Pocket General
Opening screen
Play saved game:
opens a previously saved game, may be campaign or scenario.Play scenario: start playing a new scenario
Play campaign: start playing a new campaign
View high scores: Shows the best commanders (*)
Quit: Quits the game
Playing the game:
The top line is the information line or menu line. Tapping this line will usually bring up some options.
After each turn the line will display the turn and your credits. You use the credits to buy units or reinforce them. You can only buy, sell or upgrade units in the first turn. When no unit is selected, tapping the menuline will give you the following options:
Buy: Buy a new unit, deployment must be within 5 clicks from home base.
Status: Gives you the status of all your units
Next: Initiate next turn
Save: Saves the game. If you start another application without saving the game, the game will be lost.
Quit: Quits the game
Tapping on a free space on the menuline again will bring you back.
The area below is the visible playing area. As the playing area usually is larger than the visible playing area you may pan the area by clicking on the edges of the visible playing area. Selecting a unit will bring some short information about the unit. Name/Unit number/Fuel/Ammo/Strength/Experience
If you click on the menuline, a new menu pops up.
If you have selected an enemy unit:
Info: Gives information about this kind of unit, tapping on the screen brings you back
If you have selected a friendly unit:
Info: Gives information about this kind of unit, tapping on the screen brings you back.
Reinf: Reinforce the unit. The unit will be reinforced dependent of the reinforcement factor and credits.
Resup: Resupply the unit. The unit may be resupplied or reinforced if it has neither moved nor fired.
Ren: Rename the unit
Sell: sell the unit. You may not get fully paid when you sell a unit as determined by the trade-in factor.
Upgrade: upgrade the unit. You may not get fully paid for the old unit as determined by the trade-in factor.
If you select a free space on the playing area the unit will move. It may only move one time each turn.
If you now select an enemy unit you will engage the enemy unit. The rules are like this:
First your unit fires on the enemy unit and the enemy unit's strength is hopefully reduced. Then if its range and ammunition permits the enemy unit will fire back. Only the attacking unit will gain experience as determined by the experience factor.
If you move to a free space, but it turns out to be occupied by an enemy unit the enemy unit will fire without your unit firing back.
Sometimes when you move a unit you will see a transport symbol. This is because some units needs time to get the weapon ready when it is moved. In the example WWII scenarios, artillery uses one turn while self-propelled artillery uses half a turn.
Winning or loosing.
In a scenario there are 3 different outcomes:
Victory: You captured the enemy base within a few turns
Tactical victory: You captured the enemy base within the turn limit or in a defensive game you managed to protect your base within the turn limit.
Loss: Either your base was captured, or in an offensive game you were not able to capture the enemy base within the turn limit.
You capture a base by moving onto it.
Visibility:
You will not be able to see the complete playing area. Each of your units has a spotting range and this will determine how far you will see. Please note that the computer player will see the complete area. The reason for this is limited computational resources and the difficulty of programming smart recon units. This is not a big advantage however, because the computer player is not smart enough to take full advantage of this. If the computer wins it is usually because it has more units than you have.
Terrain:
So far there is only one terrain type, mountains. These are rather hills as tanks may fire across them. In the example WWII scenarios tanks have a maximum range of two, so two "mountains" side-by-side will make a real mountain. It is not possible to move on a mountain.
Bugs:
There are some missing features, but I have not discovered any serious bugs yet, but it may be wise to have a paperclip nearby anyway. During the development numerous bugs have crashed the Palmpilot but I have not lost any data from my Pilot. If you are low on memory or you use a lot of units/unit types or have a large world size you may run out of memory. If this happens the game will exit.
(*) Not implemented yet