Instruction Manual

What is Overlord?

Overlord is a single-player strategy-simulation game that offers you the chance to battle for economic and military domination in four planet systems. As a commander, you are personally responsible for managing resources, purchasing equipment, governing people, overseeing mining and farming, developing military, training troops, planning campaigns, and directing battles.

Four alien commanders, one in each planet system, seek to defeat you. Your ultimate goal is to crush all four opponents by conquering their bases, therby protecting your home universe from the threat of invasion. Strategic skills are called for – both as commander-in-chief and as director of economic policies. Moral decisions also have to be taken; for instance, are you prepared to starve your people to death, tax them totally out of pocket and sacrifice them without mercy to the alien forces in order to hold onto power? Or do you see yourself as a beneficient ruler, who cares for the health and welfare of your subjects?

Mastering The Task

Overlord is an involved game – success is unlikely to come without practice and a thourough understanding of control methods. Make full use of the save game facility: the more difficult planet systems take a lot of completing, and its worth saving your position regularly in case the enemy forces make sudden, rapid gains. The chance to go back to a position and try another strategy is the only advantage you have over life in the real world. Use it while you learn the skils of galactic domination.

Using This Guide This documentation contains all the information you need to master Overlord. Read the Game objectives and use the Quick Reference Guide (Quickref.doc) to get going if you dont like finding your way around a manual before starting play – dip into the glossary (Glossary.txt) for more detailed descriptions of the craft and equipment you will encounter in the game, read Know Thine Enemy for more information on your alien opponents and their styles of play, then return to this manual when you need more detailed information.

If you prefer the more methodical approach, follow the Quick Start Tour. It guides you step-by-step through the first stages of laying the foundations for a stable empire in the Hitotsu planet system.

The control section explains in detail how to manipulate the cursor driven Control Screens. The Mission Background chapter offers advice and tips on developing a strategy, the Managing Resources section will help you develop a sound economy, and the Overlord Questions Answered will be a useful source of help if you need to do some trouble-shooting.

The History of Epsilon…

The only sure way to consolidate your position as a despot – an absolute ruler – is to rule absolutely. Your family has spent generations ensuring that the rule of the Dynasty of Mark is unassailable in the Epsilon galaxy.

A new threat to the stability of your rule has recently arisen. Reality is not what it seems…

Research scientist working on new inter-planetary drive systems for your craft made a major breakthrough intheir understanding of space – with worrying consequences. In pursuit of a hyperdrive mechanism that would allow ships to take dimensional short-cuts on the route from A to B, scientist discovered entire new dimensions, in fact Hitotsu, Futatsu, Mittsu, and Yottsu – each cloaked in a different reality and containing 6, 14 or 30 barren planets. Four new planet systems…

A few exploratory forays revealed that these planet systems appeared to be buffer zones that act as an uninhabited middle ground between your home universe and alien dimensions that lie beyond them. Each planet system can be accessed directly from Starbase, the planet at the heart of epsilon, your solar system – activating the hyperdrive system on Starbase and setting the appropriate co-ordinates caused Starbase to sppear at the edge of one of the buffer planet systems.

During an exploratory foray into Hitotsu, the 6-planet system, a sudden change was noticed – another planet had materialized. Rapidly activated scanning systems revealed that there were now eight planets in the system – Starbase, the six arid planets that had always been there, and the new arrival – which showed all the signs of harboring sentinent life.

Jumping back through the hyperdrive portal to your own reality to consider this new development, you decided to pay a visit to the other three universes – and found that the planet count in each of them had increased by one. It looked like someone else from somewhere else had just made the same discovery as you and was now entering the four new planet systems.

Then you decided to take another look at the Hitotsu system; co-ordinates were set on the hyperdrive plant, the activate switch thrown – and the transition was made without any energy consumption. Starbase transcended the dimentional barriers and had become a permanent part of Hitotsu, a system that now contains eight planets.

A worrying prospect indeed – this permanent link between Hitotsu and Epsilon opened you to the threat of attack. Fearing the worst, you hurriedly set co-ordinates for Futatsu, Mittsu, and Yottsu – and discovered that they too were now permanetly linked to your home universe.

Four alien dimensions are now linked to Epsilon via four planet system. Your absolute rule might soon be under threat from four alien civilivations. Civilizations that could the barren planets in each of the new systems to stockpile arms and equipment before mounting a devastating attack on Epsilon through the permanently-open portal that starbase has now become. A worrying prospect indeed – but what can be done to ensure the safety of your hard-won empire?

