No Man's Land

Introduction

The aim of the game is simple, to wipe out the enemy before they wipe you out. Unfortunately how you achieve this is not quite so simple.

The main tools at your disposal are your tanks. You may get a few to start the game with, but before you can have any serious thoughts of victory you're going to need to build more than a few more. To build tanks you need two things, a Tank Base and money. You may or may not have a Tank Base at the start of a scenario, if not, to build one you need two things, money and a Construction Yard. Fortunately you should always have a Construction Yard at the start of a scenario. Money is not always so easy to come by.

It should already be apparent that money is one of the main aspects of the game. So before we go into more details of tanks & fighting you need to know how to get money, without it you're going to lose. Oil is the key to money, scattered around the maps are oil fields. Once you've found some oil build an oil well on top, once complete it will start pumping away and generating income. Don't limit yourself to only one oil well, the more the merrier. As well as income from oil, many scenarios will provide you with a modest fixed income, this helps your initial build up and construction of oil wells, but it's unlikely to be enough to see you all the way through to a glorious victory.

Okay, you built an oil well, you've got a Tank Base, you're producing some tanks, what next? Chances are that any time now the enemy is going to discover your oil well or base and start attacking. If you haven't got enough defences you're going to be in trouble, oil wells aren't cheap, if you lose one it's going to seriously damage your chances of victory. You now have to decide how to balance your spending on tanks, turrets, and oil wells. If you don't spend enough on oil you wont have enough income to win, if you spend too much you wont have enough forces to defend your oil wells.

While you've been building up your wells and armed forces do you know what the enemies been up to? Exactly the same as you, chances are they've got a similar number of tanks and oil wells as you. You can now either sit back and wait for them to attack, and you can be sure they will sooner or later, or take the initiative yourself and see if you can knock out an enemy oil well or two.

The important thing to remember here is all the rules and tactics that apply to you, also apply equally to the enemy. If you destroy one of their oil wells it will cost them a lot of money and lost income, tipping the advantage in your favour.

Building

To build you need a Construction Yard, you should have one at the start, don't lose it or you can't build anything else. Press the 'Buildings' icon.

This will give you a choice of buildings.

Select the one you require, the chosen building will then be displayed as an icon.

Now tap on the map where you want to build it and if all is well the spot will be marked with a pattern to indicate where it will be built. A builders truck will be despatched from the construction yard to the building site, when it arrives building will commence.

To cancel the selected building without placing it tap on the icon displaying the selected building.

You don't need all the money up front to start building, as long as you have a positive balance you can commence building, half the money is taken up front. If the builders truck is destroyed on route to the building site that money is lost. Once building commences the rest of the cost of the building cost is deducted bit by bit. If no money is available then building will halt until some money becomes available.

Buildings can only be built on normal land, they also can not be built in unmapped areas.

Building tanks

To build tanks press the 'Tanks' icon.

You will be presented with a dialog displaying the available tanks and prices on the top, and an empty view at the bottom. This bottom view displays a queue of tanks to produce. To add a tank to the queue highlight it and then either tap it, press the 'Build' button or just press 'Space'. This will add it to the queue, if it's the first item in the queue production will immediately commence. If no money is available production will automatically pause until some money becomes available.

To build a continuous supply of tanks select the 'Continuous build' option. When this is enabled production continually loops around the queue building the specified tanks until the option is disabled.

To remove a tank from the queue select it, then either tap it, press the 'Delete' button or press the 'Space' key.

Controlling Tanks

To select a tank drag a box around it, multiple tanks can be selected in the same way by dragging a box around the group of tanks to be selected. Tap the map to tell the tanks where to go, tapping on an enemy tank or building tells the tanks to attack that tank or building. Be careful with this option as they may a chase a fleeing tank back to it's well defended base.

To deselect any selected tanks drag a box on any empty area of the map or press the escape key.

It's important to understand the distinction between tapping the map and dragging. Tapping is used to select where to move or attack. Dragging is used to select tanks or buildings.

Health and Repairs

By selecting a single tank or building you can see how much health it has left. Tanks can not be repaired, buildings can. By default all buildings have the auto-repair option enabled, this can be turned off by selecting the building then pressing the 'Auto-repair' button.

Auto repairs can not work while a building is under attack, once the building has been free from attack for a short period repairs will commence. Repairs cost half the proportionate cost the original build cost. For example, if a building cost $1000, and is now 66% damaged, the total repair cost is 66%*$1000/2=$333. Repairs automatically pause if no money is available.

Quick Map

The quick map is a useful to tool to get a quick overview of the whole map. Simply press the 'Quick map' icon, or press the 'Tab' key.

To zoom in on an area on the quick map simply tap the desired spot. To cancel the quick map press Escape, or tap outside the map window.

Saving the game

The game be saved by using either 'save as' or 'save' menu options. If the game is automatically shut down by the Epoc Connect software or from the system screen the current game is saved under the name "AutoSave". This name will be re-used the next time the same thing happens so it's best to make sure the game is re-saved under a different name if you wish to keep it.

