*********
                         *Captive*      Part 4
                      ****************
                      *by James Judge*
                      ****************

@~Continued from last issue - see also the maps in this section

          ****************************************
          *Mission 1, Base 4 - Treikos (96W 106S)*
          ****************************************

Now we're cooking! Four bases in and your droids are now
developing that 'mess with me and you're dead, Plant Popper'
swagger as they walk. Hmmm...  Anyway, this base has four levels
and nothing much, really, to surprise you.  Personally I think
that this is one of the easier levels in the mission as most of
the monsters are easy to kill, you get some good weapons and
armour and you find both the money and experience to utilise all
of them.

Starting off you get cut off from the entrance and, so, you must
remember to look in all cupboards for that depressed brick which
you must press.  Well, if you were on earlier levels you'd be
looking for a depressed brick but on this level (and subsequent
ones) there will be a mixture of bricks which are and aren't
depressed. So, start making it a habit to, once you've opened and
emptied a cupboard, press the brick inside the cupboard.  Most of
the depressable bricks are kept in cupboards that are behind false
wall blocks, so that should give you something to go on...

This is also the first base where power points aren't in
profusion. Just learn where three or four ones are and you can use
them as points of reference as well as a source of power.

Monster wise there are plenty of new bods this time round.

The first to be encountered will be the Hover-Troops. These, like
the troops, wander around in groups of four and fire electrical
charges. They do more damage and take more damage than their
cohorts, though. The twist with these monsters, though, is the
fact that they fly and can't be hit with the weapons you have at
the moment. The only way you can kill air borne troops is to
either use rifles (which won't make an appearance until later on
this level) or, using the Anti-Grav (which we got in the first
base), you can flip upside down, to walk on the ceiling. This
allows you to attack all the flying troops but now the reverse is
applied - you can't attack small ground enemies (such as Goblins).
Large monsters (such as Brains and Door-men) can be hit in the
head, though. Watch out because the Anti-Grav sucks up power like
anything. So, don't spend too long on the ceiling and when you
come down look out for a power point! And also be careful. If you
use a mine to try and get rid of these beasties you won't be able
to as they fly above them. Oh dear. I'll talk more on the subject
of mines next base.

Next up are Minos. These always come in fours and look like
demons; goats' legs, green top, horns, you know - the norm. They
look far more dangerous than they actually are and move pretty
slowly. They can't take much damage before flaking out but they
can give some hits in excess of the 40 mark, so don't stand next
to them day-dreaming - keep on the move.

Then there are Cagers. These little beasties come in groups of
nine and move pretty fast. They have no ranged weapons but they
take a hell of a lot of damage to kill - the 'square dance' is
called for here.

Finally there are the Fire-Spirits. There is only one group of
these in the whole base, but listen up - they do quite some
damage, especially in later bases. They move around in fire blocks
(something else that is newly encountered in this level) and can't
move out of them. They fire fireballs and move quickly in pairs
within the fire. Now, the problem with the fireballs is that hey
do a lot of damage. BUT, they go through your party ie: if they
are 'F' and you are 'G' and they fire a fireball then it will
travel through square 1, 2, 3, through your party and on through
squares 4, 5 and 6 until it runs out of steam ('>').


                        *******************
                        *F*1*2*3*G*4*5*6*>*
                        *******************

So, this means you mustn't run BACKWARDS away from a fireball as,
most likely, you'll end up inhabiting the same square as the
fireball square after square, receiving a lot of damage each time.
To avoid this dodge to the side or just stay where you are when
you're fired upon.

The fire-spirits inhabit fire squares. These squares are
impassable by you and any ground monsters, flying ones can get
past them, though. They do more damage to you if you bang into
them and if you repeatedly walk into them your vision will become
obscured with snow (as it will if you are attacked by a
fire-spirit) that takes a little while to clear (unless you've got
a magna-scan going).

