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                                 version 1.0

                               (C) FLP Nov '95


                              reference  manual




     1. Introduction
            First game
                Solar systems
                Ships
                Science

     2. Game setup
            System requirements
            Registration - Limitations

            Playing on a standalone computer
            Network playing
            BBS or Internet

            The Game window
            Creating new game
            Choosing scenarios
            Game setup
            Hosting a game

     3. Game interface

     4. Main game
            Main window
            Ship orders
                Combat orders
                Trade orders
                Trade routes
                Battle reports
            Solar system orders
                Solar system view and mining
                Politics
                Energy
                Trade support
                Colony
                Sunlist
                Budget
            Ship and starbase construction
            Overall status
            Science
            Embassy
            Race treaty
            Government
            Messages
            Race specifics

            Exit without saving
            Save turn and exit
            Help
            View hull types

            Events

     Appendixes
            A  - To do list
            B  - Build your first ship (Walk through)



@0
[1. INTRODUCTION]
By the beginning of the 21st century the technology for spacetravelling
begun to emerge. Since late 20th century, population growth had laid
heavy on the planets resources, expansion to new worlds was called for.

Pollux is a competitive game of interstellar exploration, diplomacy and
conquest. You are elected as the leader of your planets government. You
will be in charged of the production of food, rawmaterials, starships etc.
Your object is to explore and conquer the galaxies.

You will encounter other worlds, some inhabitet some not. When you meet
other races, you will have to use your diplomacy skill or perhaps your
military force to make them see your ways. You will also encounter long
lost civilizations and their inventions or guardians. Wormholes will take
your well-equipped ships over fare distances. Black holes and spacerifts
will destroy you if you do not have the acquired science. You will have to
know how to use your races special skills to the fullest, if you are to
survive other-galaxy invaders.

Spaceships can be constructed completely according to your needs, provided
you have the acquired sciences. There are a few limitations to the
various hulls your race can build, ie a small freighter can only carry
weapons weighting 10% of its full weight, but 90% can be cargospace.

Science is a major part of Pollux. You have to develop it along the way.
To explore all the over 120 science fields is beyond normal players reach,
so you have to buildup a strategy developing just the things you need,
wether it is to further your own strategy, or to counter your rival
players attacks.

!First game
There a 3 basic elements in this game.

      - The Solar systems   gives resources (workforce or minerals)
      - Your starships      gives you military power and exploration
      - Science             improves resources, power and exploration

!Solar systems
Solar systems provides you with the resources to build starships and to
develop new science. There are 7 windows describing the solar systems.:

Window          Contents
Solar system    View of the planets in the Solar system. Here you can mine
                the planets. You need rawmaterials to build starships.
Politics        Information of the inhabitet world. Here you set the income
                tax, build the defense systems, train the ground forces and
                provide funding for the police and church.
Energy          The production of energy is vital to your empire. The energy
                supply is allocated to different areas like agriculture (to
                feed to population), nature (to clean up pollution),
                entertainment (to keep'em happy) etc.
Trade           Trade support increases chance of public trade. This
                increases your trade tax income and gives you the opportunity
                to buy and sell tradeitems.
Colony          Uninhabitable planets needs CHAP-facilities to grow. Here
                you can also buy other improvements to your colonies like
                a university to improve science, better planetary defense
                systems, soil enrichment, terraforming equipment etc.
Sunlist         Provides a quick view of your empire with data like GNP,
                Population, defense systems ao.
Budget          Show a budget for next year for both the single Solar system
                and the entire empire.

!Ships
Ships are used for many things like exploration, colonization, war and
trade. Thus how you build the ship is very important. There are 3 windows
with ship orders. You should check out the appendix for building your first
starship.

Window
Combat orders   All technical data about the ship is displayed here. How
                much damage the ship can sustain, how long the ship can
                scan the enemies etc. You also decide the exploration orders
                and the wartime orders here.
Trade orders    Trade can be a major part of your empires income. This
                window allows you to buy and sell items produce by the
                population.
Trade routes    Government traderoutes is a sources of great income. It is
                hard to establish, but when you get this going, you can
                make this more than 40% of your GNP.

@1

!Science
Science are very important. Almost everything in this game relies on you
developing the nessecary equipment. Science are divided into 9 categories,
Beam weapons, Bombs, Missile weapons, Ground attack, Hull improvements,
Construction, Ecology, Computers and Energy. You develope science by
allocating energy to science on your planets. The more hours you allocate,
the better the chance of new science being developed. When you have
allocation energy, you can use the science window to adjust the level of
development for each science group.

!Messages
This game would not be much without the multiplayer option. It is the
human opponent that makes this game fun. You can write message to your
opponents when you get it contact with them. This is done by developing
the Communication equipment. The range of this equipment determines if
an opponent is within range and establishes a link if possible. Use the
messages option to diplomatically kill your enemies. The more you write
and read, the more fun the game. Writing universal messages pays you 5000
per turn.


[2. GAME SETUP]
!System requirements
Computer CPU  Intel 80286 or compatible (80386 or better recommended)
Video         VGA 640x480 in 16 colors.
RAM           4Mb
Mouse         You need a mouse, but many hotkeys exists.
Harddisk      2Mb for the game + 1,5 Mb each hosted game.

There are no music or special effects in this the first version, so sound
cards are irrelevant. In future versions the Sound Blaster 16 standard will
be used.

!Windows and OS/2
Pollux is fully Windows and OS/2 compatible. There should not be any
problems at all. Pollux is a DOS program, but can run under Windows using
the included .PIF file. Also included is a Windows icon, but no OS/2 icon.
To use the extra RAM needed, Pollux comes with a DPMI-driver, but this
can be deleted if run under windows or OS/2.


!Registration
This is not a free program (buhuuu). By registering the game, you allow me
to continue the development of Pollux, I hope you want that !?!

Registered players can play in the same game as unregistered players, but
the registered players will have a big advantage developing technology.
Unregistered users cannot develop science beyond level 3. If players
register Pollux, they can switch to the registered version within a game.

If unauthorized copies of Pollux are made, the player will be corrected in
the game and you DONT want that !


!Playing on a standalone computer
The game has a fully integrated multiplayer interface. From the main screen
you select and play your turns. When all players have played their turn, you
select the Host pushbutton on the main screen, and a few minutes after,
you can start the next round.

!Network playing
Pollux is not an actiongame, and thus does not support network gaming via
IPX or alike. Pollux CAN be played on a network though. You will need to
make the Pollux directory available to all users. All players start Pollux
and select the game directory. Then you play your turns and one of the
players select the Host-pushbutton, and the next turn should be ready soon.
You could also make a host-session to automatically host the game using the
POLLUX /HOST <directory> parameters.

!BBS or Internet
Pollux was made for this kind of gaming. This is the todo list.

