Game Head 1996 March

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▓▓▓▓ ▓▓▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓▓▓▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓▓▓ ▓▓▓▓▓ ▓▓▓▓▓ ▓▓▓▓▓ ▓ ▓ version 1.0 (C) FLP Nov '95 reference manual 1. Introduction First game Solar systems Ships Science 2. Game setup System requirements Registration - Limitations Playing on a standalone computer Network playing BBS or Internet The Game window Creating new game Choosing scenarios Game setup Hosting a game 3. Game interface 4. Main game Main window Ship orders Combat orders Trade orders Trade routes Battle reports Solar system orders Solar system view and mining Politics Energy Trade support Colony Sunlist Budget Ship and starbase construction Overall status Science Embassy Race treaty Government Messages Race specifics Exit without saving Save turn and exit Help View hull types Events Appendixes A - To do list B - Build your first ship (Walk through) @0 [1. INTRODUCTION] By the beginning of the 21st century the technology for spacetravelling begun to emerge. Since late 20th century, population growth had laid heavy on the planets resources, expansion to new worlds was called for. Pollux is a competitive game of interstellar exploration, diplomacy and conquest. You are elected as the leader of your planets government. You will be in charged of the production of food, rawmaterials, starships etc. Your object is to explore and conquer the galaxies. You will encounter other worlds, some inhabitet some not. When you meet other races, you will have to use your diplomacy skill or perhaps your military force to make them see your ways. You will also encounter long lost civilizations and their inventions or guardians. Wormholes will take your well-equipped ships over fare distances. Black holes and spacerifts will destroy you if you do not have the acquired science. You will have to know how to use your races special skills to the fullest, if you are to survive other-galaxy invaders. Spaceships can be constructed completely according to your needs, provided you have the acquired sciences. There are a few limitations to the various hulls your race can build, ie a small freighter can only carry weapons weighting 10% of its full weight, but 90% can be cargospace. Science is a major part of Pollux. You have to develop it along the way. To explore all the over 120 science fields is beyond normal players reach, so you have to buildup a strategy developing just the things you need, wether it is to further your own strategy, or to counter your rival players attacks. !First game There a 3 basic elements in this game. - The Solar systems gives resources (workforce or minerals) - Your starships gives you military power and exploration - Science improves resources, power and exploration !Solar systems Solar systems provides you with the resources to build starships and to develop new science. There are 7 windows describing the solar systems.: Window Contents Solar system View of the planets in the Solar system. Here you can mine the planets. You need rawmaterials to build starships. Politics Information of the inhabitet world. Here you set the income tax, build the defense systems, train the ground forces and provide funding for the police and church. Energy The production of energy is vital to your empire. The energy supply is allocated to different areas like agriculture (to feed to population), nature (to clean up pollution), entertainment (to keep'em happy) etc. Trade Trade support increases chance of public trade. This increases your trade tax income and gives you the opportunity to buy and sell tradeitems. Colony Uninhabitable planets needs CHAP-facilities to grow. Here you can also buy other improvements to your colonies like a university to improve science, better planetary defense systems, soil enrichment, terraforming equipment etc. Sunlist Provides a quick view of your empire with data like GNP, Population, defense systems ao. Budget Show a budget for next year for both the single Solar system and the entire empire. !Ships Ships are used for many things like exploration, colonization, war and trade. Thus how you build the ship is very important. There are 3 windows with ship orders. You should check out the appendix for building your first starship. Window Combat orders All technical data about the ship is displayed here. How much damage the ship can sustain, how long the ship can scan the enemies etc. You also decide the exploration orders and the wartime orders here. Trade orders Trade can be a major part of your empires income. This window allows you to buy and sell items produce by the population. Trade routes Government traderoutes is a sources of great income. It is hard to establish, but when you get this going, you can make this more than 40% of your GNP. @1 !Science Science are very important. Almost everything in this game relies on you developing the nessecary equipment. Science are divided into 9 categories, Beam weapons, Bombs, Missile weapons, Ground attack, Hull improvements, Construction, Ecology, Computers and Energy. You develope science by allocating energy to science on your planets. The more hours you allocate, the better the chance of new science being developed. When you have allocation energy, you can use the science window to adjust the level of development for each science group. !Messages This game would not be much without the multiplayer option. It is the human opponent that makes this game fun. You can write message to your opponents when you get it contact with them. This is done by developing the Communication equipment. The range of this equipment determines if an opponent is within range and establishes a link if possible. Use the messages option to diplomatically kill your enemies. The more you write and read, the more fun the game. Writing universal messages pays you 5000 per turn. [2. GAME SETUP] !System requirements Computer CPU Intel 80286 or compatible (80386 or better recommended) Video VGA 640x480 in 16 colors. RAM 4Mb Mouse You need a mouse, but many hotkeys exists. Harddisk 2Mb for the game + 1,5 Mb each hosted game. There are no music or special effects in this the first version, so sound cards are irrelevant. In future versions the Sound Blaster 16 standard will be used. !Windows and OS/2 Pollux is fully Windows and OS/2 compatible. There should not be any problems at all. Pollux is a DOS program, but can run under Windows using the included .PIF file. Also included is a Windows icon, but no OS/2 icon. To use the extra RAM needed, Pollux comes with a DPMI-driver, but this can be deleted if run under windows or OS/2. !Registration This is not a free program (buhuuu). By registering the game, you allow me to continue the development of Pollux, I hope you want that !?! Registered players can play in the same game as unregistered players, but the registered players will have a big advantage developing technology. Unregistered users cannot develop science beyond level 3. If players register Pollux, they can switch to the registered version within a game. If unauthorized copies of Pollux are made, the player will be corrected in the game and you DONT want that ! !Playing on a standalone computer The game has a fully integrated multiplayer interface. From the main screen you select and play your turns. When all players have played their turn, you select the Host pushbutton on the main screen, and a few minutes after, you can start the next round. !Network playing Pollux is not an actiongame, and thus does not support network gaming via IPX or alike. Pollux CAN be played on a network though. You will need to make the Pollux directory available to all users. All players start Pollux and select the game directory. Then you play your turns and one of the players select the Host-pushbutton, and the next turn should be ready soon. You could also make a host-session to automatically host the game using the POLLUX /HOST <directory> parameters. !BBS or Internet Pollux was made for this kind of gaming. This is the todo list. 1) The host creates the game. 2) The host packs the player files and distribute them (Playerx.GUE, MsgINx.DAT and Warx.LOG). 