Demolition Rules

Demolition?

Demolition is a simple two-player board game based on the strategy standard that most other computer games have adopted. It is turn-based, and grid-based. It allows the movement of units and the attacking of other units and buildings. It also has 'gold' a resource that must be harvested to supply money for the construction of more units and buildings. All of these courses of action are presented to the user on a unique front-end that is both easy to use and flexible.

First Things First

Having run the program, before you start, you must specify which patch to use. Each patch has different graphics, sounds, gameplay and maps. Simply press Enter at this point. Upon starting Demolition, you will be confronted with a black window, a portion of the Board in the top left, a Radar in the bottom right, a grid at the bottom and a group of controls in the top right titled "Creation".

Loading the Board

The first thing to do is to load up a map from the hard disk, a few have been provided as a starting point, but later you may wish to make your own maps by editing the files or using the creation controls. At this point though, we will use the maps provided. Select Load Map from the Map menu.

The Various Parts of the Board

Part of the map you selected will appear on the board. Scroll around the map using the Scroll Bars to the left and underneath the board, by right clicking in the board area, or, in the bottom right corner, click on the Radar to go to that area directly. You will see that a River divides the board into a Red area, consisting of Red Units and Buildings and a Blue area consisting of Blue Units and Buildings. A small amount of Gold is placed in both areas in equal amounts to be fair to both colours.

Editing the Board

If you want to change any aspect of the map then you use the Creation Controls.

These are the Creation Controls. Before we can use them, we must understand more about the way the game works. Each tile has a Type, each type has an Index, and each index has an X Co-ordinate a Y Co-ordinate and a Sub Type.

Type: river, redBuilding, redUnit, bluBuilding, bluUnit and gold.

Index: Each individual type has an index, this is the serial number of a tile, each tile of a given type has its own number. If you set this to "-1", then the computer will select the lowest free index available.

X Co-ordinate: The position of the tile on the board. Values are from 0 to 31.

Y Co-ordinate: The position of the tile on the board. Values are from 0 to 15. Remember that 0 is actually the top row, not the bottom row as you might expect.

Sub Type: For rivers, this would be a curve or a straight, for buildings, the type of building, and for units, the type of unit.

HPs:The amount of hit points a building or unit has at the beginning of the game.

Gold:The amount of gold a unit has in the beginning."

H-Time: the amount of time a unit has been harvesting, or if -1, the fact that it hasn't.

To place an additional tile on the grid, we type in "-1" in the Index box, select the Tile Type from the list, drag the Sub Type Bar to the right place and modify the other values. To find the X and Y Co-ordinates, we click on the board and they wil be entered into the relevant boxes. Then click on "Update Tile ". To remove a tile, we enter "-1" into both the X and Y Co-ordinate Boxes, and click on "Create Tile". To automatically enter the information about a tile, we click on the tile itself, and the information will be entered.

The Game

The Units

Tile Type			Sub Type	Description
Unit		0				Soldier, has weak armour and weapons. Can be carried in APC
Unit		1				Jeep, highly mobile, but has weak armour and weapons. It has important uses.
Unit		2				APC, has strong armour and is not very mobile. It Carries groups of four men.
Unit	3				Tank, has strong armour and weapons, but is not very mobile.
Unit	4				IU, move this onto a building and it will destroy itself and the building.
Unit	5				AMD, has strong armour and weapons, but is not very mobile.
Unit	6				MRL, has strong armour and weapons, but is not very mobile.
Building	0				Command Centre(CC), builds buildings.
Building	1				Hospital, repairs Soldiers and IUs.
Building	2				Barracks, makes Soldiers and IUs.
Building	3				Repair, repairs vehicles.
Building	4				Research, allows the building of advanced units like MRLs and IUs.
Building	5				Harvest, depot that recieves gold and credits your account.
Building	6				Factory, makes vehicles.

Starting a Game

Choose New Game from the File menu. Red starts first. All units and buildings start with full Hit Points(HP), full Movement Points(MP) and full Attack Points(AP). At the start of each turn, the APs and MPs are reset.

What Next?

The layout of the window will change when a game is started. The Creation Tools will disappear, and will be replaced with a list of all units and buildings of both colours, their indexes, and their HPs. The Radar and Board will remain, and a new frame will appear under the board, to the right of the Radar. This frame is the front end for unit manipulation.

It is clearly divided into 3 areas, the first contains data about the selected unit / building. Here it is a Barracks.

The second depends on whether the selected is a unit or a building. If it is a building, then it is used for building units and buildings, click on the building you want to build and a few turns later, the building will be complete. If it is a unit then the area is used for movement, 4 arrows and a circle. Click the arrows to move, click the circle to mine (AMD only).

The third area is used for attacking, click on one of the red targets to fire at that square on the board. This will become clearer when playing the game.

Tactics

If you attack the oppositions AMD, you can create a diversion for your main attack.

Without their research centre, the enemy can't build or repair advanced units.

Try and secure the bridges and move into enemy land as soon as possible. This gives the enemy less space to arrange an army, as (s)he is under constant pressure of attack.

If you take control of the areas around the bridges, the enemy will not be able to cross. Beware of them sending footsoldiers or jeeps across the river itself, however.

Place units around goldmines. They will restrict access for the jeeps to the AMD and cut off the enemy's supply of cash.

An MRV can shoot over obstacles like rivers, and because of its speed, can be well away from the opposition before anything tragic happens. It also has a very high miss rate, but it fires two missiles to make up for this.

Buildings can be easily destroyed by the MRV because it has two shots, and cannot miss.

The MRVs high speed, power and range make it excellent for guerrilla tactics. To counter this, place two tanks together, the MRV will only be able to destroy one of them.

Bring your IUs to the battle with an APC. These can withstand a lot more than your average IU. Send them directly into the centre of the enemy's base, and wait for them to be destroyed. Then take the IU and blow up the enemy's most important buildings.

Reference:

The Infiltration Units

These are specially trained infantry that specialise in commando raids, and espionage. They have the power to destroy any building ; obviously a lethal unit. Unfortunately, they tend to be very weak. As they are very speedy they carry very little armour. Put them in the APC for safekeeping. To use the IU, move it onto a building. The building will be destroyed; it cannot miss. Unfortunately the blast will knock some HPs off the IU.

APCs

These have the ability to secure men in an armoured, tank-like car. It can carry four men, and has a gun mounting on the top. If the APC is destroyed, the infantry escape unharmed in a group. To put men into an APC, just move them onto it, and they will enter. To make them leave the APC, click on the harvest icon, the units will leave one if there is space.

Groups

Four men can fit on one square quadrupling the firepower. Incoming shots affect all of them however, so it is sometimes wise to spread out. To make a group, move a soldier or IU on top of another, you can do this four times.

Repair

To repair a building, click the Repair button, to repair a unit, take it to the type of building where it was made, or to the special building designed to repair that unit, either a Hospital or a Repair. Simply move the unit onto the building.