Playing With Yourself! - Part 2

"Like most of those who study history, he learned from the mistakes of the past how to make new ones."
A.J.P.Taylor (re Napoleon III)

(You have just come from here) This page is wider - the pictures are going to need it! The Feds - Turn 1 Ships Time to set up the Base Some strategic things "Taunting your Enemy" and such things OK you should now have a local "Host" running now so it's time to start playing a game. There are two races in your Universe - Player 1 is "The Feds" Player 2 is "The Birds". These are supposed to be good starter races to play. BUT! You're going to have to play them both. So let's Play the Game! The Feds - Turn 1 Start the Planets4 program and you'll get this picture - Click on the "1" button that should be next to your Game name You'll get the following screen...(I've resized the bigger frame in this shot) STOP HERE!!! Click Nothing and read this! Really! This is important!!! SO make sure you understand it before anything else - it will help avoid many frustrations I met doing this thing! During Planets4 Order creation sessions - like the one we are about to embark on - you can just exit whenever you like! Hit the X - exit - whatever - It should save your last position - no probs! BUT! When you re-run the thing to carry on where you left off - and get this far again - do NOT click the Unpack RST File option - click on the race number thing and then "Play Saved File" - if you hit "Unpack RST" you will dump everything you did and have to start all over again!!! Aaaargh! I hated that! So - to summarise!!! Unpack RST = Start new orders file - ditch everything so far Play Saved File = Open saved (but not submitted) orders file Make TRN File = Submit orders - finished (but you can submit again! The host will use the last TRN file you submit) (Note - That Green Square for the race? Later on it gets other colour boxes inside...the various colours mean Green only - new RST (result) file present - only the Unpack RST button should be Active Green, Yellow - the RST file has been unpacked - The Play Save File button should also be Active Green, Yellow, Red - There is a TRN file present - i.e. you have pressed the Make TRN file button Green, Yellow, Red, Blue - You have emailed your TRN file. Even so - you can still open your TRN file (Play Saved Game) and redo stuff. (I presume until the Host actually runs the turn) (we don't need to email stuff - we're playing locally) OK - right now we're starting a new set of orders so... Choose the "1" button at the top - this selects Race 1. Then click the "Unpack RST" File - (we ARE starting a new TURN so this is OK - but beware of this button!!!) Anyway - that done - stuff like this should happen! Now things are hotting up! From this point on - I'll only be doing sections of screens - based on a full screen original... Let's have a look at this page? At the bottom Right of the map view is this thing... This area manipulates the map and displays the symbol key table.
	This thing pops up a key to all the map symbols
	This thing zooms the map in and out - you can hit the + or - buttons or click on the triangular area to select zoom levels
	This button switches on a Head-Up Display - basically text about selected objects - some people like it - but we're not going to use that here so leave well alone for now!!!
	Scroll tool - click inside this thing to scroll the map around - best just to have a play with it to see how it works
Have a play with these now? Next we have that toolbar at the top? Yup! Pretty - but also pretty confusing! And some of them aren't even activated yet! Have a read through some of the icon names and then... But I'm getting a bit bored with this - lets do something... we'll come back to this later maybe? In a normal game I gather it's a good idea to start some Spy Activities as an opening gambit - maybe get lucky. This would unfortunately chuck in some "random elements" which may mess up this tutorial so we're going to miss that out I'm afraid. ALSO - it seems - many of your resources start already loaded onto your freighters - don't ask me why! We're going to need that stuff on the base so this is just to redistribute the wealth! SHIPS In the middle of your star map you'll see a star with a green crosshair on it - that's your base- you can either click on it or sweep a selection box (left click and hold while sweeping an area) and the "Hammer and Anvil" widow pops up This is a slice of what I got. This is our first view of this thing - we'll probably see it later too I suspect. Right now we can see a flashy bar at the top left? This shows that the thing we're going to select will be a "hammer" object - a "doer" - if we click on the blank grey area to the right of this it will select the "anvil" side - the thing the "doer" does "whatever" to - basically the target. Make sure the hammer side is selected and then click on the first Ship (the Medium Deep Space Freighter) in the middle window. (You can use the green up/down arrows to scroll this list). [If you don't get this image - left click to select the first freighter in the centre list (to make it the hammer object) and right click the Base (to make it the anvil) ] A green ship icon will appear in that yellow box between the "?" and the hammer picture - click this to open the ship view page... Aaargh! Too MUCH too SOOON!!!. Panic Not. So we're going to do some ship stuff! - those boxes at the top are buttons - have a play looking at the various pages and then - click on "Trans" button - and a new window will appear... on the right is a Transport target area - click on the box relating to the Base you are Over. This appears. First - we're looking at the freighter "Express 3" here (well I was) - if we click on the green up/down button at the upper right we can cycle through all our ships - have a play and get back to "Express 3" OK - the first issue here is all those supplies - 400 of them on the each freighter. Way too much for the ship - we need that stuff on the base. If we click on the supplies box in the middle (the yellow bit) a new overlay appears we're going to transfer stuff DOWN (using the green right hand arrows) to the base. so send down
30 of its fuel	(around 100 is enough for now - they don't need much, and at the start of the game there will be free fuel lying around on planets they visit anyway)
250 of its troops	(ie most) of the troops (more useful on HW - 'scuse me, HomeWorld, a common abbreviation, being trained into High Guard, or HG as they are often called. HG are the officers who have special powers. In my example, I only have 8 to start off with. We want, ultimately, thousands.)
