How to play (Quickstart)
The game consists of a macromanagement part for the empire management,
and a wargame part for the battles. For each button on every screen
you can see a tooltip that will give you a good explanation for
its use. I also recommend to start with the Training Camp, that
is an interactive tutorial for the game. Play it to learn playing
this game in a easy way!
On the startup menu, you can click the button “Check Online” to
have the program check if a new version of the game has been released.
Starting a new game
On startup, you can choose which faction to control: Blood Legion
and Blue Army. Each one has strength and weaknesses, the choice
will only limit some special ships available only to a specific
faction.
On the next screen you can choose the Campaign Settings, and the
Galaxy Settings. Once again, just read the tooltip in the game to
know the effects of those settings.
Management Part
You see a menu on bottom with 5 buttons: resources, galaxy map,
technology, military and end turn.
On Resource Screen, you'll allocate the percentage of resource
for each type of citizens of your empire. Each class has its own
benefits: you'll need to continuously adjust those values depending
on the needs you have. If you're preparing for a battle, better
allocate more resources into the military related classes to have
more power on the battlefield, and so on. On the bottom of this
screen you see a quick summary of the actual situation of your empire,
a sort of global score, measuring how good you're doing.
The Galaxy Map gives you an overview of your galactic empire,
and also on your opponent moves. The neutral stars are white, the
Blue Army are blue and the Blood Legion ones are red. Clicking on
a starsystem will pop up a small window showing a short description
of it, and if is within your reach, you can decide to attack it.
To know if you can attack a planet, you need to check if there is
a dotted blinking line connecting one of your planets to it. Also
remember to check the Battlefield Type: each type except “Normal”
has some negative effects, for example the Space Dust one seriously
limits your ships view range.
On the Technology Screen instead you can choose which technology
you want to research. You can view all the various technologies
sorted by type, and also see which technologies you need to discover
a particular one (like a tree view).
Lastly, on the Military Screen, you can assemble your fleet. You
can build any of the ships on the list on the right, if you have
enough resources (materials and money). You can remove a ship from
the queue, but if it was under construction, by doing this you'll
lose all the time and resources already spent.
Once you are satisfied by your decisions, click on end turn or
press return key to advance game time. The game time automatically
advances by one turn also if you attack a starsystem, or if you're
being attacked and decide to defend your starsystem.
Pressing escape will bring you to the options screen.
Options
In the options screen you can adjust the volumes of music and sound
effects, the playing speed, the tooltip speed, the overall game
difficulty and if to play in windowed or fullscreen. You can also
load and save games on this screen, and enable automatic check of
new updates of the game on startup.
The game difficulty has immediate effects: if you are playing a
game and find it too easy/hard, you can go in options and put difficulty
to maximum/minimum and this will have immediate effects on the game
still in play.
The Wargame Part
When you attack or defend a starsystem, the view switch to the
wargame part. The fog of war will hide most of the map, however
you can still see where are the planets. Planets are very important
elements in the battlefield. They can give regeneration bonuses
each turn for both ship HP and crew. On every battlefield there
is a variable number of planets. Using the "Q" and "W"
keys you'll see the camera move on the battlefield cycling between
the planets present. If you move your mouse over one of them, you'll
see in the top-right angle of the screen a text showing the type
of planet, and the associated bonuses. Note that you have to move
the mouse pointer on planet center to show the values.
Click one of your ships on the map to select it (you can also use
the "A" and "S" keys to cycle through them).
Click on enemy ship to target it, then press the key number corrisponding
to the weapon you want to use, or simply click mouse again to fire
all weapons at once. Use right button to cancel your current active
ship, center map on cursor and show this text again.
You can toggle grid on/off using key G. You can toggle ship info
on/off using key I. Ship info shows a health bar for all ships,
and some useful informations for your ships only: the green number
on the left shows movement points left, the red number on the right
shows how many weapons you can still fire (aren't recharging or
out of ammo). The 2 arrows lets you rotate your active ship, or
alternatively you can use the Z and X keys.
The firing angle is a very important aspect in the battle. If a
ship is hit from the side suffer more damage, and if is hit from
behind will suffer great damage. On the other hand, if a ship is
hit from front and has enough defenses, could suffer little or no
damage at all. You need also to consider recharge times. Sometimes
is better to avoid firing a powerful but slow-recharging weapon
and wait one more turn to finish off a low HP ships with a regular
weaker beam weapon.
Each weapon has a range and an angle of fire: so always check the
blinking info next of each weapon on the active ship panel to discover
why you can't shoot at your current enemy. The transport ships are
special because they are the only ship that can try to board other
ships, taking control over them. If you destroy all opponent ships
you'll win the battle.
Win and Lose
You can win or lose in one of the following way:
1) if you have enabled “Kill Leader” in Victory Conditions when
starting a new game, the game will end if the leader is killed in
the wargame part (that is if you destroy the mothership Wasp or
Ogre in a battle)
2) if you have enabled “Galaxy Conquest”, the first faction to control
the 75% of the whole Galaxy will win the game
3) No matter which option you selected, the faction that loses its
homeworld starsystem, will automatically lose the game
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