Games PC KKND 2-KROSSFIRE User Manual

MAKING STUFF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

MAXIMUM UNITS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

MAKING BUILDINGS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

UNMAKING BUILDINGS . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

MAKING TOWERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

MAKING WALLS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

MAKING STANDARD UNITS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

MAKING CONSTRUCTIBLES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

FIXING THINGS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

TECH BUNKERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

BUILDING DESCRIPTIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

TOWERS & WALL DESCRIPTIONS . . . . . . . . . 29

INFANTRY DESCRIPTIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

VEHICLES/ANIMALS DESCRIPTIONS . . . . . . . 32

CONSTRUCTIBLES DESCRIPTIONS . . . . . . . . 34

ARIAL UNITS DESCRIPTIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

SINGLE PLAYER GAMING. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

MULTIPLAYER GAMING. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

HOST SCREEN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 1

CLIENT SCREEN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

ALLIANCES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

CHATTING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44

THE UNIT EDITOR. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44

APPENDIX A: COMMANDS & SHORTCUTS . . . 45

APPENDIX B:

EFFECTS OF TECH LEVEL INCREASES . . . . . 47

TROUBLESHOOTING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

SUPPORT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

CREDITS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

3

3

TABLE OF CONTENTS

TABLE OF CONTENTS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

MINIMUM SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS . . . . . . . . . 4

INSTALLATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

TO PLAY KKND KROSSFIRE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

BACKSTORY. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

OPTIONS SCREENS

(SUPERSTRUCTURE) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

YOUR OBJECTIVE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

COMMANDS & SHORTCUTS

(A SUMMARY) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

VISIBILITY: SEEIN’ STUFF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

FOG OF WAR/SHROUD . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

LINE OF SIGHT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

MINIMAP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

RADAR. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

SHORTCUTS TO MAP AREAS . . . . . . . . 10

SELECTING STUFF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

STATUS BARS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

BOSSING THINGS ABOUT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

MOVING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

ATTACKING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

WAYPOINTS & MARSHALLING POINTS . . 14

ORDERS LIST . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

SPECIAL ORDERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

RESOURCES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

OIL. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

ALTERNATIVE ENERGY . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

TECH LEVELS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

VETERAN UNITS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

SIDEBAR DESCRIPTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

EVOLVED, OUT OF BRIEFS

They’ve had 40 more years to evolve in a radio­active environment, so they look almost as twi­sted as their new animals. They still believe that
the first war was caused by The Scourge, angry
gods punishing humans for shunning and dest­roying nature. It is the duty of The Further
Evolved to prevent the Survivors taking over, for
fear of even greater wrath. The Further Evolved
have gone back closer to nature, shunning the
vehicles used by their ancestors. Nature or nut­hin’! Except for the guns, of course…

SERIES 9

The agricultural robots are new to the war, but
their motive is as old as they come. Revenge.
Nine series of robots were invented before the

Great War to perform menial tasks. Series 1-4,
citybots, were annihilated along with the cities
targetted by the Great War’s bombs. The fallout
from those bombs killed crops and sterilised
soil far away where the Series 9, agricultural
robots, were working, safe from the blast but not
the after-effects. Their circuitry fused, they
destroyed Series 5-8 out of spite (and lunacy)
and plotted revenge on the humans who ruined
their livelihood. In 2140, from a distance, they
observed the Survivors and Evolved warring
and realised that their pitchfork weapons
weren’t gonna cut it. They spent an extra 40
years developing a more ‘military’ approach.
They’re quite pleased with the results. Revenge
will indeed be sweet.

END OF STORY.
Now go out there and blow things up!

5

5

I

f you’ve used all the defaults during the

install process, you’ll find the KKND Krossfire
icon in your START menu under \Pro­grams\Melbourne House\KKND Krossfire. It’s
the one with the little KKND Krossfire graphic
next to it. Click it, then hit the ‘Play’ button, and
you’re away!

