Outpost 2 GUIDE!

I think I'm gonna try to make a guide for the game. Why? Mostly so Mason would possibly play with me! Perhaps also for anyone else that is interested in playing with us =D! I also love the game dearly..

Do note, the guide is a bit long, but you'll know about everything you'll need to know about playing the game, the game is a little complicated compared to some, but once you get the hang of it, it's actually quite easy.

I'll try and get some screenshots to assist later on (maybe sometime tomorrow), but for now, it'll be text.

VEHICLES AND THEIR COMMANDS:

Basics:
Left click a vehicle to select it, right click to deselect it (same goes for buildings). The default action for all vehicles when you left click is to move it, unless it is a lynx/panther/tiger "tank", then it can also tell it to attack a non-allied/friendly vehicle or building.

Waypoints:
If you hold down the CTRL button on your keyboard, and then left-click, you will create a waypoint for the selected vehicle(s), for the last way-point release CTRL and left click the selected spot.

Mobile Weapons:

Lynx is the lightest tank: Lightest armor, but also the fastest. It is the first thing you research.
Panther is the medium tank: Medium armor, slower than lynx by a bit.. and nobody seems to like them at all.
Tigers are the heaviest tank: They have the heaviest armor, slowest movement, but DUAL-TURRETS, so they usually fire about twice as fast as the other tanks.


Self Destruct:
All vehicles also have the ability to self-destruct, so be sure not to hit "d" or the button, or else they'll go KABOOM. Why do they have this ability though, you might ask?
I have found 2 reasons:
-One, they can be used in a desperate last attempt to damage/destroy enemy vehicles/buildings, seeing as how they do damage to anything near-by when they self destruct.
-Two, if you are going against a Plymouth opponent, you can have the vehicle self-destruct so it can't be captured by the enemy.

Headlights:
All vehicles also have the ability to turn their headlights off. You can turn their headlights off by pressing this yellow(when headlights are on, otherwise the button is black) headlight button found in the upper-right of their commands menu thingy.
When their headlights are off, they move slower, but when they are in the darkness of night, they also don't appear on the enemy minimap, making it a good tactic for SURPRISE ATTACKS!


But wait there's more!:
There are a few vehicles that will become very important, but will be explained in further sections!

BUILDINGS AND BASES, AND ALL ABOUT THEM:

Requirements:
Most buildings will require 3 things: Workers/scientists, power, and a tube connecting them to the command center.

Luckily, if you have a building you don't need, you can IDLE it, and it will no longer use up workers/scientists or power until you activate it again.

Unfortunately, buildings no longer work when they are critically damaged (their health turns red) or when they are hit by EMP (ElectroMagnetic Pulse, a type of weapon you can put on a tank).

-The command center is the MOST IMPORTANT BUILDING, as almost all of your vital buildings need it in order to work. You connect buildings to the command center via 'tubes' the little grey things that go along the ground. Tubes can be made by the Earthworker vehicle, but it costs a little common ore.

Keep the Command Center well defended, as most people tend to try to go for it to quickly take out a base.

-Power is produced by Tokamaks, MHD Generators(Plymouth only), Geocons(Eden only), or Solar Power Arrays(after you get a space-port and send up solar satellites). WARNING: Tokamaks slowly get damaged and have a random chance of exploding after a certain amount of damage is done. Luckily, they're the only power plant that does this.

-Workers/Scientists are the hardest resource to come by. First off, in order for them to live, you have to make sure you have Agridomes making food.
To get more people ('cause they'll die off at random even if you do have food) you have to make a Nursery (it makes children), and a University (it passively turns children into workers at random, and then if you have excess workers, you can manually tell it to train them into Scientists. It is very important you remember to tell it to train more scientists).

How to builllddd:

First, go to your Structure Factory. Left click it and go to the 'build' button that appears in the menu to the right (lower-right corner of your screen to be precise). Then a menu will appear, and you select the building you want made, and then you tell it to build it by pressing the 'build' button that appears at the bottom of that.