Water is a different element that you'll come across in this base,
too.  Water can be walked across but it will do your droids
minimal damage (2 damage per step, or if you stand in the water
for a while you'll just accept a regular rate of damage). All
monsters can cross water except the mechanical monsters. The
monsters which are frozen in water are the following (you won't
have come across some yet, but don't worry - they'll appear soon
enough!)

Troops
Tanks
Cager
TV-Guns
R2-Shells
ED-R19K

Later levels include water hydrants which, when turned on, fill up
the surrounding area with water until you turn them off. You could
(theoretically) fill an entire base with water, but whether you'd
want to or not is a different matter entirely...


As I said above on this base you come across three new pieces of
kit - two weapons and a new suit of armour. The armour first.

This is Coppator and is pretty good. You need a Robotics score of
10 to wear the Super pieces and you should be able to afford them
at the end - it'll cost you around 18,000 gold to get two whole
suits for your front two characters, a Super chest for your back
two as well as a Super head for them.  The reason why we are
up-grading the back twos' heads out of synch is because up until
now they have been making do with Basic human heads. This means
they are open to attack and will break easily. Tindron heads have
poor eyes, so we haven't given them those heads. All the other
suits of armour have good vision capabilities (on par with the
Human head) and, so, it's only fair to give the back two a good
set of eyes. The droid who isn't your leader but is in the back
row basically carries your leader's spare head. If anything
happens to your leader's head you can either swap leaders or
heads. Also remember that droids can work perfectly well without a
head - they will have less HPs and a lower carrying capacity, but

only your leader needs a head to work properly (best to give them
one, though).

Remember to sell that Basic Tindron chest you've been keeping as a
back up and replace it with a Super Tindron chest. Also be careful
because it is a little way from the shops to a power point, so
don't get lost otherwise you'll have a bunch of slow, thirsty
droids on your hands...

Now the weapons.

On this level you can do away with the Light-Swords and forget
about this unsophisticated hand-to-hand fighting which you've been
enduring so far. You're going up in the world.

The first shop you come across stocks hand-guns - everything from
Pistols through to Colts and Magnums. More importantly Super
Magnums. Each type of gun takes a different type of ammo. Pistols
take 20mm ammo, Colts 45mm and Magnums 50mm. 50mm is by far the
more expensive - six times the cost of the 45mm ammo. Personally I
think it's worth it. You do only get a couple of extra bullets but
the increase in damage makes up for the extra 250 gold which
you're paying for the privilege of using the Magnums.

This is the Handguns Ability Table:

                        ***********************
                        *Amount*Weapon   *Ammo*
                        ***********************
                        *00    *Unskilled*----*
                        *01-08 *Pistol   *20mm*
                        *10-16 *Colt     *45mm*
                        *17-24 *Magnum   *50mm*
                        ***********************

So, hopefully you've accrued enough experience from the last base
and the fights you've just had to be able to kit out all your
droids with Super Magnums. You can now get rid of your balls - but
hang on to the Super Balls which you've been finding in cupboards
- they may come in useful later on for disarming mines and opening
things from a distance. They're lighter than standard balls, do
more damage when thrown and you can get money back on the balls
you bought in the first base (if you really NEED 80 gold, that
is).

There are now a few things you will have to get use to with
hand-guns. First off the actual guns don't degrade so you'll be
able to sell them back to the shop for the same price (bearing in
mind you'll only get the same price from a shop that stocks the
weapon - if they don't you'll get a 50% reduction on the resale
price). But the ammo isn't like that - once you've bought a round
of ammo you're stuck with it. This may sound piffling, but when
you're hurriedly trying to fill a droid's back-pack with 45mm
rounds and keep on accepting 50mm rounds you soon lose a LOT of
money - so keep a steady hand and a watchful eye!

The best thing to do is to designate one droid to carry all your
ammo. This way you know that there will only be one place for you
to click when you want to reload a gun. This is far faster than
clicking on all four buttons, maybe reloading twice (thus wasting
a round), searching for an elusive round.  It's also quicker for
when you are reloading while you're still moving - you don't have
to worry about who's got what, you can just concentrate on getting
away from the death machine that's pursuing you while reloading
your weapons.