1) The host creates the game.
2) The host packs the player files and distribute them (Playerx.GUE,
   MsgINx.DAT and Warx.LOG).
3) The player copies them to a game directory and plays his turn
4) The player then packs the game (the Playerx.GUE and Msgoutx.DAT files)
   and returns them to the host.
5) The host, host's the game and distributes the player files and so forth..

If the player misses a turn, not too much damage is done. All the old
commands from the last turn is remembered and carried out. All planetary
settings are also still calculated. In version 1.0 you only lose your
messages.


!The Game window
The Game window allows you to choose the game you want to play, and the
playerfiles you have access to just by pressing the pushbuttons. The Game
window has several buttons :

Player buttons (with logo)  Enters the player turn in the current game. You
                            can also see 2 dates. The first is the host
                            date (HST file) the second is the player turn
                            date (GUE file).
Quit                        Quits Pollux and returns to DOS.
Create New Game             To get started, you need to create a host.
Host game                   Calculates playerscommands and generates new
                            turn files to distribute to the players.
Listbox                     Select the game you want to play here. This
                            will alter the player buttons according to the
                            players in the selected game.
Game Setup                  Technical information about the game.
?                           Help menu appears.
View hulls                  View hull types available.


!Creating new game
To get started with a game, you need to create a host. The Create New Game
pushbutton helps you do that. Here you can decide how many human players
you want in the game, you decide how much distance there should be to the
other races and some scenariodata can also be chosen. You should also
enter the name of the game, which is actually the directory in which the
game will be put. The host only consists of 1 file, the POLLUX.GAM file.

When you accept the window by pressing the OK-button, Pollux generates the
game, the planets, the races, events, ships etc., and puts them in the
POLLUX.GAM file. Be sure to always take a backup of this fie. Something
players do not want, is for their 150 turn game to be erased by accident.
Dont ask me how I know...

!Choosing scenarios
In the Choose scenarios listbox, you can choose between predefined
scenarios. When you choose, the numbers on the right will change.

One Alliance survives    Option reserved for later version
Galaxy explored          One way to win is to explore the galaxies. This is
                         how much you need to explore, to win.
Last year is             Predefine when the game is gonna stop. This is the
                         timebomb equally for all players. The best position
                         after this, wins the game.

Under Start conditions, you define how much each player has when he starts
to play the first turn.

Number of planets at start    This is actually one home world and several
                              developed colonies. Do not choose more than
                              60 planets per player.
1st player start planets      To make the 'All versus the Empire' scenario
                              this option can give the 1st player a
                              different number of planets to start with.
Number of start ships         This will all be small level 1 ships with a
                              single level 1 warship among.
1st player start ships        The 1st player can have a different number of
                              start ships.
Science event %               How many planets should be with lost
                              civilizations. This is not an actual number
                              but only a percentage.
Oracles                       How many oracles should there be. Oracles are
                              planets that develop science at double speed.
1st player is Borgh           The legend of the Borgh. The Borghs starts on
                              a very distant Solar system and must conquer the
                              world from all other races.

!Hosting a game
After players have finished playing their game turn, it is time to host the
game (calculated what they have done). This is done by selecting the game
in the game listbox, and press the Host pushbutton. This will take approx.
1-3 minutes to calculate depending on the progress of the game and speed of
your computer...

Before you host a game, be sure that all players have delivered their files
and that they are in the right directory. The player will give you up to
2 files (Playerx.GUE and MsgOutx.DAT) and you should give the player the
Playerx.HST, MsgInx.DAT and the Warx.LOG files in return after you have
hosted the game.

There are a few error messages that can occur.
Player receives as message.       Host receives in HSTERROR.LOG

Last turnfile was an old turn.    Old turn <x> file from player <y>
Last turn, your file was missing  Missing player <x>∩s turn ! Missed y turns
  and could not be calculated.
You are dead and gone from this
  game, sorry !


!Game setup
Game setup is the window that gives information of memory, the registration
number and the current game. Players can also join a game even after the
first turns. The computer will calculate the number of ships, science and
planets the new player will get, and place the new player a little off the
main battlegrounds. When you have edited the host, you should save it.


[3. GAME INTERFACE]
You will need a mouse, not all commands are available through keyboard.
Most of the function you can see on the screen, can be pointed out with
the mouse and selected using the mousebuttons

There are a lot of hotkeys available. Most of them will be listed in the
description of the windows, but here are some generel hotkeys.

TAB               Select next object.
SHIFT TAB         Select previous object.
SPACEBAR          Activate selected object.

!Menus
The menus are only available during gameplay. They are a list of all the
available commands when playing your turn. They can be selected using the
mouse or by pressing the ALT + first letter. Menus cannot be reached when
in a dialogbox. You actually dont need the menus to play, all you need
is the feature icons.

!Feature Icons
The featureicons are the smoothest way to get from one window to another.
Not all windows have an icon though, like the view hull types window, here
you should use the menus. If you point at a featureicon with your mouse,
you will get a help description of what the featureicon does, in the buttom
of the screen. This message will vanish when you point at another object.

!Info-line
The infoline provides information about the game during gameplay. There are
6 active infos.

   1  Name of current playing race.
   2  Name of current ship.
   3  Name of current planet or position.
   4  Golden Planets, the currency.
   5  Name of current game.
   6  Current year. This is actually 2000 + number of current turn.


[4. MAIN GAME]
!Main window
The Main window has 3 modes. The Sunmode (press Sunkey), the shipmode
(press shipicon) and the Starviewer mode (press the star-button).

The starmap displays stars as very small lightgray circles, ships as bigger
circles with the races color inside. There are 4 different colors of the
sunnames.

    Green      Planets you have not yet reached or scanned.
    Red        Planets you have scanned but are currently not occupied.
    LightCyan  Planets owned by another race.
    Yellow     Planets owned by you.

LIST or PageUp   Displays a list of available empireships and checkboxes
                 for choices of Stardust on/off, Ratings view, Display
                 System names and Update ship.
                 Ratings colorscheme is:
                   Blue         Biomism
                   Green        Waterfuel
                   Cyan         Fossil fuel
                   Red          Atomic fuel
                   Orange       Dilithium fuel
                   Brown        Xenic
                   LightGray    Iron
                   DarkGray     Supplies

+ and -          Zoom in or out on the starmap. When you zoom right, you
                 will get information about the starnames and galaxynames.


!The Sunmode
Displays information about the current Solar system. You can select to view
another Solar system or search for the nearest ship and goto shipmode.

RIGHT MOUSEBUTTON    Selects nearest Solar system and displays information.
LEFT MOUSEBUTTON     Selects nearest ship and goes to shipmode.
PageDn               Selects next sun and displays information about it.

!The Shipmode
Displays information about the current ship. You can select to view another
ship or give the current ship orders to move to selected star/position. The
information about the ship is pretty selfexplaining, but I will just mention
the Warp speed. It is measure in Warps in the bar, but the number displayed
is the actual lightyears that will be flown. The number in () after warp,
is how much fuel will be spent on the journey.

