Space Battle deluxe V2.3

Space Battle deluxe V2.3
Game No.	227
Voting	5.82 points, 11 votes
Developer	Jan Böttcher
Company	More.Gore Software
Release	2001
Platform	C64
Genre	Strategy, Miscellaneous, Space
Gamemode	Single player up to 4 players (in turns)
Operation
Media
Language
Information	Forerunner: Space Battle Deluxe Follower: Advanced Space Battle

Description

Space Battle is a simple strategy game for up to four players (Lords) and optionally a computer opponent "Deep Jones", who is, however, not the brightest. Each player commands a fleet of spaceships and tries to conquer a randomly calculated galaxy, which on many planets is already inhabited by neutral peoples (natives). At the beginning each participant chooses his home world. The first player then enters his commands ("from which planet to which fly xx spaceships) invisibly. In the status window he can then see his worlds with an overview of production rate per year and the stock of ships. The game ends after a given number of game years (10 - 999). The a report is created to find the winner.

Design

Simple screen display. Planets are shown as numbers 0 to 9 and letters A to Z. At the right border there is an info window with the current running actions and the status of the single players. At the top a menu bar is opened if needed. In the game, a for the C64 new window technique was used, which reminds of the (PC) DOS programmes of the early 90s. The game status can be saved on disk any time. In the game itself there are no music or sound effects. On the disk there is also an FAQ (manual) and a history (list of modifications) with good background music.

... an animation from the game ...

... the productivity map in Space Batlle deluxe V2.3 ...

Hints

Controls

• CRSR  Cursor keys = up, down, left and right in the menu
• Enter  Enter key = confirm commands
• Space  Space key = go on after calculations
• ←  "<-" key = end move (in emulator: This key ("^°") is one left to the "1"). With this the corresponding move is ended and the menu bar is closed.

Start of the game

The game asks you at the start how many years and maximum orders per player you prefer. At the beginning you should enter a game length of 30-50 years with a maximum of 5 or 7 orders per player and year. You can change these values any time during the game.

If you play alone, Deep Jones will be your opponent, as it does not make sense to play without enemy. But the game is most fun with several human opponents. In this case Deep Jones makes the game even more interesting. But Deep Jones always needs some time to think about its moves. If you do not want to wait for it, just do not let him join. After that you can choose between different galaxies. Just pick one and try it out, but beware of the one galaxy that is named "The other Galaxy" at the beginning. It is for advanced players who want to try something new and strange. Now you can get a cup of coffee as it takes 1:40 min until the "Galaxy Setup" is finished! The programme needs this time to set the internal tables, so it can run faster later. Earlier versions of the game did not need these tables, but in return Deep Jones needed longer to think.

When choosing the home world you should consider two things. First: Worlds that are located in overcrowded parts of the galaxy enable your realm to grow fast as ships do only need little time to reach the next hostile world. Second: On the other hand you should choose a world which lies in safe distance to your opponents’ home worlds as they possibly could destroy you and your plans very fast.

Basics

On the right side of the screen the symbol of your home world and three additional numbers are shown. The first of those numbers is the number of the player who owns this world (in this case yours!). The second number (10) means that your home world produces 10 ships each year. And the third number (100) shows that you have at the moment 100 ship available on this world. You can now use them to do attacks on hostile worlds.

Below the information about your home world there is a little window with your name and a menu with three options. The most important option in this menu is the first, "ORDERS". At the beginning this is your only option that you need, use the cursor keys to move the menu bar and the return key to confirm your choice.

After "ORDERS" has been chosen the game asks how many ships you want to send from the start world to the target world. At the beginning you should send approx. 20 ships from the home world to each of the surrounding worlds. But your orders are not visible for other players, therefore the information you enter is NOT shown in the screen, so do not marvel. Additionally, the window at the top still shows 100 ships in your home world, although you have already sent ships. By this your fellow players have no possibility to see which orders you give (except they watch your fingers while typing). After all orders have been given you press the "left arrow"-key (left to the key 1).

When it is your turn again the only thing that has changed is, that you have now less ships on your home world. The sent ships are not on the given worlds yet, as they are still on their way! Depending on the distance between the worlds it takes between 1 and 6 years (moves) until they reach their target. As you own now only a few ships on your home world, you will decide to spend no orders in this move. To jump your move simply choose the option "ORDERS" and press the "left arrow"-key.

Unoccupied worlds are inhabited by natives. These also have spaceships and use half of the production ability of their world. Therefore it is extremely difficult to conquer an unoccupied world with a high production rate. But normally the natives stay passive in the game, they rarely attack other worlds.

The other options in the menu

You can abort orders by pressing the key "Space". This gets you back to the small menu.

"MORE INFO" allows you to look at the information about worlds which are not yours. Just press the key belonging to this worlds and the "Space" key when you have seen enough.

If you choose "BIG MENU", a new menu bar appears at the upper rim of the screen. Press "F1", "F3", "F5" or "F7" to open the menus or "arrow-left" or "Space" to return to the small menu.

The "Big Menu"

The "PREFS" Menu

The PREFS-Menu allows you to elongate or shorten the game and you can enter a new max. number of orders per player and year.

The "DISK" Menu

This should be self-explanatory. Compared to the previous versions a bug in the SAVE option was fixed, so this should work properly now.