A BRIEF HISTORY OF WAR

Let’s get you up to speed. 100 years ago, a
nuclear war totalled the planet, leaving only
two groups of people alive. Of these people,
half scuttled underground, avoiding radiation,
and formed the Survivor army. The other half
stayed on the surface, mutated like CRAZY,
tamed some freaky beasts and called themsel­ves The Evolved. In 2140, they fought for owner­ship of the surface, and another two splinter
groups fled this war – cowardice or ‘going for
reinforcements’? You be the judge. It’s now
2179, and both groups have met on the surface
to fight for it again, only to find a third army also
wants some action. Those crazy kids!

SURVIVORS, IN BRIEF

Agoraphobia got the best of the military types,
and they cowered underground for 40 years
after deserting the First Surface War. Today,
they think they’re finally over it, and it’s time to
retake the surface in the name of the ‘true
humans’, as well as try out their weapon enhan­cements. They’re now called the New Survivors.
But the mentality hasn’t changed a bit.

4

• Operating System:

Windows ’95, Windows ’98, or Windows NT 4.0

• CPU Type & Speed:

Pentium 133MHz or faster

• Hard Drive Space:

100MB Disk drive space (additional space
required for DirectX 5, save games, and
Windows swapfile)

• Memory: 16MB RAM

• Graphics:

2MB DirectX compatible video card

• Sound Card:

DirectX compatible digital sound card

• CD-ROM Speed: 4X CD ROM

• Other Requirements:

Keyboard, Windows-compatible mouse

• Pentium 166MHz of faster CPU

• 32MB RAM

• KKND Krossfire supplies you with 2 CDs,

one containing the installation and Survivor
missions, the other containing the Series 9
and Evolved missions.

• Multiplayer games can be played using

either CD.

• 2-8 player network support using IPX net-

work protocol (high performance systems
recommended)

• 2 player modem play with Windows-compa-

tible, 14.4 kbps or faster modem

• 2 player serial play using null modem cable

• 2-8 player TCP/IP (Internet) play

I

nstallation of KKND Krossfire should be a

fun and wacky time to be had by all. Or at
least quick and painless so that you can get
in there and kill things NOW!

• Exit all other Windows programs.

• Insert the KKND Krossfire CD into your

CD ROM drive

• If you have AutoRun set as part of Win95

Setup, you’ll be taken to the install screen.
You’ll go to a fuzzy TV screen graphic.
Click Install. If you don’t have AutoRun
active, then click on your Win95 START
button (bottom left of your desktop), click
RUN, then click BROWSE. Make sure your
CD drive is selected in the ‘Look in’ window,
then select the file called SETUP.EXE.
Then click OK. Okay?

• Follow the instructions given, selecting the

directory and program folder where you
want KKND Krossfire installed

• A Note on DirectX: KKND Krossfire requires

DirectX 5.0 or higher to run. The install pro
gram will ask you if you wish to install it.

Say yes, unless you have a higher version

already installed.

• At the end of the install process, you’ll

be asked if you want to check out the
README.TXT file. This file contains updated
information that didn’t make it to this manual.

• Finally, hit RUN to start playing! You’re away!

4

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS & ISTALLATIONS

MINIMUM SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

Supported

INSTALLATION

Recommended

TO PLAY KKND KROSSFIRE

Backstory

PLAYING KKND KROSSFIRE

• Help:

Click this to scroll through all the keyboard
and mouse commands used in KKND
Krossfire.

• Return:

Drops you back to the game. ESC does the
same thing.

• Quit:

Fires you back to the main screen.

W

ell, it’s like most wars. Your objective is

to own EVERYTHING... to own... THE
WORLD! (insert maniacal laughter here).
You go about this by selecting an army to
join, then annihilating everything that does­n’t wear the same colours. More specifically,
you gather resources, using them to produ­ce your own buildings and units to fight and
remove the enemy’s buildings and units on
each territory. There’s a bit more to it than
that, and you’ll find out the finer points
during the mission briefings you’ll receive
before you’re sent out into the battle zone
by commanders who never go anywhere
near them. War! Who’ll ever understand it?