Cargo room is display just above the Warpspeed in (). Each 10Mt rawmaterials
uses 2 spaceunits.

RIGHT MOUSEBUTTON    Selects nearest ship and displays information.
LEFT MOUSEBUTTON     Sets waypoint for current ship. This can be either
                     a planet, intercepting a ship or a position in
                     deep space. Remember here to set the Warp speed too.
PageDn               Selects next ship without orders.
Ctrl PageDn          Look at the next ship with or without orders.

!Starmode
The Starmode feature is a means to scroll around on the starmap. It keeps
the current settings of the LIST-checkboxes and zoom, so if it is too slow,
try to remove the sunnames, ratings and/or stardust option. You cannot do
anything while in the starmode except moving the mouse around. You exit by
pressing the right mousebutton or the ESC key.

Perhaps I should mention the function keys too.

  F2    Save current game without exiting.
  F3    Displays available rawmaterials in each solar system. The bars shown
        for each planet is

            Biomism       Blue
            Water         Green
            Fossil fuel   Cyan
            Atomic fuel   Red
            Dilithium     Orange
            Xenic         Brown
            Iron          LightGray
            Supplies      DarkGray

  F4    Tradeitem prices for each solar system. Bar below the mid, is prices
        below the average price.

            Steel/Mining  Blue
            Textiles      Green
            Chemicals     Cyan
            Food          Red
            Construction  Orange
            Finance       Brown
            Media         LightGray
            Electronics   DarkGray
            Tourism       LightBlue
            Artifacts     LightGreen

  F5    Full screen view. Press F5 or escape to get back to normal.
  F6    Your own deep space scanner ranges

            Dark blue     Battlescanner range
            Dark red      Deep space scanner range

  F7    Your enemies deep space scanners, colors as above.
  F8    Warpcircles
  F9    Full screen orbital view. View ships at current location.
  F10   Save game and exit.


[Ship orders]
The Combat orders window is divided into 3 windows. The Ship orders, the
Trade orders and the Trade routes.

!Combat orders - Hotkey CTRL-S
This screen show a lot of information about the ship and the equipment it
has been built with.

Class           The starship class. This regulates what can be installed
                on the ship. See Weapon, Cargo and Science.
M.W.H.          Millions of Work Hours. How many hours is needed before the
                ship is ready to fly. This can be increased by modifications,
                Bachyon sweeps and Damage repairs.
Space           How much free space is left for tradeitems, rawmaterials
                and fuel. This can be improved by the Hull size science.
Crew            How much crew is currently employed on the ship. If a ship
                during a battle loses all crew before it is destroyed, it
                is captured by the enemy. Crew will automatically be updated
                when new equipment is bought, or when the ship has been
                damaged and returns to an owned planet.
Age             The age problem is increasingly important. You can do only
                one thing with a ship too old, selfdestruction. The
                more wornout the ship becomes, the more repairproblems will
                arise. A ship should be able to withstand about 100 years.
Bachyon         When travelling with Warp speed, the hull becomes radiated
                with bachyon. High Bachyon radiation can kill crew, so you
                should sweep this as often as you can. This is not done here
                but on the Build starship window, this is merely info.
Damage          This displays the amount of damage on the ship, see under
                Armor for how much damage the ship can sustain. Damage is
                also repair on the Build starship window.
Hull weight     The mass of the ship without fuel, rawmaterials or trade-
                items. This influences the selfdestruct order, the higher
                the hull mass, the higher the explotion effect. Also the
                amount of fuel used is influenced by the Hull weight.

Weapon,         These 3 categories are the limits of the starship
Cargo,          construction. Non of these areas can be exceeded if the
Science         ship shall be able to fly.

The blue boxes displays information about what the equipment can provide.
This is a kind of summary with the most important information deducted from
the brown listbox below to the right.

@2

!Exploring orders
Move to         The ship moves to the specified waypoint and activates the
                wartime orders if countered.
Explore         The ship moves to the specified waypoint and activates the
                wartime orders, but if anything new and unexplored is near
                the ship, this will be explored first. This is a kind of
                automatic exploration ability that can be used during turns
                where a player cannot play his/her turn.
Orbit planet    Ship orbits planet and uses wartime orders if attacked.
Trade           Ship sends messages wanting trade and is not attacked by
                the opponent. If it is a planet, you will have to be able
                to pay the trade access code.
Colonize ship   Arriving at an unexplored planet, this command will use
                the ships rawmaterials to build a new colony. This colony
                includes CHAPs if nessacary, the conversion of rawmaterials
                and selling computerequipment and thereby raising cash.
                All rawmaterials onboard the ship will be unloaded to the
                planet.
Tractor         When ships run out of fuel, a starbase needs relocation,
                or an enemyship needs transportation, the ships tractor
                beams are used. The ship or ships that shall carry out the
                tractoring must have the command Tractor and the target
                ship (the one being towed) must have the command Enter.
Enter           When you need a ship tractored someplace, you use the
                Enter command to specify which ship is being tractored.
                The Enter command is also used when dealing with Stargates
                and Wormholes. Then this command means that the ship
                should try and enter.
Transmute       When you eventually develope the transmuter device, this
                command will generate rawmaterials based on supplies. You
                will need to enter a specific code as well, in the
                Transmuter entryfield. The codes are.:

                  Code   Effect
                    1    1 Biomism for      1 supply
                    2    1 Waterfuel for    3 supplies
                    3    1 Fossilfuel for   2 supplies
                    4    1 Atomic fuel for  3 supplies
                    5    1 Dilithium for    5 supplies
                    6    1 Xenic for        8 supplies
                    7    1 Iron for         5 supplies
                    8    Destruction of all supplies onboard the ship.

New Owner       Sometimes during diplomacy, you must pay for peace. The
                New Owner command provides means to hand over a ship to
                an opponent. The ship to be handed over, must have the
                New Owner command, and an opponent ship on the same
                location will take over. If there is a starbase on the
                location, the equipment used on the ship will be learned
                by the other race ie. means to transfer science.
Selfdestruct    When the enemy comes to close, it can sometimes payoff to
                selfdestruct your ship. The selfdestruction sequence
                is very destructive, and ships, starbases and planets on
                the same location will surely be heavily damaged if not
                destroyed. It is a kind of kamikaze attack.
Cloak           Moves to specified waypoint, but are invisible during
                flight. You must uncloak (choose another command) to
                attack opponents. This can be countered by the Detect
                Light distortion or Detect Cloak depending on which
                equipment has been used to make the invisibility. Cloaking
                costs 1 unit of fuel each round.

