
STAR COMMANDER MANUAL FOR Version 1.0


Star Commander
Version 1.0
Programming by:  Cameron Beccario
Graphics by:  John Loehrlein, P.J. Lorenz, Cameron Beccario
Music by:  P.J. Lorenz
Mod interface by:  Mark J. Cox
Executable program and included files are
Copyright (C) 1994 Cameron Beccario
Star Commander Version 1.0 was written in Borland Pascal 7.0
All Rights reserved.



I.  Legal Stuff

Star Commander Version 1.0 is
	Copyright (C) 1994 Cameron Beccario
and is written in Borland Pascal 7.0

DISCLAIMER - Cameron Beccario is not responsible for any loss of data, damage
to your system, attached virii, or any other problem caused by the use of this
program.


II.  Introduction

	Star Commander is a tactical starship combat simulator.  You, the 
player, assumes the role of a starship captain with the controls of a
futuristic battleship at your fingertips.  You can match your skills against
one, two or even three of your friends (or enemies, whatever the case may be).
The victor has the pleasure of seeing his opponents' ships explode and gets 
the chance to royally rub in how no one could possibly defeat his god-like 
skills.
	Because Star Commander is a game of tactics, this means it is not a 
shoot em' up, escape from Hell,  kill the evil demons, action-type game.  This
game takes thought, time, patience, and most of all, skill (with a little luck
thrown in for taste).  However, don't let this explanation give you the idea
that this is just another boring game.  Once you learn how to play the game
proficiently, it can be just as exciting as any other action game.  Nothing is
more thrilling than firing your remaining phaser, and skillfully destroying an
opponent who has been toasting your ass the entire time.  If you take some time
to read through the manual carefully, you're bound to catch on.  The effort is 
well worth it.


III.  Game Setup (Startup)

	You've just run Star Commander and are looking at the screen wondering,
"What do I do now?"  The first menu you should come to (after the title screen)
is one that says "Load an old game" and "Start a new game."  If you haven't 
played this game before, it's highly unlikely you have any saved games 
(although some samples are included), so select "Start a new game" by using the
up and down cursor keys to highlight the selection you want with the pulsing
box and pressing enter.  If you wish to load an old game, choose "Load an old
game" and a list of saved games will pop up.  Using the cursor keys, highlight
the game you wish to examine.  Press D to view a description of that game or 
ENTER to go ahead and load it.
	If you choose to start a new game, another menu asking how many people 
will play the game will pop up.  Select the desired number and press ENTER.
Another menu conveinently pops up.  Starships are grouped in nationalities with
each one carrying a fleet of strong and weak ships.  Choose which nationality
you wish to play by selecting with the UP and DOWN cursor keys and pressing
ENTER.  A list of four ship names will appear belonging to that nationality
with the topmost ship the weakest and the bottom ship the strongest.  To view
the ships' stats, press the V key.  If you feel you've made a mistake and would
like to choose another nationality, press the B key to go back to the nation-
ality selection menu.
	When you've found the ship that satisfies your destructive urge, press
ENTER to select it.  Name your ship, press ENTER again and it's time for the
next player to choose his or her weapons of annihlation.  After all the
players have chosen a ship and ship name, the game is ready to start!


IV.  Starship Basics and Physics

For those of you not familiar with starships, this section describes them. 
Below is a list of starship terminology.

	Starship -  obviously, the vessel you command.  Think of seaships (but
		in space).
	Phaser -  Your main weapon used to destroy other starships.  It is 
		beam of highly focused energy.
	Photon Torpedo -  Your other weapon on the starship.  This is a one 
		time launch weapon, which means you can only use a photon 
		torpedo once (the larger ships usually have stores of 20 or 
		more).  They take little power to load and do much more damage
		than phasers, but their range is much more limited.  It is 
		basically a cylinder about one meter in length and one-half
		meter in width that contains high explosives (usually anti-
		matter).  Use them sparingly!  They are often called "photons"
		for short.
	Warp Speed -  This is measurement of speed at velocities exceeding the
		speed of light.  Of course, this is scientifically impossible
		(but who's being scientific!?).
	Hull - The physical body of the starship.
	Shields -  These are your starship's main defenses.  When somebody
		fires at you, the shields take the damage first, not your
		ship's hull.
	Superstructure -  Another name for the starship's hull.  When this is
		depleted to zero (from weapon hits), your ship explodes.
	Engines - the power houses of your starship.  They generate power for
		each system on the starship and, more importantly, make it
		move out of the way of your opponents.  Like superstructure,
		when your engines are depleted to zero, your ship explodes.
	Point - a unit of measure used for damage and allocation.  Ex)  20
		points of shields left;  15 points of damage;  etc.


