Stellar Conquest II
The Second Encounter.
v 1.06
(C) 1993 Ed T. Toton III
All Rights Reserved.



If you're like me, then you probably usually just run the games you
download without reading the documentation. For that reason I made the
instructions below as brief as possible, but you should skim through it
anyway since it is chock full of details that might take you a long time
to discover yourself. Please note that I'm no technical writer, so please
bear with me.



OVERVIEW:

Stellar Conquest II isn't as much a sequel as it is a remake of the first
Stellar Conquest game I made several years ago, with many improvements.
The first one was written in Quick Basic and used EGA graphics and keyboard
input only...

Stellar Conquest II, The Second Encounter is a VGA-only, and "Microsoft
compatable mouse"-only strategy game for 0 to 4 human players. The game
consists of 2 to 4 active players, any of which can be either human or
computer controlled.

The Stellar Conquest universe is a map containing 50 stars, 4 blackholes,
and 3 wormholes.

Each players starts with a starbase and 5 ships. Your goal is to protect
your base and destroy everyone elses' base. To do this, you must build
ships. You will have the opportunity to build them to your own
specifications, within your allowed budget of course. To get more money,
build more cargo ships to do mining. You can also build combat vessels and
scouts.

The ships belonging to other players will not be visible unless within
the scan range of one of yours, or under other special circumstances (such
as civilian ships (which don't appear on the map) informing your base).


GETTING STARTED:

At the main menu you have the choice of setting the player options, which
is where you select how many players there will be, human or computer
control, and what the computer cargoship ratio is.

Select "Game" to play. Once in the game you can press ESCAPE to quit,
F1 for the game options, F2 to toggle sound on/off, and F3 to toggle
Fast-Combat on/off.

At the start of the game, you will be shown your starbase menu. At the
top of the screen is a picture of a spaceship. You don't own that ship,
that's there for ship construction. By using the buttons on the left of the
screen you can add and remove pods, and on the right it will show what effect
that has on the ship's stats, while the picture above will show what it
looks like. This is the primary function of your starbase, ship construction.

At the bottom of the screen are 4 buttons that never change. By clicking
on "StarBase" you can go right back to the starbase menu. By clicking on
"Up 1 ship" or "Dn 1 ship" you can page through the menus for all of your
other ships. Clicking on "Done Turn" will end your turn, and the other
players will get to do their thing.

At the ship menus, there is a column of buttons along the right side of the
screen. Selecting "Zoom out" shows you the entire tactical map, from which
you can scan other ships, scan star systems, and select other ships directly,
and this is also where you select destinations for your ships.

Pressing "Destruct" allows you to blow up your ship, if it is equipped with
explosives. The explosives will damage ANY ship adjacent to the one that
is being blown up, both enemy and friendly.

Selecting "Jettison" allows you to jettison a pod, thus decreasing the
ship's mass, thus speeding it up. This option is included so that the
ships may have the means to retreat if necessary.

Clicking on the "Repair" button allows you to repair damage to the ship if
you are within the "action zone" of your starbase (action zones are explained
further down). All of the ships damage will be repaired for a base-cost of
1500, plus 500 for the replacement of each pod that was jettisoned.

Pressing the "Manual" button will toggle the ship to "AutoMine", meaning
it will continuously perform mining missions independently without your
needing to do anything. If you decide to do something else with the ship
later, you can toggle it back to "Manual" by clicking the button again..

Selecting "Rename" let's you override the randomly generated name given
to the ship at construction.



SELECTING THE GAME:

From the main menu you can select the Game-Type menu, which allows you
to choose which version of the game to play. You can play the standard
"Capture the Flag" game where you must destroy your opponent's starbase,
or you can play "Rule the Sector" in which you must destroy all enemy
warships.

Additionally there is the "Custom Game" option, which allows you to set
all the parameters yourself. One of the most important options in this area
is the teams setting. The game players can be put in teams. Ships will not
fire upon the ships or starbase of an team-mate, and you can see your
team-mates ships on your starmap. However, you can not see the enemy ships
that your team-mates can scan, only those that you can scan yourself.



PLAYING THE GAME:

There are several nuances and details you should be aware of before playing
the game. Particularly action zones:

Action Zones are areas of space 11x11 in size, that indicate the range you
must be within near something to do something. For instance, you must be
within your bases action zone to repair the ship. You must also be in the
action zone of the base to off-load materials from the cargo holds (done
automatically) or in the zone of a star to mine it (also done automatically).
Likewise, you must be within a ship's action zone to fire at it, or to see
a cloaked ship. The sqaure cursor in the "Zoom Out" map shows the size of
the action zone, as do the grey borders drawn around the bases and stars
on the "Zoom In" map.

