Razor 1911, Alien Legacy Full Docs

These are the Full DoX for Alien Legacy distributed by Dynamix. Date 6-20-94 Well after spending about 16 hours playing this game. It gets half a thumbs up from me. I mean so far so good but not enough action in the game and too much management. But I will explain the general concept of the game and what you can expect for a 7 disk download. You are in command of the Calypso, a "seed ship" sent to the Alpha Ceali system to colonize a planet and take mankind's first permanent step into the stars. While you were in hyper sleep, Earth had designed and perfected a new seed ship engine which would travel faster than you ship. Matter of fact, it would beat you to the planet by a large margin so the United Nations decides to send it and to also send you a couple of communications explaining the details and who your knew commanding officer will be instead of you running the project yourself. After awakening, you read the messages and also get a few others showing that the colony is nowhere in sight. The ship has arrived before you but there are little to no traces of it. You also realize that a magnetic flux storm wiped away a good portion of your ships computer system memory and bits and pieces of information get restored as you play onward. I will not spoil some of these messages since this is sufficient to set up the theme of the game. Through colonizing, researching, developing, and probing other planets in the system, you will uncover all the secrets of what happened to the missing colony. -=LORUS=- The game starts out with you on the bridge of the Calypso after the intro. and few messages from your officers. You can move the pointer around the screen and see various stations that you can left click on to activate. BRIDGE: Military Advisor - This is your chief military advisor. You can ask her for advice and she will contact you from time to time to inform you of new military technical projects that can be researched as well as other military matters. Chief Navigator - This officer informs you of stellar events as well as probe results. He will also report other happenings in space and other matters dealing with space craft. Science Advisor - This officer will inform you of scientific breakthroughs and suggest new ideas for research. Chief Engineer - This advisor keeps you up to date on the status of the Calypso, as well as suggesting new research. Robot - The Robot will tell you of advanced scientific breakthroughs that are mainly in the computer/electronics category and it is responsible for repairing the Calypso's computer systems. The Robot also maintains your PDA (Personal Desk Assistant) which keeps track of your log, other unfinished tasks and information on the totals of your colonies, and the casualties suffered in battle overall. View Solar System - This takes you to the Star Map which is explained later. See Ship's Resources - This takes you to the buildings of Calypso. It is managed and built upon just like any other colony which will be explained later. POP UP MENU By right clicking just about anywhere in the game excepts where noted otherwise, you can access the "pop-up menu" which will take you quickly to anywhere in the game. Bridge - Takes you to the Bridge. Space map - Takes you to the Space Map. Colony Manager - Takes you to where you can manage your colonies. Vehicles Manager - Takes you where you can view/manage your spacecraft including the Calypso. Tech Manager - This takes you to the research and development menu. Pause - Pauses game. Options - Takes you to the Game Options menu. Quit - Allows you to quit the game. SPACE MAP The Space Map is a 3D, fully rotatable and scalable map. You can select planets via the planet quick buttons on the right of the map (you'll begin to recognize them as you access the map more and more) or you can just left quick right on the planet or object of your choice. Right clicking on the Space Map brings up several options to choose from. These are self explanatory so I will not go into explaining them. At the bottom left, you will find the text box. This box will display various information like planet name, turns elapsed, and game speed. To the right of the text box is the game speed slide bar. This will allow you to compress time and slow it back down at your discretion. This allows you to "burn" turns when you have nothing else to do but that's rare so use it with caution. The other buttons to the right of the slide bar will allow you or rotate and zoom in and out on the planet map. When you see small twinkling spots around planets, these represent your craft. Your dots are green, the enemies, well, you'll find out sooner or later. COLONY MANAGER This is the comprehensive listing and control menu to view and quickly access all your colonies. The big blocks of information on the left, displays a detailed count of all the resources of your colony. I will explain what all the iconic representations mean in the detailed colony map section. By clicking on one of the large boxes of information, you will immediately be taken to the detailed "construction" map of that