300 (ie most) of the supplies.	100 will be plenty to set up initial colonies. The important thing at the start is not to bottleneck production of things, which requires supplies, on your HW.
190 or all the food	You will only need food on colonies if population gets above about 50,000.
All the Med packs.	Actually these have been more or less written out of the game now. They were felt to just be a complicating factor which added nothing.
All the ordnance	freighters have no weapons, so it is best stored somewhere it can be used.
OK, having made some room, load onto the freighter from the base
300 cash	to kick start your colonies. But leave the bulk of your cash on your HW
then fill it with with colonists	These eager volunteers will run your mines, sweat on your off-world farms and for the privilege, send anything valuable home whilst being eaten by sandworms and attacked or enslaved by alien races
Then cycle through to "Express 2" and 1 and do the same there. - you can scroll through the ships using the up/down green arrows in the top right corrner. If the freighters seem low on repair units - ie less than 100 units - you might want to load some on board, though they're unlikely to need them. Now we have that Nebula Class Cruiser to deal with? The starting Fed Nebula can carry a little cargo, but not much. Using the TRANS screen, load it with: 400 cash, 200 troops, ONE HIGH GUARD, as many colonists as it can hold; and 50 supplies (for starting colonies. But this is not its primary job.) Note that we put a single High Guard on board - when we get to turn 3 maybe you'll see why? Also, fill it up with Ord (Ordnance - weapon stuff!) and Repair units. This baby is going to have to do some fighting! It wants a bit more fuel than the freighters, say 200, as it may have to operate for a while with no refueling. In the ship's ATTACK screen, set it to "Attack All Enemy Ships", "Target Dangerous", "Delay Ship (Second Wave)", (this delays its entry into combat to the "Second Wave") "Fire at ground targets". In the ship MISSION screen, switch on "Auto Intercept enemy ships" and use the slide bar to set Intercept range to, say, 70. Now switch to the NAME screen of eachship. It is potentially useful to give ships names. And fun too. I shall call my starting ships: Assymetric Dog, Giant Mongolian Death Gerbil, Whoop Whoop Holler!, and Planned Obsolescence - for the Cruiser Other folk use systems like "Freighter-Medium-MolyCarrier", but I think that is dull.