Second, select a Convec and tell it to go to the structure factory dock. The dock is the little white, square pad thingy that is at the lower-right for most buildings.

Third, go back to the structure factory and go to 'storage'. When the structure factory has made the module/packet thingy for the building, you load it onto the convec via this. You press the little pretty picture of the building you want to make and it loads it onto the convec on the dock. IF THERE IS NO CONVEC ON THE DOCK, IT ASKS IF YOU WANT TO TRASH IT when you press the building.

Lastly, after the convec has the building loaded on, you tell the convec to build the building it has, by pressing the build button, and then selecting where you will build it. It shows where the building will be made by a series of colored squares, yellow squares are the actual parts of the building, white squares are the tubes that will automatically come out of the building, and blue squares are the space around the building that will become pavement. All squares must have no obstacles, otherwise they'll turn red, and you won't be able to build the building there.

OBTAINING ORE:

Requirements:
-Robo-Miner (vehicle) (it turns into a Common/Rare Ore Mine)
-Robo-Surveyor (vehicle)
-Cargo Truck (vehicle)
-Common/Rare Ore Smelter (building)

How To Use These To Get Ore:
First, you find a white dot, called a beacon. It'll appear on the mini-map, and on the main-screen. You send your robo-surveyor to go to this (just literally, move on top of it) so it can identify it. The robo-surveyor will go there, stop for a moment, and then move off as it becomes identified.

The white dot will turn into an orange dot(for common ore) or a yellow dot (for rare ore), but you might also notice there are either 1, 2, or 3 dots there. Go for 3 dots, or if you need to, 2 dots, 'cause the more dots, means the more yield the mine will get, meaning the more quickly you get ore. (DO NOTE: The mine NEVER runs out of ore, but the more dot-things it has, the more quickly you'll get ore from it).

Second, take your robo-miner to your desired identified beacon and tell it to build a mine there by clicking the build button, just like building a structure with a convec, only this doesn't need any tubes, power, or workers/scientists.

Third, you will need a Common Ore Smelter or Rare Ore smelter. If you don't have one, build one. It requires 3 workers, and about 50 power or so, and a tube connection, but do try to build in close proximity to the mine.

Last, select a cargo truck or a group of cargo trucks and click on the 'route' button, it'll have 2 arrows on it. It tells you to first, click on the mine's dock, then on the smelter's dock, then on the mine's dock again (for some unknown reason). Now the cargo truck(s) will gather ore from the mine and bring it to the smelter to give you common or rare metal, which can be used to make buildings and vehicles, hooraaay!

RESEARCH:

Extremely Important! Research provides you with new buildings/vehicles/upgrades/abilities that will keep you goin' on!

To research:

First, you will need extra scientists that aren't being used in other buildings, you can click the little 'mine-cart' button below your minimap to see how many extra workers/scientists you have.

Then, select either your Basic (usually only used in the campaign), Standard, or Advanced lab and select the 'topics' button. A menu will appear with things to research, select one, and then choose the amount of scientists you want to have research (the description of the topic will also appear here), and then press assign. They will then begin researching, yay!

Note, different topics can have a different amount of scientists researching them at a time. One topic may only let you have 7 scientists researching, while one may let you have up to 18 scientists researching, you don't need 7 or 18 to do this, but it is researched quickest if you do have the maximum amount, if you have 9/18 researching for the topic, it'll be researched much more slowly.

Also, at any given time, you can select the lab and assign less or more scientists, if given you need more scientists elsewhere or if you have extra scientists that aren't doing anything. This won't disrupt the current progress.

That's about it folks!

You should be able to play the game now, the rest is developing your own strategy and deciding which faction to use. But I suppose I can also give some tips and strategies...

Factions:

Eden:

Pros:
-They get the strongest tank, the Thors Hammer!