	Not much in this game is realistically possible, however some aspects
of the game do take physics into account.  For instance, in order to find out
how much energy is required to move at a certain speed, you take the mass of
the ship and multiply it by the warp speed at which you wish to move.  Use the
following formula to determine the power needed (the game does this for you
automatically, anyway):

		       Energy Required = Mass * Warp Speed

For instance, if you wanted to move at warp 5 and your ship has a mass of 3,
it would take 15 power points (energy required) to accelerate you to that
speed.  Ship mass can range anywhere from 1 to 10 and the warp speed limit is
18.  So, if you have a mass 10 ship and want to move at warp 18, 180 power
points are required.  Keep in mind that even starships have limits.  If you
accelerate past the recommended warp speed for your ship, the superstructure
WILL take stress damage due to excessive speed.  How much stress damage the
ship will take is reported to you when you are selecting a speed to move at.
Be careful, because you can explode if you move too fast.

	
Here's the basics:
	To start off with, engines are what give a starship power and the
ability to move. Each system on the ship requires power to work properly, and
the more power you put to a system, the better it will work.   However the
captain must decide how much power of the available power each system gets.
This is called "power allocation."  The engines produce power in points.  For
instance, engines on a starship may give you 20 power points (very powerful
engines could give up to 200 power points).  It is up to you to decide how
many power points each of the three main systems (Shields, Weapons, Movement)
on a starship get.  Obviously, the faster you want to move, the more power
points you allocate to movement, or the stronger you want the shields, the
more power points you allocate to shields.  It is also up to the captain to
decide how to use that power in each of the separate systems.  Decisions need
to be made as to which shield will be stronger, what warp speed to move at, or
which weapon will have the most power and at what time the weapon will fire
at (all of these decisions are described later in the manual).
	When power points are allocated to a certain system, they turn into
that system's power points.  For example, if the captain were to allocate 15
power points to "shields", the "shields" system has 15 shield points, or if
the captain were to allocate 20 power points to "weapons," the ship would have
15 weapon points.  However, keep in mind that this does not hold true for the
"movement" system.  Every ship gets the same number of movement points but
it's how fast the ship moves that determines how far it travels using the
movement points given to it.
      
Weapons System

	Each starship has offensive weapons, or in other words, instruments
that allow the starship to destroy other starships.  There are two main types
of weapons:  Phasers and Photons.  Some starships have many weapons (ex:  19
phasers)  while some only have one or two.  NOTE:  every starship has only ONE
photon torpedo tube. 
	Each weapon has a certain firing arc.  It makes no sense for all the
weapons on a starship to fire in all directions;  there's no strategy to this.
Instead, each one has an arc in which it can fire:  Forward, Aft (behind),
Starboard (to the right of forward), Port (to the left forward).  NOTE:  A
photon torpedo actually fires only forward, however since the photon tracks its
target over many movement points (versus a phaser which fires only on one
movement point) it can turn left or right (hence no arc restriction), meaning
it doesn't matter where the enemy is, just fire the darn thing!
	These ARCS are relative only to the front of the ship.  To give you an
idea of how these are situated, picture the front of the ship facing "up."
When this is true, Forward would be up, Aft would be down, Starboard would be
right, and Port would be left.  Here's a diagram to help you:

			_______________________________
		       |        \             /        |
		       | Forward \  Forward  / Forward |
		       |    &     \         /     &    |
		       |__ Port    \       /Starboard__|
		       |  --__      \     /      __--  |
		       |      --__   \   /   __--      |
		       |          --__\ /__--          |
  O = Your starship    |  Port    __-- O --__Starboard |
		       |      __--    / \    --__      |
		       |  __--       /   \       --__  |
		       |--   Aft    /     \ Aft      --|
		       |      &    /       \  &        |
		       |    Port  /         \ Starboard|
		       |         /    Aft    \         |
		       | _______/_____________\________|