On the Zoom-Out map, you will have a little green cursor, as mentioned
above. This cursor shows the destination of your selected ship (the selected
ship will be shown in flashing color, starbases in yellow, and all other
ships in their team color). Pressing the "T-Mode" button will toggle
the cursor. As a square cursor, your ship will fly into that square zone,
and once there it will continue to "orbit" around within that zone. As the
diagonal-lined pointer cursor (default), the ship will fly to the precise
point in the center of the cursor and stay there until you change the
destination. If the ship is in automine mode, the cursor will be a
combination of the other two, and will not change when you click the right
button; this is explained in more detail further down. The computer player
will only use the precision destination mode when attacking, so be aware
that it's defensive ships will be "orbiting" it's base, instead of being
planted at specific points around it.

Clicking the left mouse button on the map screens will select a new
destination for the selected ship, and clicking on a ship with the right
button will allow you to select a ship.

Ships set to Automine will have a different destination cursor, as noted
above. It can only be set to point at stars or your home base, nowhere else.
If set to the homebase (the default), the ship will automatically mine
the nearest star that has materials available, and you will not need to
concern yourself with that ship. If it is set to point to a star, the ship
will try to mine THAT star, and ONLY that star, regardless of how far it
is or how little material it has. You will need to check on the ship later,
so that it doesn't waste time mining a star that it has depleted. Ships set
to automine will always return directly home after filling their cargo holds,
and will then head out to a star again. Setting your ships to mine specific
stars has great tactical advantages under certain conditions. Specificially,
you can make your ships avoid stars that are gaurded by the enemy, or drain
stars that are near the enemy, and so forth. The cursor for automining ships
can not be toggled like the normal one explained above.

The "Zoom In" map, supports the same functions of scanning and selecting
as the "Zoom Out" map. It also has arrow buttons you can use to scroll the
view around to view other areas of the map.

In combat, each ship will move, then fire at the nearest target if there
is one, and assuming it has weapons. Since targets are chosen in this manner,
you can control, to some extent, which ships your ships fire upon simply by
using the precision pointer for their destination to plant them right next to
the target. Firing is done automatically.

There are 3 wormholes in the game, for a total of 6 hole-openings
(2 per wormhole). These can be used to travel great distances across the
map very quickly. However you must find them first. Use scouts for this.
Also note that there are 4 blackholes in the game, and they look identical
to the wormholes! These will destroy any ship that enters. Remember, 4 black-
holes, and 6 worm-hole openings, that means any given anomaly has a 40%
chance of being deadly. Remember to build little junk ships to test them
before sending your main fleet through...


Well, that's about all that I can explain here, to understand the rest
you'll have to go play the game! Go on.. Go! What are you waiting for!?!?
Play it!! Go on!


CHARTS:

Weapons:

Name: Hit Prob: Damage: Avg Dam:
-----------------------------------------
Laser 1/2 2 1
Missile 1/3 3 1
Plasma Cannon 1/2 4 2


Pods:

Name: ID: Cost: Mass:
------------------------------
Cargo C 500 300/700
Laser L 1000 600
Missile M 1000 600
Plasma P 2500 600
Sensor S 1200 200 Increases scan radius by 6
Shield A 800 250 Adds 4 to ship's armor factor
Cloak I 6000 1000
Bomb B 2500 1250
Targeter T 2000 250 Adds 1/12 to your hit probability.
ECM E 1200 250 Subtracts 1/12 from enemy's hit prob.


Add-ons:

Name: Cost: Speed-increase:
----------------------------------
Boosters 7000 4
Engine-2 3000 2


Ship Speed = 18 - (total_pod_mass / 250) + (boost_from_add_ons)
Ship Armor = 6 + (3 * number_of_pods)
Ship Cost = 5000 + total_pod_cost + total_add_on_cost
Scan Range = 6 + (number_of_sensors * 6)



NOTES:

The following are a bunch of details that aren't made clear during the
game, as well as some hints and tips:


- Once all of the stars are depleted, one will be moved to the center of
the map and it will regenerate it's supply.

- The cloaking device is the only pod that does not have a cumulative
effect for carrying multiples of them. It is absolutely pointless to
put more than one on a single ship.