3) The player copies them to a game directory and plays his turn 4) The player then packs the game (the Playerx.GUE and Msgoutx.DAT files) and returns them to the host. 5) The host, host's the game and distributes the player files and so forth.. If the player misses a turn, not too much damage is done. All the old commands from the last turn is remembered and carried out. All planetary settings are also still calculated. In version 1.0 you only lose your messages. !The Game window The Game window allows you to choose the game you want to play, and the playerfiles you have access to just by pressing the pushbuttons. The Game window has several buttons : Player buttons (with logo) Enters the player turn in the current game. You can also see 2 dates. The first is the host date (HST file) the second is the player turn date (GUE file). Quit Quits Pollux and returns to DOS. Create New Game To get started, you need to create a host. Host game Calculates playerscommands and generates new turn files to distribute to the players. Listbox Select the game you want to play here. This will alter the player buttons according to the players in the selected game. Game Setup Technical information about the game. ? Help menu appears. View hulls View hull types available. !Creating new game To get started with a game, you need to create a host. The Create New Game pushbutton helps you do that. Here you can decide how many human players you want in the game, you decide how much distance there should be to the other races and some scenariodata can also be chosen. You should also enter the name of the game, which is actually the directory in which the game will be put. The host only consists of 1 file, the POLLUX.GAM file. When you accept the window by pressing the OK-button, Pollux generates the game, the planets, the races, events, ships etc., and puts them in the POLLUX.GAM file. Be sure to always take a backup of this fie. Something players do not want, is for their 150 turn game to be erased by accident. Dont ask me how I know... !Choosing scenarios In the Choose scenarios listbox, you can choose between predefined scenarios. When you choose, the numbers on the right will change. One Alliance survives Option reserved for later version Galaxy explored One way to win is to explore the galaxies. This is how much you need to explore, to win. Last year is Predefine when the game is gonna stop. This is the timebomb equally for all players. The best position after this, wins the game. Under Start conditions, you define how much each player has when he starts to play the first turn. Number of planets at start This is actually one home world and several developed colonies. Do not choose more than 60 planets per player. 1st player start planets To make the 'All versus the Empire' scenario this option can give the 1st player a different number of planets to start with. Number of start ships This will all be small level 1 ships with a single level 1 warship among. 1st player start ships The 1st player can have a different number of start ships. Science event % How many planets should be with lost civilizations. This is not an actual number but only a percentage. Oracles How many oracles should there be. Oracles are planets that develop science at double speed. 1st player is Borgh The legend of the Borgh. The Borghs starts on a very distant Solar system and must conquer the world from all other races. !Hosting a game After players have finished playing their game turn, it is time to host the game (calculated what they have done). This is done by selecting the game in the game listbox, and press the Host pushbutton. This will take approx. 1-3 minutes to calculate depending on the progress of the game and speed of your computer... Before you host a game, be sure that all players have delivered their files and that they are in the right directory. The player will give you up to 2 files (Playerx.GUE and MsgOutx.DAT) and you should give the player the Playerx.HST, MsgInx.DAT and the Warx.LOG files in return after you have hosted the game. There are a few error messages that can occur. Player receives as message. Host receives in HSTERROR.LOG Last turnfile was an old turn. Old turn <x> file from player <y> Last turn, your file was missing Missing player <x>∩s turn ! Missed y turns and could not be calculated. You are dead and gone from this game, sorry ! !Game setup Game setup is the window that gives information of memory, the registration number and the current game. Players can also join a game even after the first turns. The computer will calculate the number of ships, science and planets the new player will get, and place the new player a little off the main battlegrounds. When you have edited the host, you should save it. [3. GAME INTERFACE] You will need a mouse, not all commands are available through keyboard. Most of the function you can see on the screen, can be pointed out with the mouse and selected using the mousebuttons There are a lot of hotkeys available. Most of them will be listed in the description of the windows, but here are some generel hotkeys. TAB Select next object. SHIFT TAB Select previous object. SPACEBAR Activate selected object. !Menus The menus are only available during gameplay. They are a list of all the available commands when playing your turn. They can be selected using the mouse or by pressing the ALT + first letter. Menus cannot be reached when in a dialogbox. You actually dont need the menus to play, all you need is the feature icons. !Feature Icons The featureicons are the smoothest way to get from one window to another. Not all windows have an icon though, like the view hull types window, here you should use the menus. If you point at a featureicon with your mouse, you will get a help description of what the featureicon does, in the buttom of the screen. This message will vanish when you point at another object. !Info-line The infoline provides information about the game during gameplay. There are 6 active infos. 1 Name of current playing race. 2 Name of current ship. 3 Name of current planet or position. 4 Golden Planets, the currency. 5 Name of current game. 6 Current year. This is actually 2000 + number of current turn. [4. MAIN GAME] !Main window The Main window has 3 modes. The Sunmode (press Sunkey), the shipmode (press shipicon) and the Starviewer mode (press the star-button). The starmap displays stars as very small lightgray circles, ships as bigger circles with the races color inside. There are 4 different colors of the sunnames. Green Planets you have not yet reached or scanned. Red Planets you have scanned but are currently not occupied. LightCyan Planets owned by another race. Yellow Planets owned by you. LIST or PageUp Displays a list of available empireships and checkboxes for choices of Stardust on/off, Ratings view, Display System names and Update ship. Ratings colorscheme is: Blue Biomism Green Waterfuel Cyan Fossil fuel Red Atomic fuel Orange Dilithium fuel Brown Xenic LightGray Iron DarkGray Supplies + and - Zoom in or out on the starmap. When you zoom right, you will get information about the starnames and galaxynames. !The Sunmode Displays information about the current Solar system. You can select to view another Solar system or search for the nearest ship and goto shipmode. RIGHT MOUSEBUTTON Selects nearest Solar system and displays information. LEFT MOUSEBUTTON Selects nearest ship and goes to shipmode. PageDn Selects next sun and displays information about it. !The Shipmode Displays information about the current ship. You can select to view another ship or give the current ship orders to move to selected star/position. The information about the ship is pretty selfexplaining, but I