H

ere are the main commands and shortcuts
for playing the game. The full list appears

in Appendix A: Commands and Shortcuts.

LEFT MOUSE BUTTON

The Left Mouse Button is
mainly responsible for
Selecting, Moving and
Attacking. See under
each of these sections for
details. Here’s a brief list:

• Selection/Status:

Click individual units or drag select a bunch
of ‘em. They’ll be selected, and you’ll see

7

7

• Sound Volume:

Fiddle with the Sound Effects volume.

• Music Volume:

Ditto on the Music volume.

• Scroll Speed:

Sets your scroll speed for the cursor keys
and the Left Mouse Button (ie. your stan
dard scroll speed).

• Fast Scrollspeed:

Your Right Mouse Button allows you to
rapidly scroll over the map. This slider sets
the speed of this.

• Gamespeed:

Sets overall game speed, affecting con­struction times, unit speeds, things like that.

• OK: Okay?

• Save:

To Save your game position, click this but­ton then either double click on a save slot
or click once then click the Save button.
Done! Your game details (name, time of
save) will occupy a slot. You can click an
occupied slot and you’ll be prompted to
confirm whether you want to replace the
current game in that slot with the new one.
Click yes to do so.

• Load:

See ‘Load Game’ above.

• Restart: Restarts your current mission.

• Briefing:

For an even briefer brief, click this. It’ll
restate your mission objectives in text form.

6

O

ptions! Express your democratic right to
choose!

SINGLEPLAYER GAME

Shuttles you off to start deciding what single
player mission you want. See ‘Single Player
Gaming’ below to find out more.

MULTIPLAYER GAME

Shunts you off to the Multiplayer section. See
‘Multiplayer Gaming’ later on.

LOAD GAME

Throws you at a screen
where you can pick up a
mission where you left off
(double click the mission
name or single click, then

click ‘Load’). The Delete
button clears the selected game slot of the
contained game.

CUSTOM MISSIONS

KKND Krossfire allows you to create your
own, custom-made missions, as well as to
download other people’s missions from the
internet. You can adjust practically ever­ything: background graphics, their attributes,
unit placements – even mission completion
criteria. Check out the file CUSTMISS.TXT on
the KKND Krossfire CD for the details on
making your own missions.

UNIT EDITOR

Propels you to the Unit Editor, where you can
fiddle with the stats of all the units in a multi­player game. See under the ‘Unit Editor’ sec­tion for the inside story.

OPTIONS

Transports you to the main options screen.
And the options are:

• Fog type:

Choose the degree of fog you’d like (see
under ‘Visibility’ for details).

• Smart Select:

On or off. See ‘Selecting’ for the meaning
of this.

• Hints:

Hints can pop up at the start of Single­player missions, if you choose so here.

• Sound Volume:

Slide it to set the volume level of the sound
effects.

• Music Volume:

Slide this one to set the volume level of the
music.

• OK: You feelin’ happy with everything? Hit

the OK button.

QUIT

Go on. Hit it. You’ll leave the game and all this
work will be for nought… <sob>… no, just do
it, we’ll be okay… <sniff>…

W

hen you’re happily in

the game, you might
still want some choice.
Choice is good. Hitting
the ESC key or clicking
the Options button (at the
bottom of your sidebar)
will throw you into the In­Game Options menu:

• Options:

Your first option is more options! Here’s
what you can pick here:

• Smart Select:

On or Off. See ‘Selecting’ for details.

• Wait at Waypoints:

If it’s on, your group will wait at each
Waypoint for all its slower numbers to
catch up before proceeding. See under
waypoints’.

6

OPTIONS SCREENS (SUPERSTRUCTURE)

Main Screen

In-Game Options Screen

YOUR OBJECTIVE

COMMANDS & SHORTCUTS (A SUMMARY)

YOUR OBJECTIVE

Minimap On/Off button appears near the
bottom of your sidebar. Click it (or hit TAB)
to see the Minimap, click it again to hide it.