colony. To access the other colonies when you get beyond 3 colonies, you can scroll the listing with the arrows at the very bottom and then select the colony or you can use the sort list located to the right of the boxed information. This area as a whole is the best way to keep an eye on how your colonies are doing at a glance. Detailed Colony Map - This is where you actually construct facilities to meet your colonies needs. The starting facilities that you can build are Habitats, Factories, Power Plants, and Research Labs. To construct a building, use the left and right arrows below the building picture in the upper right corner of the screen to select the building you wish to construct. Then click and hold the left mouse button ON the building's picture. No drag that picture to the location that you wish to construct the building on the map portion of the screen. You will see a darker are highlighted when you can build in a location. Keep in mined that any one colony can only have a maximum of 16 buildings but through upgrading your buildings when you discover new technology, you can get more performance from those 16 buildings. Constructing Buildings game turns. By positioning the pointers of your buildings, it will give you all the information you need to know about the building. Anything in red on this list is what your building lacks in order to be built, upgraded, or just plain operated. To upgrade a building or change what it's producing, just right click on the building you wish to affect and you will then see a menu that is self explanatory. Notice the colored "dots" next to each building? These are at a glance indicators to tell you how your colonies are doing. Green means everything is OK while light green means off-line which takes a building out of the power grid and conserves energy and other resources. Red means without power or resources needed to operate. Yellow dots mean you can upgrade that particular facility. Blue dots mean under construction or upgrade. TO move around the map portion of the screen, hold down the left mouse button and move the pointer towards the edge of the screen that you wish to move towards. The map will then scroll that direction. The closer to the edge, the closer you will scroll. The icons at the bottom of the screen shows what resources are available to your colony. These are from top left to bottom right: ORE POWER LIFE SUPPORT HUMANS ROBOTS HABITATS FACTORIES POWER PLANTS RESEARCH LABS SPACE CRAFT When starting a colony, it is wise to build 1 habitat, 1 factory, and one power plant. You will need to transport some resources from Calypso, over to the colony. You might have to use several ships to do this if you are in a hurry. VEHICLE MANAGER This is very similar to the colony manager screen excepts that it pertains to vehicles. You will start with 4 space craft and the Calypso. Each of the larger boxes on the left represent a space craft. By clicking on one, you are immediately taken to the hanger where it is located weather it is on a planet, space station, or aboard the Calypso. These boxes also show information like the vehicle identification, the pilot, where the ship is at, and the fuel it has aboard. To the upper right is a sort box and on the right is a planet list. These are ways of locating a ship via other means. Hangers - In the hanger, you will see a picture of your ship, several icons that are the same as the colony icons, and a mission selector and target selector. This is where you load cargo onto your ship by clicking with the left mouse button ON the icon of what you want to send, and unload your ship by doing the same with the right mouse button. You select the type of mission then the target of that particular mission. Be sure to set the target for your mission as well by left clicking on that button. Missions are discussed in detail below. Explore - This will allow you to pilot a craft around the planet that you are currently on, and explore the surface. You will also be able to collect commodities such as ore, life support, power, robots, all kinds of tech points, special items, and things important to the games plot line. Once you take off, you will see a satellite view of the planet. The planet as you will notice, is broken down into grids. These grids may even extend off the screen to the right, so by using the arrows on the left side of the screen, you can move the grid pointer to the right and scroll the planet to see how big it is. Other buttons are added to this screen as you develop new technology but for the time being, you start with (from top left to bottom) the ore scanner, the power scanner, and the build colony button. The scanners will locate grid locations that contain that type of commodity. You must find specific locations that are suitable in order to build colonies. A little bit into the game, you should develop a colony scanner which shows you all the places to build colonies in the immediate area. A trick you building your first colony on a new planet is to send the ship to the center of he planet. Then scan for power. Go to the power sector and collect