-They get RLVs (reuseable launch vehicles), which are shuttles that return to the space-port after a while after you launch them. Plymouth has to use SLVs, which have to be built every time you want to launch something into space, so these save common and rare ore.

-The ability to have robo-miners turn into magma-wells, aka rare-ore mines that are built on the little lava-thingies. Give a yield of about a 2-dot rare ore beacon, when you have their upgrade researched.

-In the campaign and other scenarios, their earthworkers get the ability to make blight walls.

Cons:
-In scenarios that don't have Morale set to 'steady', the morale is a bit harder to raise compared to Plymouth, I hear.

Plymouth:

Pros:
-The ability to capture vehicles via Spiders and EMP.

-The ability to make EMP missiles at the Space-port.

-They get the Supernova tank, which is a suicide-bomber type vehicle, that generates quite a big explosion, capable of taking out a command center with just one.

-In the campaign and other scenarios, their earthworkers get the ability to make Lava walls.

Cons:
-Most of their vehicles pale when compared to Eden's Thor's Hammer tank, their vehicle with the highest damage output is probably the RPG tank, which only does a fraction of damage-per-hit compared to the Thor's Hammer.


Tips:

-Try building smelters 2 squares away from mines, and have at least 2 per mine!

-Despite the high requirements, the DIRT buildings can prevent damage done to buildings by up to 25%, and I think protect up to 15 buildings each.

-Although not ideal, guard-posts are usually much cheaper compared to their vehicle counter-parts, and only require power. You should hook them up to tubes though, so they become more accurate and respond quicker.

-It isn't required, but it is helpful to make a 'robo-dozer' which paves land, making vehicles go faster on it, and buildings/tubes/walls can be built quicker on it. It is ideal to pave the land between a smelter and a mine to make the cargo trucks collect ore more quickly.

-Earth-workers not only build tubes, but walls, which can help protect bases. You can also get special walls, lava or blight walls, which will slow down, but not prevent, lava and blight. Regular walls help fend off enemy vehicles the best though, as they can take more hits until they are destroyed.

holy sweet jesus, longer than my other post :S... i wonder if mike spares a passing glance on the forums.... well either that or he REALLY wants me to finish the map, idk, ill take a look

That's a pretty good overview of the game, dont forget about lava/blight walls in the pros/cons apart. Hamachi isn't working by the way, it doesn't log on when I press power...

restarting the computer sometimes helps lol, i know a stupid solution but it works.... sometimes

MrGoose wrote:That's a pretty good overview of the game, dont forget about lava/blight walls in the pros/cons apart. Hamachi isn't working by the way, it doesn't log on when I press power...

Hmm, perhaps it is because you got hamachi while connected to my fiber-internet, and you are now trying to use it through your dial-up internet? I'm not quite sure why it isn't working, but I do hear it works with dial-up.

Does it give a specific error message?

All it says is to check the website, and I can't find anything helpfull there. I think it probably is because I got it at your house.

Possibly, I'm pretty sure the install files are still in your 'downloads' folder, so if you want, you can try uninstalling it, and reinstalling it from those files..

Hmm, although, I got hamachi while I was at WSU, and was able to come back home and have it work, but I dunno, do try reinstalling it.

Or, have you done anything with the actual hamachi network? Is your local area network card thing still on? It could be that dial-up doesn't require LAN and your computer turns it off by default or something, but you'd need it on for hamachi to work, most likely.

ya andrew your internet makes everybody FAIL

=(

So do you know how to play Outpost 2 now Mason =]?

lol nope not yet..... cause i haven't learned more of it lol, ive been..... preoccupied

Garn.

ya i was busy writting my novel the last few days. Nice guide. Screenies could be a little bigger lol. Yes i want that map finished mason. And ya maybe when i like figure out the tech stuff and you get NWN2 we can do some outpost 2.

For some reason Photobucket wouldn't let them upload to their actual size, I did notice they are a little small and hard to read.