will just mention the Warp speed. It is measure in Warps in the bar, but the number displayed is the actual lightyears that will be flown. The number in () after warp, is how much fuel will be spent on the journey. Cargo room is display just above the Warpspeed in (). Each 10Mt rawmaterials uses 2 spaceunits. RIGHT MOUSEBUTTON Selects nearest ship and displays information. LEFT MOUSEBUTTON Sets waypoint for current ship. This can be either a planet, intercepting a ship or a position in deep space. Remember here to set the Warp speed too. PageDn Selects next ship without orders. Ctrl PageDn Look at the next ship with or without orders. !Starmode The Starmode feature is a means to scroll around on the starmap. It keeps the current settings of the LIST-checkboxes and zoom, so if it is too slow, try to remove the sunnames, ratings and/or stardust option. You cannot do anything while in the starmode except moving the mouse around. You exit by pressing the right mousebutton or the ESC key. Perhaps I should mention the function keys too. F2 Save current game without exiting. F3 Displays available rawmaterials in each solar system. The bars shown for each planet is Biomism Blue Water Green Fossil fuel Cyan Atomic fuel Red Dilithium Orange Xenic Brown Iron LightGray Supplies DarkGray F4 Tradeitem prices for each solar system. Bar below the mid, is prices below the average price. Steel/Mining Blue Textiles Green Chemicals Cyan Food Red Construction Orange Finance Brown Media LightGray Electronics DarkGray Tourism LightBlue Artifacts LightGreen F5 Full screen view. Press F5 or escape to get back to normal. F6 Your own deep space scanner ranges Dark blue Battlescanner range Dark red Deep space scanner range F7 Your enemies deep space scanners, colors as above. F8 Warpcircles F9 Full screen orbital view. View ships at current location. F10 Save game and exit. [Ship orders] The Combat orders window is divided into 3 windows. The Ship orders, the Trade orders and the Trade routes. !Combat orders - Hotkey CTRL-S This screen show a lot of information about the ship and the equipment it has been built with. Class The starship class. This regulates what can be installed on the ship. See Weapon, Cargo and Science. M.W.H. Millions of Work Hours. How many hours is needed before the ship is ready to fly. This can be increased by modifications, Bachyon sweeps and Damage repairs. Space How much free space is left for tradeitems, rawmaterials and fuel. This can be improved by the Hull size science. Crew How much crew is currently employed on the ship. If a ship during a battle loses all crew before it is destroyed, it is captured by the enemy. Crew will automatically be updated when new equipment is bought, or when the ship has been damaged and returns to an owned planet. Age The age problem is increasingly important. You can do only one thing with a ship too old, selfdestruction. The more wornout the ship becomes, the more repairproblems will arise. A ship should be able to withstand about 100 years. Bachyon When travelling with Warp speed, the hull becomes radiated with bachyon. High Bachyon radiation can kill crew, so you should sweep this as often as you can. This is not done here but on the Build starship window, this is merely info. Damage This displays the amount of damage on the ship, see under Armor for how much damage the ship can sustain. Damage is also repair on the Build starship window. Hull weight The mass of the ship without fuel, rawmaterials or trade- items. This influences the selfdestruct order, the higher the hull mass, the higher the explotion effect. Also the amount of fuel used is influenced by the Hull weight. Weapon, These 3 categories are the limits of the starship Cargo, construction. Non of these areas can be exceeded if the Science ship shall be able to fly. The blue boxes displays information about what the equipment can provide. This is a kind of summary with the most important information deducted from the brown listbox below to the right. @2 !Exploring orders Move to The ship moves to the specified waypoint and activates the wartime orders if countered. Explore The ship moves to the specified waypoint and activates the wartime orders, but if anything new and unexplored is near the ship, this will be explored first. This is a kind of automatic exploration ability that can be used during turns where a player cannot play his/her turn. Orbit planet Ship orbits planet and uses wartime orders if attacked. Trade Ship sends messages wanting trade and is not attacked by the opponent. If it is a planet, you will have to be able to pay the trade access code. Colonize ship Arriving at an unexplored planet, this command will use the ships rawmaterials to build a new colony. This colony includes CHAPs if nessacary, the conversion of rawmaterials and selling computerequipment and thereby raising cash. All rawmaterials onboard the ship will be unloaded to the planet. Tractor When ships run out of fuel, a starbase needs relocation, or an enemyship needs transportation, the ships tractor beams are used. The ship or ships that shall carry out the tractoring must have the command Tractor and the target ship (the one being towed) must have the command Enter. Enter When you need a ship tractored someplace, you use the Enter command to specify which ship is being tractored. The Enter command is also used when dealing with Stargates and Wormholes. Then this command means that the ship should try and enter. Transmute When you eventually develope the transmuter device, this command will generate rawmaterials based on supplies. You will need to enter a specific code as well, in the Transmuter entryfield. The codes are.: Code Effect 1 1 Biomism for 1 supply 2 1 Waterfuel for 3 supplies 3 1 Fossilfuel for 2 supplies 4 1 Atomic fuel for 3 supplies 5 1 Dilithium for 5 supplies 6 1 Xenic for 8 supplies 7 1 Iron for 5 supplies 8 Destruction of all supplies onboard the ship. New Owner Sometimes during diplomacy, you must pay for peace. The New Owner command provides means to hand over a ship to an opponent. The ship to be handed over, must have the New Owner command, and an opponent ship on the same location will take over. If there is a starbase on the location, the equipment used on the ship will be learned by the other race ie. means to transfer science. Selfdestruct When the enemy comes to close, it can sometimes payoff to selfdestruct your ship. The selfdestruction sequence is very destructive, and ships, starbases and planets on the same location will surely be heavily damaged if not destroyed. It is a kind of kamikaze attack. Cloak Moves to specified waypoint, but are invisible during flight. You must uncloak (choose another command) to attack opponents. This can be countered by the Detect Light distortion or Detect Cloak depending on which equipment has been used to make the invisibility. Cloaking costs 1 unit of fuel each round. !Wartime orders Eliminate threat Attacks and try to destroy everything in its way. Invade planet Use this command to attack and set down troops on the planet. This command will primarily try to get close enough to beam down forces. Flee when bad odds If the ship loses >50% of the total hit points during an attack, it will try to escape. Always flee If possible, the ship will try to escape any attacks. This can be countered by initiative thus tractor beams, impulse drives and battlecomputers have an influence here. Patrol route This is a kind of Patriot missile command. The ship orbits a planet or stays on a position, until an intruder enters battlerange. At this time, the ship goes after the intruder using an intercept order, to kill it. Intercept The Intercept orders are given if you want to meet somebody in deep space or track someone down. You must set your waypoint to the location of the intruder you want to intercept. You can click more than once on the same location to change ship to intercept. !Trade orders Industrial waste, one