as much power as you can. Then leave the sector. Now scan for a place to build a colony. GO there, build the colony then click on it to land in the colony. Now you have power in the colony and it will refuel your ship every time it lands. This is a quick way to set up a ship outpost even if you don't develop a colony per say. TO land at any sector, just click on that sector to move the ship there, then click again to land. Remember, your ships use fuel for everything they do. keep an eye on the fuel gauge else you will see some snazzy animation showing your ship careening into the surface. Once you make a landing, you are now in a 3D mode and are able to skim the fractally generated surface of the planet. There is a compass to the upper right that displays your ships heading. A picture of the pilot. A top view of the entire planet that acts as a "radar and will display all scanned objects. There are also fuel gauges and cargo capacity gauges below this. At the bottom of the screen you will see several icons. From left to right these are: Planet View Toggle (between top and 3D view), Planet Scan (shows just about everything on the planet), Bomb (be careful where you drop these!), Cargo List/Drop (shows a detailed manifest of cargo and allows you to jettison some), Movement arrows, these will make the ship turn left, right or move forward. You can also use the cursor arrow keys for movement and the mouse for picking things up off the planet. Leave will allow you to gain altitude and go to another sector. To pick up and object, just position a pointer on it and when the pointer turns into a hand, click the left mouse button. If there is nothing left on a planet, you will get a "sector clear" message. If you don't see anything after scanning, and still haven't gotten a sector clear message, then there's something still there you will just have to look for manually. Also while you are flying, if the pointer is not positioned over an object, your pointer will be crosshairs. If you left click the mouse with this pointer, you will shoot the ships lasers. You will go on a target run on a planet once you military advisor sets it up. Other weapons become available through invention. Probe - This mission allows you to send a ship to another planet and start collecting planetary data and forming a topological survey. Once this is complete, you can build colonies there and explore the surface. Transport - This simply tells a ship to go from here to there taking with it anything ins it's holds and then depositing them at the target location. Pipeline - This is a nice but tricky mission to assign. If you have a colony that is producing large amounts of a commodity and you will continuously need these commodities some where's else, set up a pipeline between the two which acts like the Transport command but the ship will fly in a continuos loop back and forth between the two continuing to deposit the same cargo that was first assigned. Saves on repetition but difficult to calculate a safe amount of cargo to take without depleting the producing colony. Space Station - This mission tells the ship to establish a space station around the target planet. These can be colonized and built up just like any other colony. TECHNOLOGY MANAGER The Tech manager is where you start inventing new technology and seeing the totals of all the Tech Points that are created by Research Labs and gathered on planets. The categories are: ASTRONOMY CHEMISTRY ELECTRONICS GEOLOGY BIOLOGY MATHEMATICS PHYSICS Each invention will cost a certain amount of tech points from all or some of the above categories so it is important to keep a good stockpile in each category. When you see that you can invent something, the amount of tech points required is above the tech point icons whereas your total of tech points is below the tech point icons. If you do not have enough tech points in one or more categories to invent something, then those areas will be highlighted in red. When you have sufficient tech points to invent and everything is green, then click on "invent". You will then see how man days until completion below the text box that explains and invention. After the item has been invented, the text box will change to explain the inventions exact use instead of the theory behind the invention. MISC. The leave button steps you out of a screen or you can use the pop up menu with the right mouse button. Whenever an advisor has something important to tell you, a small button grouping will appear in the upper left corner of the screen. Just click on the ones that have a lit green light next to them. When you hear "Eureka!", that means an invention has been finished. Read your PDA whenever you forget something. It also keeps track of all kinds of interesting data that is important to the plot of the game. Well that's it so I hope you enjoy this game. It's alright in the beggining but get's better as you play it with new colony buildings and new ship weapons etc... DoX By, -=LORUS=- RAZOR DoX GREETS: You know who you are. GROUPS: Ditto. ----------------|- If you like this game, then but it. -|---------------