	If my ship's forward section were pointed to the right, the ARCS move
with it (Port would now be up, Aft is right, and Starboard is down).
	Notice that the ARCS overlap the adjacent ARCS.  If the target ship
lies within this overlap it is possible to fire two phasers in different arcs
at the same ship.  For instance, if the ship was in your Forward&Port arc, you
could fire phasers that pointed Port and Forward at the same target at the
same time.
	In order to fire a weapon, that weapon must have energy.  The captain
takes the power allocated to the weapons system and splits it up among the
different weapons.  Do NOT load all of your weapons.  Remember one phaser
CANNOT fire in multiple directions.  What if the ship you are firing at is in
front of you?  You will not want to load a phaser that can only hit things be-
hind the ship.
	When a phaser is loaded, the captain puts energy into it.  And it is
this energy that damages other ships.  How much energy you put in is the 
direct cause of how much damage the weapon does.  Let's say that if you were to
load a phaser to 3 power points, and if that phaser hits a ship, it would do 3
DAMAGE points (NOTE:  the shields are there to absorb those damage points).  A
phaser loaded to 10 power points will do 10 damage points.  However, there is a
limit to the amount of energy one can load into a phaser.  This is called the
Max PTL (power to load).  You can put as little in as you want, but you cannot
exceed the Max PTL.
	When a phaser is loaded, the captain must also decide WHEN to fire it,
that is, which movement point (or time point) to fire on (this will be discus-
sed further along in this section so you don't need to worry about it now).
	Photons are loaded differently than phasers, however.  Instead of
loading the weapon with as much power as you want damage inflicted, the photon
requires a SET amount of power to load.  For instance, the power to load a
photon on a certain starship is 5 power points.  This means that the captain
must give 5 power points to that weapon in order to fire it;  no more, no less.
This does NOT mean, convienently, that the photon does only 5 damage points.
A photon often does twice the amount of damage (if not more) than the amount
loaded into it.  A photon that is loaded with 5 power units could do 30 points
of damage when it hits.  Why not have all weapons be photons?  There are,
unfortunately some severe disadvantages to using photons.  First of all, their
range is VERY limited.  Secondly, you have a limited number of them.  Unlike
phasers, which are inexhaustible (as long as you put power to them), photons
can be used up.  The average number of photons on a ship is about 10, so use
them sparingly.  Thirdly, you can only fire ONE PER TURN.  Unlike phasers,
only one photon can be launched at a time (NOTE:  although a single phaser can
only fire once per turn, you can fire up to 19 other phasers during the same
turn if you have them.  All ships have, at most, one photon torpedo tube).
Also, photons launch only during the first time point (to be discussed later).

Shields System
	
	Each starship has defensive shields, or in other words, a cover around
the ship that absorbs damage from weapons.  Unlike the weapons system, this
one is very easy to manipulate.  Basically, a starship's shields are split up 
into four sections (almost exactly like the weapons arcs):

			_______________________________
		       | \                           / |
		       |   \                       /   |
		       |     \      Forward      /     |
		       |       \               /       |
		       |         \           /         |
		       |           \       /           |
		       |             \   /             |
  O = Your starship    |    Port       O    Starboard  |
		       |             /   \             |
		       |           /       \           |
		       |         /           \         |
		       |       /      Aft      \       |
		       |     /                   \     |
		       |   /                       \   |
		       |_/___________________________\_|
				 