of the hazards of this game, can be loaded onboard ships and dumped in deep space, or in orbit of an enemy planet, even though the last choice is a bit to the evil side. You load and unload industrial waste here. See also Planet Energy and Planet Colony for further information. A good advice is to take control of the industrial waste before it takes control over you. The purpose of Ground forces are either to defend your own planet or to conquer another opponent planet. To transport them to this other planet, you load them onboard a ship and fly to the planet. Here you must use the Invade Planet order. When you train new ground forces (on Planet Politics) you will not get these troops right away, although they are visible in this window. It takes a year/one turn to train ground forces. You also get a list of the weaponry your ground forces will use. This is not something you can choose directly. Ground forces will always use the newest and best suited weaponry. To the right you get information about the planets trading politics. Who owns the planet, wether there is an administration to pay the trade access code to, wether the trade access code is known, or you have to buy it, how much the trade access code is and how much tax must be paid. See the Planet Trade and the Planet Colony windows to control these values. Below is listed the available tradeitems. The ship column is how much you have on your ship, and the starbase or planet column is how much is available for you to buy. The price listed under ship is the last price the ship encountered. The planet price is how much you must pay for each item. To buy an item you must have room enough on your ship (See Ship mode). If you click on the item below the ship, you sell that item for the planet price. If you click on the items below the starbase or planet column, you attempt to buy that item. You should look for planets with starbases on. This gives you a bonus of 10% of the price. Further more, enemy planets gives you a bonus of 20% of the price. !Trade routes Government trade routes is one of the most important ways to earn money. To establish a government trade route, you need to explore an enemy solar system, and buy trade access to it. This window also gives you information about the exact price of each individual tradeitem on the solar systems you have explored. You should however try using the F4-key on the main starmap, its easier... !Battle reports The battles of Pollux are a complex series of information. Most ships has its own way of conducting the battle according to the weapons and equipment installed on them. This battle report shows a detailed text description of each battle. @3 [Solar system orders] The window 'Planet' is divided into 7 subwindows, the Solar system display, Politics, Energy, Trade, Colony, Sunlist and the Budget windows. !Planet Solar system - Mining This window provides a visual display of the planetary system. You can click on each sun, planet and moon to get further information about them. Planets and moons can be mined if you need rawmaterials. How good the survey looks depends on the sciencelevel of Mining Equipment. There are different types of planets giving different results. Below is shown a factorpoint of each planet type. Factor 5 is greater than factor 1. Biom. Water Foss. Atom. Xenic Iron Moon type 1% Terran type 10% 15-75% 25% 25% 5% 10% Red Mars type 80% Green Uranus type 75% 5% Blue Neptune type 70% 8% Yellow Saturn type 5% 10% Brown type 5% These numbers are automatically calculated in the Mining window (press the Mine button). In the Mine window, you decide if you want to mine the planet. A calculated price for transportation and initial cost is displayed. You can only mine one planet or moon for each planet in the Solar system. There are also different types of solar systems. You can encounter single star, double star, triple star and quadouble star systems. The suntypes are also different according to the evolutionary step.: Maximum planets in system Very young sun with surrounding gas clouds 2 Very young sun with starting planets 3 Young yellow sun 5 Yellow sun 9 Orange sun 8 Large orange sun 7 Very large dark red sun 5 Giant orange sun 3 Giant red sun 3 Small white dwarf sun 2 Small black rock dwarf sun 2 Unknown 2 (class not determined) Protostar/Thin gas cloud 2 Pulsar 2 Sun being born 2 Colliding gascloud 2 Exploded red giant 2 Optical view of small galaxy 2 (effect not known) Black hole 2 (dangerous!) When determining the climate of a Solar system, it is actually the main planet that are the subject. This also applies to wether a Solar system is inhabitable or not. Climate are as follows..: Climate values (as listed under Race specifics) Inferno 0 - 47 Tundra 48 - 69 Jungle 70 - 85 Steppe 86 - 97 Terran 98 - 104 Arid 105 - 110 Barren 111 - 120 Rocky 121 - 135 Desert 136 - 160 Dead 161 - 200 !Planet Politics !Religion Inhabitation and Religious groups has no meaning in this version, it has only been included to give the game life. !Radiation Radiation is a very important factor. To high a radiation could mean that the planet is uninhabitable and that many people will die each year. There are 3 ways to counter this. At low sciencelevels, you can only use the Planet Energy Medicine to keep people from dying. You could also invent the moon base. This helps reducing the effects of the radiation, but costs for each planet. When you reach higher levels of science, you will have the opportunity to develop Radiation control. You put radiation control on ships to reduce the solar systems natural radiation levels. !Pollution Pollution is likewise important. You counter pollution in many ways. You can allocate energy to Nature. This will clean up the nature and get rid of the pollution. You can also load the pollution on board a ship and dump it in deep space or on a nabour planet. You could also buy industrial waste equipment and use a ship or a starbase to destroy the pollution. The following influences pollution.: - Planet trade - Nature (Planet energy allocation) - Industrial waste level (Planet Colony) Each tradeitem pollutes differently, this is how.: Pollution Steel / Mining +5 Textiles +3 Chemicals +5 Food +1 Construction +1 Finance 0 Media 0 Electronics +1 Tourism +1 Transportation +3 !Patriotism Patriotism is how loyal the population is to you. If the patriotism is too low, the planet may be stricken with violent demonstrations or rebel forces. The following influences patriotism.: - Entertainment on planet. - Planetary tax. - Waste - Radiation - Church influence. !Crime Crime is fatal for your income. The Crime percentage is directly stolen from your GNP, and could zero your income. You should keep your crime as low as possible, about 3-7% seems fair. Crime is influenced by the following : - Policing - Church influence - Planet Trade - Population density - Patriotism !Population growth All production of rawmaterials and spaceships comes from the population thus population growth is very important. Expansion of your empire is one way of getting more population, but you should also consider the means to make your current empire grow, both colonies and your homeworld. Colonies should typically be a couple of hundred thousands inhabitants. There are drawbacks of to much population, but you can invent yourself out of these problems. The drawbacks are the population density, which influences crime, and pollution which is influenced by trade and thereby population density. The following influences population growth.: - Bonus for inhabitable planets - Rawreserves (perspects of business), the more the better - Planet trade - Agriculture allocation (Planet energy) - Population density - Science Ecoenhancer - Science Cloning - Patriotism - Bonus for new encountered planets - Planet tax - Race dependent growth - very important. @4 !Is there a wormhole ? Above the policing and church influence, you will find information about special events of the