Air Defense Player Instructions AIR DEFENSE Written by: Darel Schartman Player Documentation As Of: 7 April, 1991 Welcome to Air Defense. a. You are the Commanding General of your country's Air Force. You have three kinds of fighters (Retaliators, Zephyers, and Spitfires), three kinds of bombers (Deliverers, Lightnings, and Eliminators), two kinds of reconnaissance aircraft for spy missions (Falcon 1 and Eagle II), two kinds of ground based radar (XEP-90 and Grid Plus), three kinds of ground based anti-aircraft (Grendle 12, Massh 33, and Laser/2), and three types of facilities (Factories, Cities, and Bases). b. Your mission as the Commanding General is to destroy the Factories, Cities, and Bases of other players while protecting your own Factories, Cities, and Bases. You achieve this by initiating air raids against them with your fighters and bombers and defending when they raid you with your radar, anti-aircraft, and fighters. c. The main menu has 8 items and appears as follows: 1. Purchase Equipment T] Today's News 2. Aircraft Maintenance Y] Yesterday's News 3. Mission Control 4. World Powers 5. Diplomacy E] Exit Stage Left d. Everything in this game is real time. What this means is that any raids sent against you arrive during your play. Also, the missions you sent return during your play. Scoring is also real time. Since the objective is to destroy your opponents factories, cities, and bases, your game score is dependent on the number of these you have (or have left). The "World Powers" menu will reflect the current status for your country and your enemies countries. This means you can increase your score, and perhaps your world standing, by purchasing more factories, cities, and bases. e. Aircraft have to be maintained or repaired after flying raids or defending your country. The Aircraft Maintenance menu lets you buy spare parts and repair aircraft, returning them to your combat ready totals. Aircraft in maintenance are not useable for either defense or offensive operations. f. You send raids or reconnaissance missions against your opponents from the Mission Control Menu. You select the target country, then the target within that country, then select which aircraft and how many of each will participate in the raid. Raid targets can be radar, anti-aircraft, factories, cities, or bases. If you are especially successful in a raid, the President will be pleased and will reward you with extra goldbars. You can send as many raids per day as your assets permit. Just remember that you won't get them back until the next day or until the player they're targeted against plays. If the targeted player hasn't played by the time you play the next day, a special routine will process the raids and return them to you. Reconnaissance missions can be sent, but are frequently either shot down or unsuccessful if sufficient numbers of aircraft are not sent on the mission. When you do get a report on your foe's status, you can save the results and update them as you have other successes. Reconnaissance allows you to preserve game statistics for two enemies. g. You can send messages to other players by using the diplomatic function. The message editor works like Forem's and there is no limit on length. Word wrap is automatic. Incoming messages are displayed as you enter the game, pausing between messages or after 20 lines for a key press. After the message display is completed, you are given the opportunity to reply. h. The menu item "World Powers" will show you where your country stands in comparison to the others. Remember that this score is determined from the number of factories, cities, and bases you have and will fluctuate up and down as you gain or lose these assets. i. To see what happened in the world today or yesterday, check the Today's News or Yesterday's News menu items. These are updated as raids return. Additionally, the Sysop may have also included the game data files in the BBS database. This external game news will contain information not available from within the game. Don't forget to look for these files. If the Sysop of the BBS you are playing on has not installed the data base files, encourage them to do so. j. To stop play, select Exit Stage Left. Remember than you can play as often as you want each day, however, you only get paid once. k. You start each day of play by being paid in goldbars. The amount of your pay is based upon the number of factories, cities, and bases you have. If you want to earn more goldbars per day, buy more of these. Additional goldbars are included in your daily play from the President for efficient operations if you have maintained a 1:2:4 ratio or better between your bases and cities and your cities and factories. For example, if your cities are more than or equal to twice your bases and your factories are more than or equal to twice your cities, you get this bonus. However, the President considers it inefficient of have more than eight times as many factories as Military Bases. This means you cannot establish your 1:2:4 ratio and then just buy factories. Once the 8:1 ratio of factories to cities is exceeded, your operation becomes inefficient