	Notice that the main difference between the weapon arcs diagram and 
this diagram is that the arcs do not overlap each other.  It is not possible to
be hit on two shields at the same time by the same ship.  This, however, can be
unfortunate because all of the attacker's weapons are concentrated on only one
shield (making the chances more likely that the attacker will destroy it with
sheer power).
	Each shield has a numerical value that represents how much damage the
shield can take before collapsing and becoming useless (letting whatever weapon
hits the ship hit the hull).  For example, if you had a shield with 15 shield
points, the shield can withstand 15 damage points before collapsing.
	When you receive your ship, each of its four shields are loaded with a
starting value;  this is called BASE Shield Points.  The shields are auto-
loaded to a certain number, and the captain does not have to expend energy to
keep them up.  There is another type of shield point and that is DISTRIBUTIVE
shield points.  These are extra points the captain can add to any shield to make
them stronger by allocating energy to the shields system.  Distributive points
last only one turn;  that is you have to keep allocating energy to shields, and
redistributing that energy in the shields.  When a weapon hits a shield, the
distributive points are subtracted first, thus saving the underlying base points
(that take no energy to upkeep).  Keep in mind that base shield points last
indefinitely or until they are destroyed by weapons.
	Even shields have their limits, so there is a maximum number of
distributive points you can put to each shield (this usually differs from ship
to ship, but it is basically the same number of base points you start out
with). For an example, the shields on a certain starship start out with 20 base
points.  The captain allocates 20 power points to shields and then distributes
them in the following way:  10 go to the forward shield, 6 go to the aft
shield, and the starboard and port shields each get 2.  The shields are hit by
a photon that does 25 damage to the front shield.  The forward shield is
knocked down to 5 base points,

10 distributive + 20 base = 30 points total - 25 damage points = 5 points left

At the beginning of the next turn, all the distributive points dissipate
(the forward shield has 5 pts and the aft, starboard, and port each have 20).
If the damage caused by the photon had been 10 or less, the base points of the
forward shield would have been unaffected and would still have 20 points).

Movement System        
	
	Each player gets 20 movement points (time points) in which to move his
or her ship.  How far one can move depends on how fast one is traveling.
	When you load your weapons, you can specify on which movement point
you wish that phaser to fire.  For instance, if you fire on time point 1, you
are firing on the first move you make, the first key press you make in the
movement screen.  If you fire on time point 20, you fire on at the place you
eventually end up, 20 key presses in the movement screen.  Remember, if you
want to fire on time point 1, you must realize that this is after you make one
key press in the movement screen.  During one time point, you move THEN you
fire, not the opposite.

Damage

	It is possible to die in this game.  Damage is what kills you.  For
each starship, there are five places that can get damaged:  ENGINES, SUPER-
STRUCTURE, WEAPONS, SHIELDS, and SHIELD GENERATOR.  The shields, as described
above, take the brunt of the attack, absorbing as much damage as possible
before collapsing.  After a shield is gone, each consecutive weapon hit trans-
fers its damage directly to the ship.  If ENGINES gets hit, the amount of 
available power drops by the number of damage points inflicted on it.  SUPER-
STRUCTURE represents the ship's hull.  This number also goes down by the
number of damage points inflicted on it.  If half of your original SUPER-
STRUCTURE points are gone, half of your ship is gone.  If either ENGINES or
SUPERSTRUCTURE is reduced to zero or below, the starship explodes.
	Weapons also take damage.  Each weapon can withstand 5 points of
damage before becoming unusable.  If more than 5 points of damage is inflicted,
the remaining damage carries over to other phasers in the same arc.  If no more
phasers exist in the arc, damage is carried over to phasers in adjacent arcs.
If no phasers exist in adjacent arcs, the remaining damage is divided in half
and inflicted upon the SUPERSTRUCTURE.  A photon can also take 5 points of
damage before becoming inoperable.  Any remaining damage is divided by two and
inflicted upon the SUPERSTURCUTRE.
	Stress damage is delt directly to the SUPERSTRUCTURE.

Explosions

	When a ship explodes, the explosion does damage to other ships in the
area.  Damage is first delt to the shields and then to either the ENGINES or
SUPERSTRUCTURE.

Self-destruction

	It is possible to destory your ship by your own hand with the self-
destruct mechanism.  Use this to destroy your ship, destroy neighboring ships,
or to quit the game.  Selecting a powerful ship, turning on the self-destruct,
marching up to the other player and destorying him is not considered fair play
and generally makes the other player(s) angry.

