Another classic computer game. Real-time strategy, I guess, with simulation elements. It certainly had more realistic take on the resource management than most modern RTS. Polygon 3D. Was on the Amiga, Spectrum, C64, and apparently PC and AtariST?.
There is an archipelago of islands, rich in resources. You are in command of a carrier, which sails between them. The carrier contains five amphibious tanks and five fighter planes. And a host of weaponry and equipment you can add onto them. Most interesting are the ACCBs, pods containing robots which will build a command centre if dropped on an island. These command centres build factories and other structures which can then refine fuel for your carrier, tanks and planes, and rebuild weaponry, including new ACCBs.
The challenge? There's another carrier, starting at the other end of the archipelago, doing exactly the same thing. And you can't take over islands which it's colonised. For one thing, a number of the structures on colonised islands will shoot at you if you try. This is where your weapons come in.
You get notifications of what the enemy's doing, on a broad scale - colonising islands, attacking your islands, kind of thing. If you can arrange to be in the same place as it, then you get terrifying full carrier-on-carrier combat, trying to control the main ship laser, up to five strike planes, and often one or two amphibious tanks as well. One of the ways to win the game (AlexChurchill's most common) was to blow up the enemy carrier. The other is to make your way across to its home island and neutralise that. (Its home island was about 32 islands or about 8 full tanks of carrier fuel away. You can't just head straight there.)
Actually, that wasn't quite enough, since if it saw you coming it could move its command centre, the same way you can. You had to trap it somewhere with insufficient resources to rebuild. Or get lucky. Blowing up the carrier was usually easier. --Vitenka
I think destroying the CC on the *home* island (the one it started from) wins the game. I did that once. What I'd sometimes do is destroy the enemy carrier, then choose to carry on playing and work my way up to its home island and take over that. It gives you another 'you've won the game' message, and you could still choose to carry on playing if you wanted. --AC
Hmm. I'm pretty sure that on mine the enemy carrier could survive its home island going. Though only if it had already moved it, maybe. --Vitenka
There are added complexities to the resource and factory system. ACCBs and islands are either mining, factory, or defensive. Resources need shipping from mining islands to factory islands, and then to a stockpile island (designated by you). You refuel and resupply your carrier by sailing to the stockpile island and ordering the (amphibious robotic) resupply drone to come out to bring the fuel and goods to you. Attacking the enemy carrier when they're doing this is quite appropriate.
I should add that you can move the stockpile island, and the restock drone has quite a large range, it'll resupply you from a couple of islands away. Slowly. --Vitenka
Wow, really? I thought on the Amiga version it said "Stockpile island out of range" if you weren't actually in proximity to that one island. My memory may be hazy though. --AC
Yes, it'll say that - but at least on the ST that range was pretty big. --Vitenka
And there are things like telemetry limitations - your tanks and planes can't go very far from your carrier... unless they're close to a plane with a Long-Range Telemetry Pod. So you end up plotting autopilot courses for a tank with an ACCB towards an island, with a fighter with Long-Range pod flying overhead, and then just let them get there. Hopefully the ACCB will build a runway on the island fast enough that your plane can land before it runs out of fuel.
Yes. Wonderful game on the AtariST?. Incredibly hard unless you used unfair tactics, though. Keeping track of four flyers, a amphibious thing (you could have more than one active at once, but it wasn't anywhere near as helpful as the flyers) one whacking great carrier, a supply boat - oh, and an archipelago all at once was somewhat.. taxing. Humm. time to reinstall my emulators I think. --Vitenka
Hmm... I found I'd usually use 2 Walruses (the tanks): one off on Long-Range ACCB duty with an attendant Manta, and one colonising the island that my carrier was actually at. The tanks' fly-by-wire surface-to-surface missiles were wonderful - you could take out coastal defense structures from the sea, and theoretically you could even take out air units with them. I wouldn't call it "incredibly" hard, although it was pretty absorbing and took a while. But any games that are totally free-form, no levels or division of any kind, just one long-range objective, would naturally take a while. --AC
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