!Wartime orders
Eliminate threat    Attacks and try to destroy everything in its way.
Invade planet       Use this command to attack and set down troops on the
                    planet. This command will primarily try to get close
                    enough to beam down forces.
Flee when bad odds  If the ship loses >50% of the total hit points during
                    an attack, it will try to escape.
Always flee         If possible, the ship will try to escape any attacks.
                    This can be countered by initiative thus tractor beams,
                    impulse drives and battlecomputers have an influence
                    here.
Patrol route        This is a kind of Patriot missile command. The ship
                    orbits a planet or stays on a position, until an
                    intruder enters battlerange. At this time, the ship
                    goes after the intruder using an intercept order,
                    to kill it.
Intercept           The Intercept orders are given if you want to meet
                    somebody in deep space or track someone down. You must
                    set your waypoint to the location of the intruder you
                    want to intercept. You can click more than once on the
                    same location to change ship to intercept.


!Trade orders
Industrial waste, one of the hazards of this game, can be loaded onboard
ships and dumped in deep space, or in orbit of an enemy planet, even though
the last choice is a bit to the evil side. You load and unload industrial
waste here. See also Planet Energy and Planet Colony for further
information. A good advice is to take control of the industrial waste before
it takes control over you.

The purpose of Ground forces are either to defend your own planet or to
conquer another opponent planet. To transport them to this other planet,
you load them onboard a ship and fly to the planet. Here you must use the
Invade Planet order. When you train new ground forces (on Planet Politics)
you will not get these troops right away, although they are visible in
this window. It takes a year/one turn to train ground forces.

You also get a list of the weaponry your ground forces will use. This is
not something you can choose directly. Ground forces will always use the
newest and best suited weaponry.

To the right you get information about the planets trading politics. Who
owns the planet, wether there is an administration to pay the trade
access code to, wether the trade access code is known, or you have to
buy it, how much the trade access code is and how much tax must be paid.
See the Planet Trade and the Planet Colony windows to control these values.

Below is listed the available tradeitems. The ship column is how much you
have on your ship, and the starbase or planet column is how much is
available for you to buy. The price listed under ship is the last price
the ship encountered. The planet price is how much you must pay for
each item. To buy an item you must have room enough on your ship (See
Ship mode). If you click on the item below the ship, you sell that item
for the planet price. If you click on the items below the starbase or
planet column, you attempt to buy that item.

You should look for planets with starbases on. This gives you a bonus of
10% of the price. Further more, enemy planets gives you a bonus of 20% of
the price.


!Trade routes
Government trade routes is one of the most important ways to earn money.
To establish a government trade route, you need to explore an enemy solar
system, and buy trade access to it.

This window also gives you information about the exact price of each
individual tradeitem on the solar systems you have explored. You should
however try using the F4-key on the main starmap, its easier...


!Battle reports
The battles of Pollux are a complex series of information. Most ships has
its own way of conducting the battle according to the weapons and
equipment installed on them. This battle report shows a detailed text
description of each battle.


@3
[Solar system orders]
The window 'Planet' is divided into 7 subwindows, the Solar system display,
Politics, Energy, Trade, Colony, Sunlist and the Budget windows.

!Planet Solar system - Mining
This window provides a visual display of the planetary system. You can
click on each sun, planet and moon to get further information about them.
Planets and moons can be mined if you need rawmaterials. How good the
survey looks depends on the sciencelevel of Mining Equipment. There are
different types of planets giving different results. Below is shown a
factorpoint of each planet type. Factor 5 is greater than factor 1.

                     Biom. Water Foss. Atom. Xenic Iron
   Moon type                                         1%
   Terran type        10%  15-75% 25%   25%   5%    10%
   Red Mars type                                    80%
   Green Uranus type         75%         5%
   Blue Neptune type         70%         8%
   Yellow Saturn type                         5%    10%
   Brown type                      5%

These numbers are automatically calculated in the Mining window (press
the Mine button). In the Mine window, you decide if you want to mine the
planet. A calculated price for transportation and initial cost is displayed.

You can only mine one planet or moon for each planet in the Solar system.

There are also different types of solar systems. You can encounter single
star, double star, triple star and quadouble star systems. The suntypes
are also different according to the evolutionary step.:

                                               Maximum planets in system
    Very young sun with surrounding gas clouds      2
    Very young sun with starting planets            3
    Young yellow sun                                5
    Yellow sun                                      9
    Orange sun                                      8
    Large orange sun                                7
    Very large dark red sun                         5
    Giant orange sun                                3
    Giant red sun                                   3
    Small white dwarf sun                           2
    Small black rock dwarf sun                      2
    Unknown                                         2 (class not determined)
    Protostar/Thin gas cloud                        2
    Pulsar                                          2
    Sun being born                                  2
    Colliding gascloud                              2
    Exploded red giant                              2
    Optical view of small galaxy                    2 (effect not known)
    Black hole                                      2 (dangerous!)


When determining the climate of a Solar system, it is actually the main
planet that are the subject. This also applies to wether a Solar system
is inhabitable or not. Climate are as follows..:

             Climate values (as listed under Race specifics)
   Inferno   0  - 47
   Tundra    48 - 69
   Jungle    70 - 85
   Steppe    86 - 97
   Terran    98 - 104
   Arid     105 - 110
   Barren   111 - 120
   Rocky    121 - 135
   Desert   136 - 160
   Dead     161 - 200


!Planet Politics
!Religion
Inhabitation and Religious groups has no meaning in this version, it has
only been included to give the game life.

!Radiation
Radiation is a very important factor. To high a radiation could mean that
the planet is uninhabitable and that many people will die each year. There
are 3 ways to counter this. At low sciencelevels, you can only use the
Planet Energy Medicine to keep people from dying. You could also invent the
moon base. This helps reducing the effects of the radiation, but costs for
each planet. When you reach higher levels of science, you will have the
opportunity to develop Radiation control. You put radiation control on
ships to reduce the solar systems natural radiation levels.

!Pollution
Pollution is likewise important. You counter pollution in many ways. You
can allocate energy to Nature. This will clean up the nature and get rid
of the pollution. You can also load the pollution on board a ship and
dump it in deep space or on a nabour planet. You could also buy industrial
waste equipment and use a ship or a starbase to destroy the pollution.
The following influences pollution.:

   - Planet trade
   - Nature (Planet energy allocation)
   - Industrial waste level (Planet Colony)

Each tradeitem pollutes differently, this is how.:

                      Pollution
   Steel / Mining        +5
   Textiles              +3
   Chemicals             +5
   Food                  +1
   Construction          +1
   Finance                0
   Media                  0
   Electronics           +1
   Tourism               +1
   Transportation        +3


!Patriotism
Patriotism is how loyal the population is to you. If the patriotism is
too low, the planet may be stricken with violent demonstrations or rebel
forces. The following influences patriotism.:

   - Entertainment on planet.
   - Planetary tax.
   - Waste
   - Radiation
   - Church influence.

!Crime
Crime is fatal for your income. The Crime percentage is directly stolen
from your GNP, and could zero your income. You should keep your crime as
low as possible, about 3-7% seems fair. Crime is influenced by
the following :

   - Policing
   - Church influence
   - Planet Trade
   - Population density
   - Patriotism


!Population growth
All production of rawmaterials and spaceships comes from the population
thus population growth is very important. Expansion of your empire is one
way of getting more population, but you should also consider the means to
make your current empire grow, both colonies and your homeworld. Colonies
should typically be a couple of hundred thousands inhabitants. There are
drawbacks of to much population, but you can invent yourself out of these
problems. The drawbacks are the population density, which influences crime,
and pollution which is influenced by trade and thereby population density.