Solar system. This includes wormholes, rifts, starbases, stargates, The Kuw, dyson spheres, quasars and other... !Policing To counter the growing crime, you should assign percentages of your GNP. See also Crime above. The first number is the percentage of your GNP that you allocate for this purpose. The second number is how much this costs you. !Church influence Cooperation with the church can help influencing crime and patriotism. See Crime and Patriotism above. The first number is the % of your GNP that you allocate for this. The second number is how much it actually costs you. !Tax - Planet income tax This tax is the income tax of the businesses and the population. This is the way to make money. You must allocate Trade though. It is businesses that gets your wheels running. Tax influences population growth and patriotism, so you must be carefull not to set the tax too high. There is a circlelight to the left of the tax buttons. This indicates if your taxing influences your patriotism negatively. It can be yellow for up to -4% influence and red for above -4% influence. The first number is the tax percentage, the second number is how much you actually earns. !Weaponry - Defense and Ground forces To protect your Solar systems from infidels, conquerers and the like, you can buy defense systems, which is actually missiles of the best type available. The cost of these depends on what technology you have developed. You can only buy the state of the art defense post in this the first version of Pollux. Defense systems are bought and does not need repair. For each 20 missiles you have, you get another shot at the enemy. Conquerers will often bring ground forces with them to attempt to conquer your world. To counter this problem, You must train some ground forces yourself. The prices of these depends of the technology you have developed. Ground forces has to be paid each round, so you should carefully examine where and how many ground forces you want. Training of ground forces takes one year, and only then they will be available to you as your own conquering force. The first number is the number of defense posts and ground forces you have, the second number is the cost of 1 defense post or ground force. Below this is listed the currently best weapons, the weapons that will be used by your defense posts and troops. The ground force weapons are a little special here. You can have up to 4 weapons and armors listed. These weapons can cooperate and are all used. This is an attack weapon, an armor, a personal deflector and a battle suit. !Planet damage Here is listed how much damage the defense posts can sustain before they are put out of business, note: not nessecarily destroyed. The hit points of the planet is determined by the sciencelevel in hull damage. The first number is how much damage the defense post currently has, the second number is the maximum number of hit points. When defense posts are damaged, all construction points spend are used to repair them. This means you cannot build any starships. When you have sufficient levels in construction, you can build planetary shields that can help you shoot down incoming missiles. Planetary hit points are calculated as hp=hulldamage * 5 + no. of missiles. @5 !Planet Energy The Planet Energy window is perhaps the most important window of them all. The window has 3 parts, below is the energy production and the energy allocation and above the rawmaterial production. !Energy supply You need to produce energy to be able to do anything with your planet. To produce energy, you must decide what kind of production you want. You can produce energy from.: Energy source Efficiency at start Uses rawmaterial Pollutes Solar and wind energy 50% None /30 Bio energy 70% Biomism /10 Fossil fuel 75% Fossil fuel /7 Atomic fuel 80% Atomic fuel /3 Later in the game... Hydrogen 100% Water /12 Dilithium 150% Dilithium /1 Duridium 250% Xenic /2 The first number listed in the window is the efficiency, the second number is the result for each source. Pollution is calculated as the workunits result divided by the listed number. Below is listed 2 numbers. The Workforce is how much manpower you have to produce the energy with, the workunits is their results. The workunits can be allocated on the areas to the right. !Energy allocation To the right are listed the areas where you can allocate the energy you have produced (workunits). Agriculture Needed for population growth and biomism production. Nature Biomism growth and destruction of industrial waste. Mining Production of rawmaterials from the rawreserves. This can be temporarily improved by putting mining equipment on orbiting ships. Good for mining small colonies. Science Development of new weapons and equipment. Medicine Medicine deals with 3 major problems. The planets pollution, radiation and the overpopulation. Be sure to have a good health level. On the sunlist you can see how good you are performing. 100 means that 100% dies. Starship constr Building of starbases and ships and repairing planet defense posts. Entertainment Keep the population patriotism high. Manufacturing Manufacturing of supplies Trade Better chances for new businesses gives better income. !Rawreserves production There are 2 steps in getting rawmaterials that you can use. First you must mine a planet with the desired rawmaterials. This increases the rawreserves. Secondly you must produce what you want. This decreases rawreserves again, but increases your current stock. Only rawmaterials in stock can be used. If there is any biomism in rawreserves, this will grow. If you do not have any biomism in rawreserves, you could put soil enrichment equipment on a ship and unload biomism from another world. This will then go directly to the rawreserves instead of the stock as normal. This also applies to water. Biomism growth must meet specific conditions. You will need to allocate some nature, buy the soil enrichment improvement on the planet and to further increase the growth, develop ecoenhancer. Water growth is based on other conditions. You will need at least 1000 of water, the planet must be a planet with natural water, and you need soil enrichment installed on the planet. Water will not appear beyond the natural size of the planet. Dilithium is produced on the basis of water, atomic fuel or fossil fuel, selected in that order. !Trade support Trade is an important way to increase your income. You buy and sell tradeitems on your own and your nabour Solar systems. To be able to buy tradeitems, there must be an overproduction of these. This is not always the case, but you can help this happen by making your government support each tradearea. This costs 500 per step of support and will eventually increase the number of tradeitems available. When other players want to trade with you, you can decide that they should pay a trade access cost (why shouldn't you?). You can also decide how much trade tax they should pay to you. The listbox shows who has trade access code to your planet, and you can choose to change this if you want. The trade access code also provides means to decide who the planet will attack. !Colony There are basically 2 types of Solar systems. The ones that are inhabitable and the ones that are not. If a planet is inhabitable, growth of the population is limited by the size of the main planet. Uninhabitable systems are different. These need life support systems to maintain life, and you have to buy this equipment here. Life support for 1000 people costs 1 iron and 10 supplies. The AUTOChap facility is a function to automatically use the specified percentage of iron and supplies available to build CHAPs for. This ensures automatic growth capacity of the Solar system and is always at 100% at start on new colonies. Maximum inhabitation of a colony is teoritically 65mill. There are some improvements you can buy for your Solar system.: These costs 1 iron and 10 supplies: Mass Driver This is nessacary if you want