Mission briefing

If available, the mission briefing displayed at the start of the scenario can be viewed again from 'Mission briefing' menu option.

Warning Messages

In some cases warning messages flash up to inform you of what's happening off screen. Clicking the Warning icon after a warning message will take you to the location of the incident and redisplay the message.

Difficulty level

You have a choice of three difficulty levels to play the scenarios at, Easy, Medium & Hard.

On the Easy & Medium levels the computer player is disadvantaged by losing a small percentage of oil income, also each hit from the computer players tanks inflict less damage. On the Hard level it is a fair fight, neither player has any artificial handicaps or advantages.

Hot keys

If you have a keyboard the following hot keys can be used during game play to select tanks or particular buildings and centre the view on the selected item:

b: Tank Base

c: Construction Yard

t: Tank (and construction vehicles)

o: Oil well

p: Observation Post

u: Turret

w: Last warning location

The Escape key will deselect all selected tanks and any selected build option.

Holding down Shift while selecting tanks will add the newly selected tanks to those already selected.

Holding down Ctrl whilst selecting a tank. If the newly selected tank was part of a multiple selection the previous time it was selected the whole group will be re-selected by simply holding down Ctrl whilst selecting the one tank.

Holding down Shift while placing a building will place the building without deselecting it, making it simple to place multiple copies of the same building. This is most useful in edit mode.

In the scenario editor holding down Ctrl whilst tapping on a tile will select that tile as the current tile for placing on the map,

Tanks

Leopard & Viper tanks.

These are the cheaper tanks available to each side. It's better to use these when the total number of tanks is low as they can move faster and having a large number of light tanks allows you to spread the forces more.

Tiger & Cobra tanks

These cost twice as much as the cheaper lighter tanks, and are slightly slower, but make up for this with improved defensive strength and fire power. One of the main advantages these heavier tanks over the lighter counterparts is that they can be produced in the same amount of time. If you have the money and want to spend it fast, then this can be the key deciding factor in choosing which tanks to produce.

Buildings

Construction Yard

This is required to construct any other buildings. When a new building is constructed a builders truck is sent out from the Construction yard to the building site. If you have multiple Construction yards the builders truck is sent from the nearest Construction yard.

Tank base

This is required to build tanks, there is no advantage in building more than one of these.

Oil Wells

These aren't cheap, and they aren't strong, but they are essential in gathering enough money to win the game. When you build these make sure you can also defend them. If not you may well find you are throwing money down the drain.

Turrets

Turrets provide much better value for money than tanks when it comes to defensive work. However they have a big downside in that they can not be used for anything other than defending the site where they were built. Choose wisely between building tanks and turrets.

Observation Posts

These might not seem much use at first, but they are cheap and the long range view they give can provide crucial advance warning of an enemy attack, giving you time to summon all your forces to defend the threatened target. They'll also help you to spot enemy reconnaissance tanks in your territory and enable you to destroy or chase them off.

Oil

There are three sorts of oil source. Oil(A), Oil(B), Oil(C). The type indicates how fast the oil can be pumped out of that oil field. (A) being the fastest and (C) being the slowest.

Oil fields have varying quantities of oil in them. It can often be worth checking the size of different oil fields before choosing which ones to build an Oil Well on. To see how much oil is still in an oil field select the oil field and the quantity will be displayed in the control panel.

Double/Quad speed

The game can be set to run at double or quadruple speed by setting the "x2" or "x4" button on. Pressing the button again will switch back to normal speed.

Scenarios

Make sure the Scenario view is shown by selecting the 'Scenarios' option in the main screen.

Scenarios are divided into groups, with an extra group <Miscellaneous> where new and unsorted Scenarios are put.

A scenario that has been completed at the current or a higher skill level is marked with a '*'.

To play a Scenario first select the appropriate group then select the scenario, tap it, press Enter or choose 'Start game' from the menu.

If available a mission briefing will be displayed while the Scenario loads, when loaded press 'Start' to clear the dialog and start the game.

Saved games

Make sure the Saved games view is shown by selecting the 'Saved' option in the main screen.

Saved games are sorted in date order with the most recent at the top. On the left of each column the display shows name of the save file, followed by the name of the Scenario that it came from.

To load the saved game select the file then tap it, press Enter or choose 'Start game' from the menu.

Saved games can be deleted with the 'Delete game/scenario' menu option.

Custom games

Custom games provide instant access to an unlimited number of different randomly generated scenarios. A number of options are available from the Custom Game dialog to allow you to tailor the game play as required.

Map: You can select a map from any of the available Scenarios. Only the underlying map is taken from the Scenario, all buildings, tanks and oil fields are discarded and replaced with randomly generated alternatives.

Players: Allows you to play an 'AI v AI' instead of the usual human versus the computer version. See later section for more details of AI v AI games.

Tanks: Choose how many tanks each player starts the game with. This can be used to give one or other player a head start.

Oil fields: Choose the number of randomly generated oil fields placed on the map.

Money: Choose how much money each player starts the game with.

Income: Choose the rate at which each player receives a fixed income.

