefer to be rewarded with resources or with combat ships. If you choose the first one, a transport ship will be hyperspaced to the planet of your choice (the EMPIRE has a more advanced technology that allows teletransportation of whole ships without Stargates!). The transportship will contain food, energy and raw material in amounts proportional to the interest of your discovery. If you prefer to have combat ships, you will get one of these ships (depending on the IQ of the discovered life form): Fighter (IQ=1), Dreadnought (2), Cobra Ship (3), Pulsar Destroyer (4) and Battlestar (5). There are about 50 different life-forms in the game. 5.2. The MECHS If you play the game alone, the computer will simulate an alien race, the MECHS, called so by humans as they seem to be just machines... huge, frightening, aggressive machines. In contrast to Colonial Conquest v1.05 they now have some intelligence - a few hundred lines of code make it possible! A gigantic spaceship, ten times stronger than one Battlestar, the "Mothership", can now colonize planets by installing an Alien Central Unit on them, which is a fully automatic material producing unit. The planet is then independent and starts to build Nuclear Power-Plants, Defence Units, Tripods, Troop Transporters, Fighter Ships etc. The Mechs are now capable to perform coherent actions, for example the coordinated attack and invasion of one of your colonies! If one of your home-worlds is conquered by the Mechs, some buildings will be destroyed at once: Barracks and Universities. The Mothership will then be called for the installation of an Alien Central Unit. During this time, the humans will be forced to work as slaves for a maximum material production (yes, I told you: The computer is now intelligent!). As long as there is food in the granary, they will not be allowed to produce enough new food. The humans will be treated without any mercy and if there are too many people for the mining activities, they will be exterminated. Once the Alien Central Unit is installed, the remaining human slaves will be executed. MECHs prefer to be alone on their planet. 6. End of turn Once both players have given their commands, the program will calculate the effects of these commands. Here are the main points of this procedure: 6.1. Ground combats If troops have been disembarked on a colonized planet during the game turn, a ground battle will now take place. A window will pop up showing the two armies standing face to face. During the following battle, the players will have no opportunities to influence the outcome of the fight. The battle will last until the complete annihilation of the defender or the invader. Hit the "Escape"-key to fasten up the battle. 6.2. Space ships & Space battles All space ships are moved by one unit. If they arrive to their destination planet, the program tests if enemy troops are there. If so, a space battle will take place. This battle is invisible for the player and only the result will be shown, but here is how the battles are simulated: Each ship type has an attack value and a defence value. For simplicity, these values are equal in Colonial Conquest. The attack value represents the number of shots that this ship can fire toward the enemy, the defence value represents the number of shots that the ship can absorb before being destroyed. This value is therefore decreased at each hit and once it is zero, the ship will explode. In the battle, each side can shoot once until all ships of both sides have fired all their guns. Each shot hits with a chance of 15% plus the Technology-Level of the owner of the ships! (In other words: if you have a Tech-Level of 10, the chances of your ships to hit an enemy ship are 25%!) If the planet where the battle is taking place is colonialized, the enemy side will have the possibility to attack it (see "Attack planet" menu of the command window!). The attack and defence values of the planet will then be added to the total fleet force. Once the defence of the planet has dropped to zero, the planet will be without defence and invading troops will have the possibility to disembark soldiers in the following game turn. The player will see the result of all battles in the battle report that will be shown at the beginning of every new turn. 6.3. Population growth & Production On the planets, the population will grow depending upon the food surplus that is produced at each turn. In addition to this, the food reserves of the planet will have a negative influence if there are not at least 4 units left for every colonist. The growth rate will never be higher than 5%. At the beginning of the game, you will have 5000 people on your planet represented by five colonists. For all next 1000 people you will get one colonist more. As people need room to live, you will have to build city complexes (8000 people each) to enlarge the natural capacity of the planet (4000 people). If there is no room left, the population will not grow anymore! Once your population has reached 8000 people, chances for a plague to break out will rise. It is therefore useful to build a medical center at this time. At every turn, all material will be used to build the active object. If no object is chosen, all material will go into the reserves. Once the object is built, you will see it in the planet window. 6.4. Game End and High-Scores Once one side has lost all its planets and all its spaceships or if one of the players has reached the Empire rating needed to be incorporated to the Empire (see Section 2), the game will end. A normal message will appear at the end of your monthly report informing you that you have won/lost. You will then have time to look at all your planets and space ships (if you are the winner) or to switch off the Amiga before the final screen appears (if you are the (bad!) looser). Once both players have seen the results and ended their turn, a final graphic screen will appear to celebrate the winner. After a few seconds you will be able to click on your mouse and the game will return to the Workbench if you are in the two player mode. If you were playing in the one player mode, the high-score list will be loaded and displayed. In this list, the players are ranked by the number of turns they needed to beat the alien opponent. If you made it into the list, you will be able to give your name (max. 9 characters) and the program will take you into the list. Please make sure that the device "ColonialConquest:" is NOT write protected as the program has no possibility to check that! If you want to clear the list one day, just delete the file "Hiscores" from the disk. The program will realize that it misses and create a new and empty list after having asked you. 7. Last Word Wow! I admit that this manual is quite long! Sorry! It's just because the game rules got more and more complicated during the programing, and I couldn't resist the temptation to implement all new ideas I got during the hours of boring game-testing. Fortunately, I think that Colonial Conquest II is very easy to handle and the rules are quite intuitive. If you are used to play this kind of strategy games, you will probably not have to read the whole manual - just start the game and have a look! (That's the way impatient people like me do it usually!) For all of you who would like to know a little bit more about the making of Colonial Conquest, I have written the following few lines: This program has been written with the fantastic AMOS Basic (v1.36) and compiled with the AMOS Compiler, both from Europress Software. It contains more than 8000 program lines. The title picture was created with Imagine v2.0 and all icons were painted with DPaint IV. It has been designed on a A4000 and was therefore always very fast. I hope that it will not be too slow on smaller machines. Colonial Conquest II has been written to be a nice-looking, easy to use immoral strategy game to be played with a friend. I hope you will enjoy it! At this point I would like to thank Armand Hirt for his incredible Icon-Map-Editor and Michael Unternährer for game testing and continuous support. I would also like to thank all beta-testers who helped me to develop Colonial Conquest II. Without them, the game would be unplayable! A big thank you also goes to everybody who develops PD and Shareware for the Amiga! Now that the future of our favourite machine seems uncertain, I think that it is more than ever important to stick together. Comments, donations, postcards, bug reports etc. to: Christian Mumenthaler Langgrütstr. 178 CH-8047 Zürich SWITZERLAND E-mail: mumi@mol.biol.ethz.ch PS: Please read the "Copyright"-file too! It is very important! Zürich, 25. October 1993 Revised for Colonial Conquest v1.05 : Zürich, 19. December 1993 Revised for Colonial Conquest II: Zürich, 1. August 1994