• Upgrading it

Upgrading your main building also upgra­des your Minimap. At Tech 1, the Minimap
shows terrain and friendly units; Tech 2
gives you enemy units as well; Tech 3
extends the radar range from your main
building.

• Understanding it

Here’s what it looks
like.
The black areas are
Shroud (see above).
Grey areas are Fog.
Coloured dots repre­sent units or buil­dings, their colour
showing their team.
When you are under
attack, you’ll see little flashes of red on the
Minimap to point to the action. Some units
appear to appear and disappear under the
Fog. See Radar below for an explanation.

• Moving it

The tilde (~) key toggles your Minimap to
the top left or bottom left corners of your
screen so the Minimap isn’t in the way.

• Scrolling it

If the main playing area is quite large, the
Minimap won’t fit it all in, so you’ll need to
scroll around inside it. You can position the
cursor to an inside edge of the Minimap
and click repeatedly to move in that direc­tion, or you can scroll around the larger
map (left or right mouse buttons or cursor
keys).

9

9

W

hen it comes to seeing stuff in KKND

Krossfire, you got options. Some units,
buildings and terrain can affect what you see
and how you see it, and there are other visibi­lity options that you pick yourself. Let’s get
into it.

FOG OF WAR/SHROUD

A Shroud (in KKND terms) is a black area on
the map, representing an area your units
haven’t yet explored. Fog of War is a stippled
map overlay representing an explored area
no longer in the visual range of any of your
units or buildings. Under this ‘Fog’ only the
terrain is visible, not enemy buildings or units.

LINE OF SIGHT

At ground level, visibility is not always as
good as it could be. A unit’s line of sight can
be obscured by trees, cliffs and plenty of
other things. This is represented in KKND
Krossfire by the Fog or Shroud remaining
active in a unit’s visual range if that unit tech­nically can’t see past an obstruction or over
the top of a cliff.

MINIMAP

The Minimap is a miniaturised version of the
map. Not many surprises there. It gives you a
quick overview of the surrounding area.
Here’s what you need to know:

• Getting it

Your main building (eg. Clanhall) starts at
Tech Level 0. Upgrade it once and your

8

their status bars (hit points, veteran level,
group number, etc)

• Add to selection:

Shift + LMB. Adds a unit to an existing
group.

• Move:

See under ‘Moving’ for the multiple moving
options.

• Attack/Force Attack:

See under ‘Attacking’ for the multiple
attacking options.

• Set Waypoint:

For issuing multiple orders. Hold Shift and
click. See under ‘Waypoints’.

• Issue Special Orders:

See under ‘Bossing Things About: Special
Orders’ for such orders as Defend, Repair,
Enter, etc.

RIGHT MOUSE BUTTON

• Fast scroll:

Position the cursor in
the main play area,
hold this button and
move the mouse. It
scrolls fast! Hence the
name.

• Deselect:

Right click on anything that’s not a unit or
building and you’ll deselect the current sel­ection.

• Cancel Production:

Click on a production button to cancel a
unit/building’s production.

H

ere are some of the main keyboard short­cuts.

ALT+ENTER: Toggles between Full Screen and

Window View.

CTRL + [0-9]: Stores selected units/buildings

for quick retrieval. The number key
becomes a shortcut to selecting that
group of units/buildings.

[0-9]: Restore group selection. (Stored group

will be selected)

ALT + [0-9]:

Restore group and centre screen on
group

CTRL+ drag select:

Overrides Smart Select (if active), so
Tankers, buildings and Technicians will
be included in that particular drag sel­ect.

HOME: Centre view on your main building (eg.

Outpost). To view your other main buil­dings (if any), repeatedly click the
HOME key.