Sometimes firearms (both hand-guns, rifles and everything from
then on) can jam (ie a bullet gets stuck in the barrel). This
renders the weapon useless until you can reload it. You'll be able
to tell whether a weapon is jammed when the bar to the side of the
weapon turns red and fills the whole box.

Keep an eye on this bar when the gun is working fine too - a
little forewarning when your bullets are going to run out will let
you plan a little sortie against a monster and then retreat
further to reload the guns.

A little trick I learnt a while back. If you have eight guns in
all eight of your hands and you run out of ammo and then five or
more of the guns run out of ammo, but you have two or three full
guns left, you can still get a good firing rate going. What you
must do is put all but one gun into your inventory. Then, starting
from the top-left hand working down to the bottom right place the
gun in a hand and fire. Quickly pick the gun back up, move it to
the next hand, place it and fire. Keep this going along the line
and with one gun you should be getting up to a speed of firing
nearly equal to that with six or seven guns. It's far faster than
waiting for just two guns to recycle while you have six free hands
just twiddling their collective thumbs. It may take a bit of
practice though (when I started to use this method when I was low
on ammo I started off with all the back characters hitting the
front droids in the back - they weren't amused).

This little tactic can be applied to all weapons, so if you are
using a few Light Swords and two or three of them become broken
use the same method BUT ONLY WITH THE FRONT FOUR HANDS - THE BACK
TWO DROIDS CAN'T USE HAND TO HAND WEAPONS!

The next weapons you'll come across will be the Rifles. I don't
really like these weapons as they seem a pointless major addition
to your armoury. The boon with these is that they fire high. So
far hand-guns have been firing at waist levels and, so, miss the
flying monsters. Rifles shoot at head height so they hit all
flying monsters bang on. They do slightly more damage than
hand-guns but shouldn't replace them - otherwise you wouldn't be
able to hit any ground enemies.

What I tend to do is train one droid (usually the one with the
highest Wisdom score and, therefore, the highest amount of
experience points) up to as high as he will go in Rifles before I
blow the generators to this base. I then go back to the shop which
sells the rifles and buy two of the best Rifles he can use
(whether it is a Rifle, Shotgun or Hunter. This time round I was
able to get a Super Shotgun only). I then keep his Magnums and arm
him with the Rifles. This way I'll be able to shoot any flying
monster a few times (maybe killing them) without having to use my
anti-grav and if I am walking on the ceiling I'll be able to clear
away any nuisance Goblins without flipping back over. Lazy I know,
but who cares?

The benefit of getting a Hunter over the other two types of Rifles
is that it uses the cheaper form of ammo (50mm as opposed to
cartridges) and also fires two shots at a time. So, you could get
four bullets flying with two guns - pretty good methinks.

The Ability Table for the Rifles:

                        ****************************
                        *Amount*Weapon   *Ammo     *
                        ****************************
                        *00    *Unskilled*         *
                        *01-08 *Rifle    *Cartridge*
                        *09-16 *Shotgun  *Cartridge*
                        *17-24 *Hunter   *50mm     *
                        ****************************

I s'pose you want to know where to get these pieces of kit from,
don't you? Well, they are available from the two shops which are
in the North East corner of level two.  The maps are in the next
file.

That's it for another instalment. Tune in next time for bases five
and six as well as a look at mines and other interesting stuff.

PS - You can contact me for any specific help with Captive through
my usual address (33 Chidley Cross Road, East Peckham, Nr.
Tonbridge, Kent, TN12 5BX) or telephone me on 01622 871679.

I've got all passwords up to the Space Station on Mission 6 and
all switch (8 and 16 way) solutions up to and including the Space
Station on Mission 3.

You can distribute this and any other Captive guide file I do to
anyone you want. Just keep my name on it (please) and remove the
telephone number if it is going to someone who doesn't read
SynTax. Thanks.



                              - o -