Data set: The game comes with two data sets, these specify the details and graphics of the tanks and buildings available to each side. This allows you to choose which side uses which set, it is possible to use the same data set for each side in the game, but be warned this will give identical tanks and buildings to each side. Extra data sets may become available at a later date.

AI v AI games

You can watch the computer fighting against itself by using the 'Start AI Game' menu option. This option starts an AI v AI game on the currently selected scenario. You can't play AI v AI games on a scenario until after you have completed it.

AI v AI Custom games can also be played (see Custom games for more details), these do not require you to have completed the scenarios before allowing AI only games on any the maps from the incomplete scenarios.

During an AI game the computer acts as a director and follows the action. Buttons control whether the game is viewed from the viewpoint of Player 1, Player 2 or a from a global all-seeing viewpoint.

The director can also be disabled allowing the viewer to take control of the view. Manually changing the view whilst the director is in control disables the director for a few seconds.

The current ranking of how powerful each side is can be viewed from the '%' button.

Demo mode

Demo mode is the same as AI v AI games, except once a game is complete it will automatically restart giving an endless rolling demo.

Scenario editing

Editing your own scenarios allows you to create an infinite variety of game play situations, and adds a whole new dimension to the game.

To create or edit a scenario first switch the main screen into edit mode.

Creating new scenarios

To create a new scenario choose the new 'Create new scenario' menu option, select a name and Disk to store the new scenario on. As a start you can also choose to copy either the whole of another scenario including all tanks and buildings or to just take the map from the other scenario. If you choose to create a new scenario from scratch you can set the size of the map and data sets to use (see Custom game section for more details on data sets).

To start drawing the map tap the tiles button, this will give you a choice of tiles, select one then start tapping and dragging on the map to draw with the selected tile.

Some tiles automatically apply the appropriate edge effect, the river tile is a very good example, this can also be used for lakes. Roads automatically apply a solid border, road bridges automatically rotate to link bits of dry land with each other. For coastal effects join sea and sand tiles. Shallow rivers and shallow sea tiles can be driven through, although only at a low speed.

You can combine editing the tiles with adding tanks, buildings and oil to the scenario. Tiles which are occupied by buildings, tanks or oil can not be edited, so it's generally best to do most of the tile editing first, then start adding buildings, tanks and oil.

The key element in controlling how the scenario will play is the size and location of the oil fields. Players are forced to move tanks and build defences were the oil is. A large number of small oil wells will result the in game play moving around the map from one oil well to the next, a small number of large wells will result in the players digging in around the large wells and playing a more static game.

If scenario does not contain a construction yard at the start then there will not be any way of making buildings. This feature can be used to construct restricted scenarios. Other than the construction yard there are no rules on how many buildings a scenario should or shouldn't contain. By adding a tank base defences and oil wells the build up stage can be avoided to take the player straight into the thick of the action.

A particularly important aspect is balancing the two sides to control the difficulty of the level. There are three main factors that can be used for this purpose.

1: The position of the oil wells, wells near the main base provide an easy source of oil, wells spread out further afield are a lot harder to safely manage.

2: The number of tanks and buildings at start up. Don't make the start up strengths vary too much, as even a small number of extra tanks may give one player a head start that will allow them to immediately control and dominate the game.

3: Money, the start money and income of each player can be set from the 'Scenario parameters' dialog. Giving one player a small advantage on the fixed income is a very good way of giving the scenario a permanent bias one way or the other.

In the scenario parameters dialog the computer strategy can be set to one of Neutral, defensive or attacking. This should usually be set to Neutral. Selecting either of the other options will seriously damage the computers ability to search out and farm oil fields. They will instead cause it to either put the bulk of it's effort into defending an existing base, or into attacking it's opponent far more than it usually would choose to.

If either defensive or attacking are used the scenario should be edited to give the computer a ready made supply of oil and a considerable head start over the human player.

In the scenario parameters dialog you can also set the human player to be either Player 1 or Player 2. There is no real difference in choosing which player the human is then building the scenario around that selection. What this option does allow you to do is instantly switch which role the human plays in a scenario. This can effectively give you two very different scenarios for the effort of only creating one.

Editing scenarios

The built in system scenarios can not be edited. Although they can be cloned using the 'Create new scenario' option then using the copy option to copy the settings from the desired built in scenario.

To edit a scenario switch to Edit mode, select 'Edit scenario' from the menu and edit it the same as if it was a new scenario (see Creating new scenarios)

Managing files

No man's Land files are saved under the top level folder \Documents\NoMan, this can be on any available Disk.

Saved games are stored in the \Documents\NoMan\Save folder.

User created scenarios are stored in the folder \Documents\NoMan\Scenario

To create a new Scenario group use the a third party file manager to create a new folder within the \Documents\NoMan\Scenario folder, i.e. \NoMan\Scenario\MyScenarios. This new scenario group will then appear in the list of Scenario groups in the No man's Land Scenario view. Then use the file manager application to move the desired scenarios from the \NoMan\Scenario folder into your new sub-folder.