CTRL + [ F5 – F8 ]:

Store screen position. (See under
‘Visibility’)

F5 – F8:

Recall stored screen position. (Also see
under ‘Visibility’)

ESC: (During a game) Brings up the in-game

options menu.

TAB: Open/Close Minimap
~: Toggles Minimap between top left and

bottom left corners.

SPACE: Cancel current orders on selected units

(they’ll just stop!)

?: (Technically, it’s the / key). Activates

unit information label for the next unit
or building the cursor hovers over.

‘‘ ^^ aa __::

Scroll the view

BACKSPACE:

Recall last selected group

S: Stand Ground. Units will stay put, even

if fights break out around them.

D: Disperse. Selected units will scatter

away from the selected area.

F: Fight. Selected units will aggressively

seek and attack any enemy unit within
visual range.

G: Guard. Selected units will stick by the

Guarded unit, defending it if it gets
attacked.

M: Multiplayer message. See under

‘Multiplayer Gaming’ for details.

+/-: Increases/Decreases Game Speed.

(Technically, it’s the - and = keys).

8

COMMANDS & SHORTCUTS (A SUMMARY) VISIBILITY: SEEIN’ STUFF

KEYBOARD

VISIBILITY: SEEIN’ STUFF

S

tatus Bars appear over units and buildings

when they’ve been selected. Since they’re
a few different types of Status Bar, you might
need a quick run down. So here we go:

Here is a list of all the information that could
possibly be contained in a Status Bar:

• Health level:

This is the coloured bar inside buildings,
units and vehicles/animals. It changes
colour and size as the unit takes damage or
heals.

• Oil level:

A blue bar showing how much oil is contai­ned in the unit or reservoir.

• Tech Level:

Shows the Tech Level of a building. Yellow
indicates current Tech Level, black indica­tes room for further advancement, and red
indicates Tech Levels unavailable at this
time (the Global Tech Level limit).

• Capacity Slots:

Shows the capacity of transport units.
Yellow shows slots filled, black shows slots
available.

• Veteran Status:

Represented in the Status Bar’s border of
infantry and vehicles/animals. Grey border
represents inexperience, blue border signi­fies a first level veteran, red border indica­tes a top level veteran.

• Group Number:

Displayed below the Status Bar. Shows the
group’s number (ie. the key where its short­cut has been stored)

11

11

STATUS BARS

ecting all units contained. The only excepti­on to the latter is when Smart Select is
active. See below.

ADDING TO SELECTIONS

To add a unit to an existing selection, hold
SHIFT and click on the unit you wish to add.

DESELECTING

To deselect, click the Right Mouse Button any­where on the map that isn’t a unit or a building.

STORING & RETRIEVING GROUPS

You may wish to store a unit, group or building
somewhere, so you can access them quickly
and easily when the heat’s on. Easy! To store
something, first select it, then hold CTRL and
press a number key (0-9). It’ll be stored in that
shortcut key, and the number of the key will be
applied to all the status bars of the contained
units. To retrieve that selection and make it the
current selection, simply press that number
key.

SMART SELECT

Okay, so you’re under attack and you’ve
clicked and dragged everything in your camp to
go fight. And what happens? You notice that
your unarmed Tankers and Technicians have
run off to get killed, and you’ve selected your
buildings for no readily available reason.
Solution? Turn Smart Select on in your in-games
options menu (hit ESC)! With Smart Select on,
Tankers, Buildings and Technician-types are
ignored by drag selections. Note that you can
still click on these units individually, and you
can make them selectable on a one-off basis
by using the Override feature detailed below.

OVERRIDING SMART SELECT

Although Smart Select can be turned off com­pletely via the in-game options menu (hit ESC
to access it), there are times where you’ll want
everything to respond to a drag selection, just
this once. Holding CTRL and performing a
drag select will include all units in that selec­tion. Okay?