There is only one course of action – to go on the offensive and do unto the four alien civilizations what they most certainly want to do unto you – only do it first, and do it quickly.

While appropriate military operations were put underway, diplomatic teams were dispatched to the alien planets in Hitotsu, Futatsu, Mittsu, and Yottsu. Basic non-aggression pacts were agreed, a few spies left behind, and an uneasy peace initiated. Well, at least the treaties have bought you some time, time that can be used to get ready.

Armament manufacturing plants are working flat-out, producing craft and equipment. You have examined all the options. Now it’s time to go on the offensive…

THE GAME OBJECTIVES

You are the commander and supreme leader of Epsilon, a universe located at the very edge of space. Scientific research into a new dimension-busting hyperdrive has had a rather unfortunate side effect – your Starbase is now permanently linked to and part of four barren planet systems: Hitotsu, Futatsu, Mittsu, and Yottsu. Each of the four planet systems acts as a buffer zone, and is linked to one of the four new dimensions that are populated by alien civilizations.

Clearly, this situation introduces an unwelcome instability into your life as the commander of Epsilon – suddenly, there are new dimensions for you to conquer. And new dimensions which, without doubt, harbor alien races just as eager to conquer your home system, Epsilon.

Your investigations have established that the four alien races, like your own people, are organized under a dictatorial system of government. Your opponents Wotok, Smine, Krart, and Rorn have established bases in the buffer planet systems which are now known as Hitotsu, Futatsu, Mittsu, and Yottsu respectively.

Your objective is to become the supreme ruler of each of the four planet systems. Only when all four systems are totally under your control can you feel safe from the threat of alien attack.

And once you have control of a planet system, you can concentrateon amassing troops and resources there, ready for an invasion of the alien dimension that lies beyond… But such plans are of the future, are are outside the scope of Overlord 1. The first priority is securing the safety of Epsilon.

Victory Conditions

Overlord offers four campaigns: the battles for control of Hitotsu, Futatsu, Mittsu, and Yottsu. Victory in each campaign is yours if you can gain control of the alien base located at the opposite end of the planet system to Starbase; conversely, victory falls to the alien commander if he can wrest Starbase from your grasp.

There is no time limit set on a campaign – the struggle continues until you quit the mission or one side wins. Once a campaign has been started you cannot introduce additional resources from elsewhere, but it is possible to ship craft and military equipment from Epsilon to help your war effort. Naturally, such equipment has to be paid for, and in order to maintain the inter-dimensional equilibrium, appropriate resources may also have to be shipped back to Epsilon in exchange for equipment.

Food, Fuel, Energy, Credits, Minerals and people are present on Starbase when a campaign begins and are the economic Resources that need to be managed with care if you are to succeed. Neutral planets can be colonized and enemy planets can be conquered. Remember, when a planet is under your control, you can extract Resources that are useful to the war effort.

Choosing A Planet System

The four missions can be attempted in any order you choose, and an individual mission can be attempted as many times as you like (although the start conditions vary slightly each time).

Hitotsu contains 8 planets and you are up against a fairly inept alien commander. Futatsu contains 16 planets, and you compete against an alien life-form that is rather more experienced at government and the strategies of war. Mittsu contains 32 planets and you fight a highly-experienced opponent who is well-versed in the skills of government and military strategy.

Obviously, the more planets there are in a system, the more complex the task managing Resources and deploying your military forces becomes.

The ultimate challenge is presented by Yottsu, another 32-planet system. The creature you challenge there is remarkably sophisticated at the arts of war and government – you will find him impossible to overthrow unless you have trained yourself thoroughly in the other arenas first.

When you first enter a planet system, Starbase is a functional colony – but the Resources you find on Starbase are limited, and you do not have an army. Your opponent, however, has been busy, anticipating the start of hostilities. Your first objective must be to assess the task that lies ahead.

Then you have to develop your own strategies for success.

The information you need to develop your skills as a player of Overlord is in this manual. Once you have mastered the control system, serious play can begin.

CONTROLLING OVERLORD

MAIN SCREEN This is the screen that appears when you first enter one of the four planet systems. From here, you access controls available to you during play, receive messages on the video teleprinter console, and gain an overview of the progress of the game.

Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, one click on the right mouse button returns you here (Unless you are right in the middle of buying or renaming something, in which case the right mouse button will be temporarily used as the ENTER key. Two clicks of the right mouse button will get you to the Main Screen.)