The following influences population growth.:

   - Bonus for inhabitable planets
   - Rawreserves (perspects of business), the more the better
   - Planet trade
   - Agriculture allocation (Planet energy)
   - Population density
   - Science Ecoenhancer
   - Science Cloning
   - Patriotism
   - Bonus for new encountered planets
   - Planet tax
   - Race dependent growth - very important.


@4

!Is there a wormhole ?
Above the policing and church influence, you will find information about
special events of the Solar system. This includes wormholes, rifts,
starbases, stargates, The Kuw, dyson spheres, quasars and other...

!Policing
To counter the growing crime, you should assign percentages of your GNP.
See also Crime above. The first number is the percentage of your GNP that
you allocate for this purpose. The second number is how much this costs you.

!Church influence
Cooperation with the church can help influencing crime and patriotism.
See Crime and Patriotism above. The first number is the % of your GNP
that you allocate for this. The second number is how much it actually
costs you.

!Tax - Planet income tax
This tax is the income tax of the businesses and the population. This is
the way to make money. You must allocate Trade though. It is businesses
that gets your wheels running. Tax influences population growth and
patriotism, so you must be carefull not to set the tax too high. There is
a circlelight to the left of the tax buttons. This indicates if your
taxing influences your patriotism negatively. It can be yellow for up to
-4% influence and red for above -4% influence. The first number is the
tax percentage, the second number is how much you actually earns.

!Weaponry - Defense and Ground forces
To protect your Solar systems from infidels, conquerers and the like, you can
buy defense systems, which is actually missiles of the best type available.
The cost of these depends on what technology you have developed. You can
only buy the state of the art defense post in this the first version of
Pollux. Defense systems are bought and does not need repair. For each 20
missiles you have, you get another shot at the enemy.

Conquerers will often bring ground forces with them to attempt to conquer
your world. To counter this problem, You must train some ground forces
yourself. The prices of these depends of the technology you have developed.
Ground forces has to be paid each round, so you should carefully examine
where and how many ground forces you want. Training of ground forces takes
one year, and only then they will be available to you as your own
conquering force.

The first number is the number of defense posts and ground forces you have,
the second number is the cost of 1 defense post or ground force.

Below this is listed the currently best weapons, the weapons that will be
used by your defense posts and troops. The ground force weapons are a
little special here. You can have up to 4 weapons and armors listed. These
weapons can cooperate and are all used. This is an attack weapon, an armor,
a personal deflector and a battle suit.


!Planet damage
Here is listed how much damage the defense posts can sustain before they
are put out of business, note: not nessecarily destroyed. The hit points
of the planet is determined by the sciencelevel in hull damage. The first
number is how much damage the defense post currently has, the second number
is the maximum number of hit points.

When defense posts are damaged, all construction points spend are used to
repair them. This means you cannot build any starships. When you have
sufficient levels in construction, you can build planetary shields that
can help you shoot down incoming missiles.

Planetary hit points are calculated as hp=hulldamage * 5 + no. of missiles.

@5

!Planet Energy
The Planet Energy window is perhaps the most important window of them all.
The window has 3 parts, below is the energy production and the energy
allocation and above the rawmaterial production.

!Energy supply
You need to produce energy to be able to do anything with your planet. To
produce energy, you must decide what kind of production you want. You can
produce energy from.:

    Energy source          Efficiency at start  Uses rawmaterial  Pollutes
    Solar and wind energy         50%              None             /30
    Bio energy                    70%              Biomism          /10
    Fossil fuel                   75%              Fossil fuel      /7
    Atomic fuel                   80%              Atomic fuel      /3

    Later in the game...
    Hydrogen                     100%              Water            /12
    Dilithium                    150%              Dilithium        /1
    Duridium                     250%              Xenic            /2


The first number listed in the window is the efficiency, the second number
is the result for each source.

Pollution is calculated as the workunits result divided by the listed
number.

Below is listed 2 numbers. The Workforce is how much manpower you have to
produce the energy with, the workunits is their results. The workunits can
be allocated on the areas to the right.

!Energy allocation
To the right are listed the areas where you can allocate the energy you
have produced (workunits).

   Agriculture     Needed for population growth and biomism production.
   Nature          Biomism growth and destruction of industrial waste.
   Mining          Production of rawmaterials from the rawreserves. This
                   can be temporarily improved by putting mining equipment
                   on orbiting ships. Good for mining small colonies.
   Science         Development of new weapons and equipment.
   Medicine        Medicine deals with 3 major problems. The planets
                   pollution, radiation and the overpopulation. Be sure
                   to have a good health level. On the sunlist you can see
                   how good you are performing. 100 means that 100% dies.
   Starship constr Building of starbases and ships and repairing planet
                   defense posts.
   Entertainment   Keep the population patriotism high.
   Manufacturing   Manufacturing of supplies
   Trade           Better chances for new businesses gives better income.


!Rawreserves production
There are 2 steps in getting rawmaterials that you can use. First you must
mine a planet with the desired rawmaterials. This increases the rawreserves.
Secondly you must produce what you want. This decreases rawreserves again,
but increases your current stock. Only rawmaterials in stock can be used.

If there is any biomism in rawreserves, this will grow. If you do not have
any biomism in rawreserves, you could put soil enrichment equipment on a
ship and unload biomism from another world. This will then go directly to
the rawreserves instead of the stock as normal. This also applies to water.

Biomism growth must meet specific conditions. You will need to allocate
some nature, buy the soil enrichment improvement on the planet and to
further increase the growth, develop ecoenhancer.

Water growth is based on other conditions. You will need at least 1000 of
water, the planet must be a planet with natural water, and you need soil
enrichment installed on the planet. Water will not appear beyond the
natural size of the planet.

Dilithium is produced on the basis of water, atomic fuel or fossil fuel,
selected in that order.

!Trade support
Trade is an important way to increase your income. You buy and sell
tradeitems on your own and your nabour Solar systems. To be able to buy
tradeitems, there must be an overproduction of these. This is not always
the case, but you can help this happen by making your government support
each tradearea. This costs 500 per step of support and will eventually
increase the number of tradeitems available.

When other players want to trade with you, you can decide that they should
pay a trade access cost (why shouldn't you?). You can also decide how much
trade tax they should pay to you.

The listbox shows who has trade access code to your planet, and you can
choose to change this if you want. The trade access code also provides
means to decide who the planet will attack.