Oh, if you toggle click on the button legended "NAMES" in Space Command, it'll list the items there alphabetically as names, or numbers
Freighter transfers and naming done. Now move on to their movement. On the ship OVERVIEW screen, near the top right is a "Speed" box. this is actually a slide control. Click on it and move Speed up to max. Do the same for all the ships. And hit DONE Now we need to send them somewhere - get the Hammer and Anvil (HA) screen up again - by sweeping an area over the base or something. Select the freigher "Whoop Whoop Holler" in the middle window of the Hammer/Anvil window again and then click the icon (bottom row, far right) and then click on "Boring Planet" ( - you should get something like this?) Firstly you will notice a new waypoint icon has appeared in the top toolbar? This is so you can create a chain of up to 6 waypoints. The Blue triangle on the trackline allows you to add a new point inside the current track. Click (and hold the button down) on the blue triangle and drag to the star in between "Cango". You should get something like this - [ By the way - if you need to clear your waypoints for a particular ship go to the ship's NAV screen - (select the ship and hit that green ship icon on the hammer side of the hammer/anvil window) Select the NAV box - and click the button "Clear" on the right...] Also - if you nead to get out of waypoint selection mode - click on the normal pointer icon at the top Select the other freighters and send them as follows Assymetric Dog - south to "Mann" When I did this - this thing popped up Since Mao and Mann are so close together you need to select which one you mean - click on "Mann Unexplored Planet #488" in this box then send Giant Mongolian Death Gerbil - south-west to "Lacerta Prime" Finally Send the Cruiser "Planned Obsolescence" North-East - to "Shaddan" Having set speeds and waypoints, you could leave the ships now, and they would travel towards their waypoints when the turn is run. However, there are a handful of other things to do with the ships first: Click on the MISSION screen. Turn on Long Range scanner and Planetary scanner for all ships. Otherwise you won't be able to see the details of the new planets you arrive at. Don't turn on Running Lights. Those are a decoy beacon thing you sometimes use to delierately make a ship more visible (for traps). The Auto Pilot switch on this screen does nothing. It is for a future tool which will help reduce the micromanagement of running ships. You don't want the freighters to auto-intercept ships. That's a warship's job. Leave that alone. On the ship DAMAGE screens for each ship, turn on all REPAIR options (the top 7 switches). This will help them survive battles.
OK - Time to set up the Base Now - we need to do some base stuff - and build things. So - click on the Base Command Icon and this thing appears... Another complex thingy - but... Most of this is status... Planet name - nice picture, name , type, soil, blah blah blah. That's the overview page. There are a bunch of boxes (buttons) at the top here too where you can do stuff. Have a quick click through them...? We need to build some things:
A Government Centre	This is vital in order to increase tech levels.
Mineral Mines	These turn ore (See the Base MINERALS screen) into metals, which you'll be using for building ships later.
Farms	These make food and a little money, but unfortunately there is a build limit of 10 per turn.
Factories	These make things! Heck, they're factories!
Another Training Centre	this is required for turning those troops into those valuable "High Guard". It also promotes colonists (breeders) to crew (for ships), crew to troops. Later, we'll build more to accelerate the process, but they're quite expensive and we actually don't want too many as breeding colonists is the priority right now.
Cities	These will your main source of income in a few turns.
SO - select the Struct button and you get this screen What is this saying? - basically - it identifies what structures I have in this base. Green ones I can build - the red ones I can't - yet. I note that I have 0 Government Centres... click this. And it opens up an upper area showing that I have a Current Count of 0 and none pending. We need to build one. Click on the Build 1 red button - you'll notice a blue circle thing appear at the bottom? Next - while we're here select Farm and then Build 10 of those (the maximum allowed). Next - build 400 Factories, another Training Centre, 10 Mines and as many Cities as you can with the supplies available - I managed 6. Right - lets check a few things are ON that should be. Click the Switches box at the top right of this window. Then click on the Factories box on the left... This thing defaults to 100 supplies per turn - click on the 1K X button and use the slider bar to select 10000 supplies per turn (maximum). Click on the Terraformers box and switch these ON if they are off - these keep the planet farmable. You need food - or people get unhappy and riot, etc. Click on Ship Repair Shop and use the sub screen to convert 10 Duranium a turn into Repair Units. You won't need many for a long time. Click on Air Attack Base, and then "Form Airwing" on the sub screen that comes up. This brings you to a new screen. Use the slider bars to make a Wing consisting purely of 50 "Io" fighters, and press "Activate Wing". This will help with homeworld defense, because you're sending your starting warship off somewhere else Then click the Switches button at the top again (as there doesn't seem to be an exit button for this page) Now click on the Base Shield box - make sure it is ON. Basic advice