The System Map An at-a-glance guide to how things are going in the current solar system.

Your Starbase is at the bottom of the map and the enemy’s base is at the top. The colored dots that orbit around the axis of the star map represents the planets: red represents a planet under control of the enemy; blue represents a neutral, unformatted planet; white indicates a planet that is being formatted, either by you or the enemy. A dot that flashes between green and red indicates a planet that is currently embroiled in battle. Your opponents face appears in silhouette behind the System Map – the clearer you can see him, the closer he is to victory.

Planet Information

The icon at the top left of the System Map display calls up basic information on the current planet – it’s worth remembering that the larger a planet is, the longer it takes to format. This icon also gives a breakdown on the status of the entire planet system, revealing the number of planets under your control, the number of planets under enemy control and the number of planets that have yet to be formatted.

Home Key The icon at the bottom left of the System Map display is the ‘home key’ – click on it to move the planet cursor directly to Starbase.

Pause and Sound Controls

Click on the ear to toggle sound effects on or off. Clicking on the hand pauses the game, and the icon becomes silver-colored – click on it again, or click the left mouse button to resume play.

Control Panel Clicking on these icons gives access to the other Control Screens within Overlord. Learn to recognize these icons – they also appear on other screens, where they allow you to go directly to another Control Screen without returning to the Main Screen first.

THE PLANET TYPES Volcanic – Horticultural Stations and Solar Satellites work here, but the real gains are made if you set up mining operations. A basic Mining Station produces five times the yield of Minerals and three times the yield of Fuel on a volcanic planet as it does on any other planet type.

Desert – Farming and Mining operations proceed at normal, basic rates but the energy yield from orbiting Solar Satellites is much increased owing to the thin atmosphere that cloaks Desert planets – very little Energy is lost when it is beamed down to the planets capacitor storage devices.

Tropical – Normal, basic yields are obtained from Mining Stations and Solar Satellites, but as might be expected, you get significantly more food from a Horticultural Station when it is installed on a tropical planet as it utilizes some of the local flora and fauna in the production of food.

Metropolis – Starbase is a Metropolis planet. These planets are good revenue earners – the quantity of credits per unit of time you recieve from setting a given tax rate on a given size of population is much higher on a metropolis planet than on any other planet type.

THE PLANET SURFACE

At any one time, a maximum of nine craft can be located on a given planet – there are three spaces in the Docking Bays, and six platforms on the surface of the planet itself.

In order to land a craft from orbit (or before you can buy a craft on Starbase) there has to be a vacant Docking Bay available to receive it. This may mean launching a craft and parking it in orbit – there’s unlimited room in the space lanes – or it may mean transferring something from a Docking Bay out onto the surface of the planet to make room.

Remember: Horticultural and Mining Stations only produce Resources when they have been moved out on the surface of a planet and activated.

The Planet Surface Screen allows you to move craft between the six platforms on the planet and the three Docking Bays. To move a craft out, click on its name in the Docking Bay panel. To move it back into a vacant Docking Bay, click on the visual representation of the craft that appears when it occupies a surface platform.

And to turn on a Mining or Horticultural Station, simply click once on the ‘ON/OFF’ toggle switch… you may need to check all your Mining and Horticultural Stations after a cosmic storm or energy failure – they have a nasty habit of switching themselves off and going unnoticed until stores have dropped dangerously low.

MANAGING RESOURCES

Managing resources is one of the keys to success in Overlord. It is important to monitor levels of Food, Energy, Minerals, Fuel, Credits and People on all the planets you control. As well as using Resource-creating equipment, you should also remember to protect planets that produce resources from enemy attack.

The relative importance of the Resources with which you have to deal depends on which of the planet systems you are seeking to conquer, and on the strategies you choose to adopt when playing the game.

Credits and Population

Credits are vital: they are needed to buy weapons for your soldiers when you commision your recruits into platoons, and you have to have sufficient funds in the Starbase treasury to pay for equipment ordered on the Buy Screens.

The main source of credits is taxation – you can set the tax rate that prevails on each of your colonies by accessing the Government Screen, but if you set the tax too high on a planet, the population’s morale will suffer and as a consequence, the rate at which the population increases will begin to slow down.

If the tax rates are too high, population may cease to grow at all, and if Food stocks fall below levels needed to sustain population, then people start to die. In such an emergency, you can obtain temporary respite by moving people into cryogenic storage if you have any craft in the Docking Bays of a planet, or into the army if the food shortage occurs on Starbase – people in the army or on board a ship do not consume Food.