!Colony
There are basically 2 types of Solar systems. The ones that are inhabitable
and the ones that are not. If a planet is inhabitable, growth of the
population is limited by the size of the main planet. Uninhabitable systems
are different. These need life support systems to maintain life, and you
have to buy this equipment here. Life support for 1000 people costs 1 iron
and 10 supplies. The AUTOChap facility is a function to automatically use
the specified percentage of iron and supplies available to build CHAPs for.
This ensures automatic growth capacity of the Solar system and is always at
100% at start on new colonies. Maximum inhabitation of a colony is
teoritically 65mill.

There are some improvements you can buy for your Solar system.:

These costs 1 iron and 10 supplies:
    Mass Driver           This is nessacary if you want to trade here.
    Administration        This is nessacary if you want to tax the trade.
    Geological Sattelite  Not implemented yet
    University            Improves your science by 10%

These costs 10 iron and 100 supplies + a specified amount of money.:
    Moon base           Reduces effect of radiation, and improves maximum
                        inhabitants by using other planets in the system.
    Planetary shield    Decrease opponent tohit chance in a fight, and
                        provides energy absorbers for planets.
    Ring world          Massively increases solarenergy efficiency
    Soil enrichment     Improves biomism and water growth. On ships SE will
                        unload biomism and water directly to reserves ie
                        plant the trees..
    Industrial waste    Destruction of waste (used together with allokation
                        to Nature)
    Terraforming        Improvement of maximum population and temperature,
                        installed on ships, terraforming improves climate.
    Radiation control   Decreases radiation in Solar system.

Not all of the above are available from start, you will have to develop
each of them along the way.

The Mass Driver should only be bought if you want to trade on that planet.
Administration if you want to get paid from your opponents trading on the
planet. Universities should only be build on large planet (>50000 inhabs).

The latter colony improvements (those priced at 100 supplies and 10 iron)
can be divided into 2 groups:

Moon base, Planetary shields and the Ring World, improves statistics only
once. The Moon base reduces the effect of radiation and could thus help
you get started on planets with a lot of radiation. Moon bases also
provides you with improved maximum inhabitants on a system by using the
other planets and moons in the system. Planetary shields greatly improves
the planet defenses, reducing the effects of beamweapons and the chance for
beams and missile to hit the planet. Do not underestimate these, they are
truly nessecary for a complete defence system.

The final item in the first group is the Dyson sphere. Perhaps you've read
the book about Ring worlds, but for those of you who have not the idea is
to build a full band of land around the sun. Such a ring is of course huge.
More importantly *all* the inside of the band is turned toward the sun, i.e.
there is no night. Furthermore the surface area of such a band is much much
greater than of a sphere. This adds up to an astounding improvement in
solar power and this is what the dyson sphere improvement is all about.
The solar power efficiency is much increased thus bringing efficient
pollution-free energy supply in reach.

The other items in the expensive colony improvements belongs to the second
group. These are Soil Enrichment, Industrial Waste, Terraforming and
Radiation Control. When one of these items are bought, they continually
improves the living conditions of the planet. Soil Enrichment makes biomism
and water regenerate faster, thus enabling you to use more biomism or water
without destroying your rawreserves. If there are no rawreserves of either
type present, soil enrichment built on ships can be used to dump water and
biomism directly into rawreserves, enabling them to grow. Industrial Waste
improves the planets ability to destroy waste. Together with the "nature"
energy allocation this will help you destroy waste present on the planet or
perhaps just lower the energy need to prevent waste accumulation. (If the
nature bar is red or the sunlist shows a "+" beside the pollution number
waste is accumulated.)

Later on in the game Terraforming will be available. When you build
terraforming on a planet the temperature of the planet will slowly change
for the better. The higher level the quicker the change. When the planet
has become inhabitable the terraforming stops changing the temperature and
starts improving maximum inhabitants. Terraforming loaded on ships has much
the same effect on climate, changing the climate towards inhabitability.
When the planet has become inhabitable, nothing further happens. Note that
the ship must be set on "orbit planet" in order for this to work. It is
recommended to use this on planets close to being inhabitable (check
climate and temperature) and on large planets (these will provide space
for many inhabitants.)

Radiation Control is the last colony improvement in the expensive group.
It works alike on planets and ships to slowly reduce radiation level.
The higher level of radiation equipment the quicker the change. The
equipment on the planet becomes obsolite, when the radiation reaches zero,
well unless someone uses bombs or other means to increase the radiation on
your planets. Radiation Control is expensive to develop and employ but
it is the only way to reduce radiation and make radiated planets usable.


!Sunlist
The Sunlist is an easy way to select a planet you want to view, but it
also contains a summary of information.

!Next sun
This button selects the next sun in the sunlist and displays the current
page of information about this Solar system.

!Budget
This window shows a budget of both the current Solar system and the whole
empire.


@6

!Starbase and ship construction
Starbase and ship construction are similar to each other. A starbase is
merely a ship with no engines and triple the hull size.

Before you activate this window, be sure to activate the starbase or ship
that is going to initialize the building of your new starbase or ship !

The window is divided into 2 sections, an upper section and a lower section.
The upper section is similar to that of the Ship order window, but there
are a few new features.

At the upperleft corner of the window, you will see the current selected
starbase or ship and the current planet that provides the manpower. You
cannot build ships when the initializing ship is not in orbit at start.

Bachyon radiation can be controlled here. Pressing the Sweep button, you
perform a Bachyon sweep on the ship and all bachyon will disappear. This
becomes more and more needed when you have travelled the stars for a while.
A Bachyon radiation of above 500 is considered very dangerous. A Bachyon
sweep takes 50 MWH to perform. The ship cannot move during a Bachyon sweep.

Damage can be repaired by pressing the Repair-button (surprise!). All damage
will be repaired. Each damage point represents 1 MWH. A ship cannot move
during reparations.

The amount of energy and rawmaterials are also listed. The first column
shows how much you are using right now to build the ship, and the second
how much is available.

The Weapon, Cargo and Science percentages are very important when you build
a ship. They cannot be exceeded or the production will be halted. If the
weapon limit is 40%, you can have up to 40% weapons on board. Exceeding
this limit will halt the production.


!The Docks
When you press the Docks button, you will see up to 7 of your ships in
orbit. These can be selected. If you click one time on your mousebutton,
you will change the upper sections information. Clicking 2 times will
select the ship and change to the Improve page.


@7

!Building a new ship
Pressing the New hull, initializes building of a new ship. The lower
section changes to a display of the available hulltypes. Here you must
select the desired hull type and hull size, end this by pressing the
Build hull button. Now your back in the Improve window, where you can
select either the New weapon-button or the New science-button to select
the equipment you want on your ship. Now the lower section changes to a
list of the available weapons or equipment, and you can select these and
the science level of each equipment before you press the Accept-button.
When you have ordered both the weapons and equipment you want, you are
finished and the ship will be build. In short this is.:

  1  Choose the initializing ship
  2  Choose the build starbase or the build ship window
  3  Choose the New hull button
  4  Choose the hull type AND the hull size you want (and can effort)
  5  Choose the Build hull-button
  6  Choose the New weapon or New science button
  7  Select in the listbox the equipment you want to install AND
     then select the level of the equipment.
  8  When you have selected all the equipment you want, press the
     Accept-button. Now you have ordered the ship.
  9  In the Planet Energy window you should assign enough construction hours
     to build all your ships. Easiest way is to click the checkbox to the
     right of the Ship constr.