10

RADAR

Radar, in KKND terms, is a visual aid allowing
your Minimap to spot units and buildings
under the Fog of War (so don’t worry yourself
with it if you’ve got your Fog option switched
off!) Here’s how Radar works:

• Getting It:

Radar can appear in two forms. Firstly, your
main building (eg. Barn) issues a radar field
when upgraded to Tech Level 3. And
secondly, a Radar turret can be strapped
to a Constructible Unit to form a mobile
radar unit (see Constructible Units below).

• Understanding it:

Something equipped with radar will have a
regular visual range, completely exposing
all terrain around it, but will also have a
radar range. This radar range is represen­ted by an area of Fog around the visual
range. And not only that, but this ‘radar fog’
will expose enemy units and buildings (in a
pulsing, sweeping pattern) on the Minimap.
Note that this won’t pick up Constructible
Units equipped with Radar Jam (see below).

• Jamming it:

There are two ways to prevent a unit sho­wing up on enemy radar, Radar Jam (avai­lable to all armies) and Stealth (Survivors
only). Both these are available as extras in
the Constructibles menu. A vehicle equip­ped with Radar Jam will not show up on
enemy radar. One equipped with Stealth
will not only be invisible to radar, but will
generate an aura of radar jam (sticky stuff,
you’d think), so that nearby units will also
be hidden from radar scanners.

• Special Note:

You want mobile, aerial radar? Load a
radar-equipped vehicle into an aerial trans­port!

SHORTCUTS TO MAP AREAS

Though the Right Mouse Button held and
dragged is a great way to get around the
map quickly, a few other ways exist. And
here they are:

• Minimap Clicking:

To instantly cut to a distant area that’s visi­ble on your Minimap, simply click on it in
the Minimap. Whoa!

• Bookmarking:

You can ‘bookmark’ screen positions,
which means storing screen positions as
shortcuts attached to keys. This is handy
for quickly ducking back to secondary
camps or areas of interest (oil setups,
enemy camps, etc). You can set up four
bookmarks. When you are on the desired
map position, hold CTRL and hit a func­tion key (F5-F8). After this, simply hitting
that function key will display that map
area. Cool!

• Home Key:

The HOME key will centre the screen on
your main building (eg. Outpost). Repeated
clicking will cycle through other Outpost
type buildings, if you have them.

• Stored Groups:

If you’ve stored groups into number keys
(see Storing Groups below), then you can
recall the group and centre the screen on
them by holding ALT while hitting the
group’s key number.

Y

ou gotta get people’s attention before

you can get them to do stuff for you.
Here’s all you need to know about selecting
units and storing groups.

SELECTING

There are two basic ways to select units. You
either click on an individual unit or building,
or you click and drag a selection box aro­und a number of units, then let go, thus sel-

10

SELECTING STUFF

SELECTING STUFF

STATUS BARS

And by the way, to stop your unit Force
Attacking, select it and hit the SPACEBAR,
which cancels orders.

SHOOTING BIRDS (GROUND TO AIR ATTACKS)

Shooting aerial targets from the ground is the
same as regular attacking, except that only a
few units can do it. And those units are specifi­cally anti-aircraft units or they’re long-range
units who can easily aim at the sky. These units
are: Anti-Aircraft Constructibles, Anti-Aircraft
Towers, other fighter aircraft, and Rocket
Launcher infantry (or equivalent). Of course, if
an aerial unit lands, then all units can go
bananas at it!

ARTILLERY

Artillery units (created as Constructible Units)
can shoot big distances and do big damage.
They have a minimum range (so help them out
if units get too close), but they have a delight­ful maximum range.

FIGHT ORDER

The Fight order, or the ‘Bully Patrol’ as we like
to call it, sets up your units to just go out wan­derin’ and pickin’ fights. The units will immedia­tely look around for any enemy units in their
visual range and go smack up the ones they’re
best at smacking. See more about Special
Orders below.

CLIFFS

A special note on cliffs is required here: All units
can shoot down ‘em, but only the Artillery
Constructible units can shoot up ‘em. So secu­re the tops of cliffs for some safe, deadly
action. And keep away from the bottom of them
if the enemy’s likely to have taken the high
road.

