Introduction Welcome to Unity Wars! For most the goal of Unity Wars, other than to have fun, is to be the one with the highest score. To do that you need to be the biggest, baddest ruler around. Life as a spacefaring race is nothing but anarchy. Survival of the fittest is the law. Unity Wars is played in a series of rounds. Each round is an entirely separate game and everyone starts anew each time. Rounds can last between a week (for a fast tick game) to anywhere up to several months (for a slow tick game). A tick is a regular event where the server updates the entire game universe such as fleet movement and income. In a typical fast tick Unity Wars round the ticks occur every two minutes. A slow tick round usually has ticks every hour. You play the ruler of a planet. Your planet is located within a galaxy with planets controlled by other players. You are expected to work with your galaxy mates against the rest of the universe though this is not always so. Civil war - attacks between galaxy members - is not unheard of. Each galaxy is part of a cluster. Sometimes the galaxies within a cluster can ally against the other clusters but not always. The Unity Wars universe is made up of several clusters. Initially you start off as a primitive race. Your planet resides in a galaxy but you are not part of it as yet as you are not technologically advanced enough. No one can see you and you cannot see anyone else until you have advanced into a spacefaring race. The Game Almost everything you do in Unity Wars requires resources. There are three types of resources: Metal - Used for ship hulls, buildings, etc. Crystal - Basis of your technology and computers. Uranium - Powers your ships. There are only two ways these resources are generated: Asteroids - Rich in ore and mineral deposits. Planet Mining - Based on your home planet. Planet mines are only a minor resource provider useful mostly during the early stages of the game. Far and away most of your resources later in the game will come from your asteroids and the more asteroids you have the more resources you will accrue. Naturally asteroids are a very important part of life in the universe and everyone guards their 'roids jealously. Your score is based on your assets such as how many ships you have, how many asteroids you own and other constructions you may have. So obviously the way to get your score up is to try and get as many resources as you can to build things with. The trouble is there are only so many 'roids surrounding your planet. Soon you will need to grab 'roids from other players in order to keep growing. But don't expect them to let you do that without a fight... Getting Started Assuming you've already created and validated a planet log into the game. You should see a screen that looks similar to this: The Overview Screen On the left is the menu. This is where you select the various screens used in the game. At the top is the current count of your resources (in tonnes) and score as well as the current server time in Greenwich Mean Time. You are also given a time till the next tick. On the right are five indicators that flash when various events occur. More about these later. Finally in the middle is the main screen where everything happens. Resource Screen Let's start by clicking on the Resource menu item. You should be faced with this screen: The Resource Screen Let's take a closer look at the Planetary Income table: Planetary Income Table This table lists your per-tick income. The first column lists the number of each type of asteroid you own. As you can see you do not currently own any. Ignore the number in brackets for now. The next column displays how many tonnes per resource your asteroids generate. Each asteroid generates 250 tonnes of each resource. The third column indicates the income coming from planetary mining. Everyone starts off with the most basic planetary mine which creates 250 of each resource per tick. The final column is the total income in tonnes from both your asteroids and your mines. Both mines and asteroids generate resources but they have an important difference. Mines cannot be taken from you - asteroids can! On to the second part of the resource screen: Initiate Roids Section 'roids initially come uninitiated. In this state they are worthless to you as they generate no income. To make them useful you must initiate them for mining as a metal, crystal or uranium asteroid. Once an asteroid is initiated as one of the three types it cannot be changed. However initiating 'roids comes at a cost. Your first 'roid costs you 1,000 metal in resources to initiate. The next 'roid will cost you 1,250 metal. The third 1,500 and so on, each 'roid costing 250 more than the previous one. Of course a 'roid will pay for itself eventually as it makes up its initiation costs from its generated resources. As you initiate more and more asteroids, however, it takes longer and longer for it to pay for itself and eventually it becomes cheaper just to steal your asteroids from someone else. But first, let's get your first 'roid initiated. Everyone gets one uninitiated asteroid at the start. Feel free to initiate it as any resource you choose though it should be pointed out that almost all veteran players initiate their first asteroid as a crystal 'roid as crystal is the most sort after resource in the first stages of the game. Click on the field next to the resource you wish to initiate the 'roid as and enter the number of 'roids you wish to initiate (in this case type "1"). Click