Building a new ship influences a few variables.:

  MWH           Millions of work hours. You would be wise to adjust the
                Planet Energy allocation Ship Construction to meet the
                demands of MWH. Ship construction refers directly to the
                number of MWHs needed for the construction of the ship.
                Having a very large allocation on the planet, gives you
                the oppurtunity to build more than 1 ship.
  Space         Shows how much space is available after you have installed
                the new equipment. You must leave room for fuel and perhaps
                tradeitems.
  Crew          Crew is needed during battle. If a ship loses all its crew,
                the ship is conquered by the enemy. Ship crew is
                automatically updated when new equipment is bought.
  Hull weight   The heavier the ship, the more fuel it needs to fly.


When you are choosing the equipment, there is a button called 'Scrap equipm'.
This allows you to scrap old equipment and make room for new better ones,
ie scrap atomic engines when new Dilithium engines are developed.

The 'Scrap ship' button is used when you regret that you did build this
new big ugly battleship. Scrap ship can only be used on new ships. If you
want to get rid of an old ship, use either the Selfdestruction order or the
Colonize order (see Ship orders).


Rawmaterial costs
Building starships and starbases costs rawmaterials as well as money. This
list tells you how much.:

  Weapons        1 Supply each level (level 1 = 1, level 2 = 1 + 2)
                 3 Xenics
                 1 Dilithium per level (level 1 = 1, level 2 = 2)
                 1 Iron per level

  Equipment      1 Supply each level
                 2 Iron per level
                 1 Dilithium per level


[Overall status]
The overall status window is divided into 6 pages, the status, the graph,
the combat and the scorelists.

Your government keeps track of what happens in the empire. This list of
demographic information is shown in comparison to your opponents. It is
a list of your civilizations status in a number of areas and the score
accordingly.

Approval rate     The % of the people that will vote personally for you
                  next election.
Population        The number of people in your empire.
GNP               The total income generated by your empire.
Active trade      The total number of items for sale in your empire.
Empire size       The total number of planets that are under your control.
Science research  The total number of sciencepoints in your empire.
Health level      A relative number based on how much you have allocated to
                  fight disease.
Pollution         The total waste Mt in your empire.
Family size       A relative number that represents the growth of your
                  empire. This is the number of children each family has.
Military service  This is a number that represents the strengh of your
                  fleet and ground forces.
Productivity      A relative number that represents the available workunits
                  per energyunit.

All these numbers except Pollution should be as high as possible. Pollution
is a bad thing and should be zero !


!Graph
The second page shows a graph of the evolution of your empire. The graph
shows the values for number of ships, number of planets, sciencepoints,
inhabitants and total income.

!Combat strengh
The third page shows combat strengh, number of planets and ships and the
relation to your nabour. The combat strengh is derived from the actual
strengh of your navy and is very important.

!Scorelist
The fourth page shows the score ratings for all players. You can only see
the name of the players you have contact with.

!Empire status
Here you can see your growth potential. You can see how many inhabitable
planets you have etc.

!Advisor
Your advisors will give you a few good advices along the way. They can be
trusted, but it is up to you to decide what is important and what is not
important. There can easily be more than one page of advice.

[Science]
Science is very important in this game, and you should choose carefully
among the scienceareas to be the one who has the best overall sciencelevels.
(you dont want to use a laser against a supernova missile).

There are 9 science fields to research in. You research in all 9 at the
same time. This is.:

  Beam weapon     Weapons based on energy or energy drains. Some beam
                  weapons halves enemy shields and others kills ship crew
                  in an attempt to conquer the enemyship. Beam weapons
                  are medium range weapons.
  Bombs           Bombs are either destruction or chemical weapons.
                  Bombs are close range weapons.
  Missiles        Missileweapons are long range weapons, and there are
                  several types. Some missiles do fire damage which can
                  be countered by fire extinguishing, some missiletypes
                  spreads out and increases their potential hit chance and
                  the fighter bay carries 5 fighters.
  Ground attack   To conquer another players worlds, you must use ground
                  forces. Ground attack weapons varies in use. Most weapons
                  does normal damage, but the biosphere gun always kills
                  an enemy troop unless countered by a battle suit. You
                  can develop different types of armor, and both the
                  personal deflector and the battle suit can and will be
                  worn together with the normal armor.
  Hull            Maybe the most important science group. This contains
                  all the improvements available for ship hulls, including
                  hull damage, hull size, tractor beams, shields, engines
                  and other.
  Construction    Covers a broad spectre of constructions from mining
                  equipment to ring worlds. Most important is perhaps the
                  robotic control that enhances the productions of the
                  planets.
  Ecology         It is the population that builds and develops starships,
                  so you would want to give them as good conditions as
                  possible, for them to grow. Ecological tools like
                  terraforming, medicine, radiation control and cloning
                  can be found here.
  Computers       Computers provides information. Without the deep space
                  scanner you are blind, without the communication equipm.
                  you cannot get in contact with your opponents and without
                  the battlescanners you do not know what weapons your
                  enemies are using. You can also use computers to make
                  light distortion equipment, this way you become invisible.
  Energy          The population produces energy for the jobs they perform,
                  ie developing science, building starships aso. This
                  production of energy can and should be enhanced.


The first screen you will see when starting a new game has 2 red boxes and
2 blue ones. The red ones shows the science you are developing and the blue
ones shows the sciencelevel you already have gain, and in the blue listbox
you should choose what new field you want to research.

When you click on the listboxes, they changes the contents of the 2 lower
windows. They show what the selected area or equipment is all about.

When you start, you should select all 9 areas before clicking on the
OK-button. You select by clicking on the red listbox first, and the blue
one after that, on the areas you like. The red listbox will show if it has
not been chosen yet. If you just click on the OK-button you select the old
settings again and the research will be carried on in that field.

!Science research
The science window gives you the opportunity to choose how much you will
research in each of the 9 areas. This is done in relative percentages
using the scroll bars. The black bars are the percentages. The small
yellow bar is how far you have come in the development and the red one
if you will have discovered the science next turn.

The buttons to the right is used to select what information you want in the
big black window. Press hull and you get all the available hull technologies
shown. There are 2 colors in the black box. White is the technologies you
have discovered and produced. The Red color is the science you know can be
done, but not yet have developed. The little yellow R shows which field you
are currently developing. You can select another field among the shown if
you want.

Each level of science need a greater and greater amount of sciencepoints
to reach. Below is a list of the first few levels.