13

13

BOSSING THINGS ABOUT

Air: Air units, available at higher Tech Levels,

can be ordered about like any other unit.
They fly over all terrain, but will attempt to
land on the nearest piece of flat ground
when they reach their destination. If direc­ted to attack, they will do so, then return to
the last point they touched the ground.

MOVING WITH ANGER

If you want your units to get from point A to
point B as fast as you can without getting
distracted, just click a destination on the map.
If, however, you want them to smack up anyo­ne they come across in their travels, then hold
CTRL and hit the destination point. They’ll
walk, but they’ll walk with attitude.

THE REGULAR KIND

Simple ol’ attacking’s easy. Select your group,
position the cursor over the enemy unit or buil­ding you want attacked (the cursor will become
the attacking cursor), and click with the Left
Mouse Button. Your units will attack to the best
of their ability, attacking all units around that
area when they’re done. Easy.

FORCE ATTACK

There’ll be times when you want to shoot up a
weakened bridge, or just attack an area of gro­und to set up a nasty ‘firewall’. Or heck – you
might decide that now’s the right time to blow
the crap out of an ally. Or maybe you’ve gone
war crazy and you wanna shoot your own units
or buildings. Who can explain what happens
out there? Anyway, to perform a Force Attack,
hold ALT, position the cursor over the desired
target, and hit the Left Mouse Button. Kaboom!

12

And here’s a list of what has what:

• Infantry/Vehicles/Animals:

Health Level, Veteran Status, Group Number

• Buildings:

Health Level, Tech Level, Group Number

• Oil Tankers:

Health Level, Oil Level, Group Number

• Transports:

Health Bar, Capacity Slots, Group Number

• Oil Puddle: Oil Contained

• Walls: Health Level

B

eing a Commander is all about, y’know,

commanding. You’ve gotta be able to
direct your units all over the place so that
they can risk getting killed instead of you. Ah,
war. It’s a funny ol’ game. Here’s all you need
to know about shuffling units about.

BASIC STUFF

To move something, select it, then click on a
valid area of terrain. You’ll know
it’s not valid if you see a NO GO
cursor. No go areas are holes in
the ground, stuff like that. Note
that you can really map out which way you
want a unit or group to get to a destination.
That’s covered under Waypoints below.

TERRAIN (& NO TERRAIN) EFFECTS

There are a few things you’ll need to know
about terrain.

Trees: Only infantry can move through trees.
Roads: Roads allow units to move more quick-

ly than on unflattened terrain.

Water: There are three types of water, alt-

hough they’re sneaky and look identical.
Shallow water allows all units (including inf­antry) to cross, Medium level water allows
infantry and amphibious units only, and
Deep water will only allow amphibious units
across. This, of course, assumes that the­re’s a nice flat shoreline to enter the water
– no jumping in the pool!

12

BOSSING THINGS ABOUT

BOSSING THINGS ABOUT

Moving

Attacking

A

few special orders for special units exist,

but they’re fairly straightforward. For
example, the Detonate order for suicide
units and the Repair order for the Mobile
Constructible Repair vehicle are treated as
basic ‘targetting’ orders. Click on the unit,
then click on the unit/building you’d like it to
affect.

RESOURCE UNITS

Resource Units represent the level of ener­gy you’ve collected. Everything you make
costs Resource Units to build, and some fun­ctions (such as Research) cost Resource
Units as well. You can see your current level
of Resource Units in the Resource Display
at the top of your screen.

How do you acquire Resource
Units? Keep readin’…

OIL

Oil (called Earth Blood by the more caring
Evolved) is great, and don’t you go listening
to what those nutritionists say. Oil is also the
richest source of Resource Units in the war,
and since Resource Units allow you to build
up a force, which allows you to wipe out the
enemy, which allows you to win the war,
which allows you to take over the whole
world, you can bet that oil’s pretty darned
important. You can
find out how much oil
is in each puddle by
holding the cursor
over a puddle and
looking at its Status
Bar.