to trade here. Administration This is nessacary if you want to tax the trade. Geological Sattelite Not implemented yet University Improves your science by 10% These costs 10 iron and 100 supplies + a specified amount of money.: Moon base Reduces effect of radiation, and improves maximum inhabitants by using other planets in the system. Planetary shield Decrease opponent tohit chance in a fight, and provides energy absorbers for planets. Ring world Massively increases solarenergy efficiency Soil enrichment Improves biomism and water growth. On ships SE will unload biomism and water directly to reserves ie plant the trees.. Industrial waste Destruction of waste (used together with allokation to Nature) Terraforming Improvement of maximum population and temperature, installed on ships, terraforming improves climate. Radiation control Decreases radiation in Solar system. Not all of the above are available from start, you will have to develop each of them along the way. The Mass Driver should only be bought if you want to trade on that planet. Administration if you want to get paid from your opponents trading on the planet. Universities should only be build on large planet (>50000 inhabs). The latter colony improvements (those priced at 100 supplies and 10 iron) can be divided into 2 groups: Moon base, Planetary shields and the Ring World, improves statistics only once. The Moon base reduces the effect of radiation and could thus help you get started on planets with a lot of radiation. Moon bases also provides you with improved maximum inhabitants on a system by using the other planets and moons in the system. Planetary shields greatly improves the planet defenses, reducing the effects of beamweapons and the chance for beams and missile to hit the planet. Do not underestimate these, they are truly nessecary for a complete defence system. The final item in the first group is the Dyson sphere. Perhaps you've read the book about Ring worlds, but for those of you who have not the idea is to build a full band of land around the sun. Such a ring is of course huge. More importantly *all* the inside of the band is turned toward the sun, i.e. there is no night. Furthermore the surface area of such a band is much much greater than of a sphere. This adds up to an astounding improvement in solar power and this is what the dyson sphere improvement is all about. The solar power efficiency is much increased thus bringing efficient pollution-free energy supply in reach. The other items in the expensive colony improvements belongs to the second group. These are Soil Enrichment, Industrial Waste, Terraforming and Radiation Control. When one of these items are bought, they continually improves the living conditions of the planet. Soil Enrichment makes biomism and water regenerate faster, thus enabling you to use more biomism or water without destroying your rawreserves. If there are no rawreserves of either type present, soil enrichment built on ships can be used to dump water and biomism directly into rawreserves, enabling them to grow. Industrial Waste improves the planets ability to destroy waste. Together with the "nature" energy allocation this will help you destroy waste present on the planet or perhaps just lower the energy need to prevent waste accumulation. (If the nature bar is red or the sunlist shows a "+" beside the pollution number waste is accumulated.) Later on in the game Terraforming will be available. When you build terraforming on a planet the temperature of the planet will slowly change for the better. The higher level the quicker the change. When the planet has become inhabitable the terraforming stops changing the temperature and starts improving maximum inhabitants. Terraforming loaded on ships has much the same effect on climate, changing the climate towards inhabitability. When the planet has become inhabitable, nothing further happens. Note that the ship must be set on "orbit planet" in order for this to work. It is recommended to use this on planets close to being inhabitable (check climate and temperature) and on large planets (these will provide space for many inhabitants.) Radiation Control is the last colony improvement in the expensive group. It works alike on planets and ships to slowly reduce radiation level. The higher level of radiation equipment the quicker the change. The equipment on the planet becomes obsolite, when the radiation reaches zero, well unless someone uses bombs or other means to increase the radiation on your planets. Radiation Control is expensive to develop and employ but it is the only way to reduce radiation and make radiated planets usable. !Sunlist The Sunlist is an easy way to select a planet you want to view, but it also contains a summary of information. !Next sun This button selects the next sun in the sunlist and displays the current page of information about this Solar system. !Budget This window shows a budget of both the current Solar system and the whole empire. @6 !Starbase and ship construction Starbase and ship construction are similar to each other. A starbase is merely a ship with no engines and triple the hull size. Before you activate this window, be sure to activate the starbase or ship that is going to initialize the building of your new starbase or ship ! The window is divided into 2 sections, an upper section and a lower section. The upper section is similar to that of the Ship order window, but there are a few new features. At the upperleft corner of the window, you will see the current selected starbase or ship and the current planet that provides the manpower. You cannot build ships when the initializing ship is not in orbit at start. Bachyon radiation can be controlled here. Pressing the Sweep button, you perform a Bachyon sweep on the ship and all bachyon will disappear. This becomes more and more needed when you have travelled the stars for a while. A Bachyon radiation of above 500 is considered very dangerous. A Bachyon sweep takes 50 MWH to perform. The ship cannot move during a Bachyon sweep. Damage can be repaired by pressing the Repair-button (surprise!). All damage will be repaired. Each damage point represents 1 MWH. A ship cannot move during reparations. The amount of energy and rawmaterials are also listed. The first column shows how much you are using right now to build the ship, and the second how much is available. The Weapon, Cargo and Science percentages are very important when you build a ship. They cannot be exceeded or the production will be halted. If the weapon limit is 40%, you can have up to 40% weapons on board. Exceeding this limit will halt the production. !The Docks When you press the Docks button, you will see up to 7 of your ships in orbit. These can be selected. If you click one time on your mousebutton, you will change the upper sections information. Clicking 2 times will select the ship and change to the Improve page. @7 !Building a new ship Pressing the New hull, initializes building of a new ship. The lower section changes to a display of the available hulltypes. Here you must select the desired hull type and hull size, end this by pressing the Build hull button. Now your back in the Improve window, where you can select either the New weapon-button or the New science-button to select the equipment you want on your ship. Now the lower section changes to a list of the available weapons or equipment, and you can select these and the science level of each equipment before you press the Accept-button. When you have ordered both the weapons and equipment you want, you are finished and the ship will be build. In short this is.: 1 Choose the initializing ship 2 Choose the build starbase or the build ship window 3 Choose the New hull button 4 Choose the hull type AND the hull size you want (and can effort) 5 Choose the Build hull-button 6 Choose the New weapon or New science button 7 Select in the listbox the equipment you want to install AND then select the level of the equipment. 