                Level  Needed sciencepoints
                  1           25
                  2          125
                  3          250
                  4          425
                  5          650
                  6          925
                  7         1250
                  8         1625
                  9         2050
                 10         2525
                 11         3050
                 12         3625
                 13         4250
                 14         4925
                 15         5650
                 16         6425
                 17         7250
                 18         8125
                 19         9050
                 20        10025



When you look at the description of the different sciences, you should
notice the science niveau each item is on. In the first rounds of game
play, you only have a very limited number of sciences available. This
is determined by the science niveau. Your science niveau is shown in the
bottom of the window. There are 2 things you should do to gain more
science niveaus. First, you must have 1 item with a level equal or
greater than the science niveau you want to achieve. Secondly you must
have a generel science level in the other items in the science group that
matches the following rules..

Weapons    All levels in the group divided by 3 equals science niveau.
Equipment  All levels in the group divided by 4 equals science niveau.

It is possible to exchange science with other players. This must be done
by equipping your ship with the desired science, and then fly it to your
opponents nearest starbase and set the orders to New Owner. This will
give your allied all the sciencelevels on the ship.


[Embassy]
This window show you a list of the races you have contact with. You can see
how your relation is towards them, and how they look upon you. There are
5 steps on the relationbar.

Relation                    1%    25%    50%    75%    100%
War                         Yes   Yes    No     No     No
Government trade            2%    50%    100%   150%   200%
Build ship                  No    No     No     Yes    Yes
Improve ship                No    No     No     No     Yes
Load allied ground forces   No    No     No     No     Yes
Hire ship crew              No    No     No     No     Yes
Ship to ship transfer       No    No     No     No     Yes

100% relation does not mean allied. It is not yet possible to be allied to
anyone in Pollux. It will come in a later version.

Battle can be avoided if you set your mission to trade and pay for
trade access.

Use this carefully, remember your opponent can see how you are towards him,
and the wrong signal could lead to war.

[Race treaty]
Not implemented yet.

[Government]
Not implemented yet.


@8
[Messages]
This game would not be much without the multiplayer option. It is the
human opponent that makes this game fun. You can write message to your
opponents when you get it contact with them. This is done by developing
the Communication equipment. The range of this equipment determines if
an opponent is within range and establishes a link if possible. Use the
messages option to diplomatically kill your enemies. The more you write
and read, the more fun the game.

Use the UNI button to put an add in the global Universal Newspaper.
This will pay you GP5000 per turn.

To create a new message:

    1  Press NEW button
    2  Select the races you want to communicate with.
    3  Select the editorfield, and write your letter.
       First line will be the subject (thats why it is written in blue)
    4  Press the SEND button and the letter will be off.

You can rewrite the letter if you use the Output-file and send the message
again, remember to delete the old one.

Messages can be more than 1 page long (3 I think..)


[Race specifics]
It is very important to know what your race is capable of. The margins
counts, and races have special abilities that can alter the fights. The
special abilities are.:

   Growth          How fast the population grow. The faster the better,
                   a value of 3-4 is normal, but a single race, the
                   Slaedi, is reproducing very fast with a factor 8.
                   Low values should be countered by developing ecology
                   science.
   Body            Measurement of the body-strengh of the race. This is
                   used when fighting battles on the planets. Normally this
                   is zero, but some races are very strong and get bonusses
                   like the Robotics with +25. This should be countered by
                   developing better ground attack weapons.
   Magic           A few race has magic abilities. This is used for ground
                   battles and is calculated as a bonus on the damage done.
   Magic resist.   Only a few races has magic resistance. This is to counter
                   the races with the magic abilities, see above.
   Min and max     To avoid building CHAP (life support) systems, the
   temp.           Solar system must be inhabitable. This means that the temps.
                   of the main planet in the Solar system must be within
                   these race ranges. Most common values are 20-70 degrees
                   celcius.
   Min and max.    To avoid building CHAP (life support) systems, the
   climate         Solar system must be inhabitable. This means that the
                   climate of the main planet in the Solar system must be
                   within these race ranges. A full list of the climate
                   descriptions is given under Planet Solar system. Most
                   common values are 30-70.
   Health          This has something to do with the population growth.
                   If you have a high value here, you can better withstand
                   harsh radiation and pollution problems. Zero is normal.
   Trade           A lot of your income during the game, is based upon
                   the level of trade performed. A good racevalue here
                   will give you chances of a better income. Normal is zero.
   Science         Some races have latent innovative abilities, and some
                   has not got a clue or are not that interested. This
                   bonus is to the sciencepoints is measured in percentages
                   of the normal sciencepoints values. Even if you have low
                   values here you are not nessacary behind. Normal is zero.
   Ability         Not implemented yet. Will contain new innovative ideas !


[Exit without saving]
This options lets you exit the game without saving whatever you have
selected or build in the game. You will return to the main game window
and can choose another game or enter this game again.

[Save turn and exit]
This option will save all the actions you have done and exit this game.
You will return to the main game window and can choose another game or
enter this game again.

[Help]
No. Ohh, this is this text. I should have known you where this clever...

[View hull types]
This is a complete list of all the ships and their abilities.

[Events]
When you discover new Solar systems or sometimes randomly, you will get an
event. This could be a wormhole with a chance to fly through, or an
undiscovered civilization with big treasures. There are more than 20
different events.

[Appendix A - To do list]
This is a list of the few things you should remember to do each round.

    1  Move your ships
            Ship orders
            Ship trade
            Unload ship and build colonies
    2  Planet
            View patriotism
            Only frequently adjust the energy allocations
    3  Build new ships
    4  Write intriguing messages
    5  Check demographics

[Appendix B - Build your first ship]
Pollux is not easy for starters, so here is a walk through for building new
starships.

    1  Enter the game and select the main starmap ie. press ok if there is
       any messages.
    2  Select a starbase or a ship orbiting the world you wish to build
       your ship in orbit off. You can select any ship by clicking the left
       mousebutton on top of the ship on the main starmap.
    3  Click on the Build starship icon.
    4  Click on 'New hull' button
    5  Select the shiphulldesign you want in the listbox (has to be black).
    6  Click 'Build hull' button
    7  Click 'New science' button
    8  Hull size is now black, and you should increase the hull size using
       the big black up-arrow.
    9  The light number display should now show you the hull size level and
       being the first ship you build, you only have access to level 1. The
       hull size determines how many things you can install on your ship.
    10 To fly you need an engine and some energy cells. First ship can only
       chose the atomic engine and the atomic fuel cells. Select the engine
       first and increase the engine level to 1 using the big up-arrow button.
    11 Select the atomic fuel cells hereafter and increase them to level 1.
       With hull size to 1, engine and fuel cells to level 1, your ship can
       now fly.
    12 Press OK-button to return to the main starmap.
    13 Now designing the ship is not enough. You need to assign some men to
       build it too. This is done on the Planet Energy window, so press
       ALT P and the E-key. Then press the little checkbox in front
       of 'Starship constr.', Pollux will now calculate how many
       men/workhours you should put into building the ship.
    14 Next turn, your ship should now be ready for flight.