V.  Sample Turn

	After each player has chosen his or her ship, a screen appears showing
the players' ships, ship names, and player numbers.  A pulsing box surrounds
the player whose turn is next.  This player then shoo's away the other players
to work in peace and in secrecy.
	The first screen of the player's turn is the ALLOCATION screen.  The
captain must decide here how much each of the starship's systems gets in energy
points.  The number of available power points that the engine outputs is
displayed along with the engine efficiency (remaining engine points divided by
the original engine points).  Above this display is a graphical schematic and
three numbers listed under the MAX heading.  These numbers represent the
maximum number of power points that can be allocated to a system without
wasting energy (why allocate 40 power points to weapons when you have only one
phaser with a Max PTL of 5?).  The maximum amount of energy one can allocate on
any starship is 180 for movement, 191 for weapons, and 160 for shields.  If you
have made a mistake, don't worry!  You can redo your energy allocation when it
prompts you to do so.
	The next screen is the SET VELOCITY screen.  Use the left and right
cursor keys to select the speed you want to travel at.  The computer calculates
and displays the power required and the stress involved in traveling at the
selected speed (nothing tough here).
	After the warp speed is selected, the SHIP MOVEMENT screen is
displayed.  Each ship, as stated before, has 20 movement points (i.e., 20 key
presses).  The keys to move a starship are:

	Up Arrow - Move forward
	Left Arrow - Rotate to the Left
	Right Arrow - Rotate to the Right
	Home Key - Move diagonal up and left
	PgUp Key - Move diagonal up and right
	S - stand still for one movement point

	Remember, time point 1 occurs AFTER the first keypress, not before.  If
you make a mistake, don't worry!  You can re-move your ship.
	The next screen, the WEAPONS screens, allows you to sow the seeds of        
destruction.  The right of the screen contains some critical information about
the limits of your weapons:  the number of phasers you have, Max PTL, PTL
requirement for photons, etc.  A weapons grid is also displayed showing info
on each individual weapon you have (with the photon torpedo tube occupying the
bottom slot of the grid for every starship).  Just to the right of each row is
a circle that "lights-up" when you move the up and down cursor keys.  This is
the weapon selection icon.  To load a weapon you must first "light-up" its
selection icon and press ENTER.  On the left of the screen will appear a
PTL prompt;  the amount of energy you want to put into the phaser.  Remember,
this number cannot exceed your Max PTL or the amount of energy allocated to
weapons.
	The next prompt asks you for the target of the phaser.  Enter the
number of the player you want to fire at (Ex:  for Player 3, enter a 3).  Be
careful not to target yourself.
	The third prompt asks for the time point on which to fire the phaser.
Specify a number between 1 and 20.  Keep in mind that when firing a phaser,
the target ship must be in the ARC of the phaser AT THE EXACT TIME POINT that 
you specify.  Firing a forward arc phaser at player 2 on time point 20 doesn't
help if player 2 crossed your forward arc into your port arc by timepoint 15.
If the target ship cannot be fired at because he's in the wrong location at the
wrong time, the phaser won't fire.  It is very helpful to use the tactical
screen in conjunction with the weapons screen (more on this later).
	Photons are easy to load.  Select the weapon and answer the questions.
That's all there is to it.
	In addition to the base screens of ALLOCATION, SET VELOCITY, SHIELDS,
MOVEMENT, and WEAPONS are three other screens which can help you during your
turn.  These are called SHIP STATUS, TACTICAL, and QUIT screens that are
accessible from any screen displaying their selection keys under the screen
title.  Just use the selection key and the selected screen will pop up.  To
exit these screens, press the Escape (ESC) key.
	The SHIP STATUS screen gives you all the information you need about
your starship in one place.  Information such as weapons and shields data is
given.
	The TACTICAL screen is a very powerful utility that allows you to plan
your turn, view the enemy, and theorize as to their positions.  When you press
the Alt-T key to display this screen, a starfield showing the current ship
positions displays.  Use the spacebar to toggle between ships, and the
following keys to perform actions on the selected ship:

	Alt-W   - overlay weapon arcs
	Alt-S   - overlay shield arcs
	Alt-M   - Move selected ship
	