8 When you have selected all the equipment you want, press the Accept-button. Now you have ordered the ship. 9 In the Planet Energy window you should assign enough construction hours to build all your ships. Easiest way is to click the checkbox to the right of the Ship constr. Building a new ship influences a few variables.: MWH Millions of work hours. You would be wise to adjust the Planet Energy allocation Ship Construction to meet the demands of MWH. Ship construction refers directly to the number of MWHs needed for the construction of the ship. Having a very large allocation on the planet, gives you the oppurtunity to build more than 1 ship. Space Shows how much space is available after you have installed the new equipment. You must leave room for fuel and perhaps tradeitems. Crew Crew is needed during battle. If a ship loses all its crew, the ship is conquered by the enemy. Ship crew is automatically updated when new equipment is bought. Hull weight The heavier the ship, the more fuel it needs to fly. When you are choosing the equipment, there is a button called 'Scrap equipm'. This allows you to scrap old equipment and make room for new better ones, ie scrap atomic engines when new Dilithium engines are developed. The 'Scrap ship' button is used when you regret that you did build this new big ugly battleship. Scrap ship can only be used on new ships. If you want to get rid of an old ship, use either the Selfdestruction order or the Colonize order (see Ship orders). Rawmaterial costs Building starships and starbases costs rawmaterials as well as money. This list tells you how much.: Weapons 1 Supply each level (level 1 = 1, level 2 = 1 + 2) 3 Xenics 1 Dilithium per level (level 1 = 1, level 2 = 2) 1 Iron per level Equipment 1 Supply each level 2 Iron per level 1 Dilithium per level [Overall status] The overall status window is divided into 6 pages, the status, the graph, the combat and the scorelists. Your government keeps track of what happens in the empire. This list of demographic information is shown in comparison to your opponents. It is a list of your civilizations status in a number of areas and the score accordingly. Approval rate The % of the people that will vote personally for you next election. Population The number of people in your empire. GNP The total income generated by your empire. Active trade The total number of items for sale in your empire. Empire size The total number of planets that are under your control. Science research The total number of sciencepoints in your empire. Health level A relative number based on how much you have allocated to fight disease. Pollution The total waste Mt in your empire. Family size A relative number that represents the growth of your empire. This is the number of children each family has. Military service This is a number that represents the strengh of your fleet and ground forces. Productivity A relative number that represents the available workunits per energyunit. All these numbers except Pollution should be as high as possible. Pollution is a bad thing and should be zero ! !Graph The second page shows a graph of the evolution of your empire. The graph shows the values for number of ships, number of planets, sciencepoints, inhabitants and total income. !Combat strengh The third page shows combat strengh, number of planets and ships and the relation to your nabour. The combat strengh is derived from the actual strengh of your navy and is very important. !Scorelist The fourth page shows the score ratings for all players. You can only see the name of the players you have contact with. !Empire status Here you can see your growth potential. You can see how many inhabitable planets you have etc. !Advisor Your advisors will give you a few good advices along the way. They can be trusted, but it is up to you to decide what is important and what is not important. There can easily be more than one page of advice. [Science] Science is very important in this game, and you should choose carefully among the scienceareas to be the one who has the best overall sciencelevels. (you dont want to use a laser against a supernova missile). There are 9 science fields to research in. You research in all 9 at the same time. This is.: Beam weapon Weapons based on energy or energy drains. Some beam weapons halves enemy shields and others kills ship crew in an attempt to conquer the enemyship. Beam weapons are medium range weapons. Bombs Bombs are either destruction or chemical weapons. Bombs are close range weapons. Missiles Missileweapons are long range weapons, and there are several types. Some missiles do fire damage which can be countered by fire extinguishing, some missiletypes spreads out and increases their potential hit chance and the fighter bay carries 5 fighters. Ground attack To conquer another players worlds, you must use ground forces. Ground attack weapons varies in use. Most weapons does normal damage, but the biosphere gun always kills an enemy troop unless countered by a battle suit. You can develop different types of armor, and both the personal deflector and the battle suit can and will be worn together with the normal armor. Hull Maybe the most important science group. This contains all the improvements available for ship hulls, including hull damage, hull size, tractor beams, shields, engines and other. Construction Covers a broad spectre of constructions from mining equipment to ring worlds. Most important is perhaps the robotic control that enhances the productions of the planets. Ecology It is the population that builds and develops starships, so you would want to give them as good conditions as possible, for them to grow. Ecological tools like terraforming, medicine, radiation control and cloning can be found here. Computers Computers provides information. Without the deep space scanner you are blind, without the communication equipm. you cannot get in contact with your opponents and without the battlescanners you do not know what weapons your enemies are using. You can also use computers to make light distortion equipment, this way you become invisible. Energy The population produces energy for the jobs they perform, ie developing science, building starships aso. This production of energy can and should be enhanced. The first screen you will see when starting a new game has 2 red boxes and 2 blue ones. The red ones shows the science you are developing and the blue ones shows the sciencelevel you already have gain, and in the blue listbox you should choose what new field you want to research. When you click on the listboxes, they changes the contents of the 2 lower windows. They show what the selected area or equipment is all about. When you start, you should select all 9 areas before clicking on the OK-button. You select by clicking on the red listbox first, and the blue one after that, on the areas you like. The red listbox will show if it has not been chosen yet. If you just click on the OK-button you select the old settings again and the research will be carried on in that field. !Science research The science window gives you the opportunity to choose how much you will research in each of the 9 areas. This is done in relative percentages using the scroll bars. The black bars are the percentages. The small yellow bar is how far you have come in the development and the red one if you will have discovered the science next turn. The buttons to the right is used to select what information you want in the big black window. Press hull and you get all the available hull technologies shown. There are 2 colors in the black box. White is the technologies you have discovered and produced. The Red color is the science you know can be done, but not yet have developed. The little yellow R shows which field you are currently developing. You can select another field among the shown if you want. Each level of science need a greater and greater amount of sciencepoints to