The "MAPS" Menu

Here you can view the maps about the realm of each player, about unoccupied worlds, the number of ships on worlds and the production rate of the worlds. From V2.0 there is a new feature, you can also view the distances between worlds as in the "MORE INFO" option of the small menu. For this you enter the starting world and the game then shows a map with the years (moves) which are needed between this and the other worlds. Note that the ships need two years to reach their full speed. This fact is regarded in the maps.

The "MISC" Menu

Most of the options explain themselves here.

• "LIST ORDERS" gives you a list of all your ships which are currently on the way including the target world and the time they still need. But be careful with this list, the other players could peep.

• "STARSCAN" is a very important thing. With this menu option the room around your realm is scanned for hostile attackers that near your worlds. The game informs you about most of the attacks that can happen in the next three years. Also the strength of the attack is shown (light, medium, heavy). Light attacks are only dangerous if you have moved too many ships from this world before. Medium attacks can be dangerous, but there is also the possibility to defend the attack without any harm to the defence. Heavy attacks can only be defended with much effort. A small rule of thumb: 4 light attacks correspond to one medium and two medium correspond to one heavy attack. So if a Starscan shows a light, medium or heavy attack, depends of course on the number of ships that defend this world at the moment. If you e.g. have no ships on one world, each attack will be shown as "heavy".

• "EVACUATE A WORLD" is useful, if you think you can neither defend a world nor reconquer it later. Evacuation means that you transfer all your ship to one of your other worlds and additionally destroy the most production sites. Some of the production sites are transported to the next world with the evacuated ships.

• "RETIRE FROM GAME" means giving up. All your ships are removed from the galaxy and substituted by natives.

• "END THE GAME" ends the game, no matter if the "max # of years" was reached or not.

Information about hostile worlds

The information that the game gives you seems evidently wrong. But this is not the case! All data from hostile worlds which you can access are "lastly calculated data", this is data from the point of time at which a player has given his last order or a world has been attacked the last time. The current number of ships and production rate cannot be seen. It is part of the game, that you do not know everything about your opponents.

Random events

Each year some worlds will slightly change their production rate. Other random events are:

• "Re-Organisation": The production rate of a world rises considerably.
• "Sabotage": The production rate of a world lowers considerably and some ships are destroyed.
• "World Beam": A world disappears and reappears at another place in the galaxy.
• "Asteroids": Some ships do not reach their aim as they are destroyed by asteroids.
• "Native Mutation": Natives of a world breed rapidly and attack other worlds near them.

Deep Jones

Deep Jones is not as intelligent as a human player. To compensate this, it starts with 200 ships instead of 100. It follows a strategy, is more intelligent and aggressive as in earlier versions and can pose a threat, but sooner or later you will win and have found out its strategy.

The end of the game

The game ends if one of the following criteria are met:

• The set game length has been reached (max. # of years)
• You have chosen "END THE GAME" in the MISC Menu
• There is only one player left, all the others were defeated or have retreated from the game.

At the end of the game all ships that are still on their way will reach their target world. Additionally, all worlds will produce further new ships during this six year long phase (it takes this long until the last ship has reach the target world). But you cannot give any more orders. This means that you have no possibility to react to attacks. Then the ranking of the players is shown. The position is calculated as follows:

	Total number of ships
-	Number of ships produced in the last 6 years
+	Number of your worlds * 30
=	Your score

Solution

Some small tips:

• You should be able to defend your worlds against attacks. If you think your worlds needs a better defence, send ships to this world.
• Worlds are more valuable for you, if they have a higher production rate. It reaches from 0 - 12 and can change during the game, but you cannot influence this.
• It is better to conduct one heavy attack than several light attacks on a world.
• When choosing the home world avoid the middle of the galaxy, as you can easily get surrounded from all sides.

Voting

Voting of the C64-Wiki users (10=the best vote):
5.82 points at 11 votes (rank 843). You need to be logged in to cast a vote.
C64Games	6	9th September 2006 - "good" - 676 downs

Reviews

Sledgie: "I played a previous version of this game with several friends enthusiastically in the past. I like much the further development with the optional computer player and the well-arranged design. The missing sound effects do not disturb, as this is no action game. The possibility to save the game status, especially when playing very long (e.g. 999 game years) are top. My total voting is 8 out of 10 points."

FXXS: "Spartanic graphics, no music and nevertheless even alone against DEPP JONES a motivating strategy game. The controls could have done with a few shortcuts, DEEP JONES could have been a bit stronger, but the random events and the natives balance this quite well, makes 8 out of 10 points."

Miscellaneous

Cover

• Unfortunately no official cover was released for this game.

Highscore

1. FXXS - 2.585 (07.06.2014)
2. Sledgie - 244 (17.10.2003)
3. Nobody - 0 (dd.mm.yyyy)

	#2 Sledgie		#3 Nobody

• As you can set many things freely in this game, a highscore does only make sense, if one agrees with single-player games on game years and moves per year. Multiplayer game scores are not comparable. Therefore settings of 30 years and 5 moves per round are valid. In this time span one can also defeat DEEP JONES...

Links

• C64Games.de - Game No. 2675
• Gamebase64.com - Game No. 14597

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