Re: Few suggestions from a new player

Yes, you ship that file with the install. That description is 
detailed enough to get someone started, but I think a reference file 
would be VERY helpful. 

I'm familiar with Stars!, which is a similar game. Spaceward Ho is a 
much simpler game, and in many ways it's better, but players still 
need to understand how it works.

Here are some things I found missing from that file, or less-well-
explained:

-   There is no explaination of ranks. One of the best things about 
this game is that it can get harder the more you play. How does 
allying affect score?
-   A paragraph to describe planet earnings and costs would be very 
helpful. It should describe that a new planet costs about $750 per 
year ($7500 per turn), until the population increases enough to cover 
that cost. It should also describe that the total dollars added to 
savings each turn is the income from all planets - planet support 
costs + interest on existing savings, or whatever the formula is. 
Interest should also be described, and I still don't quite understand 
what 'dipping into savings' means. Is it the same thing as 'Allow 
Debt'?
-   Fuel generation should be described. It seems that populated 
planets and tankers generate fuel, but how much does each generate 
per turn. At first I thought that satellites generate fuel.
-   Colonizing and evacuating. Apparently colonists just appear when 
you build a colony ship, and just disappear when you evacuate. I 
didn't find it specifically explained how much terraforming costs per 
turn, and how much metal can be mined, based on how many inhabitants 
a planet has.
-   It should be mentioned that money and metal earned by any planet 
are available at all planets immediately, and that any ship built can 
be immediately given flight orders.
-   The Spending screen section should explain what the colors on the 
spending bars mean. Sometimes the bars are replaced with a positive 
or negative number, but this isn't explained. Please explain 
something about the dimminishing returns of putting extra money into 
a planet. Also, why do the Metal and Income values have a + or -, but 
Savings never does. 
-   The History screen section should explain that the up/down 
buttons scroll.
-   The Galaxy screen section should describe the Show Ship Info 
feature, since the game is much easier with it.
-   The Planet Info screen, at the bottom of the Galaxy Map, is never 
described. Specifically, the slider at the left isn't described. It 
seems to mean equal amounts for terraforming and mining when at the 
top, and no terraforming/all mining when at the bottom.
-   The Build screen section should point out that building the first 
ship of a particular design costs the development cost, and all 
others cost the design cost. It should also describe what the C/S 
toggle stands for.
-   The hard buttons should be explained.
-   Bad guy IQ. I assume it just affects how much research costs.
-   Build capacity.

And one more bug:
-   If I select a ship in the build screen and I don't have enough 
money to build it, the number of ships to build is set to 0, as it 
should be. But if I then tap Allow Debt and try to increment the 
number to build, it jumps from 0 to 2, instead of jumping to 1.

This is a great game, but a reference manual would really be helpful.

Larry

--- In [email protected], Steve Orens <steve@o...> wrote:
> We put together an HTML tutorial on our web site. It is linked off 
of the
> main Spaceward Ho page. Look for the text "How to Play". Here is a 
direct
> URL:
> 
>     
<http://palmgames.mobilefreon.com/products/spacewardho/readme.html>
> 
> Also, I thought we shipped that the download? Perhaps not. I admit, 
it has
> been a while since I have looked at the download itself.
> 




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