An oil puddle.

15

15

RESOURCES

L: Load Transport. As part of a series of

Waypoint commands for a Transport,
clicking the L key will set the most
recently clicked destination as a
pick up point. The Transport will set
down and remain for a short time so
that units can be piled in, then it will
fly to its next destination point.

U: Unload Transport. As part of a series

of Waypoint commands for a Trans­port, clicking the U key will set the
most recently clicked destination as
the point it will lay down its cargo.

ALT: Force Attack. Forces a unit to attack

an ally, terrain feature, bridge, etc.
See ‘Force Attack’.

SHIFT: Waypoint/Queue orders. Sets

Waypoints. See above.

SPACE:Cancel Order. Selected units will

stop moving or attacking, selected
buildings will forget their Marshalling
Points, Selected towers will stop
firing.

T: Auto Assign Tanker. Sets an idle

Tanker off to find an Oil Rig and
Power Station and start hauling oil.

CTRL: Move while attacking. Holding CTRL

and selecting a destination point will
make your units alert – they’ll
defend themselves against attacks,
then continue to their destination
once they’re no longer under direct
threat.

14

WAYPOINTS

The units in KKND Krossfire have developed
better memories, and can now remember up
to 9 orders to complete in order. These
orders are called Waypoints. Usually you’ll
be using Waypoints to mark out specific
paths for the units to take (for example, an
aerial unit might be given a path that avoids
Anti-Aircraft towers to get to its destination
instead of taking the shorter, more dange­rous, direct route). Sometimes, though,
you’ll give the units orders on the way, like
”Go here, fight whatever you see, return to
base for repairs, then return to your starting
point”. To find out how to set Waypoints,
keep reading.

Setting Waypoints

To set such Waypoint orders, select the
units, hold SHIFT and click out their path. A
dotted line will display their path. For orders
such as ”get repaired”, you’d click on the
Repair Bay as one of the steps. For a haras­sment order, you might hit the F (fight) key
after selecting a destination point.

Patrolling

Patrolling means a unit or group will travel
around in a continuing loop until an enemy
comes near, then they’ll attack it. To set up
a loop, set up a path of Waypoints, then
click the final destination point back on one
of the others. The Waypoint path turns red,
and the units will begin their ‘Marchin’ up ‘n’
down the square’.

Changing Waypoints

To change a set of Waypoints, select the
unit or group again, hold SHIFT and map out
the new set of orders.

Wait at Waypoints

This is an option available in your in-game
menu, designed for slow units. If ‘Wait at
Waypoints’ is active, your units will stop at

each Waypoint until all the members of the
group have caught up, and only then will
they wander off to the next Waypoint.

Marshalling Points

Units usually hang out the front of their creati­on building, but sometimes you’ll want your
fighting units to head straight into battle. To set
this up, click on the relevant creation building,
hold SHIFT, and click out some Waypoints
describing your desired path. New combat units
will follow this path upon creation. To cancel
this, select the building and hit SPACE (cancel
orders).

T

o inflate your ego as supreme commander

of the war, you now have more orders you
can lay on your poor little units. The
Keyboard commands are listed with the
descriptions below, and they also appear,
along with all Keyboard and Mouse
Commands, under the ‘Help’ button in the in­game options menu.

S: Stand Ground. Select units and hit

the S key and those units will remain
where they are and not attack
unless specifically ordered to do so.

D: Disperse. Selected units will imme-

diately scatter and move a short
distance from the current mouse­pointer position.

F: Fight. Selected units will attack any

enemy within visual range, and will
hunt what they’re best at killing if
there’s a choice.

G: Guard. Selected units will stay near

and Guard a building, unit, or area.
Select the units, hold the cursor over
that that requires guarding, and hit G.

14

BOSSING THINGS ABOUT

Waypoints & Marshalling Points

Order List

Spezial Order

RESOURCES