Its worth bearing in mind that much higher revenue per unit of time is received on a Metropolis planet for a given tax rate, so you may wish to concentrate on building the population on Starbase and other Metropolis planets you format during a game. It’s well worth keeping the population level on Starbase as high as you can – it’s the only community from which you can recruit new soldiers and obtain crew for new ships.

Credits can also be raised in case of dire emergency by scrapping craft on the Docking Bay Screen, or by decommissioning Platoons that are located on Starbase (Achieved on the Platoon Management Screen).

Credits can be shipped back to Starbase from your colonies almost instantaneously – clicking on the appropriate icon on the Government Screen activates an electronic transfer of funds.

In order to take advantage of the higher taxation yields on Metropolis planets or to ensure a supply of civilians for the draft, you may need to move people around a planet system.

Food, Minerals, Fuel and Energy

When you start a new game, Starbase is seeded with a quantity of Resources. Similarly, when a planet is formatted the Atmosphere Processor delivers some basic supplies to the newly-established colony.

In order to live and multiply in number, people need to consume Food. Depending on which planet system you are attempting to conquer, Minerals and Energy may be needed back on Starbase to fund purchases made on the Buy Screens. Energy is used by Mining Stations and Farming Stations when they are operational, and Fuel is needed by most craft to travel through space.

The only certain way to increase stocks of Food, Minerals, Fuel and Energy is to acquire the appropriate equipment and manufacture them, although Resources can be captured as the spoils of war.

Mining Stations produce more Fuel and Minerals when they are sited on Volcanic planets, Farming Units produce more Food if they are located on a Tropical Planet, and Solar Satellite Generators yield Energy more rapidly if they are in orbit around a Desert Planet.

Significant gains can be made by deploying your Resource-generating equipment wisely, establishing colonies that specialize in contributing a particular Resource to your overall economy – buy that still leaves the problem of transporting Resources to the planets that need them…

Moving Resources Around A Planet System

Ideally, every planet under your control will be totally self-sufficient, producing all the Food and Energy it needs to survive, but such equilibrium is certainly not easy to achieve, and in certain scenarios, proves impossible. From time to time you will need to make an emergency shipment of Food, and sometimes Fuel and Energy, form one planet with a surplus to another with a pressing shortage.

While Credits can be moved back from planets under your control to the Starbase treasury by clicking on the appropriate icon on the Government Screen, you may need to effect a physical transfer of Minerals or Energy back to Starbase in order to satisfy the asking price for a piece of equipment you want to by.

Relocating Your People

You may wish to move people from planet to planet – a population might have been allowed to dwindle to zero on one of your possessions, or you may wish to take advantage of the extra-high yield from taxes that you enjoy on Starbase or another Metropolis planet by shipping in some people from less economically-rewarding planets. Or you may need to take people back to Starbase so they can be drafted into your army.

With the exception of Credits, Resources are shipped around the planet system as cargo. Small amounts can be loaded into the cargo holds of Battle Cruisers, Horticultural Stations and Mining Stations, which is worth bearing in mind if you are about to make a journey anyway. For real bulk transport, however, you need the heavy-duty truck of the spacelanes – a Cargo Cruiser.

The Cargo Bay Screen is used to load and unload cargo and passengers – once a ship is in a Docking Bay, you select it by clicking on its name (unless it is the only ship in a Docking Bay on the current planet, in which case it is automatically selected as the current ship for Cargo Bay operations.) Providing a ship has the capacity to carry passengers (check the status panel the appears at the top center of the Cargo Bay Screen for details on the currently selected craft), people from the population of the current planet can be put into cryogenic storage and moved into the passenger compartments of the current ship. Click and hold on the appropriate arrow in the Passenger Embarkation Icon to effect transfers to and from the cryogenic store.

The large panel to the right of the Cargo Screen contains the Stores Display – vertical, green bar-readouts indicate quantities of Food, Minerals, Fuel and Energy held in the current planet’s stores; red bars represent amounts of these Resources that are in the cargo hold of the current ship, while green bars show what, if anything, is loaded aboard the current craft.

If capacity remains in the cargo hold of the current ship, clicking on the red buttons at the bottom of the display bars moves goods on board. Conversly, goods can be unloaded selectively by clicking and holding on the appropriate green button. Digital readouts at the base of each column reveal the tonnages of each commodity that are on the planet (Green Box) and in the holds of the current ship (Red Box).