- If you find the computer player too easy to defeat, then put yourself
against 2 or 3 of them teamed together using the "Custom Game" mode.
I personally defeated 3 teamed computer players using the "Destroy the
starbase" goal, slightly increased starting cash, and no base-bombing,
on the first try! Single computer opponents may prove to be no match
for you as well.

- Setting the game configuration to "Bases can Fire" will equip each
starbase with one of each weapon.

- Setting the game configuration to "Bases are Mobile" will allow the
starbase to move like any other ship, but at speed 1.

- Ships actually move a distance 1.5 times their speed rating.

- Starbases can travel through worm-holes, however they will not be
destroyed by black-holes.

- The team value displayed on the starbase menu is the value of that
particular players force with the rapair costs subtracted from each
ship (and base), plus the players money level.

- The cargo-ship ratio for the computer players determines what fraction
of their fleet will be cargo ships. Setting this to a low number will
slow down the computer players ability to replace its lost ships.




REVISION HISTORY:

1.01 - Team value display now subtracts the repair costs from the
ships and the base.
- Automine button bug fixed.
- Default Cargo-Ship ratio for computer players increased.

1.02 - More control is being excersized over the distribution of stars
to make it more even for the players.
- A limit of 5 ECM pods has been imposed for ships. 6 ECM pods
makes a ship that can't be shot at all without the aid of
targeters.

1.03 - The intended font is actually displayed on the title screen now,
since I forgot to include the font file in the previous releases.
- The buttons in the map-modes are redrawn correctly now.

1.04 - Minor bug in the file systems fixed.
- NecroBones logo added.
- Status of selected ships is now displayed in the map modes.

1.05 - Long-range starmap moved down slightly so as to more easily
access the upper edges.
- Border of the status bar in the map modes more accurately
shows the players color.
- Action zone borders around stars and bases no longer are
XORed, as sometimes they would erase one another which
often caused confusion.
- "Team Value" on the starbase menu has now been reworded as
"Score", as some people thought "team" included the other
players that were on their side.

1.06 - Black holes and worm holes can no longer appear fairly close
to the bases (due to a bug they would on a rare occasion).
- The attacks from ships are once again erased from the screen,
as they weren't always in 1.05.
- F1 Menu repaired (there was no way to abort the menu in 1.05).




NOTICE:

This program is being distributed on the "shareware" concept. It is by
no means completely free. If you think the program is of use to you, please
send a registration fee of $5. If you think that is rediculous, then send
less (or more for that matter). If you hate the program or found too many
bugs, write me and tell me, and include a graphic explanation (but don't
be too harsh!! Heheheh). In any event, write to:

Ed T. Toton III
7101 Talisman Lane
Columbia Md 21045


And WHY should you register it?
1. To support my continuing efforts to bring you some level of
functional programs. If I get no cash, you get no improvements
in these programs, and I won't be encouraged to make new and
better software!
2. To get that warm glow for knowing that you supported the author
of at least one of the many shareware programs you probably use.
3. To find out if there is a newer version. All you need to do is
ask! But letters with money take priority!
4. You could be sick and demented and thus register everything you
get your hands on.



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This Program, Manual, and Data Files, are all protected by U.S. Copyright
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and/or sales may result in imprisonment of up to one year and fine up to
$10,000 (17 USC 506). Copyright infringers may also be subject to civil
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The author of this program makes no warranties of any
kind, expressed or implied, as to the fitness, functionality,
effectiveness, or safety of this software and accompanying
documentation. Under no circumstances shall the author and
developer be liable for any damages incurred during or as a
result of the use of, or misuse of, or inability to use, this
software and documentation. All risk is assumed by the user,
and we hereby disclaim any implied warranties of fitness or
performance of this software. Use at your own risk.
The developer and author reserves the right to make
revisions and changes to the software and documentation without
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FINAL NOTE:

If you have any questions, concerns, suggestions, criticisms, donations,
remarks, praise or opinions, please write! I WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU!!
(the address is listed above).

Feel free to call my BBS:
The Sorcerer's Quarters BBS
(410)-290-3752. 300 - 14400 baud,
v.32bis, v.42bis, etc..


Ed T. Toton III
"Necromancer"
-1993



Stellar Conquest II
The Second Encounter.
v 1.00
(C) 1993 Ed T. Toton III
All Rights Reserved.
((C) includes the spelling errors)