on the text field below the table to see how much metal initiating will cost. It should indicate 1,000 metal. Hit "INITIATE" to initiate the 'roid. You should see "Asteroid(s) initiated" at the top of the screen and the initiation section disappear. If it doesn't try following the previous steps again. The initiation section only appears if you have uninitiated asteroids in stock. Now take a look at your Planetary Income table: Planetary Income Table As you can see your income has now been updated with your new asteroid's resource generation. Remember though that you will only get the totals indicated in the last column on each game tick. Construction Screen Okay, click on the Construction item on the left menu. The Construction screen is where you build special items that give you access to new features. Similarly the Research screen (which we'll look at soon) is for starting research into technology. You can have one each of a Construction and Research item going at any given time. Once a Construction or Research is complete usually this results in more items being available to construct or research. Now lets look closely at the list of Construction items you should see on your screen: Construction Table Initially you only have three options available to construct. Remember you may only construct one item at a time. The ticks column tells you how long it takes to construct each item in game ticks. Once you start a construction it cannot be stopped so choose carefully. Three initial items are: War Factory - Once completed gives you the ability to build War Sloops (attack ships), Cargo Launches (for stealing income) and Roid Drones (for grabbing asteroids). Choose this if you want to be war-like straight away. Automated Mines - When built upgrades your planetary mining of metal by 1,500 units (tonnes). Selecting this dramatically improves your metal income early on and is a popular choice. Targetting Computers - Once finished enables you to produce Photon Cannons (planet-based defence turrets). A useful choice if you feel vulnerable and want to get defence going early. As asteroid initiation requires a lot of metal we'll go for Automated Mines to start with. Click the "Construct" button next to this item. You should see the list change to look like: Construction Table As you can see once a construction is under way no other constructions can be started. You'll also note your resources have gone down by the cost of the construction item (you may need to click on Construction on the menu again for the top bar to update). Research Screen Now click on the Research menu item. Research Table The Research Screen is very similar to the Construction Screen. Once again you can only research one item at a time. Here you have three options: Cloaking Device - Enables nothing except being the first requirement for starting the cloaked ship line of constructions/researches. Not really a good first choice at this stage. Wavelet Theories - Once completed allows you build Scan Accelerators. Directed Light Beams - Like Cloaking Device enables nothing but opens up a reduced travel time construction. Wavelet Theories is nearly always the best choice here as it enables you to build Scan Accelerators once complete. Scan Accelerators are important to your planet as without them finding local asteroids is difficult. Also until you build Scan Accelerators your race is considered primitive and is not visible to anyone else, nor can you see or communicate with other planets. In fact, there's so little you can do without Scan Accelerators you're wise to get them up as soon as possible. Click the "Research" button next to Wavelet Theories. Research Table Overview Screen At this stage there's very little you can do until your researches and constructions are complete. The only other menu item that is of any interest to you at present is the Overview Screen. But feel free to peruse the other screens if you wish. Click Overview on the menu. This screen does exactly what you'd think; provide an overview of what is happening with your planet. The various sections show: Planet Name Right at the top of the screen your name and planet are displayed. Once you build Scan Accelerators your universe co-ordinates will also be displayed here. Message of the day Any pertinent messages from the Unity Wars staff appear here. Message from your commander Until you have Scan Accelerators and become a functioning member of your galaxy you will not see anything here other than "None". When you have Scan Accelerators you will see any messages your galaxy's elected commander has chosen to set. Only members of your galaxy will be able to see this message. Even after you have Scan Accelerators you may not see a message here; your commander (if you even have one) may not have set it. Military Status Gives a brief list of incoming enemy and friendly fleets as well as your own fleets' movements. Construction Shows what (if anything) you are currently constructing and how many ticks is left till it is complete. Research Your research item and ticks left. Asteroids A run down of the quantities of each type of asteroid you own. Once you have ships and defence turrets these will also be itemised on this screen. Now there's not much we can do except wait 12 ticks for the Automated Mines and Wavelet Theories to complete. This tutorial is currently incomplete so it really only serves to give you a glimpse of the game play of Unity Wars.

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