and the President pays no bonus. You will know if you receive a bonus for efficient operations by a notice when you first enter the game. l. You have five days of new player protection from raids against you. However, you can attack at any time if the country you select to raid is out of protection. Attacking while you are under protection will void your own protection. Basic Concepts. a. Your facilities (Factories, Cities, and Bases) are protected in defense by your fighters, radar, and anti-aircraft. The effectiveness of your defense, as in real life, will depend on how many of these defensive assets you have in relation to the facilities you want to protect. Obviously, 50 of each won't do well protecting 500 facilities. When you reach a certain proportion of radar and anti-aircraft per facility, you will be notified of an incoming raid, told how many aircraft are in that raid, and given the opportunity to select how many of each type of fighter to scramble. If you don't have more than the magic ratio, the game will simply announce an air raid and scramble a percentage of your fighters in defense. There is an exception to the 20% scramble rule that is discussed below. b. When you send an air raid against an opponent, damage to your raid and the target are computed using real life factors. Bombers require fighter escort. Insufficient escort will be paid for in shot down aircraft. Further, any raid has to penetrate the enemy defenses enroute to the target, brave heavy defenses at the target, and run through them again on the way out of the country. Losses will be assessed for each of these phases and you will also shoot down enemy fighters with your escorts. Remember that part of the defenses are ground based radar and anti-aircraft. Based upon the total number of defenses per targets and the numbers you are attacking with once you reach the targets, the enemy's loss of radar, anti-aircraft, factories, cities, or bases are assessed. Notice the plural used in "targets". This highlights that if you are attacking factories, and your opponent has 600 of these, a raid of 200 aircraft can't possibly cover all 600. But this limitation goes for the defender as well. Their ground based defenses of radar and anti- aircraft are spread between their factories, cities, and bases. In summary, you will be shown what has returned, how many aircraft you shot down, and how much of your target was destroyed. The News will report your enemies claim of what he shot down of yours. The above discussion of how damaged is assessed, will help you configure both your defense and your raids accordingly. Spend your goldbars wisely. c. If your score drops below 500 points during game play, your country will collapse. You will have to re-enter the game and start over. Since a new player starts with a score of 600 and has five days of protection to build, droping below your starting point will cause the citizens of your country to not only declare you a failure, but shoot you full of holes besides. Your countrymen reward heros. They have no room for bad Generals. d. Daily play is important. Not only do you not get paid if you don't play, raids sent against you will be processed anyway after one day of non-play. Also, instead of the normal percentage of your fighters scrambling in defense, a lesser number will defend if the maintenance routine has to process the raid. A word to the wise, don't let your wimps fly in defense while you are absent. e. Successful raids against factories, cities, and bases may be rewarded by the President with extra goldbars. Successful raids against radar and anti- aircraft are not rewarded, however they are useful in helping your other raids survive. Tips on Strategy. a. Coordinate alliances with others and then coordinate your attacks. b. Reducing radar and anti-aircraft before hitting factories, cities, or bases may improve your raid's success and decrease your losses. c. Remember that the more expensive an aircraft is, the more effective it is. In short, you get what you pay for. This equates to fewer expensive aircraft being equal to more cheap aircraft. However, numbers do count, so don't leave your bombers bare as they enter foreign territory. d. Small raids do small damage and suffer heavy losses. Large raids do more damage and may also suffer heavy losses (see tip b above). Notes. a. If you have any ideas for improved game play, please pass them on. If you have the privilege on your BBS of sending fnet email, you can send ideas in email to Darel Schartman at Node 224. Make sure you spell the name correctly or the email will not be delivered. b. We will not worry about or even consider multiple BBS play until the game is sound in the local mode. Let's concentrate on ways to make the game better, more fun, and more realistic. However, please bear in mind that while not all suggestions will be accepted, the suggestion may stimulate other ideas that will be. Your participation will be greatly appreciated. Game Documentation written by: Dick Pederson AKA DOC HOLIDAY FNET Node 224, Flash BBS US Robotics HST Modem (314) 275-2040 PC Pursuitable at 2400 Baud through MOSLO