is - Don't Switch This Off!!! Click the Anti-Aircraft Gun box and make sure these are ON. They cost nothing unless something happens.... Finally - let's put the Base on an aggressive stance. Click on the Military tab/button and click on that Kill! Kill! Kill! option! This is so that it is more effective if attacked in "ground combat". And finally - click on the Name box at the top and give it an interesting name - it amuses the enemy and helps you to remember what's yours! We're done with the base so click DONE Some strategic things we should and can do... I say "should" because we're noty going to do it all in order to make sure random elemenst don't mess up this tutorial's "flow"... So... Now click on the HQ button on the the top menu bar. And then click on the SPY menu item. In a real game we would probably try to use our Spies as an opening gambit to destroy the enemy's base. Like this??? This WOULD be a good thing to do BUT PLEASE DON'T! - it may add random factors that could mess up this tutorial!!!! But remember that this sort of thing "may" help when you do play against someone else. This would be a lucky chance thing - worth trying - may not work - but it's all part of tactics. Right now we're just learning the buttons and such. BUT - there are some things we can do without messing this all up Click the "Select Target Race button" and choose race 2 (then hit DONE in the sub-window) and then switch ON the "Gather Intelligence" button on the Spying window also Click on the Green arrow beside the "Funding" box so that you select 100mc spent per turn. Right. Now we're rolling! But nothing's happened yet! It won't - were just writing the orders... it'll all happen when the turn is submitted and the host resolves it... We're going to do a bit of Tech Level shopping - but what you buy depends on how much money you have in the Central Bank... In the HQ subwindow - click TECH This all looks pretty cheap - but we're going to be a bit stingey here... click on the box for Small Weapon Tech It would probably be a good idea to bump up most of the other cheap stuff here in a real game - if we have the money (like we do at the moment) but please DON'T! This scenario needs a little mucking about with to make it interesting!!! Hit DONE Now - Let's look into "Taunting your Enemy" and such things One of the fun things to do is taunt other players. And in a PBEM game, you don't always know WHO the other players are. There is an in-game messaging system so you can arrange alliances, etc. Let's try it: Click on the "Send a Message" button, which looks like a red radio tower thing on the top toolbar. Up pops a new screen. Click on "2" (ie "I want to send a message to player 2, the Birds.") And "New Message". Type in something like: "Psst - over here" in the Subject line, and "We Know Where You Live" as the message. Finally, click "Anonymous" so the Birds don't know who sent it. (Pointless in a 2 player game, but we are trying to illustrate what is possible 8) ) Whilst we're at it, let's Read our incoming messages. You should do this every turn, some interesting things pop up. Click on the top toolbar icon which looks like a letter . You get a list of messages: TAX REPORT - this is what you've managed to swindle out of your population this turn. It is already in your account. There are 2 types of money: Money in bases, which you can spend (or transfer to the central account with Government Centres); and Central Account money, which is only usable for increasing tech levels and Spying, and which cannot be transferred back out. RESOURCE REPORT - don't worry about this. Sometimes games have Too Many Objects, ie more than 20,000 (!), whereupon this becomes significant. That is unlikely to happen before turn 50! And so on. Most messages are self-explanatory. However the KING OF THE HILL and VICTORY POINTS ones need explaining... one day!! It is sufficient to say at this point that the target of the game is NOT always killing everyone else - there are also "targets" which can come "into play" Click the HQ button and click on the ID button (the one with the green fingerprint image). And type in a new Commander's Identity? I used "Ensign Cannon Fodder". Last Checks! Click on the "Pending Orders" icon - it was one of those blank ones before... be sure to select your base doing the building before (as Hammer object) - It should confirm that New Fighter Wing command you entered earlier? OK - that was possibly a bit confusing? I know I found it so! There are so many buttons? !! Actually it isn't that bad (apparently!) - this was just one way to give orders, there are other ways, using different controls that do much the same thing - this is so that players can work it their own way? This game has been Beta Tested for over 3 years now - so quite a few people have requested their own changes.... Let's finish this turn! Click the "FILES" button in the top left. This takes us back to the select a game opening screen of Planets. Once again though!? Beware of this screen and the "Unpack RST file" option! Touch NOT ! (Well not yet!) There's a bit more detail on this in this footnote - here Anyway Whilst on the FILES page, with the "1" button highlighted, hit the "Make TRN File" button to ensure Host can read player 1's moves. (Ie, this compiles a Host-readable list of the Fed orders in a file called player01.trn). [A bit dull that... but true] AND! From this point on this tutorial is going to get a bit less verbose, sorry! ! This page has most of the basic "knobology" instructions so if you need to refer back to it - open the next page link using a "Open In New Window" type option Next - the Birds!