Pressing Alt-M allows you to theorize on the possible locations of the selected
ship at different time points.  Select the warp speed you think the ship may
move at and spend the time moving the ship around at will.
	If you've already finished with the MOVEMENT screen, you can press
Alt-P to display the moves you made.  This is extremely helpful in determining
the direction you are facing at a certain time point when loading weapons.
	To reset the screen and move every ship back to the original positions,
press Alt-R.
	The QUIT screen handles self-destruction, game saving, and un-
conditional quitting.  To save the game, simply press S and input the file
name (right before the battle sequence, the computer will ask for you to input
a description for the saved game).  To self-destruct, press D and answer the
questions.  To turn off the music, press M and to quit unconditionally without
giving the game a chance to save, press Ctrl-PgUp.
	When you are sure that you've finished your turn, press Alt-W in the
WEAPONS screen to end it.


VI.  Selection keys

Selection keys are keys that perform functions in the game.  Each screen has a
special list of selection keys.  Here they are, listed in their entirety:

Allocation Screen:
	Alt-T - displays the tactical screen
	Alt-S - displays the status screen
	Alt-Q - allows you to quit the game and/or engage the self-destruct
		mechanism

Set Velocity Screen:
	Same as Allocation Screen

Raise Shields Screen:
	Same as Allocation Screen

Weapons Screen:
	Same as Allocation Screen
	Alt-W - Ends turn (weapons screen is the last screen of a turn)

Tactical Screen:
	Alt-W   - displays weapon arcs
	Alt-S   - displays shield arcs
	Alt-M   - Move any ship
	Alt-P   - Replays movement if you have calculated it already
	Alt-R   - Resets screen.  Moves ships to original positions
	Esc - quits tactical screen

Quit Screen:
	Ctrl-PgUp - Unconditional quit.  Stops everything immediately


VII.  Final Notes

	On Turn Structure:  The game is set up in a rather peculiar way.  Each
player takes their turn separately,  one after the other, in the order of
slowest, from the last turn, going first.  Then the battle sequence follows
with combat and movement with all players together.  The game then loops back
to player turns and starts the sequence all over again.  The player turns would
actually be superimposed over the battle sequence if this were reality but I
can't do this without networking the game (which I have no clue about how to
 do) so this is the best I could do.  Thus, any decisions you make within your
turn will not be instant.  They will actually happen within the battle sequence
and not within your turn.

	On Self-Destructing:  one you set the self-destruct to true, you must
finish your turn out, wait for other players to finish their turns, and wait
until the battle sequence is over until your ship blows up and you can walk
away from the game (if for instance, you wanted to quit the game but still let
others play on).

	On Saving the Game:  when you turn the save game ON, you must wait
until each player finishes their turn before the game is saved.  Once the last
person have finished their turn, the program will ask you to enter a game
description (which will be accessible in the load game menu).  Three lines
only.  You must use the three lines so either use text or just press ENTER.


	On Quitting the Game Instantly:  DO NOT USE CTRL-BREAK while the music
is playing unless you have this unbearable need to press the reset button. Your
computer WILL lock up!  From the QUIT screen, press Ctrl-PgUp to quit
immediately.

	On Annoying "Whines" when using the PC-Speaker:  When music is playing
through your PC-Speaker (which I don't recommend anyway), you might get an
annoying noise instead of music.  This is because the mix rate is set too low.
Quit the game and use the CONFIG program supplied.  You can experiment by
setting the mix rate higher by 1,000 or so and testing it until it sounds good.
My 486/50 works well with a 15,000.  When using a Sound Blaster, regardless of
your processor, 10,000 works pretty good.


VII.  Contacting the author

	The author (me) is Cameron Beccario.  I'm always willing to answer mail
regarding questions, complaints, complements or anything else on your mind.
	Star Commander is distributed as freeware.  This means that you can
distribute and use this game freely, free of charge.  If you like the game,
a donation of $10 would be GREATLY appreciated.
	
	My Internet e-mail address is:  cameronb@iastate.edu

	I can also be contacted at:  
		The Nexus BBS (sysop David Shafer)
		(319) 362-6088

	You can also contact me at my U.S. mail address: 
		Cameron Beccario        
		4153 Riverview Rd.
		Cedar Rapids, IA 52411-7943

Thank you for trying out my game!  Hope you enjoy!