reach. Below is a list of the first few levels. Level Needed sciencepoints 1 25 2 125 3 250 4 425 5 650 6 925 7 1250 8 1625 9 2050 10 2525 11 3050 12 3625 13 4250 14 4925 15 5650 16 6425 17 7250 18 8125 19 9050 20 10025 When you look at the description of the different sciences, you should notice the science niveau each item is on. In the first rounds of game play, you only have a very limited number of sciences available. This is determined by the science niveau. Your science niveau is shown in the bottom of the window. There are 2 things you should do to gain more science niveaus. First, you must have 1 item with a level equal or greater than the science niveau you want to achieve. Secondly you must have a generel science level in the other items in the science group that matches the following rules.. Weapons All levels in the group divided by 3 equals science niveau. Equipment All levels in the group divided by 4 equals science niveau. It is possible to exchange science with other players. This must be done by equipping your ship with the desired science, and then fly it to your opponents nearest starbase and set the orders to New Owner. This will give your allied all the sciencelevels on the ship. [Embassy] This window show you a list of the races you have contact with. You can see how your relation is towards them, and how they look upon you. There are 5 steps on the relationbar. Relation 1% 25% 50% 75% 100% War Yes Yes No No No Government trade 2% 50% 100% 150% 200% Build ship No No No Yes Yes Improve ship No No No No Yes Load allied ground forces No No No No Yes Hire ship crew No No No No Yes Ship to ship transfer No No No No Yes 100% relation does not mean allied. It is not yet possible to be allied to anyone in Pollux. It will come in a later version. Battle can be avoided if you set your mission to trade and pay for trade access. Use this carefully, remember your opponent can see how you are towards him, and the wrong signal could lead to war. [Race treaty] Not implemented yet. [Government] Not implemented yet. @8 [Messages] This game would not be much without the multiplayer option. It is the human opponent that makes this game fun. You can write message to your opponents when you get it contact with them. This is done by developing the Communication equipment. The range of this equipment determines if an opponent is within range and establishes a link if possible. Use the messages option to diplomatically kill your enemies. The more you write and read, the more fun the game. Use the UNI button to put an add in the global Universal Newspaper. This will pay you GP5000 per turn. To create a new message: 1 Press NEW button 2 Select the races you want to communicate with. 3 Select the editorfield, and write your letter. First line will be the subject (thats why it is written in blue) 4 Press the SEND button and the letter will be off. You can rewrite the letter if you use the Output-file and send the message again, remember to delete the old one. Messages can be more than 1 page long (3 I think..) [Race specifics] It is very important to know what your race is capable of. The margins counts, and races have special abilities that can alter the fights. The special abilities are.: Growth How fast the population grow. The faster the better, a value of 3-4 is normal, but a single race, the Slaedi, is reproducing very fast with a factor 8. Low values should be countered by developing ecology science. Body Measurement of the body-strengh of the race. This is used when fighting battles on the planets. Normally this is zero, but some races are very strong and get bonusses like the Robotics with +25. This should be countered by developing better ground attack weapons. Magic A few race has magic abilities. This is used for ground battles and is calculated as a bonus on the damage done. Magic resist. Only a few races has magic resistance. This is to counter the races with the magic abilities, see above. Min and max To avoid building CHAP (life support) systems, the temp. Solar system must be inhabitable. This means that the temps. of the main planet in the Solar system must be within these race ranges. Most common values are 20-70 degrees celcius. Min and max. To avoid building CHAP (life support) systems, the climate Solar system must be inhabitable. This means that the climate of the main planet in the Solar system must be within these race ranges. A full list of the climate descriptions is given under Planet Solar system. Most common values are 30-70. Health This has something to do with the population growth. If you have a high value here, you can better withstand harsh radiation and pollution problems. Zero is normal. Trade A lot of your income during the game, is based upon the level of trade performed. A good racevalue here will give you chances of a better income. Normal is zero. Science Some races have latent innovative abilities, and some has not got a clue or are not that interested. This bonus is to the sciencepoints is measured in percentages of the normal sciencepoints values. Even if you have low values here you are not nessacary behind. Normal is zero. Ability Not implemented yet. Will contain new innovative ideas ! [Exit without saving] This options lets you exit the game without saving whatever you have selected or build in the game. You will return to the main game window and can choose another game or enter this game again. [Save turn and exit] This option will save all the actions you have done and exit this game. You will return to the main game window and can choose another game or enter this game again. [Help] No. Ohh, this is this text. I should have known you where this clever... [View hull types] This is a complete list of all the ships and their abilities. [Events] When you discover new Solar systems or sometimes randomly, you will get an event. This could be a wormhole with a chance to fly through, or an undiscovered civilization with big treasures. There are more than 20 different events. [Appendix A - To do list] This is a list of the few things you should remember to do each round. 1 Move your ships Ship orders Ship trade Unload ship and build colonies 2 Planet View patriotism Only frequently adjust the energy allocations 3 Build new ships 4 Write intriguing messages 5 Check demographics [Appendix B - Build your first ship] Pollux is not easy for starters, so here is a walk through for building new starships. 1 Enter the game and select the main starmap ie. press ok if there is any messages. 2 Select a starbase or a ship orbiting the world you wish to build your ship in orbit off. You can select any ship by clicking the left mousebutton on top of the ship on the main starmap. 3 Click on the Build starship icon. 4 Click on 'New hull' button 5 Select the shiphulldesign you want in the listbox (has to be black). 6 Click 'Build hull' button 7 Click 'New science' button 8 Hull size is now black, and you should increase the hull size using the big black up-arrow. 9 The light number display should now show you the hull size level and being the first ship you build, you only have access to level 1. The hull size determines how many things you can install on your ship. 10 To fly you need an engine and some energy cells. First ship can only chose the atomic engine and the atomic fuel cells. Select the engine first and increase the engine level to 1 using the big up-arrow button. 11 Select the atomic fuel cells hereafter and increase them to level 1. With hull size to 1, engine and fuel cells to level 1, your ship can now fly. 12 Press OK-button to return to the main starmap. 13 Now designing the ship is not enough. You need to assign some men to build it too. This is done on the Planet Energy window, so press ALT P and the E-key. Then press the little checkbox in front of 'Starship constr.', Pollux will now calculate how many men/workhours you should put into building the ship. 14 Next turn, your ship should now be ready for flight.